Originally published at LonPrater.com. You can comment here or there.

PRODUCTION

Total new fiction written in 2009: At least 323 pages, or about 81,000 words.

Days actually writing new fiction: 30.

Average fiction-production day: Almost 11 pages, or about 2,750 words.

Best single day production: 31 pages, or about 7,750 words (Two middle chapters of The Whisperer in the Willows)

Here’s the breakdown–

• Added to novella-in-progress The Light That Will Not Fail
• Finished short story “Farrah’s Heart Was Not Hard Enough”
• Started and finished new short story “Like Baby Elephants”
• Started, finished, and revised short novel The Whisperer in the Willows
• Wrote only 1 new poem this year, Desperata (Or, The Desiderata of H.P. Lovecraft)
• Started and finished new short story “Subclinical”
• Started and finished new short story “Never the Twain”
• Started alternate history novel The American in His Season
• There was also miscellaneous editing on some older short stories mixed in throughout the year (apparently to no avail, heh)

SALES & PUBLICATIONS

• Short story “Head Music” was reprinted in Apex Magazine
• Poem Banshee sold and was published in ChiZine
• Short story “Deadglass” sold and was reprinted in Triangulation: Dark Glass
• Short story “Prelude to a Theme by Dougie Franz” became my first podcast, kicking off the Theme and Variations podcast anthology
• Poem Desperata (Or, The Desiderata of H.P. Lovecraft) sold to Dark Faith anthology, forthcoming in 2010
• Short story “All That Remains is the Middle” sold and will be reprinted in Retro Spec: Tales of Fantasy & Nostalgia, forthcoming in 2010.

EDITING & NONFICTION

• Worked all year as editor of 29th edition of The Management of Security Assistance, the Defense Department’s 700+ page textbook of arms dealing.  The first few thousand copies should already be delivered and in storage at work when I return.

RECOGNITION

• 2008’s Talebones story “A Road Like This, At Night” made the long list of Honorable Mentions for Year’s Best Horror
• And so did my 2008 ChiZine poem Sugar and Old Spice

Originally published at LonPrater.com. You can comment here or there.

1) Check this right here out! My first podcasted story is going to be “Prelude to a Theme by Dougie Franz” and that ain’t all!  It is going to feature some awesome backdrop music, as arranged by Michelle M. Welch.  The process of figuring out what program to use, and then how to use it was really just karma for all those times so many years back when I got impatient with people for not understanding computers.  Now the stuff going on baffles even me.  Regardless, I soldiered on, with help from Michelle and I think my story will be the one premiering the podcast antho on 28 October.  Check it out!

2) Being a bear of very little brain (not to mention lazy and helpless in the face of 21st century technology), I finally got around to putting a story on Anthology Builder, the neat little site that lets you build your own book of short stories to order run by the energetic and savvy Nancy Fulda.  In a few months, I’ll probably have another one up there, once the exclusivity period is up.

And enough tooting my own horn.  Let me toot the horns of some friends:

3) Ken Scholes has a great sequel out to his first book LAMENTATION.  It is called CANTICLE, and I’m enthralled with it.

4) Nathan Schoonover has exciting news:  A&E will be airing the first two episodes of the ghost-provoking show he’s a part of, EXTREME PARANORMAL, this Halloween season.  October 19th and 26th–SET YOUR TIVOS, or watch it live! Click that link to see the preview and show website.

5) Serial fiction is cool again!  Fans of Jay Lake’s MAINSPRING and ESCAPEMENT should go check out what’s brewing at Subterranean.

6) I already mentioned how awesome it all was before, but it bears repeating:  Jaime Lee Moyer won a prestigious Ohio literary prize a while back. I got to go see her accept it and read from the winning work Wednesday night.  Go Jaime!

Originally published at LonPrater.com. You can comment here or there.

* The latest issue of Apex Magazine just went online, with my story “Head Music” reprinted within. My story is in fantastic company: Look for stories by Secret History of Moscow author Ekaterina Sedia, the always enchanting Theodora Goss, and of course the usual slew of infortaining articles on horror/SF and such. Available free on the website, or in very affordable ebook formats, if you’d rather get your fix that way. I’ve read and enjoyed Apex for quite a while, so it feels like something of an accomplishment to finally be an “insider”!

* About to be far from regular, reliable internet access for a while. If you send me email or post a comment any time after Friday, my response will probably be slowish. Through the rest of March. By the end of the month, I should be unburying myself from whatever’s piled up. I should have some kind of internet, but I have no way of knowing how much/how often till I get there. I can’t broadcast here where I’m going for safety reasons. It should be okay to post a pic or two and some light travelogue on my return.

* Haven’t been reading so voraciously this month. Been busy as heck. Time with the kids, Time preparing for work commitments in the schoolhouse, Time preparing for this work commitment in the field. But like Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory, I did of course make Time for one last trip to the comic book store before my travel. Which added a measure of pure delight to an otherwise stinktacular night of poker. (Guess what? There is a hand that can beat a King high flush… Who knew?!) But the comic book store here in Fairborn (The Bookery, which rules) was still open–that’s how early Shelley and I got beat out of poker–and the final issue of Dark Horse’s Solomon Kane was in. A solid, splendid adaptation that built 5 issues from an unfinished REH fragment. As great as the finale was, there was even better news in the letters column at the end: June 2009 they are releasing a collection of all the old black and white Solomon Kane comics from the ’70s. (!!!) And later in the year, color collections of all the SK stuff done in color in the ’70s and ’80s. Formative stuff for me, so I’m stoked. I know they are only doing it to capitalize on the Solomon Kane boom they expect to come with the movie. But I’m okay with that. Just give the fan what he wants and no one gets hurt, see?

* Listened to a “playaway” collection of Mark Twain. Some well known stuff, like the Jumping Frog story and his scathing review of The Deerslayer. But some other pieces I hadn’t come across before, like Cannibalism in the Cars, where that sly dog Twain once again mocks Congress as only he could get away with, plus amusing pieces on the problem of getting a watch repaired, burglar alarms, the buying and selling of echoes, and travails along the way to getting the government to pay their bills. Read with spirit and warmth by Thomas Becker.

* Books going with me on my trip: Jay Lake’s Escapement (my bedside book, for what little reading time I’ve had this month), Lamentations by Ken Scholes, The Trouble Begins At 8: A Life of Mark Twain in the Wild, Wild West by Sid Flieschman. Probably more–I’ll have a crapload of airplane time to kill. While I’m at it, I’ll probably take over the latest collection of genrezines and so on and pass them along to folks otherwise starved for small press fantasticness.

* Besides working and reading, I’d like to get Unholy Mashup Novel finished while I’m there. It’s doable, I think. I need to get it done because Novel the Next is already wrapping its little claws around my neck….