Easily the biggest news is the release of my second short fiction collection, Three Things Cameron Couldn't Tell You. I was so delighted to read Randee Dawn's generous blurb for the collection and had a great time doing a book launch at Worldcon with her for our respective books. (Richard Sparks, unfortunately, was unable to join us.)
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| Randee Dawn and I at our Worldcon 2025 Book Launch Party |
Worldcon in general was a great experience. I was on one panel and also did a reading on Saturday morning, sharing three stories from my new collection. Thanks to Glen Engel-Cox for the photo of me at my reading!
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| Michael reading at Worldcon 2025 in Seattle |
I've also had a couple of new stories published so far this year. My crime story "Prank Frank" was published in Black Cat Weekly issue #197 and my fantasy flash "In the Garden" was published in 3 Turns Widdershins.
Neither of those stories is available to read for free online but one of my previously-published stories is now available for free online for the first time, though in audio, not text. "A Drink from the Doubtless Sea" was podcast by Manawaker earlier this fall; it had originally been published in 99 Fleeting Fantasies.
While we're on the topic of audio presentations of stories, just last night I was on Story Hour for the first time in about a year and a half and read my story "Carolina." The video is up on YouTube now, so you can check out my story and Natasha Calder's story which preceded mine.
And finally, a couple of notes about conventions past and future. Last weekend, I went to MileHiCon 57 and was on two panels and did a reading. One of the panels was the convention's annual "Flash Fiction Chopped" competition where authors are given prompts by the audience and have several minutes to write part of a story based on those prompts. They then read what they wrote to the audience who in turn vote on who they want to see stay on the panel and whose time in the competition has ended. To my pleasant surprise, I won the competition with my story which I titled (after the fact) "Vampires in a Sunoco Bathroom, I-10 Arizona, October 26 1986, 7:15 AM." I'm looking forward to returning to MileHiCon next year to attempt to defend my title. :)
Before that, I plan to attend at least a couple of other conventions, though I don't have details yet about whether I'll be on programming at either. COSine is being held in Colorado Springs the weekend of January 23, 2026. And just one weekend later, ConFusion will be in the Detroit area when I'll (genuinely) coincidentally also be. I'll update folks here with my schedule if I'm going to be on programming.
Okay, so I think that covers everything new for now! I'll try not to be such a stranger...
