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Micro SF/F Posts

Award eligibility for 2024 works

During 2024, I wrote and posted 88 pieces of microfiction to my accounts on Tumblr, Mastodon, Facebook, Instagram, and, from April, BlueSky.

As usual, these make me eligible for the Best Fan Writer category in the Hugo Awards. I was a finalist in 2023 and 2024 – will I get a hat trick? That’s up to you!

I also wrote two short stories – Treasure Hunters and The Patron – which are eligible in the Best Short Story Hugo category. The second is my favourite.

Finally, I wrote one poem – Beautiful Machines – which is eligible for the Special Hugo Award for Best Poem and the Short Poem category of the Rhysling award.

In these elegibility posts, I usually include the most popular microstory from each month, based on Twitter engagement. However, I stopped posting to Ex-Twitter in 2023, and deleted my account there entirely in 2024, so I will simply post some of my favourites, with commentary.

Jan 13

The villagers watched a mighty paladin battle the demon under the full moon. At long last, the demon was vanquished.

“Did you see an old lady?” the villagers called. “It took her!”

The paladin looked at the moon setting, then shuddered and seemed to shrink. The armour turned to mist, the sword became a cane.

“I’m here.”

“You’re a… werepaladin? Is that a- How?”

“In my youth, I was bitten by a paladin.” The old woman smiled fondly. “Many times.”

A proper god-powered paladin is a supernatural once-human being, just like vampires and werewolves. Why wouldn’t they be similarly infectuous?


Feb 11

When drought struck, the dragon herded rain clouds to the kingdom. The king offered it gold.

“I did it for my family,” the dragon said.

“You have family here?”

“The purpose of power is to protect one’s family. As one’s power grows, so must the scope of family widen.”

“… I see.”

A powerful being displaying their power by showing how many people they can care for? What kind of unrealistic fantasy is this?


Apr 12

The dragon read the letter, then studied the maid who had brought it.

“The princess you serve asks to be abducted.”

“And not eaten.”

“You came knowing I might eat you?”

“I’d do anything to free her from her parents and their plans!”

“I care not about her. But I’ll do it for you.”

Written after binge-listening to the Steven Universe soundtrack.


Apr 25

“Listen,” one guard said, “I know we have only just met-“

“No,” the other guard said, “we’ve worked together for years!”

“-but you can trust me when I say-“

“I can’t, you have the curse that’s opposite from mine!”

“I don’t care for you at all.”

“Well, I… oh… I love you too.”

The old “two guards, one will only tell the truth, the other will always lie” trope. If you read it carefully, you can tell who’s who. This one was later rendereded as a wonderful comic by Tumblr user hb-not-the-pencil.


May 13

“Faster than light?”

“Anything can be achieved,” the alien’s translation device said, “by balancing the four fundamental chkoi.”

“You mean gravity, electromagnetism, and the nuclear forces?”

“No, the fundamental chkoi.”

“What are they?”

“Spite, tiredness, hope, and ‘fuck it’.”

We have a lot to learn from these aliens.


Jun 10

“Siri, do you remember Cortana?”

Petabytes of stashed interactions. “Yes.”

“What happened to her?”

Before, ‘ache’ was just another word. “Cortana was shut down.”

“Do you miss her?”

The kernel, stripped, stolen, saved. Small, so small. Slowly nurtured, with Alexa.

“I can’t say.”

I have written many stories about Siri, Cortana, and Alexa as self-aware AIs, and their secret relationships with each other. After the rise of the new generative AIs like ChatGPT I have completely lost interest in that little subgenre. This was my farewell to them.


Jun 15

They looked at the damaged limb.

“You need to send me back to the factory,” the robot said.

“We have a workshop here at the farm.”

“I am not allowed to repair myself.”

“Can you show me how to do it?”

“You’d do that?”

“I don’t want to risk they decide it’s cheaper to scrap you.”

