It’s close enough to the New Year for me to post my annual “year in review” comments. 2024 has been pretty good as far as he number of stories I’ve had published.

It started out with my short story “I Don’t Want To Be Human” appearing in the Cloaked Press anthology Spring Into SciFi 2024. This tale goes back to my roots in terms of sapient robots, AI, while flying in the face of the common trope that all humanoid robots want to be like people.

Next up, I’m particularly proud of the 16-part science fiction serial I wrote for Starry Eyed Press called Our Legacy, The Stars: A Tom Corbett Adventure. It’s currently on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform, but Vella is going away (you still have time to read it). The folks at Starry Eyed say they’ll republish my work in book form, hopefully in the coming year. I’ll let you know.

I meant for “The Aliens” to be a short novel, but Starry Eyed Press edited it down to a long short story in their anthology Galactic Treks. I did some of my most creative work in that tale, inventing a unique form of faster-than-light travel and some very unusual aliens. When the rights revert to me, I’ll see what I can do about expanding it again and maybe even adding to that universe.

“The Last Oasis of Mars: From the Tales of the Razzle Dazzle” was so much fun and the story that launched High Tower Magazine. It’s Jack London meets Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars stories (sort of) and if you click the link, you can read it for free.

“Olivia Comes Home” was something I posted on my blog for a “writing challenge” but repurposed it for the online magazine SciFanSat, also available for free.

“The Other Place” is actually a favorite of my co-workers, with three of them buying the Raconteur Press anthology The Super Generation. It’s a story of a one-time event that affected only certain members of that generation, government conspiracies (of course), with a hint of “The Incredibles.”

“Wraiths” was born somewhat from a dream I had, so I gave it life and it was published in SciFanSat. Available to read for free.

“The Haunted Detective’s Cat” is a sequel of sorts and also tons of fun. Published in Raconteur Press’s anthology Moggie Noir: Alley Cat Alibi. 1940s San Francisco private detective Marguerite Potter, who is always haunted by her ghostly clients, has an unwanted partner in Mac, a library cat, in solving the murder of a literature scholar who held the key to a Chinatown conspiracy.

“Blood Trail” is also a sequel following the further adventures of Consulting Occult Detective Emma Elizabeth Durban and her partner former Idaho City Sheriff Bobby Bill Thornton. In the anthology Zehlreg Augustus Grindstone’s Spectacular Western Oddity Emporium they visit San Francisco in the 1880s in search of a vampire who is creating others of her kind and spreading them across the American west.

Blue Planet Press published my science fiction space opera “Confluence” in their anthology Far Futures: Book Three. The crew of a NASA probe to Jupiter’s moon Europa are accidently “swallowed” by an alien vessel and struggle to find a way to communicate with their unwitting captors in an attempt to return home. What happens when it’s too late?

“The Joker and the Thief” is a personal favorite of mine and can be found in the Celestial Echo Press anthology Ruth and Ann’s Guide to Time Travel, Volume 2. It involves a man who has the natural ability to time travel, a pawnbroker whose shop is outside of reality, and the pursuit of the stolen Mona Lisa on board the doomed passenger liner Titanic. Then the real trouble starts.

Last but certainly not least, in the Crucifixion Press anthology Shoot the Devil 3: Militia of Martyrs, you will find my short story “The Book of Names.” An all but immortal man has spent thousands of years collecting words and syllables that when put together and spoken, will banish all evil from the Earth. However, he’s hunted by Legion, an army of demons dedicated to stopping him. On the eve of collecting the last fragment of the name, they catch up to him, and his only salvation may be a lone women who is trapped in the battle between them.

Oh, it seems I forgot about Hex which was published by Black Hare Press. It was a wee tale that started out as a contest on Facebook. I didn’t win the contest, but my story was published along with the others.

That’s it for 2024. A few other stories have been accepted by publishers but won’t see print (virtual or otherwise) until 2025. I’ve got plans for furthering my writing in the coming year, particularly since I’ll be retiring from my day job in early January.

I hope you all have been enjoying the holidays in whatever manner you celebrate, and may you all have a Happy New Year.

Stay tuned.