In the name of awards season, here’s a quick breakdown of all the stories I had in print in 2014. I don’t think I’ll have much short fiction out in 2015, since I’ve a couple books due, so this might’ve been my big year!

Very grateful to everyone who helped make these stories happen.

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I’ve been silent this past month because I’m wrapping up a novel – a geopolitical thriller, ruthless conspiracy and romantic tragedy, an argument about empire and resistance. The Traitor Baru Cormorant is a work of fantasy, but like all art, it exists in a political context. It doesn’t have a choice.

Here I want to plug a number of writers who’ve both contributed to my own political awareness and perpetrated some great art of their own.

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My story ‘A Plant (Whose Name is Destroyed)’ is now up on Strange Horizons, accompanied by a podcast reading in the voice of Fearless Leader Anaea Lay.

I’m very proud of this story. People often ask me whether genre writing, concerned with questions of what if and what next and what’s out there, must sacrifice some of its humanity to achieve its goals. I like to think that moving away from the mundane real doesn’t have to mean moving away from human truths. Distance can provide parallax, or make the familiar strange.

I’d like to talk about this story – and my other short fiction on Beneath Ceaseless Skies – in more depth, but Kate Elliot’s interesting points about worldbuilding are up next.