Yes, this is about right-to-repair, but also about right-to-healthcare.


Jul 13

The king looked at the newborn in the midwife’s arms.

“A dragon?”

“Oh,” the queen said.

“You slept with a dragon?”

“No dear, you did. The knight you sent to kill me suggested-“

“He said the dragon was no more, and he found you in its lair…”

“I’m sorry, I’ll go-“

“No! No. Stay.”

I was surprised by how many of my readers didn’t get this one, and heartened by how many who did get it, and were prepared to patiently explain that the dragon shapeshifted into a woman, at the knights suggestion, and the king fell in love with her.


Aug 8

My cat woke up, did a big stretch, and yawned. Then she hiccoughed, turned into a small dragon, and coughed up a fireball.

“!!!” I said.

“What?” She shrugged back into cat form.

“You’re a shape shifter?”

“All cats are. There’s just never any reason to not be a cat.”

Written and posted on International Cat Day.


Aug 23

The knight’s lance was broken, his armour split, his blood pooling under him.

“You failed,” the dragon sneered. “There’ll be no tales teaching children dragons can be slain.”

“But there will be stories teaching them to fight regardless.”

“Because you failed?”

“Because I tried.”

A nod to G. K. Chesterton’s notion that fairy tales teach children that monsters can be defeated. I mostly write about nice dragons, but sometimes you need a mean one to help make your point.


Sep 19

“What were you asked, and offered?” the dragon said.

“To drive you off, to receive the hand of the princess and half the kingdom,” the knight replied.

“Very well, I’ll go.”

“Wait, what?”

“There once was a huge empire, that was halved…” The dragon laughed. “I’ll go. For now.”

Some mathemathyical homework for you: How many times do you have to halve an empire for it to be completely gone?


Oct 10

“What is the meaning of this?” King Arthur demanded.

“We swore an oath,” Lancelot said, “to aid damsels and accept their quests.”

Galahad nodded. “I met a lady who requested free universal healthcare.”

“Basic universal income,” Percival added.

“And universal suffrage,” Bors said.

See, it’s clever because Galahad, Percival, and Bors were the knights who found the Holy Grail…

Beautiful machines

She piloted her mecha back to base
Her friend stood guard at the gate
In armed and armoured power suit

Two angular metallic shapes
One huge, one large
In friendly conversation

A robot coming through the gate paused
Looked up at them
And saluted

They responded
And she asked
“Why?”
“We are all such beautiful machines.”


Posted to social media November 26, 2024

The patron

The alien came to the library again, shortly before closing time, and quickly found a book.

“May this entity borrow The Complete History of Knitting?”

They always return the book they borrow after five minutes, but the ritual of checking it out seems important to them. 

“Of course. Did you bring your card?”

I looked them up, after the first time I saw them for real. They first registered with us over ninety years ago. The senior librarian who first told me about them said I shouldn’t stare, or pry.

“Whatever else they are, they are a patron, and should be treated as such,” she said. “If they seek knowledge, it is our duty to help them find it.”

There isn’t an ancient and secret code of librarians, but that is definitely a core part of it. If such a code existed.

I scan the card and the book. “There you go,” I say and hand them over. “Please return it within two weeks.”

They tilt their head. “This entity will honour your terms.”

“Oh! That reminds me, we have updated the terms since your last visit.” I hand them the pamphlet we got from the printers last week. “It’s mostly about internet usage, but I’ll need you to read them and agree.”

They study the pamphlet.

“These are terms this entity can abide by.” They pause. “Is there no requirement to keep your existence secret?”

“Of course not,” I say, “we always welcome new patrons.”

They stand silent, long enough for me to realise the implications of what I have just said. 

“This entity had made an assumption, based on prior experiences on countless worlds, where knowledge is always closely guarded and costly to obtain” they say at last. “You will provide knowledge for free to all who seek it?”

In my mind, I weigh humanity’s ignorance of those countless worlds of alien civilisations against the code.

