Happy December! My Writing Year in Review

Wow, is it December? This year has been both extremely long and also gone in the blink of an eye.

If you're a person who nominates for awards and things, may I direct you to my Awards Eligibility post?

So, how was my writing year?  Pretty amazing, actually. Even not including my Patreon, I've had more stories published this year than I have to date, with three already out, one of which is in a pro market, and the final one forthcoming on Boxing Day. I've also had one more acceptance (so far!). Contract forthcoming, so I'll announce more when I can.

Though speaking of that pro market...."Surveillance Fatigue", published in Escape Pod, qualified me to become an Associate member of the SFWA.....so I applied and was accepted!  It has also made me Campbell eligible and every time I mention that I realize I should look into it further but, here we are. I also joined the Science Fiction Writers Codex

Awards eligibility post 2018

Well, it's here. Awards season is upon us, or at least nominations season for the upcoming awards season.

As always, publishing as Jennifer R. Donohue. I am also now eligible for the John W. Campbell award.


My short stories:

"A Thing With Feathers" was published in Mythic Delirium

"Surveillance Fatigue" was published in Escape Pod

"Bread and Milk" was published in Under the Full Moon's Light

"The Glint of Light on Broken Glass" is in Truancy 5




My novella "Run With the Hunted" is available in paperback and on many digital platforms.

Run With the Hunted preorder

Happy October, everybody, I have a surprise for you!

My cyberpunk novella "Run With the Hunted" is available for Kindle preorder! The release date is October 31, 2018.

"In the fast-paced, tech-heavy future, diamonds are still a girl’s best friend. Bristol is more than happy to get dressed up and crash a private diamond sale that her hacker associate, Bits, has caught wind of on the deep web. The job is unbelievably simple and the getaway is a breeze; Dolly barely even gets to fire a shot during the holdup. But in the days that follow, things start to go wrong. Bristol’s dinner party is raided, their buyer backs out, and they find themselves on the run in a heavily surveilled city. Now that it’s become clear these diamonds are more than meets the eye, the trio has to find out who wants them enough to kill for it."


I said this on Twitter, and I'll likely post about it at greater length at some later date, but "Run With the Hunted", in my head, takes place in the same near-future as "Daddy's Girl" and "Surveillance Fatigue". This isn't to say that the characters in those previous stories are involved; they aren't. Another notable difference is that the characters in "Run With the Hunted" all have names! But, it was a lot of fun to write, and I really enjoy the characters of Bristol, Bits, and Dolly, so hopefully I'll make a habit (series) of this.

July 2018 writing goals roundup

Happy July, friends! Are my American readers having the same heatwave that we've just been hit by? I both love it and don't...if I was at the beach, I'd truly love it. These are beach days, to be sure.

I encourage you to check out my Patreon. This month's story, "The Wave", is a somewhat beachy wave. You can read the author notes there without any cash on the barrelhead, but I'll say, the story was inspired by my recent reading about Big Wave Surfing, and by Coca cola's "have a coke with" campaign (the bottles have peoples' names on them). I just moved up the timeline to be a near future, perhaps a few decades beyond where "Daddy's Girl" would be.

In general writing news, I wrote three first drafts last month (!). One of them came out much longer than my stories normally go (almost 14,000 words) and seeing as how  Fireside is having a novella call next month...I figured I'd try to lengthen it for that submission window. It's an interesting exercise, just casually saying "well I need to add 6k to this story", when so many of my stories are around 2000 words in total. I can definitely write 6000 words by then, but whether they are meaningful words which fit the story and improve it remain to be seen.

This month is also a Camp NaNoWriMo and for once, I'm not really certain what to consider my "main" project. I should work on rewriting the middle book of the werewolf trilogy. I should work on this novella for Fireside. I could do both, and that might just be what ends up happening.

Happy June! It's like summertime!

Hello Friends! Did you miss me?

I have some news for you.

On May 18, my fiancé and I became *DRUMROLL*  husband and wife

We got together wayyyyyy back in college, in 2001, and we were engaged and bought a house and a dog together, and now every once in awhile we look at each other (even today, on our two week anniversary and say "we're married" with big dumb smiles on our faces).

PUBLICATION DAY! "Surveillance Fatigue", on Escape Pod

Publication day is finally here!

"Surveillance Fatigue" is Episode 623 on Escape Pod!  You can listen to it (which I am doing for the first time) or just read it if that's your preference.

Of related interest, Escape Pod is the first podcast to be nominated for a Hugo award! This publication will also be the sale which allows me to apply for an SFWA membership.

So please read, or listen, and share it far and wide! I do hope you enjoy. It's fairly timely, given the meme of "I hope the FBI agent assigned to my Facebook is well/thinks I'm funny/understands", etc. I did, however, write it 2016.

March came in like a lion and is still an lion and

We had cold temperatures and snow all through March, as though the season was making up for mild (ish?) weather in December. (Not in January. January sucked.) But, birds are starting to come back, and some sad confused little crocuses bloomed next to the library building, so hopefully spring asserts itself, well, soon.

I'd already mentioned that A.C. Wise reviewed "A Thing With Feathers" in her Words For Thought blog on Apex, and Maria Haskins also reviewed it on her blog! I am forever pleased that people like my words, and I am forever grateful to those writers for reviewing them. Also, importantly, they do seem to really see and understand what I'm getting at.

I had no new acceptances in March, and am eagerly awaiting my Escape Pod publication of "Surveillance Fatigue" in a week and a half or so. Also, big news, the Hugo Award nominations were announced yesterday and Escape Pod is on that list!

Something to consider, if you like reading the darker end of science fiction and fantasy: The Dark is Kickstarting funding for their next two years. They publish amazing materials, and would like to increase the amount of money they pay their writers. Also, at the higher end of the rewards, there are things like a story critique by Nin Harris, a lovely writer and a PhD holding teacher and scholar, so if you're writer and have those kinds of funds laying around, don't miss this chance!

Also, as it is April 1, Camp NaNoWriMo has (in theory) commenced. I don't have writing plans this month, strictly, but rather rewriting plans. I'm going through Learn to Howl once more with feeling, in order to fix setting issues and some places where the story sags, and hopefully I can get this thing published this year!


And, last but not least, my Writer Friend Tori Curtis (of Eelgrass fame) has had her short story "Upon Your Marriage to a Redcap" published in Iridium Zine. It's a delightful story that I've known through various iterations, and I'm happy that it's found a home!

What happened in February?

Happy March! We got about a foot of snow to welcome the month with! Wouldn't it be nice if that didn't happen? I got a snow day, anyway.

My story "A Thing With Feathers" that I talked about in my January post is now live on the Mythic Delirium website!

ALSO!  A.C. Wise reviewed "A Thing With Feathers" in her "Words for Thought" column posted by Apex Magazine , and I think wrote some very good and thoughtful things on the piece. I appreciate both her review and the understanding of my story that she possesses!

In other fiction news, the acceptance that I mentioned is my story "Surveillance Fatigue", which is currently scheduled to go live at Escape Pod on April 12! It will be available there in both text and audio, so if listening to stories isn't your jam, you can still take it in.

I wrote one short story in February, tried furiously to finish it for the Sword & Sonnet deadline so I could sub a second story, and then realized, first, that it was 1500 words too long and there wasn't any way I was going to cut it down in time and second, it kind of didn't fit the theme anymore anyway? So I only subbed one story to that anthology, which was rejected, but sent on to the next market! So we march on ever hopeful, etc.

Fireside Magazine is opening for submissions in April, from April 23-April 27 (and with a  limit of 4k words!), and I know what I'm going to send them.

Interestingly, "too long" is not a story problem I tend to have. Many (most?) of my shorts are between 1500 and 3k words, with some reaching upwards of that, at 5k, and a couple of random novellas. It does make submissions interesting, though, if your story is too long for one venue and too short for another one. Submission guidelines are an important thing to pay attention to, friends!

Writing in January (lots of deadlines!)

It's February already (or finally, depending on how your January went!)

My short story "A Thing With Feathers" is live on Mythic Delirium's website! You can also get the entire issue on Amazon or Weightless Books if that's more your style (no physical magazine, alas).

I finished three stories in January. One of them was something I'd started last year and messed around with a lot, trying to figure out point of view (first? close third? omniscient?) and tense (past? present?) and finally I was able to bring it home. The other two I wrote for submission calls, and have already been rejected for those anthologies. On one hand, that's a letdown. On the other hand, I really like it when responses are prompt. It means I'm not waiting for months. It means I can send another story. Or write another story, depending on how specific what they want is (Sword & Sonnet is pretty specific).

I also got an acceptance in January! They'd held the story for awhile, and also kindly let me send an updated version of it (of course I figured out a better way to end it after submission) and I'm very excited to announce this one when I'm able! I think projected publication date is April, so stay tuned, space cowboys.



Some recommended listening when you read "A Thing With Feathers" (I wrote the story before I ever heard this song or heard of Meg Myers, but it's a good fit!)