The Obligatory Blowing of Horns: Awards Eligibility Post 2023

It's been nearly a year since I last posted here, mainly because my alter ego Mr Church has had a lot to say for himself over on his website. He's been pretty busy writing, too, but the Bestwick byline hasn't been completely dormant

2023's been comparatively quiet on the publication front: another of those 'duck in the mist' years where a lot of work's been getting done, but the results won't be visible for a while yet. Nonetheless, a few things made it into print, so here's the obligatory round-up of any work that saw daylight for the first time this year. 

Stories

'Are We Going Under?,' published digitally in Parsec #6, January 2023, edited by Ian Whates. Reprinted in book form by the same editor in Parsec in Print, September 2023. 

'Kingbreaker,' published in Shakespeare Unleashed, edited
by James Aquilone, July 2023.

'The Flight of Ravens,' published in Unknown Heroes versus the Forces of Darkness, edited by Will Jacques, April 2023.

Patreon

Most of my Patreon output's consisted of a new serial story, Dogman, which is still ongoing. Some stories have appeared, but most of these have been previously published pieces, with the following exceptions:  

'731' (short story,) October 30th.

'The Good Man's Ghosts' (verse,) March 15th. 

And that's the lot, this year!

All the best, folks.

Simon.

'22 in Review

Phew. Well that was quite a year.

A fair bit happened, just for me personally (I'm not even going to try to summarise the year's political upheavals or all the cool people we lost.) It went something like this:

I got an agent (properly speaking, I signed with the Ki Agency last year, but couldn't officially announce it, for Reasons, till well into this year.) I'm still with Ki and looking forward to more excitement in 2023, but now represented by agency founder Meg Davis, as Anne Perry has moved on to become the new commissioning editor at Jo Fletcher Books. Anne has been an absolute star and I hope we get to work together again in the future.

I had a novel published under a new pen name, to excellent reviews and pretty good sales. 

I wrote two complete novels in 2022, and am partway through a third. That took up the bulk of my time and energy work-wise this year, but I also managed to place three stories with publications due out in 2023: 'Are We Going Under?' will appear in ParSec Magazine, 'Kingbreaker' in Shakespeare Unleashed, and 'The Flight Of Ravens' in Unknown Superheroes Vs The Forces of Darkness. 

On top of all that, I started a podcast, No Darkness But Ours, with my friend and colleague Gemma Files, in which we discuss horror in all its forms. Topics so far have included snowbound horror, the work and legacy of M.R. James, and Folk Horror. We're currently in the middle of a discussion on Queer Horror, with more to come. You can check our work out here.  

Under my own byline, the following was published this year:

Short Fiction:

Nemesis of Wire (Phantasmagoria #20, ed. Trevor Kennedy)

Bait (Book of Extraordinary Femme Fatale Stories, ed. Maxim Jakubowski)

Mummy Calls (Classic Monsters Unleashed, ed. James Aquilone)

Work published on Patreon:

Short fiction:

This Life, This Death

The Night of the Dog-Headed Man

The Death of Norma Lake (fragment from early draft of Bonewalker)

Low Over Water

The One You Feed

Adaptive Evolution In The Lancashire Grindylow: A Report By Alexandra Thraves Ph.D

The Bactrian

Verse:

Submariner

Beacon 46-A

The Christmas Kiss

In addition, my story 'Redwater,' from The Alchemy Press Book Of Horrors 3: A Miscellany Of Monsters, was reprinted in Ellen Datlow's The Best Horror Of The Year #14, making three years in a row that my work's appeared there.

Thank you to all the editors who've published me this year, to Anne and Meg, to Gemma for her support on the podcast, and to all readers and listeners who've supported my work by reading or listening to it.

Finally, and most of all, to my lovely wife, Cate, without whom none of this would have been possible.

Happy New Year, everybody.

Good luck for 2023.

Simon x