Author: Craig Gidney

I had the pleasure of moderating a panel at the Gaithersburg Book Festival last week with the authors Jinwoo Chong and Owen King.

Flux, Chong’s debut is a speculative fiction novel that has elements of time travel, alternate realities, tech startups, and queer and Asian American identity.

King’s novel The Curator is a gaslamp neogothic fantasy set in an unnamed European country at the turn of the century, equal parts Dickens and Wes Anderson. (And it’s illustrated, too!)

I recommend both novels –and authors (they are great people).

I have stories in two summer anthologies that can be pre-ordered.

Blackened Roots, an anthology of zombie stories from the African Diaspora, edited by Nicole Givens Kurtz and Tonia Ransom features my story “Grayed Out.”

Unspeakable Horror 3: Dark Rainbow Rising, edited by Vince A. Liaguno, features my story “Strange Enchanted Boys.”

2022 saw me traveling to more cons and events. In March, I went to the International Conference of the Fantastic in the Arts in Orlando, Florida. I went to Stokercon in Denver and two weeks later to Balticon. In August, I went to Necronomicon in Providence, followed by the HP Lovecraft Film Festival in October. I went up to Philadelphia for a Halloween reading event, and in November back up to Baltimore for another event. Finally, I went to New York to read at a Burlesque show in early December.

2022 also saw the release of my fifth book, the third collection called The Nectar of Nightmares from Underland Press. “Impz” is a new story I published in Looming Low Volume II. Two anthologies my fiction was in won major awards. Unfettered Hexes: Queer Tales of Insatiable Darkness (ed. dave ring, Neon Hemlock Press) won a Shirley Jackson, and The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction (ed., Oghenechovwe Donald Epeki, to re-released by Arc Manor Press) won the World Fantasy Award.

I also co-won the Joseph S Pulver Award for Weird Fiction (along with Zin E. Rocklyn).

I met a bunch of people, both readers and authors, and in one case, drag performers, in each city I visited. It was a full and busy year. 2023 is about hunkering down and writing more fiction.

The last couple of Tweets by Space Karen were enough to make me pull up my roots and leave the birdapp. In one, he implied a former employee (who’s gay and Jewish) of being a pedophile apologist by taking an excerpt of his PhD thesis paper out of context. In the second tweet, he threw meat to anti-vaxxers and transphobes. I barely have a presence there, but I’m out. (Space Karen has become a proto Proud Boy and is turning the birdapp into his personal KiwiFarms).

I used to like Grimes, (his ex) but I can’t even listen to her anymore. She must have seen what a far right buffoon he is and picked him anyway.

So, I’ve joined Mastodon. Here’s my relevant information — ethereallad@pettingzoo.com

I also signed up for Post, but who knows when I’ll get an invite?