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2025 is going to be one of those transitional years in my life. Several long running projects will end and several new projects will begin. So, what do I have planned? (Note: everything listed in this post is subject to change without warning—such is the Way of the Freelancer.)

Professionally: It is all project-based. And most of it will be in editing. A lot of it will be for CGL, but I do have a couple of other freelance clients I’m working with. I will do some writing as well. Maybe some more voice acting/narration.

For Catalyst, in specific…

• Augment magazine, issues 1-4, will be released.
• I’ve also got the Shadowrun novella line to take care of.
• And, on the schedule, at least one more Shadowrun anthology. 
• Also, there’s a couple of BattleTech things on my plate to edit and write.
• Not to mention finishing Shadowrun: Imre Grey and, at least starting Shadowrun: Elf in White.

For me, personally: I plan to self-release several projects in 2025.

• First, we will finish up “Dear Penpal, Belgium 1980.” Then I will have to decide if I want to write the next of those. I won’t do it in actual physical letters, but if “Dear Penpal, Pennsylvania 1984” happens, it will still be an epistolary work vaguely based on my life as a teenager.
• Second, I will release a small fiction collection of my original Tales of the Hucked Tankard (from Campaign Magazine), including the unreleased story and a second original “twenty years later” story.
• Third, I’ve got plans to update Industry Talk to Industry Talk Revised: 15 Years Later. A lot has happened in the last 15 years. Some of my advice has changed. Some has not. But I think I have a lot more to say than I did last time.

Convention Travel… I plan to limit my travel a lot. Gen Con, my main industry convention, and Worldcon Seattle 2025. That’s it. That’s all I currently have on the docket for work travel.

On the Homefront, I only have three specific desires this year: Decluttering, less time online, and finishing unfinished books.

• Decluttering: “I need to declutter.” I’ve been saying this for 3 years now. This year, with the help of the Husband, we’ve decided to gamify the project and tackle it together. I broke the house out into 36 projects, wrote them down, and put them into a wooden chest. Each week, we will pull one out and do it. I think this will work. I hope it will. I can feel the weight of things on my shoulders.
• Unfinished Books: In 2024 (and 2023, 2022…), I started reading various novels, novellas, collections, and graphic stories. For whatever reason (work, distraction, exhaustion, travel, etc…), these books have not been finished. I spend too much time online. I want to remedy that. I declare 2025 to be the Year of the Unfinished Book. I will keep track of every book I read by category (Unfinished, New, Work), and publish it at the end of the year. Hopefully, this will convince me to renew my reading habit.
• One day off the internet per week: I think I’m going to see if I can take one day a week off the internet. The world will survive one day without me looking at email. I just need to figure out which day of the week it will be. (Probably Sunday—the day I have no scheduled meetings nor other online commitments–except for the “Dear Penpal” zoom calls.)

Overall, the thing I want to do most in 2025 is to be gentle with myself. To stop yelling at myself for “failing” whatever arbitrary goal I had set. I don’t have high hopes for the next 4 years as it is. Thus, I will be doing what I can to care for myself, my friends and family, and my local community.

But, as always, I will keep track of my metrics. (If you would like a copy of my blank 2025 Freelancer Summary document, contact me. I will send it to you.)

One last thought. I don’t make “resolutions” (noun: a decision to do something or to behave in a certain manner). The term isn’t for me. I plan. Complete with specific steps to accomplish that plan. Either I execute the plan or I don’t. I know it’s all semantics, but “resolutions” feels a bit wishy-washy to me.

That’s it. Doable goals with specific plans for 2025.

Here’s the numbers. We all love numbers so much.

• Books published: 2, Shadowrun: Auditions and Shadowrun: The Mosaic Run
• Anthologies published: 3, 99 Fleeting Fantasies, Shadowrun: Magic, Machines, and Mayhem (co-edited with John Helfers), and Shadowrun: Through the Decades (co-edited with John Helfers)
• Short stories published: 4, “Eye of the Beholder” (co-written with Raven Oak), “Hella AFK”, “A Tale for Munchausen’s Merriment”, and “Dueling Minstrels” (co-written with Marie Bilodeau)

• New words written: 105,830
• Words edited: 441,00+

• Awards nominated for: 2 (both Scribe awards)
• Awards won: 1 (Won the Scribe award for Shadowrun: Auditions)

• Stories submitted: 12
• Stories sold: 6 (50%)
• Stories rejected: 4 (33%)
• Stories outstanding: 2 (17%)

Thoughts about the numbers:

• I’m pleased with the number of things that were published. It’s nice to have new novels and stories out in the wild.
• You’ll note that I did a LOT more editing this year. Gotta pay the bills. The Husband has retired from tech.
• The Scribe award nominations and win were very nice. I appreciate being acknowledged by my peers.
• As for the stories submitted and sold/rejected…I really am on target with that one. My acceptance rate hovers around 50%. This year I made my 100+ short story sale. That was cool.

I don’t really have a lot to say about the metrics for this year. I’m fine with them. They’re respectable for a full time publishing professional. With the Shadowrun magazine coming out next year and being an editor-at-large for CGL, my editing numbers will not be going down. That does cut into the writing schedule. But I’ve got my plans for next year—which I will talk about in the next blog. In the meantime, enjoy some pictures of my cats.

I hope you have had a very good holiday season!

(CW: Kitten injured but OK.)

Life is better with kittens. It is also more complicated and, occasionally, terrifying. Freya had an accident this morning. It’s the kind of thing no one could expect. That 2.5 lb kitten tried to climb an 8 lb slab of wood to get to me, cooking. Somehow, what she did caused the whole thing to topple over backwards as she clung onto the top of it. (I KNOW… it was leaned up against the cabinet. How the f* did she overcome the lean?)

Honestly, it is easier to share what I wrote to a discord group than to re-explain it:

[10:29 AM]

Freya just pulled an 8 lb slab of wood on top of her, I watched it happen. I couldn’t stop it. She fell over backwards holding onto it so she hit her back on the floor compounded by the wood on top of her. She got her tail stuck under it because she got herself on top of the wood.

[10:30 AM]

I freed her. She limped and yowled and when I picked her up, she yowled more. I put her down and she moved away then laid down with her hips out. I told [the Husband] he needed to get her to the emergency vet RIGHT NOW. [The Emergency Vet] is open. He left. I cleaned up. Freya is x-ray right now

[10:31 AM]

Both me and [the Husband] feel terrible because neither of us thought a kitten could move that slab of wood (it’s a stove topper/cutting board.)

[10:32 AM]

IF we are lucky, she’s bruised and scared. If not, something is broken.

For ten minutes, I did the only thing I could do…continued to work on my freelance editing. Then I got word.

[10:42 AM]

[The Husband]: “She has a minor pelvic fracture, probably no method of treatment except cage rest for 4 weeks. Coming home with pain meds as well.”

[10:42 AM]

cage rest for a kitten

[10:43 AM]

[The Husband]: “A surgeon specialist will look at xrays early next week to see if anything else to do.”

Once the Husband got home, he told me that it seemed that Freya has fractured both sides of her pelvis. But, they weren’t completely sure. The specialist would look at the x-rays (which I now have in my email) and everything had already been sent to our normal vet.  Until told differently…4 weeks of cage rest for Freya. (In three weeks she gets spayed…maybe.)

In the meantime, my friends rallied. Roz had kitty jails for just this kind of thing and offered to bring them over. She picked up Seanan along the way who brought a peacock feather to use to distract Mimir while the chaos of kitten jails were set up. It was so appreciated. It was a thing we didn’t have to figure out while our brains were running in twenty different directions.

After everyone left, Mimir immediately defeated the soft sided kitten jails and collapsed the one that Freya was in on her. Mimir does not take kindly to being separated from his sister. The problem is, he is bigger than she is and wants to wrestle. So, Freya is now in the One for Pets kitten jail (Portable 2-in-1 Double Pet Kennel/Shelter) and a second one has been ordered.

Apparently, minor pelvic fractures are the most common injury in a kitten. They jump from too high, fall off furniture, topple things on themselves. She is young and healthy and should be fine. Me, on the other hand, I’m a mess. So’s the Husband.

One good(?) thing to come out of this: Mimir has to play by himself. It’s getting Leeloo’s attention. She’s starting to play with him. She almost let him cuddle with her once, then rebuffed him. A second time, he went to cuddle on my chair while Leeloo was under a blanket. She almost let it happen until his kitten nature pulled the blanket from her head…and then Leeloo had quite the hissy fit. She didn’t hurt him but she did swat at him enough times (he’s a champ at “hunker and freeze”) when he wouldn’t move that I quietly said, “Leeloo.” She stopped, huffed at me 2-3 times then flounced off. It’s a start?

If I have done this correctly, this blog post will go live on Monday, December 9th. It’s my birthday and the Husband has whisked me away for a day trip to Leavenworth!

Event: It’s my birthday! I like to celebrate all week. Buy yourself or a friend one of my books and leave me a review. If you’ve got all of them and would rather get me something else, I have a ko-fi account, an amazon wishlist, and a kindle wishlist.

