Somehow, for the second year in a row, I’m eligible for awards. How that’s the case is beyond my comprehension. To my delight, however, I’ve yet to receive an email from the Global Writers Federation informing me that my imposter syndrome is, in fact, warranted and my membership has been revoked eternally.
So . . . .
In 2022, Clarkesworld published “The Carrion Droid, Zoe, and a Small Flame” and, in doing so, made one of my dreams come true. Karen Burnham deemed the story “lovely” in Locus Magazine, and Sam Tomaino called it “[a} touching tale with a poignant ending” in SFRevu.
Although “Carrion Droid” addresses the topics of post-climate-catastrophe existence, natural-language processing in artificial intelligence, and the irrational behaviors that can stem from grief and loss, ultimately the story is a subtextual character study, drawing on techniques from the slice-of-life genre. (My previous story set in the same world, “Cherry-Blossom Droid,” which found a place on SFWA’s Nebula Recommended Reading List, used similar techniques, and I’ve started to refer to this subgenre I’m exploring as “sci-of-life.” I intend to explore the subgenre more in the future.)
I’d be thrilled if you read or listened to “The Carrion Droid, Zoe, and a Small Flame.”
Also . . . .
I now appear to be in my first year of eligibility for the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. That I’d even fit into the same category as the other eligible authors really is an honor.