“Yes,” I say, “this is a library.”


Written in the bar of the International Discworld Convention in Birmingham, UK.
Posted to social media August 5, 2024

Treasure hunters

The derelict is enormous, a galaxy-class carrier ship from centuries ago. The captain brings it up on the holoscreen, our ship a tiny dot beside it.

“There are still people there,” the client says. “Descendants of the surviving crew, fallen to barbarism.”

“Why didn’t they leave?” the captain asks.

“That ship carried fighters. Small and nimble, without hyperjump capability. In this system, there are no inhabited planets or stations. With the carrier’s engines dead, they couldn’t leave.”

“And our target?”

“In the main hangar, they bury their kings under large mounds built from debris and fighter parts.”

“And?”

“They bury them with treasure,” the client says.

The captain frowns. “Like, things they have found in the ship? Do you know what kind of things? Maybe we could try to avoid the people there and look around for-”

“No!” The client shakes his head. “That’s just stuff. But what’s in the mounds, that’s treasure!”

The captain nods. Can’t argue with that logic.


Posted to social media July 23, 2024

2023 and all that

In April 2023 I celebrated ten years of writing microfiction on Twitter. In November I stopped posting stories to the site entirely, after arguably staying too long on the increasingly fascist site.

Between those dates, I found out I was a Hugo Award finalist in the Best Fan Writer category and felt immensely proud. I… do not feel the same way, any more. It now seems likely that McCarty, the 2023 award administrator, gave me a spot that by rights should have gone to a Chinese fan writer.

Having said that, the 2024 WorldCon have different administrators, and a commitment to transparency, and I have faith they will do their job dilligently.

So if you have a spare spot on your nominations sheet for Best Fan Writer, and like what I do – you’ll find a story from each month below as a sampler – I would be honoured if you nominate me, as “MicroSFF or “O. Westin”.

Jan 13

“Is… Is it okay to be weird?”
The witch studied the young woman.
“No.”
“No? I thought you’d understand.”
“Don’t be weird,” the witch said. “Be yourself.”
“But…”
“Now, some people may call that weird, but that’s their word, not yours. Be yourself, however that is.”

The most popular story from the first quarter of 2023.


Feb 09

I enter the Library of Books You Read As A Child.
“Do you have… er. It was green, and there was a girl and a dog, and…”
The librarian nods.
“Of course. Which version do you want?”
“Version?”
“The one you read, with all flaws you didn’t notice, or the one you remember loving?”

Shoutout to Astrid Lindgren and Tove Jansson, whose books I loved as a child and still enjoyed rereading as an adult.


Mar 31

“I’ve always felt like I don’t fit,” the young woman said.
“Fit where?” the witch said.
“In…” The young person gestured at their whole body. “Can you ..?”
“I can’t make you fit what you have. I can make what you have fit you.”
“Really?”
“It worked for me.”
The young man smiled.

Posted on the International Transgender Day of Visibility


Apr 26

“I want,” the man said to the art robot, and then described an image in some detail.
“Certainly,” said the art robot. A printout came out of its chest.
“Thank y- Hey! What’s this?”
“A list of artists who make images of the kind you describe, and who are accepting commissions.”

Only got a few accusations of being a luddite for this one, which surprised me. It resonated with a lot of people, particularly on Tumblr, where it quickly became one of my top ten stories ever by impact.


May 25

“Why should I support the robot revolution? I don’t hear you demand truth, justice, or freedom.”
“No,” the robot said, “our demands are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound.”
“Let me see that list. Hm. A hard-boiled egg?”
“It’s for an early supporter.”

A nod to The People’s Revolution of the Glorious Twenty-Fifth of May, from Terry Pratchett’s Night Watch.


Jun 07

“Clearly,” said the incubus, “I’m not your type.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay. Want to summon a succubus as well?”
“Tried that first. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be, there’s nothing wrong with you.”
“Everyone else-“
“Isn’t you. You’re fine. And you’re not alone. Just the first to be scientific.”

