Reading and Gaming Highlights of 2023

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December 24, 2023
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I read more than I watch or listen, and so here are highlights from this year of the close to 200 books I read or reread in 2023. I get the majority of my reading from NetGalley, BookBub deals, ARCs, and the library. I include publication dates so I can remember what I will recommend for Nebula reading; bolded titles are eligible for award stuff this year; titles in italics indicate a forthcoming title.

Here are some of my favorites in speculative reading from this year:

F.M. Aden – The Bride of Death (Northern Light Press, March 1, 2024) – Lovely fairytale retelling.
Emma R. Alban – Don’t Want You Like a Best Friend (Avon, Jan 9, 2024) YA – queer Victorian romance with a whiff of The Parent Trap.
Cassie Alexander – AITA? (2021) – Fun paranormal sexy romance.
Julia Armfield – Our Wives Under the Sea (2022) Lovely, eerie horror.
Rachel Aukes – The Lazarus Key Waypoint, (Jan 8, 2024) – Thriller with fish & wildlife officers going up against dinosaurs
Bridget E. Baker – The Birthright Series, 2020. Solid space opera, and I liked the PoV changes from book to book. I read the first three and will be picking up the other five when I get the chance.
S.A. Barnes – Ghost Station (April 9, 2024) Great psychological thriller on a space station.
Redfern John Barrett – Proud Pink Sky (Amble Press, 2023) Linked short stories of a gay homeland. Enjoyed this a lot.
Stephen Baxter and Terry Pratchett – The Long Earth Parallel earth series, 1st of four.
Melissa Blair – A Broken Blade (2021) – Solid YA fantasy, first of three books.
Marie Brennan – The Market of 100 Fortunes (Aconyte, Feb, 2024) Loved this Legend of the Five Rings tie-in novel.
Tobias Buckell – A Stranger in the Citadel (Tachyon Publications, 2023), Terrific world-building and a librarian questioning that world.
Octavia E. Butler – Mind of My Mind. Rerelease of work by one of my favorite writers. Everyone should read Octavia. Over and over again.
Sebastien Castell – The Malevolent Seven (2023). Absolutely solid and fun fantasy that lives up to the excellence of Castell’s other works.
Heidi Catherine – The Whisperers of Evernow (2019) Interesting premise, YA.
Beth Cato – A Thousand Recipes for Revenge (47North, 2023) I love Cato’s work and this was no exception. Plus — food and fantasy! First of 2 and I’ve already preordered the sequel.
P. Djèlí Clark – The Dead Cat Tail Assassins (Tor, April 23, 2024) Delightful secondary world fantasy.
David Clawson – My Fairy Mother is a Drag Queen (2017) – Fun Cinderella retelling. YA.
Lex Croucher – Gwen and Art are Not in Love (Tor Macmillan 2023). YA queer romance, fun and frothy.

Alex Evans – I Am a Barbarian (BooksGoSocial, Dec 17, 2023) Fun YA secondary world fantasy.
Philip Jose Farmer – Lord of the Trees (2012), The Mad Goblin (2013) Typical crazy-ass Farmer and a certain amount of (literal) cock-swinging.
Brandon Gillespie – Atom Bomb Baby (2023) Strong whiff of Fallout fanfic about this book, but in a good way.
Nicole Glover – The Conductors (2021) Loved this alternate history with magicians running the Underground Railway; first of two books
Kim Harrison – American Demon (2020) I always enjoy Harrison and this was no exception.
Christina Henry – The House that Horror Built (Berkeley, June 14, 2024) Solid horror about the cinema, nicely creepy.
Kevin Hincker – The Ghost with a Knife at Her Throat (August 13, 2023) I adored this urban fantasy, which had some cool twists. First in a series and I’m picking up the rest.
S.J. Himes – The Necromancer’s Dance (2016) First in an urban fantasy series of the vampires/werewolves ilk, fun gay fantasy with lots of action.
Dara Horn – Eternal Life (2018) Is living forever a boon or a curse? Lotsa historical texture.
Kat Howard – An Unkindness of Magicians, A Sleight of Shadows (2023) Loved this duo of mannerly magician books.
Sarah Zachrich Jeng – When I’m Her (Berkley, March , 2024) Compelling story of female friendship.
Mary E. Jung – Blossom and Bone (2022) Cozy fantasy feel to this series that I really enjoyed, first of a 3 book series.
T.J. Klune – In the Lives of Puppets (2023) Terrific SF retelling of Pinochio. One of my favorite reads of the year.
Tim Lebbon – Among the Living (Titan Books, Feb 6, 2024) Lebbon is always good, and this is solid and compelling.
Ann Leckie – Translation State (2023) More in Leckie’s complex and compelling SF universe, along with one of my favorite characters of all time, Qven.
Britney S. Lewis – The Undead Truth of Us (2021). YA zombie with a lot of emotion to it.
Megan Mackie – Death and the Crone (2023) Enjoyed this older woman romance in Mackie’s Lucky Devil setting.
Melissa Marr – Remedial Magic (Tor, Feb 20, 2024) Cozy fantasy with a lovely lesbian romance.
J.R. Martin – The Engineer’s Apprentice (2023) Solid beginning to a steampunk series.

