Sabbatical Update 4

When I started this sabbatical, I had a primary goal to develop a consistent creative practice, with a focus on storytelling and linear media.

Life had other plans.

October and November alone wiped out more than $40,000 of our savings. The entire sabbatical has been marked by hit after hit in an unending succession of expensive crises. The financial runway that should've carried us deep into next year is running out somewhere between eight and ten months ahead of schedule, which means this sabbatical is right at the cusp of an unexpected and untimely end.

The things that went wrong are nobody's fault, and could not have been foreseen. Most potently, the sabbatical period was bookended by death: the first, sudden and unexpected; the second, drawn out and slowly dreaded. Funeral and travel expenses devastated our savings and severely shortened our financial runway. Intense grief hangs over every day like a shroud, suffocating executive function and degrading focus.

Everyone close to us has also suffered a calamitous year. Close friends suffered divorces, layoffs, evictions, emergency moves, and deaths in their own families. We've all rallied to help each other as much as possible, but the need for mutual support has been so overwhelming; it feels like we've all been working so hard to avoid drowning that we can't actually get anywhere.

Needless to say: that consistent creative practice never even got a chance to breathe. I did manage a few small wins, despite all the adversity (more on those below), but the goal itself was crushed by circumstance pretty much right out of the gate, and right now I don't know how I'm ever going to get over how bad that feels.

In any case, with the sabbatical coming to a close, I'm currently seeking new employment, contracts, and/or commissions. Check out this page for details.

Writing wins

I did join, and continue to attend, a year-long speculative fiction writing workshop with Hugo House in Seattle. I've met a great cohort of fellow writers, and the structure and accountability of the workshop helped me to get three pieces of short fiction well underway:

• Briarcliff (working title) -- A moody horror short that explores the nightmares and neuroses of a failed writer and his grim partnership with a prehistoric demon. This piece is an experiment in narrative by elision, drawing inspiration from video games' heavy use of environmental storytelling.
• The Deep (working title) -- A cosmic horror short about a deep sea salvage dive that discovers a hidden threat beyond human understanding, and a secret organization that will do anything to keep that threat hidden. This piece is a claustrophobic katabasis into the deep, filled with interpersonal tension, existential dread, and even (somehow) malevolent mathematics.
• Justicars (working title) -- A dark fantasy short that follows a knight-priest and his squire on an urgent mission to stop the mad patriarch of their order from freeing an ancient and terrible god. This pieces explores themes of faith and doubt, servitude and free will.

Briarcliff is in final revision, Justicars is in first revision, and The Deep is in first draft. I haven't decided yet whether these pieces will be pitched to lit mags, self-published, or a mix of the two, but they're all on track for publication one way or another, hopefully in 2025.

Even though I'm not yet published, I finally found my way to being comfortable calling myself a speculative fiction and horror writer. While that is ultimately "just" a label, it's also helped focus and drive my creativity in a definite direction, which is invaluable.

Music wins

I did learn the basics of playing the guitar, and I'm now moving into learning fingerpicking technique.

Also, it turns out I really like playing the guitar. I've often read guitarists talk about their guitar as a best friend or their closest relationship; I'm not sure I'm there yet, but I definitely catch the vibe: this instrument gives me joy in a very different way than the piano, and I've already found myself reaching for it when I need comfort. And that's a lifelong benefit, all by itself.

Reading wins

I finished at least 20 books this year, which is vastly more than I've read in any other year of my adult life.

(It's probably a little more than that, actually, but my record-keeping on The StoryGraph has been a little spotty lately.)

Here are some of my favorites from this year:

• Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times -- This book, which is part self-help and part memoir, feels like a warm, safe hug. It's probably the most important book I read all year.
• The Dead Take the A Train -- A fun gonzo horror romp with an adorably sweet queer romance at its core. Root for the heroes, hate the villains, and make a big gory mess along the way. Who says horror can't be fun?
• Lilith -- A time-jumping alt-history narrative of Adam's first wife coming into her own power. Wickedly feminist, viscerally funny, often thought-provoking, and thoroughly satisfying.
• The Last Unicorn -- I grew up with the animated film, but didn't read the book it's based on until this year. As usual, the book is better, deeper, more complex. An instant classic for the dark fairy tale set.
• The Futurological Congress -- This absurdist bit of speculative fiction is the longest joke I've ever read, and the punch line made me want to throw the book. I love it so much.
• The Fifth Sacred Thing -- This is post-apocalyptic speculative fiction with a utopian bent, and its deeply-rooted themes of power, community, and resistance rocketed it into my all-time top three, alongside Ursula K. LeGuin's The Dispossessed and Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower. Like those, this book will live in my head for the rest of my life.

And I've just started Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, which will likely round out my reading for the year.

Next up

With the sabbatical coming to a close, I'm currently seeking new employment, contracts, and/or commissions. Check out this page for details.

On the writing front: I've got a few other short stories and a handful of novels concepted and outlined, so there are plenty of clear next projects as my current shorts move into publication. I'm enjoying writing short fiction, but I'd really like to get one of the novels underway next year. And even if/when I do end up back in full-time employment, I'm still tilting at the windmill of establishing a consistent creative practice.

On the music front: As with writing, my guitar practice has been really inconsistent, thanks (again) to life being relentlessly mean to us. I'm still trying to get that to become a more consistent habit, and improve the quality of my practice sessions. I'd really like to get good at fingerpicking style, and work on integrating live acoustic guitar parts into future digital music work, especially as I explore more orchestral arrangements and organic instrumentation.

On the reading front: My to-read pile is absurd. I'm really looking forward to reading more LeGuin in 2025, and seeking out more excellent horror and horror-adjacent works. Also, I subscribe to Apex, Asimov's, and Uncanny, but I've been real bad about actually reading them lately, so I want to work on that as well.

This year has been extremely hard in unforeseeable ways, and most of the things that went awry were well out of our control to begin with. That sucks ass, and with the incoming political situation, I'm fully expecting that dynamic to continue (and perhaps worsen) as we move into next year.

So now my focus is on building resilience, moving through grief, and finding healthy outlets for the intense anger I feel at the state of the world and the ways in which it blew my sabbatical goals all to hell.

We live in interesting times. Stay safe out there.