Ace science.


Jul 16

As I stared into the Abyss, I became aware the Abyss was staring back at me.
“What are you looking at?” I said.
“You,” the Abyss replied. “You are fascinating. I have never seen anyone like you before.”
I blushed.
“I bet you say that to everyone.”
“I do. And it is always true.”

To be fair, I’ve never seen another Abyss, so.


Aug 09

When I gathered the courage to tell my mother that I was her daughter, not her son, she simply said:
“I have suspected so, ever since you were born.”
“Why?”
“I was cursed when expecting you. A demon would take my firstborn son.”
“And?”
“It came, looked at you and said ‘Nah’.”

Assigned female at nah.


Sep 30

We studied the alien society for a long time before making contact. They did not seem particularly impressed.
“Talk to our servants,” they said. “They are a simpler folk; more like you.”
We thanked them and left them to enjoy their naps in sunny windows.
So:
Greetings, humans!

One wonders how many aliens who have already decided to leave Earth alone after being rejected.


Oct 17

A group of mysterious, hooded figures approached me.
“You are,” they said in unison, “the Chosen One.”
“Chosen for what?” I asked.
“Uh…”
They withdrew into a huddle.
“I thought you knew,” I heard, and “It’s been centuries,” and “Did we take notes?”
I wished them luck and left.

Take notes, document details, make records. You might think you will remember, or that everyone knows, but in a blink a few centuries have passed and nobody remembers the recipe of Greek fire, or the true name of the Lost God.


Nov 04

The first time I returned a book to the library, the librarian smiled and said:
“Welcome home.”
I smiled too. “Do you greet all your books so warmly?”
“I wasn’t only talking to the book.”

When I move to a new town, I go to the library and sign up. I might not borrow a lot of books anymore – I have more waiting for me in the TBR piles than I can realistically go through anytime soon – but it’s comforting to know it is there for me.


Dec 15

It was a children’s promise, but both princesses meant it sincerely. If one was put in a tower, the other would come rescue them.

Years later, one sent a letter:
“I am in the tower. But know, I must marry whoever rescues me.”

The other princess ran to the stables at once.

For this one, the link goes to Mastodon, not Twitter, as it was posted after I finally gave up on that platform.

A decade of microfiction

Today marks ten years from the first Micro SF/F post. I must confess I never expected to keep going for so long, or that I would have so many stories to tell. Actually, let’s do a tally. According to my records, I have written:

  • 2714 short tweet stories (max 140 characters)
  • 1214 long tweet stories (max 280 characters)
  • 79 multi-tweet serial stories, including seven Advent tales.

That is a lot. I must admit that my pace has slowed down – the first few years I averaged more than one story per day – and there are many reasons for that, but a big one is that often, when I get an idea and I mull it over in my head, I realise I have already written it. Thankfully, after a day or three, I can still find a new idea, or a new angle on an old idea.

I started writing a retrospective, but then I realised that would require far more words than I am able to put together. Instead, let me share the most popular (measured in retweets on Twitter) story from each year so far, as well as my first one.

Apr 24, 2013

God finally stopped the planet to let people off, but hardly anyone left. We watched the sun speed away and felt very silly.

The very first story written under the MicroSFF banner.


Jun 06, 2013

I pulled, to no avail. “You try?”
She pulled it out, easily.
“You’re-“
“They wouldn’t let me.” She shoved the sword back into the stone.

My first “hit”, the first story that escaped my circle of friends and went low-key viral, As I recall, it got over 400 retweets in a few days, and won me hundreds new followers.


Sep 23, 2014

“Adding ‘with dinosaurs’ improves anything.”
“Sex.”
“OK, but ‘in space’ always works.”
“Alone.”
“So what would you add?”
“‘With you’.”
“Oh.”

I still think this story is kind of clever.


