A few days late, but better than never, I suppose.
Despite all the complete chaos of the world around us, 2021 was another pretty good writing year for me. I had three stories published over the course of the year, “A Hell of a View,” “Darkness Peering,” and “The Devil in the Details” (links go to Goodreads entries for the respective anthologies). Over the summer, the anthology Monsters, Movies & Mayhem (with my story “Vinegar Syndrome”) won the Colorado Book Award for best anthology, so that was pretty neat.
Over the course of 2021, I wrote 8 new stories (including “Darkness Peering,” above). 3 of them have found homes, and I’m hopeful for the rest.
The biggest project was finishing up my second novel the Seething. It’s a weird monster-horror book I’ve been working on between short stories for a couple of years now. I think it’s solid. I finished it in the spring, polished it over the summer and started sending it around in the fall. I’ve had a couple of bites, so hopefully some news about that soon.
Since it’s the time of year when awards are being considered, I should mention that all three of the stories mentioned above are eligible for short fiction awards. I sent “Darkness Peering” and “A Hell of a View” out for consideration to the Bram Stoker awards which are presented by the Horror Writers Association. I didn’t send out “A Hell of a View,” because I don’t really consider it a horror story. It’s dark, of course, but not really horror in the traditional sense. I momentarily considered seeing if there are any awards for “slow-burn stories about once-sided romances that go off the rails and end in nuclear fire.” But probably not worth the effort.
If anyone reading this is interested in reading those stories for awards consideration, drop me a line here, or email me at benmonroe (at) iCloud (dot) com, and I’ll see about sorting you out with copies.
So that’s a wrap for 2021. Let’s see where 2022 takes us.
