When I reflect on the year that was, what’s in my mind is the coronavirus doom scrolling, and all the negativity. Sure, that was part of it, but when I looked a little further, well, there was plenty of great stuff, too. Part of the experience was the Melbourne lockdowns, during which my mum died, and I also broke my leg. What a list! It was full of tragedy and drama. But, aside from all the crisis and consternation, it’s been my most productive writing year to date, with some wonderful successes. It’s not award-winning stuff, but in overviewing what I’ve done, I feel pretty good about what's been achieved.
This year has also made me realise that everything is indeed a journey, and that the pains in our lives give us more to work with. Without the awful experiences I would not have grown as much, so lemons and cream cakes, and onward we go!
Here’s my 2020 list of writerly endeavours, which is not too shabby. 
Anthology Editing 
Co-edited two charity anthologies:  Burning Love and Bleeding Hearts with Chris Mason, and Trickster’s Treats 4: Coming Buried or Not with Geneve Flynn, both published by Steve Dillon over at Things in the Well. What a great privilege and experience it was to work with all those wonderful authors, my co-editors and Steve Dillon, and to raise funds for bushfire relief and literacy to donate to the Australian Red Cross and the Indigenous Literacy Foundation. 

In summation, it's been a heck of a busy year. Not all doom scrolling at all! I’ve co-edited two anthologies, completed a mentorship, conducted about 25 author interviews, written 46 flash pieces, submitted 80+ times and had five acceptances, and formed and facilitated an online writing group that meets monthly and sometimes in-between.  It’s been a good year! ​I still have a few things carrying over from 2020, but they can wait until the next post. 
My latest acceptance and publication - mainly detailed here so I can show off the cover! - was for my flash piece 'Droplets' and is featured in the Macabre Ladies' publication Extreme Drabbles of Dread. Gruesome cover, isn't it?

It's certainly been a mixed bag of achievements and experiences this last 12 months. There's been good, bad and some pretty ugly. Maybe that's why I'm starting this year with Hope. Interestingly enough, 'Hope' was the name of this month's Furious Fiction submission. I'm literally starting 2021 with 'Hope'. ​
I hope you have a good year, too.

Hi Jenny, thank you for joining us. Can you tell us about who you are and also about your writing: for example, what genres and themes do you write in and about, and is there anything that has influenced your choices?  
If not for Reagan, Thatcher et al starting the slow demise of university arts departments worldwide, I would probably be a Classics academic somewhere, working on religion, myth and daily life in the Bronze Age and Classical Aegean, and writing the occasional poem of my own. As things turned out, I retrained with IBM as a specialist in computer data communications in Melbourne. I'm now retired from that, back in Newcastle and writing poetry and prose for people of all ages, often involving time.
 
I love pretty much all the genres: science fiction, fantasy, historical, romance, crime and mash-ups of them all. Particularly in my historical fiction, I'm keen on keeping my work true to the daily life of actual people who wore real clothes (seldom as fancy as those on statues and pots), ate food (mostly lentils and unappealing root vegetables, until relatively recently), walked to the market every day to buy food, draw jugs of water and so on – especially including the slaves and servants, who were most definitely also people. For every princess, there were thousands of slaves and peasants.

 Can you tell us a bit about your publications and writerly highlights, and what else we can look forward to seeing from you in the future?    
My big recent highlight is that my 2019 novel The Girl in the Mirror, published by Eagle Books (an imprint of Armidale publisher Christmas Press) has recently been awarded the Davitt award for Best Children's Crime Novel. (If you follow that last link, you will see what the judges and I said in the (safely virtual) ceremony.) The Davitt awards are very ably run by Sisters in Crime Australia. Winning the Children's Davitt award for The Girl in the Mirror is very special.
 
Another major highlight: in March 2020, Pitt Street Poetry published my third collection of poetry, The Alpaca Cantos. The teal cover with the Chauvet Cave style alpacas is just gorgeous. If you follow that link, you will see great reviews from Mary Soon Lee, Magdalena Ball, Alison Goodman and Judy Johnson and Emma Lee. 