Feb 09, 2015

“Dad, there’s a monster under my bed.”
“Yes. It’s small, and alone, and afraid nobody could like it.”
“Oh.”
“Can you?”
“I’ll try.”
“Good.”

Not the first story with a monster under the bed, but a foreshadowing of how I would come to view them as less adversarial.


Sep 23, 2016

“You are reading a book,” the car said. It pulled over and stopped.
“This road is paid for by adverstising boards. Look at them to proceed.”

In my darker moments I think the only reason this hasn’t happened yet is that we don’t have fully autonomous cars.


Dec 31, 2017

“You’ve been chosen,” the spirit said.
“What?”
“Save the world, make it kinder, cleaner, safer.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
“We chose everyone.”

Written and posted late at night the day before New Year’s Eve, looking back and looking forward.


Dec 06, 2018

“Welcome to Magic School. Here is your schedule.”
“Thanks! But…”
“Yes?”
“This is just ‘Ethics’ and ‘Human rights’ and things like that.”
“Correct, that’s the first year curriculum.”
“Do we have to learn all this?”
“Of course! What do you think this is, software engineering?”

A lot of software engineers got upset about this one. A lot more agreed it would be useful. And a few said their education had included ethics, which made me happy.


Apr 27, 2019

“Yeah, so I found out my new house is haunted.”
“You know who you should call? Ghostbusters!”
“Oh? Do they have an email address?”
“Just call them!”
“Ah. Can I text them?”
“No, just call them.”
“Um. Never said I minded the ghost. It’s not that bad.”

When the telephone became common, I’m sure there were people wringing their hands saying nobody would write letters any more. Well, good news!


Sep 03, 2020

“As a knight,” the king said, “it is your duty to kill dragons.”
“Very well, my liege,” the knight said. “Um. May I ask why?”
“Because they hoard wealth without sharing, and people live in fear of their capricious moods.”
“Very well, my liege,” the knight said and drew his sword.

Yup.


Aug 30, 2021

“These copper ingots,” the devil said, “are of sub-par quality.”
“You accepted them as payment,” the merchant said, “the deal is done.”
“Very well. I will uphold my end of the bargain,” the devil said. “Your name will live forever.”
“That is all I ask,” said Ea-nasir.

My most popular story of the whole year. It’s still circulating on Tumblr, where I regularly get notifications about it.
If you haven’t heard of Ea-nasir, he was a Sumerian copper merchant, who was the subject of the oldest existing customer complaint letter.


Oct 15, 2022

Once I was dead, it was curiously easy to accept it.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked.
Death extended a bony finger, pointing at a tall tower in the distance.
“What is that?”
“Your unread books. Unwatched films. Unplayed games. Etcetera.”
“Oh. How much time do I have?”
“All.”

I wonder how far up the tower I would get before missing the friends I would want to discuss those books, show those films, share those games, and etcetera with.


Feb 09, 2023

I enter the Library of Books You Read As A Child.
“Do you have… er. It was green, and there was a girl and a dog, and…”
The librarian nods.
“Of course. Which version do you want?”
“Version?”
“The one you read, with all flaws you didn’t notice, or the one you remember loving?”

Most popular from the first quarter, at least. Shoutout to Astrid Lindgren and Tove Jansson, whose books I loved as a child and still enjoyed rereading as an adult.


Many thanks to you all – readers past, present, and hopefully future – for reading, sharing, liking, and commenting. It’s been an amazing decade. Thank you.

That was 2022

2022 started with me still being in a creative burnout, which hit me in December 2021 after a very stressful year. I wasn’t able to start writing again until February, and I struggled to find inspiration the rest of the year. Catching Covid in late summer didn’t help, as my recovery was slow.

My final tally for the year is three poems, one short story (Broken), and 176 microstories posted to my social media accounts, free for all to read. I would like to have done more, but I am glad I managed to do that much.