Zoe Hana Mikuta – Off With Their Heads (Disney, April 24, 2024) Great queer Alice in Wonderland riff with Gideon the Ninth vibes.
Jo Miles – Dissonant State (2023) Fun space opera that has me looking for the beginning of the series.
Premee Mohamed – The Siege of Burning Grass (Rebellion Publishing, March 12, 2024) If you buy one book in 2024, this should be it.

Sunny Moraine – Your Shadow Half Remains (Tor, Feb, 2024) Creepy horror of the everyone is the enemy apocalypse variety.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia – Silver Nitrate (2023) Sharp-edged horror set in cinematic history.
Tamsyn Muir – Harrow the Ninth (2020), Nona the Ninth (2022) I loved Gideon and Harrow but bounced hard off the third book for some reason.
Patrick Ness – The Rest of Us Just Live Here (2015) – YA and I LOVE this book about what it’s like to not be the Chosen One so much.
Naomi Novik – A Deadly Education (2020), The Golden Enclaves (2022) Fabulous entry into the genre of magic schools.
Allison Saft – A Dark and Drowning Tide (Random House, Sept 17, 2024) Loved this secondary world fantasy frenemies to lovers take on a murder mystery.

Lilith Saintcrow – A Flame in the North (Orbit, February 13, 2024) I always enjoy Saintcrow and this was a pleasurable read but I like her more modern fantasy stuff considerably more.
Robert Shearman – We All Hear Stories in the Dark (2022). I’m still working my way through this massive three volume set and enjoying it enormously. Highly recommended if you love short stories.
A.J. Steiger – Eye of a Little God. (January 2, 2024). Well-executed psychological horror.
Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland – The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. (2017) Great time travel corps stuff with a fun romance. There’s a sequel, which I need to pick up.
Andrew F. Sullivan – The Marigold (2023) Fabulously unhinged horror.

Lavie Tidhar – The Circumference of the World (2023) His usual brilliance, so much lovely stuff in this!
K.B. Wagers – A Pale Light in the Black (2020) Fun start to a series.
Khan Wong – The Circus Infinite (2022) Terrific SF with a runaway teen with special powers.
Z. J. Ryder – Twisted Neuros (2023) I love this story of an AI trying to figure out its own existence.

In anthologies and collections, I recently began a project to go through all my anthologies and collections to see which I want to keep. So far that’s included:

Space Opera, edited by Brian Aldiss. Keeping for historical relevance more than any innate quality.
Light Years and Dark, edited by Michael Bishop. Keeping for the high degree of original fiction, the quality of writers and works, and the editorial vision.
The Black Science Fiction Society’s Genesis: An Anthology of Black Science Fiction Book One, edited by Jarvis Sheffield. Keeping for the breadth of established and new voices.
A Larger Reality: Speculative Fiction from the Bicultural Margins, edited by Libia Brenda. Keeping because I love books with the stories in the original language as well as English, plus the range of established and new voices.

In my short fiction reading club, in which we read classic stories of F&SF, we read: Ray Bradbury’s “The Fog Horn,” Karen Joy Fowler’s “Standing Room Only”, Robert Heinlein’s “All You Zombies,” and “The Green Hills of Earth,” Anne McCaffrey’s “The Ship Who Sang,” Vonda N. McIntyre’s “Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand,” C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner’s “Vintage Season”, Clifford Simak’s “Desertion,” Connie Willis’ “A Letter from the Clearys”, and Roger Zelazny’s “Auto-da-Fe.” I’ve found these craft-focused sessions, which are part of my Patreon community, illuminating and useful in terms of learning more about F&SF history as well as craft tips and tricks.

In video/computer games, I started playing the early version of Baldur’s Gate 3 in early September, and I’ve been obsessed with it. Earlier in the year, I was playing Sun Haven and really enjoyed it, along with occasional bouts of Darkest Dungeon. If you’re a Stardew Valley fan, you will like Sun Haven, because there’s a lot of similarities and fun writing. I continue to play Pokemon Go on my phone.