 Where can we find out more about you and your work?  
My own website: www.jennyblackford.com
The Pitt Street Poetry website: https://pittstreetpoetry.com/poet/jenny-blackford/
The Eagle Books website: https://eaglebooksadventure.com/2020/10/01/what-the-davitt-awards-judges-and-jenny-said-at-the-awards-ceremony/

Thanks, Jenny. What a fabulous 2020 you've had. Congratulations on the Davitt and your recent release. 

Jenny's poems "Pythia Speaks" and "An Afterlife of Stone" appear in Trickster's Treats 4: Coming, Buried or Not! , a charity anthology in support of the Indigenous Literacy Foundation. 
 
 

Hi Herb, thank you for joining us. Can you tell us about who you are and also about your writing: for example, what genres and themes do you write in and about, and is there anything that has influenced your choices?
I live just south of the border-town of Buffalo, New York on the east end of Lake Erie, which is the world’s eleventh largest lake, and is half in Canada and half in the United States.  Although I am the fifth generation born in Buffalo (the U.S. side), one of my four children was born in Canada, and grew up speaking French as a first language.  I spent two decades working in factories, driving trucks, and fixing machines, and two more decades as an English Professor at Hilbert College.  Both have their merits, but the latter profession leaves more time for writing.  If my writing has a leitmotif, it is: “society lies.”

Can you tell us a bit about your publications and writerly highlights, and what else we can look forward to seeing from you in the future?  
I’ve had eighteen books or chapbooks of poetry published, and over 1750 total poems published, along with sixty plus short stories, a produced feature film, short films, and 250 plus non-fiction pieces. 
Two writerly highlights were winning the 2016 Asimov’s Readers’ Award for best poem with “Answers” and earning third place in the 2020 Elgin Awards chapbook category for the book Fragments from the Book of the After-Dead.
I have the short story “The First Martian World War” coming up in Analog, and the poems “Rewinding History” and “Failed Space Colonists” coming up in Asimov’s.  I have two books mired in press, The Book of Fibs, and Bits ‘n Pieces.  I have no clear idea of when they might be released from Written Image Press.
 
This year has presented a lot of challenges for many of us. Instead of discussing those, what are some of your 2020 highlights?
Autumn 2020 has been an uncommonly successful season for my short fiction.  I blame this on writing a lot more comedy because we all need a laugh this year.  In addition to my story “Burying the Well on the Wings of a Crow” in Trickster’s Treats #4, “The Mahahaa and the Quarrelling Lovers” appeared in NewMyths Magazine.  “Indian Lake Project Redux” appeared in Drunk Gekko.  “The Incident of ‘13” is due out any day in the anthology Erie Tales XIII: Unlucky Thirteen and also features the character Wallaby Walker who first appeared in Trickster’s Treats. 
Another highlight was “Generation Gap,” a long mainstream poem that appeared in Poetry Quarterly.  In addition, two of my poems were nominated for the Rhysling Award long category and three poems were nominated for the Dwarf Star Award.  I’ve had the pleasure of being an assistant poetry editor at Amazing Stories, and in 2020 I started co-editing SpecPo Reviews with Sandra Lindow.
One more highlight was seeing my writing student Brynn Biesik graduate college, and fulfill one of her dreams by moving to South Korea to teach English there.

Where can we find out more about you, Herb?
www.HerbKauderer.com
https://amazingstories.com/
https://specpo.wordpress.com/category/reviews/

Thanks, Herb. That's an amazing list of works! It's also a great thing to see a student reach their goals. 

Herb's story "Burying the Well on the Wings of a Crow" appears in Trickster's Treats 4: Coming, Buried or Not! , a charity anthology in support of the Indigenous Literacy Foundation. 