Event: I will be reading at A Midwinter Haunting! 8pm at the Kirkland Arts Center. Readings from HWA Seattle Chapter members. Free event. I will be reading a spooky holiday story. On a mid-winter’s night, everyone is hungry.

Interview: With Epic Realms. I enjoyed the heck out of this interview. YouTube link.

Release: My 25th edited anthology is live! Shadowrun: Through the Decades celebrates 35 years of Shadowrun through 7 novelettes and novellas from new authors and old favorites!

Release: Valdemar short story, co-written with the fabulous Marie Bilodeau in the Feuds: All-New Tales of Valdemar anthology. “Dueling Minstrels” – a story of two small town minstrels and their battle of wits exploding beyond verbal showmanship…

Writing Contest: Worldcon Seattle Writing Contest 2025 – Submissions open Jan 5-20 (do not send anything in before this time).

Support: As always… if you appreciate my work and would like to support me, I love coffee. I am made of caffeine. This is the quickest way to brighten my day.

Tuesday, Dec 3rd, was the equivalent of emotionally speedrunning my life. I do not approve nor do I recommend. It was one of those days that even my editor would look at and say, “Isn’t that a bit much? Maybe spread those events out over the novel instead of a day.”

Bad: Mena stopped eating and drinking on Monday. She was still hiding on Tuesday morning. The Husband and I had already decided she needed to go to the vet. Mena loves her treats.

Good: My cat lover advent calendar and the Husband got me froofy coffee. (Little things count.)

Good: Our 2x a month housekeeper arrived!

Bad: Our housekeeper noticed our refrigerator suddenly wasn’t working. Through investigation, 8 outlets in the kitchen and family room weren’t working. This is something that happened years ago. Got fixed. Broke again.

Good: Plugged the refrigerator into a different plug and it worked. No spoiled food.

Bad: Had to find an electrician.

Good: Not only found an electrician, they were able to come out on the same day, AND were able to fix the issue.

Bad: That was $$$ money we didn’t expect to spend (but that’s what emergency funds are for).

Good: Started a new D&D game at the house. Session 0. Figuring everything out.

Bad: Vet called. Mena has feline pancreatitis. No cure, some mitigation. Caught it early. Mena was kept overnight for more observation. We will see what we need to do when we pick her up today. (Good things: It had nothing to do with the anxiety drugs Mena got put on because of the kittens nor was it due to the arrival of the kittens. This would’ve happened no matter what.)

Good: I sold a little short story I love to a new pro-paying market. This is a short story that has been rejected 20+ times. I’m so glad it found a home.

Other things happened that weren’t big enough to make the list. Also, several of my friends are going through rough times. I know I’m not the only one having a hell of a week (and it’s only Wednesday). Sometimes life is like that. I just wish it wouldn’t involve my cats. Mena is only 12. She’s sweet and silly and doesn’t deserve the pain she’s in now.

My life is all kittens and work right now. Freya and Mimir arrived on the 8th of November, one day after we got home from our Canadian trip that was such a blast! The twins (siblings technically) were less than 2.4 lbs each. They are so small and so cute!

The girl is Freya and the boy is Mimir. We wanted siblings because we knew they would be good for each other. Especially while we integrated them into our household with two senior cats. (More on them shortly.)

Fierce Freya is fearless and, frequently, brainless. She has no survival instinct. She will base jump from any height, chase a hissing Mena, and generally not be aware that anything could be harmful. Especially giant lumbering people who want to step where she wants to run under.

Mighty Mimir switches between Meek and Mighty. He is always hesitant of new things and people at first. Then he becomes as fearless and brainless as Freya. He usually is the first to escape the quarantine zone. Most of the time, he listens when another cat hisses.

As for the senior cats, Leeloo is interested in the kittens. She will go sniff them then back off when she realizes they are not her Maus. (She still misses Isis and Pharaoh.) She hisses at them when they get up in her grill, and that is usually enough for both kittens to back off. If not, she’s bapped Freya and both kittens submitted.

Mena, on the other hand, lives in the House of Hisses and Growls. She wants nothing to do with the little interlopers who have stolen her place as the baby of the family. She frequently hisses at the barrier or the door to the kitten room so hard that she gives herself a coughing fit. Feliway doesn’t seem to be helping. I may have to get some kitty Prozac for her. She seems to be afraid of the kittens. Especially Freya, who doesn’t seem to understand what hissing means.

Still, I have hope and patience for the clowder to integrate. It will take time and understanding. Maybe drugs. Right now, the kittens are too small to have the run of the house, and they haven’t finished having their vaccines. This week they get access to my bathroom, the kitten room, and my office. Maybe next week, the whole top floor of the house so that the senior kitties can get some peace and quiet downstairs.

