I put off doing all my year-end admin, mainly because I wanted to have a couple of days that were actually days off, and then because I’ve been head down working on The Broken Heavens and then my latest Patreon story there at the month’s end.
Year-end is a time of reflection for good reason. When you get to the end of a year during the coldest, darkest time of year, it can feel like you did absolutely nothing.
So, to dispell that notion, here’s some shit that got done despite 2018’s desire to murder me:
Kameron Hurley Does Things
- Released Apocalypse Nyx, a collection of Nyx novellas
- Finished writing The Light Brigade
- Wrote twelve short stories for Patreon (one every month! Whew, and you can read the whole set for as low as $1 here):
- Monsters Do Not Die Quietly (a Nyx adventure)
- Among the Chosen Girls
- The Woman’s Art of War
- Powder Burns
- Citizens of Elsewhen
- Echo Echo Echo Echo
- Corpse Soldier (a Nev adventure)
- We Burn
- Flicker
- Glottal’s Gift: An intergalactic fairytale
- The Conclave of Ravens (a Nyx adventure)
4. Held down my day job, and did a couple of campaigns I’m particularly proud of
5. Resolved a five-year-old publishing dispute (mostly my agent did this)
6. Got together all the paperwork for Canadian residency application (except that goddamn piece from South Africa – hello 2019)
7. Traveled to Spain for Celcius Festival and three city book tour stuff (holy shit that was THIS year)
8. Traveled to Aspen, CO as GOH at Sirens.
9. The Stars are Legion was published in France – my first appearance in French!
10. Turned down doing a Star Wars novel (sorry, fam – those deadlines are not for people with day jobs)
11. Wrote six columns for Locus magazine
12. Produced five more episodes of Get to Work Hurley
13. Paid off my LAST student loan!!
Overall, there were some less-fun adventures in adulting this year, including my spouse taking over sole guardianship for his grandmother, which adds an additional crunch on us financially, and alas, further complicates the whole “run away to Canada” plan I had that was going to get me the writing-full-time-by-the-time-I’m-40 dream. I’m soothing my adulting angst by spending more time at the gym again, and trying to at least get another dog out of this because at this point, dogs are therapy.
Occasionally I get really pissed off about having to work twelve jobs just to live something close to the middle class life my parents had, and I grouse and grumble and then I yell aloud, “Life isn’t fair, princess!”
The fact that I JUST paid off my student loan and then picked up family care bills is not lost on me. And we haven’t even started in on taking care of our own parents yet, which… lord. And they wonder why millenials don’t seem to have any retirement or disposable income? By the time our student loans are paid off we have to start caring for our parents, and our health insurance premiums and medical bills are basically a mortgage payment every month in and of themselves.
Welcome to the millenial adulting dream!
But the truth is we’re in a place where we CAN help with these things, and that part is good, I suppose. I’m not dead yet. I’m writing great books, each one better than the last.
Onward, and onward.
Not dead yet.
