swan_tower | 2025 publications in review

Man was this an unusual year for me and publications.

Not the part where I didn't have a novel out. That's happened before, and it will again, thanks to the vagaries of scheduling; I have years with multiple novels out which more than make up for it.

And not really the part where I only published two short stories, thanks to a drop-off in my production of new stories (after an absolute flood of short fiction writing for a few years prior). Those are:

"The Poison Gardener" (Sunday Morning Transport, paywalled)

"Mrs. Patterson's Home for Landlocked Men" (Flash Point SF, free to read online)

No, the unusual part is where I published EIGHT POEMS in 2025. There are plenty of poets who outpace that, but for me it's a lot! All are either free to read online, or out of their period of exclusivity so I have made them available myself:

"Hermit of the Crossroads" (terza rima, Haven Spec)

"Among the Briars" (villanelle, Rialto Books Review)

"Axis Mundi" (inverse mirror fib, Eye to the Telescope)

"Story Sits in Places" (rhyme royal, Worlds of Possibility)

"Hallucination" (free verse, Merganser Magazine)

"Cutting the Cord" (rhymed quatrains, Small Wonders)

"The Great Undoing" (modified sonnet, 4LPH4NUM3R1C)

"Our Rewards" (villanelle, Merganser Magazine)

. . . actually, I published nine poems, but one of them is a piece I tucked into one of my own self-pubbed collections as a bonus piece. There were two such collections this year:

The Atlas of Anywhere (secondary world fantasy; a "sequel" of sorts to Maps to Nowhere)
A Songbook of Sparks (stories based on folksongs; a "sequel" of sorts to A Breviary of Fire)

So that's it for 2025! I have three things slated to come out in January, though -- a short story and two poems -- so I'll be hitting the ground running next year. Let's see what else 2026 has in store!

(originally posted at Swan Tower: https://is.gd/9nTgOX)