But, as of right now, my entire world is finishing up the first issue of Augment magazine, and dealing with kittens who have no survival instinct.

Today’s Tell Me comes from the incomparable Marie Bilodeau. She tells me why she thought it was time for a StoryBundle of books with middle-aged protagonists in science-fiction and fantasy, called Never Too Old to Save the World, and how much she loves them.

Age Need Not Stop You

In my twenties, I desperately wanted more stories of women kicking ass, and not needing a man to do so. I wanted female friendships, and arguments, and insecurities…all in an epic fantasy context. Twenty years ago, there were a lot less books with these core themes applied to women, especially ones that weren’t romance-focused.

To scratch my own reading itch, I wrote Heirs of a Broken Land with three central female characters who would fight each other and evil, and would lean into their powers instead of shying away from them, or giving them up for family/romance/etc…

When I reached my forties, I craved reading about older heroines saving the world while juggling family, responsibilities, and any incurred trauma (life is traumatic, you know?). So I jumped back into the world of my first series and created a second series, Keepers of a Broken Land. I’m twenty years older, so are my characters…and evil takes more than one trilogy to defeat.

Again, they’d lean into their powers, and not just pass them down to their children like so many fantasy stories do. They’d try to make right the stuff they screwed up, no matter how haunted they were, and they’d still support each other and keep fighting.

Now hungry for stories of middle-aged protagonists in science-fiction and fantasy, I leapt from book to book, devouring stories of people still standing up despite scars and creaky knees. (I discovered crones, too. Inspiration for Future Marie!)

There’s this thing about loving books where you just want to scream about them to everyone. And that’s what I wanted to do with the stories I discovered, so I decided to put together a Story Bundle that focused on characters 40+.

It was a crazy, joyful experience, and I’m very proud of the ten books gathered in this bundle. From heroes looking for redemption to crones tasked with saving the world (despite not being able to find her reading glasses), from grandmothers trying to save their community to old friends trying to save each other, this bundle will cure you of any conception that older folk can’t save the world.

YA fever has been sweeping the fantasy genre for decades, and generation after generation is told that “they’ll be the ones to clean up the planet/save the world/stop the evil.” … Time to stop putting all the onus on youth and time to step up, no matter your age! Because, if we’re lucky, we’ll all grow up to be middle-aged, and then crones (and other gender equivalents), and we need to help light the night for those following. No passing the buck to younger generations—let’s work with each other, instead.

Because you can be 40+ and still kicking butt.

I hope these ten amazing books will inspire and entertain you as much as they did me! The Story Bundle is available until November 21, so make sure to grab it now!

—

Marie Bilodeau is an Ottawa-based author, TTRPG game writer, and storyteller. Her speculative fiction has won several awards and has been translated into French (Les Éditions Alire) and Chinese (SF World). Her short stories have also appeared in various anthologies and magazines like Analog Science Fiction and Fact and Amazing Stories. Marie is also a performing storyteller and has told stories across Canada in theatres, tea shops, at festivals and under disco balls. She’s won story slams with personal stories, has participated in epic tellings at the National Arts Centre, and has adapted classical material. In her spare time, she’s also the chair of Ottawa’s speculative fiction literary con, Can*Con.

While I was in Canada, I discovered there were two very interesting book bundles being sold. One that has my books in it. One that does not.

Ending on 30 November 2024, the first is the Shadowrun Fiction Mega Bundle, run by Humble Bundle. It supports the Book Industry Charitable Foundation, which is pretty cool. (Note: Donation proceeds will be provided to the Binc Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to providing financial assistance to booksellers and comic sellers, their employees, and their families, in times of crisis.)

More importantly to me, this book bundle contains every novel and novella I’ve written for Shadowrun! So, if you’re missing any of my Shadowrun fiction, this is a very good time to get it. Plus it’s got so much more Shadowrun goodness from old authors and new!

***

Next up we have: The Never Too Old to Save the World Bundle.

Curated on StoryBundle by Marie Bilodeau (who will have a Tell Me on the blog shortly.)

Ending on 21 November 2024, Marie has put together 10 books of middle-aged heroines and heroes who claim and keep their power. Saving the world isn’t just a young orphan’s game anymore. This bundle looks fantastic. I’ve just recently been introduced to the term “Crone Lit” and I love it. Not only that, I’m already reading Becoming Crone.

There you go. Two bundles of books for a fabulous price. If you need some fiction to help keep you sane for the holiday season, I’ve got you covered.

I’m now home from an 8-day trip to Ottawa, Canada as one of the Editor Guests of Honor at Can-Con and to spend time visiting Marie and her partner and their clowder. This was my first trip to Ottawa. I hope it will not be my last. I had such a good time. I will miss them and Canada, but I am happy to be home. (Because: Kittens!)

As has become tradition after a convention, I tell you 10 things that may or may not have happened. 8 are true. 2 are lies.

1. I may or may not have done shots with Arley Sorg at Can-Con.
2. I may or may not have revealed some personal secrets to people new to me.
3. I may or may not have discussed being in a feud with Sarah Gailey. What’s the feud about? We don’t know—yet.
4. I may or may not have convinced the Husband to do something extremely silly.
5. I may or may not have taken my GoH costume judging duty quite seriously and argued my case with fellow judge Arley Sorg.
6. I may or may not have absconded with Greg Wilson (and others) for a private conversation to plan shenanigans for Worldcon Seattle 2025.
7. I may or may not have received an insightful tarot reading from a stranger.
8. I may or may not have helped Ed Greenwood and Marie Bilodeau learn a new game called Gudnak for reasons.
9. I may or may not have accidentally gone into a secret sex shop in a mall that looked like a toy store—blades, bongs, and butt plugs, oh my! (Marie takes me to the best places!)
10. I may or may not have visited an underground bunker and discovered that US history from the outside looking in is…telling.

Did I mention kittens?

Today, the talented Raven Oak tells me about how footnotes in fiction enhance the story, and why she loves them so much.

I have a love affair with footnotes.

Maybe it’s because of all the academic papers I had to write throughout my career as a teacher, but I think I fell in love with them before high school and college, back when teenage me was devouring speculative fiction books at a rate of one or two per day.

Books like Robert Asprin’s MythAdventures series were a mad mix of fantasy and humor, where footnotes were used as a way for the author, the characters, or both to leave commentary on what was happening aside the plot line. Asprin used footnotes as a comedic schtick, one that worked well for his various series.

As a young writer, I took his example to heart. This was something real writers did. Imagine my surprise when adult writer me found very few footnotes used in fiction at all. (Though this is changing thanks to the LitRPG genre.)

Many people hate footnotes because of their association with MLA citations and research papers, two topics often considered tedious, but who says they have to be? Why can’t authors use them in their fiction? Why can’t a story about dragons have footnotes, too?

While I haven’t gone so far as to use footnotes in my fictional work as of yet, they came in handy during the writing of my first memoir. Because the book covers everything from gender identity, sexual orientation, and transphobia to medical gaslighting and abuse, I found myself needing to clarify most of what I was talking about, if for no other reason than to insure I was educating folks rather than confusing them.

For example, it’s challenging to discuss demisexuality if the reader has no idea what that is or why it’s important. More than that, the footnotes served as a way for me to insert humor and my own wry sarcasm in between the sentences of some very serious topics. As I wrote, I found myself escaping into the footnotes like they were their own substory within the story I was framing.

More importantly, they reminded me of what it was like back when I was twelve. Nothing in the life of an adolescent is simple. Between hormones and peer pressure, the life of a teenager is complicated and messy. Toss in figuring out whether or not your queer, child abuse, and poverty and well… let’s just say there’s a reason child-me escaped so frequently into the worlds of speculative fiction.

Tapping into those feelings and the joy I found in so many tales helped me remember the good inside of the bad that has often been my life. It’s easy to get lost in the trauma, or to believe the depression and anxiety when its roars are sometimes deafening, but the footnotes were a reminder that humor has always pulled me out of the darkness.

Just like speculative fiction, humor has always been a means of escape.

Voices Carry may be a non-fiction memoir, but in the writing of it, I rediscovered the importance of humor…and footnotes!

—

Multi-international award-winning speculative fiction author Raven Oak (she/they) is best known for Amaskan’s Blood (2016 Ozma Fantasy Award Winner, Epic Awards Finalist, & Reader’s Choice Award Winner), Amaskan’s War (2018 UK Wishing Award YA Finalist), and Class-M Exile. She also has many published short stories in anthologies and magazines. She’s even published on the moon! Raven spent most of her K-12 education doodling and writing 500 page monstrosities that are forever locked away in a filing cabinet.

Besides being a writer and artist, she’s a geeky, disabled ENBY who enjoys getting her game on with tabletop games, indulging in cartography and art, or staring at the ocean. She lives in the Seattle area with her wife, and their three kitties who enjoy lounging across the keyboard when writing deadlines approach. Her hair color changes as often as her bio does, and you can find her at www.ravenoak.net.