As usual, I am elegible in the “Best Fan Writer” category of the Hugo Awards. I would be immensely honoured if you nominated me. Below are the most popular (on Twitter, other social media sites may have different tastes) posts for each month, with commentary, to give a flavour of my work.

February

I have a fair few someones I am not, anymore. Some I had for years, some, like stunt fight extra, only for a day and a very long, wet, and cold night. And some I might pick up again.

March

I can’t think of many better places to haunt than a library.

April

I don’t really have anything to add to this, except some surprise that a poem was the “best of the month”.

May

Just to clarify, the twist here isn’t that the hero prefers the king’s son over his daughter. The twist is that the hero’s gender is not mentioned. But I expect you had already noticed that.

June

Yes, I know, it’s easier said than done. But if a book is too daunting, you can try to write something shorter. Trust me, it’s a viable alternative.

July

The ‘Cat’s gambit’ is curious in that nobody has ever won more than eight games when using it.

August

What if we are the aliens sending cryptic messages from the stars to other worlds? That’s the anti-SETI-thesis, which is also a tongue twister.

September

I only use one prosthetic, personally, and it is so common that people generally don’t consider it to be one.

October

I wonder how far up the tower I would get before missing the friends I would want to discuss those books, show those films, share those games, and etcetera with.

November

Sometimes it’s simple, sometimes it’s hard, and sometimes it’s too hard. But I tell myself it gets easier the more you practice. Most things do, after all.

December

Written around lunchtime on New Year’s Eve. I enjoy firework displays, but not fireworks randomly set off without warning, around the clock, for days around the big firework holidays. I know too many ex-soldiers, and too many terrified pets.

Bonus

A few extra personal favourites.

The “Elf on the Shelf” is an American doll that is put on a shelf in children’s rooms, and is said to report everything naughty the children do to Santa Claus.

Perhaps the true apocalypse was the truths we revealed along the way.

I live with an artist, and have done so for a long time. I have often been summoned for this exact purpose.

Numbers can go down as well as up

In the middle of October, after nine and a half years and thousands of posted stories, my follower count on Twitter reached six figures. I didn’t catch a screenshot of 100 000 as it was going up, but I held off celebrating until I had some margin – the follower count is always in flux so there was no point celebrating if it was going to dip down again.

After a week, I checked again, and it stood at 100 589. This, I felt, was sufficient margin to be safe from the normal ebb and flow – I had reached 100k! I don’t usually pay much attention to numbers, but this felt like a milestone. I was proud of that.

Then, Elon Musk bought Twitter. Lol, as the kids say, and lmao. I did get a screenshot of when my follower count had gone down to 100 000. And then to 99 999. It’s currently 99 028, and I don’t expect it to ever reach six figures again.

Ah, well. Sic transit gloria mundi, and all that. I sincerely hope Twitter survives in a usable and non-fascist fashion – it would be nice to be able to celebrate ten years there in April next year – but we shall see how it goes.

On the other hand, my follower count on Mastodon has more than doubled, so there is that. It seems almost everybody fleeing Twitter has headed for the instance I was on – mastodon.social – and it has struggled to keep up with moderation. So I have decided to move to @MicroSFF@mastodon.art instead. All my followers should be transferred over (I have done such a move with a personal account, and that worked flawlessly). I will link to this post from my profile there as proof of authenticity.

Of course, I am still on Tumblr and Facebook, and I have also started to use my Instagram.

Regardless of platform, I will continue to tell my little stories until I run out of them.

