This year has been something.
I left a significant teaching job back in May and my heart is still broken about it. But it freed me up to have a quiet summer and fall, which led to more writing than I’ve done in quite some time, and more growth in my craft. Over the last several months I’ve come to terms with what I want to do for the next few years of my writing career and all I can say is that I am incredibly excited.
This year has also been busy on the publication side of things. In January I published a story at Many Worlds called “Narratology by Peter Wood” which is a mouthful. A strange little story about Gustave Flaubert possessed by something that forces him to write books
Then in June Many Worlds, Or the Simulacra was published, the first anthology for the Many Worlds Collective. I am so proud of this book and our work with our publisher Radix Media to get it out into the world. I was a co-editor on the anthology, alongside Josh Eure, a project we’d been working on since 2020, so it was truly a milestone for us to see it in print. Especially after a long search to find a publisher (which makes me even more grateful to Radix Media). The road was long but the outcome has been rewarding. I really think it is an incredibly strong anthology, receiving a starred review from Publishers’ Weekly and very positive reviews from Kirkus and Locus Magazine.
In July I published “A Tech Mage Comes to Visit” with Sunday Morning Transport. I love this little story. It is the first story I’ve ever written in a secondary world. It is quiet, mostly one scene, but there’s so much world building and characterization in there. Finishing it and seeing the feedback it has received makes me want to return to it for a longer project.
In October my story “Wandering Devil” was published alongside many of the greatest writers in black speculative fiction in the anthology Out There Screaming. You might’ve heard a lot of noise about this one since it was edited by Jordan Peele and John Joseph Adams. I still can’t believe I was fortunate enough to be a part of this. The bigness of the project aside, I really believe this is (maybe) the best short story I’ve ever written. It may be bumped from that spot eventually, but right now it is the one story that feels very near complete; in that sense that no story is ever truly finished, this one feels so close to it, like it is doing everything I want it to do. I don’t know if other authors feel this, but there’s this satisfied feeling I get when a story is working for me and this one really makes me feel that satisfaction.
And then the novel: We Are the Crisis, which came out November 7th. It is the second book in the Convergence Saga, the first being No Gods, No Monsters. I have a lot of personal feelings about the book, but my biggest feeling, the one I feel most consistently, is pride. Pride for having completed a second book in a trilogy during the most difficult time in my life (not being hyperbolic here). And I love the book, for all the things it is doing and setting up. The book itself has received a lot of critical love: starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal; positive reviews from Locus Magazine, Tor.com, Foreword, and the New York Times; listed as a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus and Library Journal; and an Editor’s Choice Pick by the New York Times. It has also (to my surprise) been getting a lovely response from readers.
So, to recap:
“Narratology by Peter Wood” in Many Worlds (a strange little story about Gustave Flaubert possessed by an entity that forces him to write books)
“A Tech Mage Comes to Visit” in Sunday Morning Transport (my first secondary world story and hopefully not my last, about mages with the power to shape technology in a world with very little advanced tech)
Many Worlds or the Simulacra, published by Radix Media (the first Many Worlds anthology, co-edited by myself and Josh Eure, of which I am very very proud)
“Wandering Devil” in Out There Screaming (an anthology of black horror edited by Jordan Peele and John Joseph Adams; what might be my best story ever)
We Are the Crisis, published by Blackstone Publishing (so proud of this novel, particularly for surviving writing it)
There’s some stuff ahead in 2024, but publishing is slow so some of things cooking now won’t be out until 2025. Lots I am looking forward to.
Cadwell Turnbull 