Hi Liam, thank you for joining us. Can you tell us about who you are and also about your writing: for example, what genres and themes do you write in and about, and is there anything that has influenced your choices?
My dark Drabble, "Drowning", is inspired by a painting at the Tate Britain by Frederic Leighton.
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/leighton-and-the-sea-gave-up-the-dead-which-were-in-it-n01511 Apparently, it was considered too dark for the original commission, (AKA "unsuitable for a Christian church"). So yes, I tend to write on the darker side, where there are, allegedly, cookies. But really, that's no surprise. Story writing is a lot about conflict, which is why a genuine Utopia is so rarely written. And such darkness, even at times like this, tends to be mostly speculative. And my attention span is not... what was I saying? Ah yes, it seems inevitable that I write dark, speculative, short stories, and who am I to deny the hand of destiny? (I just have to keep ignoring the people who ask if I've written a novel yet. La-la-la... I'm not listening!)

Can you tell us a bit about your publications and writerly highlights, and what else we can look forward to seeing from you in the future?
This time of the year is always pretty good for writers of dark speculative tales. I've recently been published in Crone Girls Stories We Tell After Midnight 2 and AMInk's Shadowy Natures, I have a Frankenstein-based story in audio form due out on Gallery of Curiosities, and another spooky tale of Hide and Seek scheduled with 34 Orchard. I'm also pretty stoked that I have a second short story forthcoming in Analog, alas, I don't yet know when, it might not be until next year!

This year has presented a lot of challenges for many of us. Instead of discussing those, what are some of your 2020 highlights?
2020 is going to break all sorts of records, and not all in a bad way. Most submissions and most submitted words are the more easily tracked ones (yes, I too can use Excel.) But that's just writer admin, if you like. I'm just about on course to meet the goals I set for words written this year, so there are plenty of stories in the pipeline for the immediate future, if I can just convince publishers to do the right thing!

Where can we find out more about your work, Liam?
If you want to see everything I have published in one place, try https://happyendingnotguaranteed.blogspot.com/ If you just want to connect and see them as they come out, I'm a moderately active doomscroller on Twitter at https://twitter.com/LiamJHogan

Thanks, Liam. Sounds like we'll see a bit of your work next year. Looking forward to it.

Liam's story "Drowning" appears in Trickster's Treats 4: Coming, Buried or Not! , a charity anthology in support of the Indigenous Literacy Foundation. 

Hi Alicia, thank you for joining us. Can you tell us about who you are and also about your writing: for example, what genres and themes do you write in and about, and is there anything that has influenced your choices?
Thanks for asking me to participate in an interview. My name is Alicia Hilton, and I’m an author, law professor, arbitrator, actor, and former FBI Special Agent. I grew up in Oregon, and I currently live in a suburb of Chicago. When I write fiction, I tend to borrow from my own life. I’ve never killed anyone, and I don’t have supernatural powers, but I’ve seen a ghost, and I know how to use weapons. If I’m going to write about a real place, I always visit that location so I can incorporate landmarks and learn about the flora and fauna. Supernatural forces often creep into my writing. Most of my fiction is weird—a blend of fantasy, crime fiction, science fiction, and/or horror. I’ve been writing poetry since I was twelve. Writing poetry helps me to connect with nature and explore strange aspects of human nature. 

Can you tell us a bit about your publications and writerly highlights, and what else we can look forward to seeing from you in the future?
In 2020, my first standalone book was published by Demain Publishing UK. Moonlight, Gunshot, Mallet, Flame is two stories about dangerous women confronting supernatural forces. In the title story, Laura is a hitwoman who murdered men to avenge and protect innocent victims, but her violent past catches up to her after she kills her nephew.  In the second story, “A Little Death,” an internet date unites two monsters. Moonlight, Gunshot, Mallet, Flame is available in eBook and paperback, https://www.amazon.com/Moonlight-Gunshot-Mallet-Flame-Shocks-ebook/dp/B083S11174/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1QKETENX5M1RE&dchild=1&keywords=moonlight%2C+gunshot%2C+mallet%2C+flame&qid=1602525867&sprefix=moonlight%2C+gunshot%2Caps%2C166&sr=8-1

Other writerly highlights:
In 2020, Brick Moon Fiction podcast two of my stories. “Nocturne in Black and Gold” blends fantasy, horror, and science fiction. Most of the action takes place in an operating room, and the surgeon is a tiger. “Fairy Tales and Selkie Tails” is an epic fantasy story about coming-of-age, bravery, love, and transformation. Listen to the stories for free, https://brickmoonentertainment.com/?s=Alicia+Hilton
 
Daily Science Fiction published my story “A Glorious Chapeau.” The story began as a poem and morphed into flash fiction. “A Glorious Chapeau” is a fantasy story about magic and hope. Read the story for free, https://dailysciencefiction.com/fantasy/magic-and-wizardry/alicia-hilton/a-glorious-chapeau
 
Red Room Press has reprinted two of my stories in Year’s Best Hardcore Horror. “Monkey See, Monkey Do” was reprinted in YBHH Volume 4. “MRSA Me” was reprinted in YBHH Volume 5, http://www.redroompress.com

Upcoming publications​:
“MRSA Me” will be reprinted in Best Indie Speculative Fiction Volume 3 from Bards and Sages Publishing.
 My story “Evolution” will be published in Annihilation Radiation, an anthology from Storgy Magazine.
 My story “Stellar Nucleosynthesis and the Infinite Power of Love” will be published in Tales from OmniPark, an anthology from House Blackwood.
Two of my poems will be published in Penumbric Speculative Fiction Magazine.
 
Where can we find out more about you, Alicia?
For news of my upcoming publications, speeches, and other events, please follow me on Twitter @aliciahilton01 and visit my website, https://www.aliciahilton.com.
 
Thanks, Alicia, for stopping by. That's a pretty amazing portfolio outside the writing one! And the writing one is pretty good too! Looking forward to seeing more of your work.

Alicia's poem "Sleeping With the Dead" appears in Trickster's Treats 4: Coming, Buried or Not! , a charity anthology in support of the Indigenous Literacy Foundation. ​

Hi Aristo, thank you for joining us. Can you tell us about who you are and also about your writing: for example, what genres and themes do you write in and about, and is there anything that has influenced your choices?
I grew up in Durban, South Africa, before moving to Johannesburg, where I still live, for high school and university. As far as my writing, I aim for horror – how close I actually get to it is up to the reader. But being Greek, and having lived in South Africa, I always try to pull influences from one of the two, or sometimes both. Ultimately, if someone enjoys something I wrote, I count that as a win, if I scare them too, that’s a bonus.
 
Can you tell us a bit about your publications and writerly highlights, and what else we can look forward to seeing from you in the future?
Every acceptance is a highlight for me. My first printed publication was actually with  Things in the Well, in Beneath The Waves – Tales from the Deep. It was a story titled ‘The Natloer’, which shows the South Africa side of my influences, while this one, ‘A Light For The Grave’ shows the Greek.
 
This year has presented a lot of challenges for many of us. Instead of discussing those, what are some of your 2020 highlights?
Well on a personal note, this year I asked the love of my life to marry me –  and for reasons known only to her she said yes. So as far as highlights for me go, that’s pretty hard to top – even if this year has felt a little like the world is falling apart at times, I’ve been walking around with a big smile on my face (behind my mask of course).
 
You can find Aristo on Twitter @AR1sto

​Thanks, Aristo, for stopping by. And congratulations - that is indeed awesome news for 2020.  

Aristo's story "A Light For the Grave" appears in Trickster's Treats 4: Coming, Buried or Not! , a charity anthology in support of the Indigenous Literacy Foundation. 

Hi Kellie, thank you for joining us. Can you tell us about who you are and also about your writing: for example, what genres and themes do you write in and about, and is there anything that has influenced your choices?
I’m a committed Canberran—grew up here, as did my parents and two of my grandparents. I’ve left a couple of times, for study (in Japan) and work (in Newcastle and again in Japan) but not for long and always came back. My two favourite things to do are dragon boating and scaring myself stupid on ghost tours.
Dragon boating, with my wonderful team Dragons Abreast Canberra, has taken me to Florence, Italy where we raced on the Arno River—there is nothing quite like the exhilaration of a dragon boat race, whether we’re in Canberra, interstate or overseas, or the whole body fatigue at the end of it!
As for ghost tours, or anything spooky, icky or supernatural I come across in reading and random googling, these provide stimulus and motivation for my writing. As a child, and also as an adult, I loved watching scary movies—not the blood and guts horror, but the psychological and twisted suspense stuff—but I tend to watch from behind a barrier, whether it’s a cushion or my fingers. It really is my favourite genre to write though. I’m not sure if it’s the escapism I like, or if it’s the scary dark side of me coming out, but I am most engaged when I write along the paranormal theme. My YA works and short stories all follow this path. On the flip side, I also write froth and bubble for kids.

Can you tell us a bit about your publications and writerly highlights, and what else we can look forward to seeing from you in the future?
After boring my teachers silly in primary school with long, long, long pieces of creative writing, I really didn’t write anything creative again until about five years ago when, on a whim (and after deciding to go part-time in my primary school teaching job) I enrolled in a ‘writing for children’ evening course at the Canberra Institute of Technology. I don’t know why I stopped writing creatively, because I loved it as a kid, although I suspect the focus in high school on assignments and essays probably had a lot to do with it. I started off writing picture books and short stories for kids, then my mentor suggested I turn my 2000-word short story into a novel. It went from a piece about a girl who sleepwalks (me!) to a dark and deadly YA novel—which I’m still shopping around. I’ve placed in a few competitions, been shortlisted and had four stories published in anthologies—all for the age 8-12 market, but the selection of my story for Trickster’s Treats #4 – Coming Buried or Not is my first for the older, adult market and, quite honestly, the one I’m most excited about. It’s funny how, as writers, our focus can change. I feel like I’ve found my niche and am planning on refining my skills in this genre, with hopefully much more to come in the next few years and beyond. 

This year has presented a lot of challenges for many of us. Instead of discussing those, what are some of your 2020 highlights?
As just mentioned, my selection in Trickster’s Treats is a definite highlight of 2020 for me. However, this was the cherry on top of the sundae which was finding my wonderful critique group (which we’ve named ‘Prompts Plus’) as it was this group who encouraged my writing in this genre, critiqued it, encouraged me some more and gave me the confidence to submit in the first place. I love my group and, like I feel I’ve found my niche in genre, I also feel I’ve finally found my tribe.
Another writing-based highlight of 2020 has been working with my amazing ASA mentor, Rae Luckie on my narrative non-fiction memoir ‘thingy’. My son has Asperger’s and years ago, I started a blog about our journey. It was basically a venting platform for me (I see that now) but I did get quite a few followers and one of them suggested I should turn it into a book. At the end of 2019, applications for the Anne Edgeworth Fellowship opened and I thought ‘why not!’. I banged out an application – and won it! Never have I been so surprised. Part of the fellowship enabled me to engage Rae’s services and together we’re turning this memoir into a bit of a butt-kicker when it comes to the lack of understanding of autism, particularly in education.
On a personal/work level, a massive highlight has been my decision to leave teaching (after 25 years!) and focus on my editing and writing business. Scary, but liberating.

To find out more about Kellie:
Business website: https://justrightwords.com.au/  (my other passion is promoting local authors, there’s a page for this)
Blog site: https://inmyaspergersworld.wordpress.com/

Thanks so much for chatting with us, Kellie, and sharing a bit about yourself. Congrats on the Fellowship - an awesome achievement. Also a brilliant achievement writing something that raises autism awareness. Looking forward to seeing what you do next.

Kellies story "Till Death Do Us Part" appears in Trickster's Treats 4: Coming, Buried or Not! , a charity anthology in support of the Indigenous Literacy Foundation. ​

Chris, thank you for joining us. Can you tell us about who you are and also about your writing: for example, what genres and themes do you write in and about, and is there anything that has influenced your choices?
I’m Chris Mason and live in Adelaide, South Australia. I predominantly write horror but sometimes include fantasy and SF in my work. I write with a fair dose of humour and my characters love to chat. I grew up in the '60s so I tend to hark back to that time when I was discovering the world and realising not everything was as happy and safe as it seemed. Innocence corrupted is a recurring theme in my work. 

Can you tell us a bit about your publications and writerly highlights, and what else we can look forward to seeing from you in the future?
I have had stories in all four editions of Trickster’s Treats and was absolutely delighted to have "Digging up the Past" included in this last one. Trickster’s has a special place in my heart, as it is one of the first places I was published. Continuing my wonderful association with Things in the Well, I also have stories in the recently released Outback Horrors and the soon to be released Tales of the Lost V2. Smiling at my name sitting alongside Joe Hill and Neil Gaiman on the ToC will never get old. Looking forward, I have a lot of new work bubbling away, some of which I hope will go into a collection next year. I’m a pantser through and through so who knows what else I’ll be doing in 2021.

This year has presented a lot of challenges for many of us. Instead of discussing those, what are some of your 2020 highlights?
Who knew 2020 would be the year to renovate. I finally found the time to turn the spare bedroom into my own writing space. Instead of having books scattered throughout the house, most of my collection is now contained in the one place, and my sticky notes, mountains of notebooks, and general brain vomits onto any writable surface, have a new home. The laptop is still free to roam, but I’m hoping my considerable mess will keep to the one room from now on. On the writing front this year: I co-edited the anthology Burning Love and Bleeding Hearts with Louise Zedda-Sampson (we had so much fun), two of my stories were nominated for awards – "Vivienne and Agnes" winning the Aurealis award for Best Short story – and several short stories were picked up for publication.

Where can we find out more about you, Chris?
You can find me at facebook.com/chrismasonhorrorwriter or on twitter@Chris_A_Mason where I tend to post a lot of pictures of books I’m reading, and animals doing cute animally things.

Thanks, Chris, for stopping by. Looking forward to the collection. And yes - doing an anthology in 6 weeks was a bit of a challenge, but it was a hoot working with you! Steve Dillon obviously knew we'd get along.

Chris's story "Digging up the past" appears in Trickster's Treats 4: Coming, Buried or Not! , a charity anthology in support of the Indigenous Literacy Foundation. 

Amanda, thank you for joining us. Can you tell us about who you are and also about your writing: for example, what genres and themes do you write in and about, and is there anything that has influenced your choices?
I'm from a small town in Kentucky, U.S. and write mostly horror and speculative fiction/poetry. I've always had a love of dark things and I tend to explore the afterlife a lot in my writing. 

Can you tell us a bit about your publications and writerly highlights, and what else we can look forward to seeing from you in the future?
My second book of horror poetry, Tall Grass, made the shortlist for a Bram Stoker Award nomination and was also nominated for an Indie Horror Book Award. My short fiction has been published in Dream Noir, The Hellebore, and Eastern Iowa Review, among others. In 2022, my middle-grade novel Where Wild Beasts Grow will be published by Fitzroy Books.

This year has presented a lot of challenges for many of us. Instead of discussing those, what are some of your 2020 highlights?
2020 has been a strange year for me creatively. I tend to have a hard time writing when my anxiety is amped up, but since March I've experienced the exact opposite, and I've written quite a bit - including two novels. 

You can find Amanda's work here:
Poem: https://ghostcitypress.com/poetry-71/2019/3/2/amanda-crum
Book: https://www.amazon.com/Tall-Grass-Amanda-Crum/dp/1083086685

Thanks, Amanda, for talking with us. Two novels. Amazing work.

Amanda's story "To Leaven His Bones" appears in Trickster's Treats 4: Coming, Buried or Not! , a charity anthology in support of the Indigenous Literacy Foundation.