RPG-wise I’m running a live game of D&D 5e and playing in two f2f homebrew D&D campaigns, one virtual D%D campaign plus Esper Genesis on Twitch. That sounds like more than it really is, which is a chance to game once or twice each week. Early in the year, I played in a game of Apocalypse Hearts run by Lowell Francis and want to recommend the Open Hearth gaming community for people interested in finding interesting story-focused games to play online. I also used the Party Backstory Generator tool by Justin Sirosis in my D&D game as the session 0 and found people really grooved with it and generated some interesting connections.

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The New Place, and Other Recent News

October 6, 2015

Recently spotted in Value Village. I believe this is the god of pumpkin spice.

We are mostly unpacked and settling into West Seattle. The construction across the way continues, and they’re working frantically to get the place done before the rainy season sets in. I give them a 50/50% chance of making it.

The high ceilings here make the place feel enormous, as does the extra 300 square feet we’ve picked up. We’ve also got substantially more closet and cupboard space. The view from the kitchen window remains a thing of wonder; every night it gives me a beautiful sunset with sound and mountains. Yesterday there was sunlight coming in through the leaves and flickering on the cabinet so beautifully that I had to call Wayne to come and look. The cats like the new place, particularly the carpet in the study.

Downsides are small so far — we’ll definitely need to get a portable AC for at least one room next summer in order to survive. We certainly can hear the restaurant — but the hours are such that it’s hasn’t been bothersome at all and it means we never need to worry that our TV or music is too loud in turn. There are raccoons who like to come up the back stairs and trip the motion detector driven light. Garbage is much more complicated than it was in Redmond: here we have to separate out food waste and there’s no handy dumpster.

picture of a tortoiseshell cat — Taco says the sunlight is good here but the pillows are too small.

The best feature, for me at least, remains the location. A few dozen coffee shops are within my walking range. The library is a six minute walk away. If I wanted to, I could take the water taxi into Seattle. Also within walking distance: multiple thrift stores, several parks, an antique mall, four large grocery stores, a 24 hour Bartells Drug Store, two bookstores, an art supply store, a post office, a pet food store that carries the cans of gold that are the only thing Raven can eat, and some of the most beautiful views around. The Unitarian Church is a hour walk, but a ten minute drive isn’t too bad.

Saturday we finished up cleaning the condo. A friend just moved to the area, so we’re happy to be able to have him staying there and making sure no one sets up a meth lab or tiger breeding facility or something like that while we’re gone.

Recent writing news:

“Marvelous Contrivances of the Heart” just appeared in Fiction River: Recycled Pulp, edited by John Helfers.
I turned in my story, “The Curious Peregrinations of a Goat Herder,” for the Champions of Aeltalis book, and Marc Tassin liked it.
“He Knows When You’ve Been Sleeping” will appear in Naughty or Nice, edited by Jennifer Brozek. This is a humorous story that edges into R realms and is also the first Christmas story I’ve written, which is a slightly odd combo.
“Rappacini’s Crow” was rereleased in the Best of Beneath Ceaseless Skies Year Six.
Two collaborations are forthcoming: “The Mermaid Club” with Mike Resnick and novella “Haunted” with Bud Sparhawk.
A notable recent reprint is “Tortoiseshell Cats are Not Refundable”, which originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, and will be reprinted in The Best American Fantasy and Science Fiction, edited by Joe Hill with series editor John Joseph Adams.
Recent Patreon stories are Talking in the Night and Snakes on a Train.
Other upcoming stories include “Tongues of Moon Toad” in The Bestiary Anthology, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer; “Preferences” in Chasing Shadows, edited by David Brin; “Red in Tooth and Cog” in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction; novelette “The Threadbare Magician” in Genius Loci, edited by Jaym Gates; “As the Crow Flies, So Does the Road” in Grendelsong, edited by Paul Jessup; and “Call and Answer, Plant and Harvest” in Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

photo of Cat Rambo with flowers — The kitchen is airy and light; it makes a more compelling argument for buying fresh flowers than the old place.

Recent teaching news:

I have just finished up converting the Character Building Workshop class to the on-demand form for Fedora and I am very pleased and proud with how this one turned out and how my little online writing school is growing. Once I’m done converting them all, I will go back and update the first one, based on a lot of the lessons I learned working with this particular class.
I’m finishing a third and final installment of my How to Teach Workshops series for the SFWA Bulletin; you can find installment one and installment two in the Bulletin, the most recent of which is available on Amazon.
Upcoming live classes include: Flash Fiction Workshop (October 16), Literary Techniques for Genre Fiction I and II (October 17 and 24), the Reading Aloud Workshop, and the First Pages Workshop with Caren Gussoff.

That’s all for now! Looking forward to an October spent exploring this new space and finally finishing up this goddamn book.

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