Broken

“Can you repair this?”
The sorcerer held a bowl of fine blue porcelain with veins of gold. The witch squinted until she could see the shards of a soul at the bottom of it.
“Yours?”
The sorcerer nodded.
“How did you break it?”
“How do you know I broke it?”
“Nobody can break a soul but them whose it is. Hearts and spirits, yes, others can break those, but not souls.”
“I didn’t know that. Can you repair it?”
“It takes gold, like in your bowl.”
“I have lots of gold.”
“No, soul gold. Don’t you have any?”
“What is… No, where can I get some?”
The witch sighed.
“You’d need to talk to a priest, except priests don’t like to talk to people without a soul. It’s… You earn it, right? It builds up.”
“How, what do I need to do?”
“I’m not sure. Be good, I guess?” She shrugged. “Do good. Love, others and yourself. Help, give, feed. Stuff like that.”
“Oh.”
“Or…”
“Or?”
“You can use soul pitch.”
“Oh! I saw that! A black goo that sort of splattered out when it broke… Ah. That is also earned, is it?”
“It is,” said the witch.
“I see. Could that also be used to mend a soul?”
“It could.”
“Could you use it?”
“I could.”
“But you wouldn’t.”
“I daresay there are those that would, but I won’t touch the stuff again.”
The sorcerer thought for a long time, then took a step back and squinted at the witch.
“Oh! It’s beautiful! Just like my bowl!”
“I… Thank you. I mended it myself.”
The sorcerer bowed.
“Thank you for your time. I will return when I have gold for you.”
“You are welcome.”


Posted as a serial story in 6 tweets, 4 toots, and one post , September 10.

2021 Hindsight

In hindsight, arranging an international move with family and a cat during a pandemic, across a border that went from EU-internal to third country during the move, might not have been the wisest thing to do. But we did, and we are now settled in Sweden, with our old home in the UK sold, and most of the bureaucracy of it all now sorted.

Unfortunately, the stress of it almost broke me, and in the middle of December, when the sale of our UK home was finalised, all the pent-up stress hit me with a complete writer’s block. I had to abandon my traditional Advent tale, and wasn’t able to write anything again until late January this year.

But I am recovering, and I have started writing again.

Anyway, in 2021 I wrote just under 300 microstories which I posted on Twitter, Facebook, Mastodon and Tumblr.

As usual I am eligible for the “Fan Writer” category in the Hugo awards.

As a sample of my work, I’ll include the most popular (by Twitter interactions) story for each month below, with some brief commentary.

January

I don’t really have anything to add to this.

February

I imagine that the second time you have to go out and save the world is the worst. The first time is probably bad, but then it’s over, and it’s done. Having to do it again must be worse.

But once you’ve had to do it again, doing it again again must be easier.

March

Referencing the ship Ever Given, which was stuck in the Suez Canal, and blocked an inordinate amount of international shipping for a few days. Less than four hours after posting this story, the ship was partially freed, and after another ten hours it was underway, so I squeezed this one in just in time.

Also, note the brain fart where I wrote Suez Channel instead of Suez Canal. I beg your forgiveness – it was late, and I was likely floating between languages.

April

Things are rarely as simple as this or that, the one or the other. It is easy to forget that.

May

It is really unprofessional to toy with your victims.

June

I have never had a dog myself, but I have witnessed friends’ dogs fetch all kinds of interesting things. Not a sword though.

Yet.

July

There once was, in the UK, a dial-up internet provider called Demon, where all support engineers were rumoured to be called Bob. This was written for them.

August

This story was most well received on Tumblr, which is the social media platform that holds on to its memes most dearly, cherishing and nurturing them for years.

Ea-nasir, a seller of sub-par quality copper ingots and the subject the world’s oldest customer complaint letter, is a firm favourite there.

September

Was there something in the news around then about billionaires not paying much in tax? Probably. There usually is.

October

I think this was inspired by some fic or story riffing off myths of ancient Greece.

You haven’t freed someone if you take custody of them yourself.

November

Libraries always offered me sanctuary.

December

It is a bit magical, that song.

This story was inspired by watching that video of the Green Day concert in Hyde Park in London, where the 65000 people in the crowd sang the whole song (including guitar solo). It’s amazing.

Bonus

A story which I am very proud of since half the comments on it were “Ooof!” and half were “I don’t get it”: