The cover for next month’s Analog Science Fiction & Fact has been revealed! The issue contains wormhole engineer immigration story I co-wrote with Mercurio D. Rivera, “The Walk to Distant Suns.” This is the first time either of us have appeared in the venerable magazine. I’m super excited!

Looking for something to listen to this weekend? You might want to listen to the latest Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast, where Rajan Khanna, Sara Lynn Michener, David Barr Kirtley and yours truly discuss the latest season of Doctor Who. Slight spoiler: we had a few nits, but overall we loved this new season and are excited to see where the showrunners take the new Doctor.

You can listen to the podcast here.

Hope you and yours had a happy New Year’s! We spent ours with close friends, ringing in the new year with much cheer and cheese. (And perhaps it was the cheese that prevented me from having too bad of a hangover the next morning.)

If you were busy over the holiday break, you might have missed the Geeks Guide to the Galaxy episode I participated in, reviewing the SyFy TV series Nightflyers, based on the George R.R. Martin novella of the same name. Erin Lindsey, Andrea Kail, myself, and host David Barr Kirtley discuss the show. And needless to say, we have opinions.

Here’s a quote from yours truly:

“The only way they can communicate with the [aliens] is by bringing along a psychic, which sounds perfectly reasonable, except the psychic is literally a psychopath—at least that’s how they present him from the get-go. And I’m like, ‘Why would they bring this completely unstable psychopath with them on this journey which is the last best hope of humanity? Can’t they find a more stable psychic?’ I didn’t quite get that. And then they bring him on board in this giant cage, and he looks through the window and messes with someone’s brain, so it’s like, ‘Well, what’s the point of the cage then?’ I don’t understand why they’re even locking him away if he can literally just ‘think outside the box’ and fry someone’s brain.”

You can listen to the full podcast here.

I’m happy to announce that my short story “Truth is Like the Sun” will appear in a future issue of Lightspeed Magazine. The story is told in a modern epistolary (letter) format and concerns a trans Persian-Thai rock star who performs a musical set from orbit and literally breaks the internet. No news yet on when the story will be released.  

The Dreaded Empty Signing Queue

Some of you may remember my essay from a couple of years back called “Overcoming Self-Doubt as a Writer,” which was published on the SFWA blog. That essay will be included a new book called The Writer’s Book of Doubt, edited by Aidan Doyle. I think it’s a great idea. Artists of all shapes and sizes struggle with self-doubt and depression, and a handbook on how to overcome the worst of those humps would be super-useful. But the book will only see the light of day if it makes its Kickstarter funding goal. Can you help out?

Donate to the Kickstarter here.

Maniac, a new series on Netflix starring Emma Stone & Jonah Hill.

The last time I was on Jim Freund’s Hour of the Wolf radio program, I had no idea he was going to put it up on Facebook Live, and so, well, I didn’t shave or put on a nice shirt. Viewers saw me, like a wild animal, in my natural state. This time, when I was on Jim’s program this past Wednesday, I made sure to clean myself up.

Jim and I talked about TV shows, the state of the genre, and about 1h21m into the show, I read “The Marsh of Camarina,” my story about AI and job replacement that appeared in the anthology Shades Within Us. You can see the most recent Facebook Live recording here.

My Geeks Guide to the Galaxy discussion, just released, was thankfully audio only. So listeners will have no idea if I am waxing philosophical about the Netflix show Maniac in my underwear. It’s up to you to decide. 

Seriously, though, I had a lot of fun discussing that show with Chandler Klang Smith, Rajan Khanna & host David Barr Kirtley. You can check out the show here.

More to come soon, after I finish the damn novel.