[apologies this is getting up late, but Friday I wasn't feeling great and so I've been low key the last few days and starting to catch up now. Thanks for understanding!]
Otherwise, I’ve been trying to get to this and that. I did turn in my latest Locus column on time on the 20th, which is a relief. I’ll be trying to catch up on some other things now that’s in and I can maybe have a breather soon. We’ll see. And of course the Hugos are just over a week away, and I have some programming otherwise to get ready for, including a “So You Want To Be A Reviewer” panel that I’m very excited about because it’s got a lot of really awesome people it will be fun to talk to. I’m still not sure really what to say on the subject. Hmm.
One thing I was poking at recently was the About Me section here on Quick Sip Reviews, because I’ve let it get rather out of date (same with my works/publications page). I’ll be working on fixing those in the coming weeks I hope. But it did give me some perspective as I was updating everything, and chasing down links, and otherwise thinking about my reviewing journey, which has been rather wild. I started at Tangent in 2014 and it really wasn’t a good scene. I kept doing that and joined Nerds of a Feather in late 2014, beginning my long running The Monthly Round column, where I’d pair short fiction and alcoholic drinks. It’s still one of my favorite projects I’ve done. Anyway, I then started Quick Sip Reviews in January 2015. At that point I was still reviewing for Tangent, too. Thankfully, I backed away from Tangent toward the middle of 2015 and shifted focus to NoaF and QSR.
Things continued mostly unchanged until the middle of 2016, when for financial reasons I launched my Patreon. There weren’t really any changes to that, then, until 2018, when I stepped back from Nerds of a Feather and got my first paid reviewing gig at The Book Smugglers doing X Marks the Story. Through all of that, I continued to run and expand Quick Sip Reviews. 2019 saw The Book Smugglers stop their paid publishing, and for the first time I was only doing QSR and my Patreon. That lasted until 2020 when I restarted X Marks the Story irregularly as an unpaid thing. That continued through halfway through 2021 when The Book Smugglers largely stopped putting up content.
In 2021, however, my attentions were pulled to the release of two books—my short fiction collection The Burning Day and Other Strange Stories and We’re Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction 2020 (edited by C.L. Clark and myself). I was then approached in late 2021 to take on a review column for Locus. I accepted, as I began that I also began winding down work on Quick Sip Reviews, closing out my 2021 content in February 2022 and moving to the format I’m in now, with weekly updates but only infrequent reviews.
It’s interesting, in part because “So You Want To Be A Reviewer” is part of this journey. I did want to be a reviewer, and so I set about reviewing as much as I could as well as I could, shifting with my abilities and my life situation otherwise. But aside from the money I made through my Patreon, it took me over three years to get a paying reviewing position, and I lost that after a year, only to get a different paid reviewing position after over seven years of being a reviewer. It pays to persist, I guess.
Anyway, just sort of looking back on this all and thinking. I also got to track my award nominations, which began in 2018 with being a Hugo Finalist for Fan Writer, and continues to this year where I’m up for a Hugo in Fanzine, an Ignyte for Best Anthology/Collection, and won a Locus Award for Anthology for We’re Here alongside C.L. Clark. There again, though, it took over three years of doing a whole lot of work to be nominated for anything, and my first award win wasn’t for reviewing at all, though my review work and We’re Here are definitely both linked. But yeah, looking back is a hell of a thing.
And that’s about it for now! In media, I continue to play Final Fantasy VI rather slowly, am now watching the final season of Sherlock Holmes, and am almost through what Marvel Unlimited has for Generation X. I hope all is well with you! Cheers!
One thing I was poking at recently was the About Me section here on Quick Sip Reviews, because I’ve let it get rather out of date (same with my works/publications page). I’ll be working on fixing those in the coming weeks I hope. But it did give me some perspective as I was updating everything, and chasing down links, and otherwise thinking about my reviewing journey, which has been rather wild. I started at Tangent in 2014 and it really wasn’t a good scene. I kept doing that and joined Nerds of a Feather in late 2014, beginning my long running The Monthly Round column, where I’d pair short fiction and alcoholic drinks. It’s still one of my favorite projects I’ve done. Anyway, I then started Quick Sip Reviews in January 2015. At that point I was still reviewing for Tangent, too. Thankfully, I backed away from Tangent toward the middle of 2015 and shifted focus to NoaF and QSR.
Things continued mostly unchanged until the middle of 2016, when for financial reasons I launched my Patreon. There weren’t really any changes to that, then, until 2018, when I stepped back from Nerds of a Feather and got my first paid reviewing gig at The Book Smugglers doing X Marks the Story. Through all of that, I continued to run and expand Quick Sip Reviews. 2019 saw The Book Smugglers stop their paid publishing, and for the first time I was only doing QSR and my Patreon. That lasted until 2020 when I restarted X Marks the Story irregularly as an unpaid thing. That continued through halfway through 2021 when The Book Smugglers largely stopped putting up content.
In 2021, however, my attentions were pulled to the release of two books—my short fiction collection The Burning Day and Other Strange Stories and We’re Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction 2020 (edited by C.L. Clark and myself). I was then approached in late 2021 to take on a review column for Locus. I accepted, as I began that I also began winding down work on Quick Sip Reviews, closing out my 2021 content in February 2022 and moving to the format I’m in now, with weekly updates but only infrequent reviews.
It’s interesting, in part because “So You Want To Be A Reviewer” is part of this journey. I did want to be a reviewer, and so I set about reviewing as much as I could as well as I could, shifting with my abilities and my life situation otherwise. But aside from the money I made through my Patreon, it took me over three years to get a paying reviewing position, and I lost that after a year, only to get a different paid reviewing position after over seven years of being a reviewer. It pays to persist, I guess.
Anyway, just sort of looking back on this all and thinking. I also got to track my award nominations, which began in 2018 with being a Hugo Finalist for Fan Writer, and continues to this year where I’m up for a Hugo in Fanzine, an Ignyte for Best Anthology/Collection, and won a Locus Award for Anthology for We’re Here alongside C.L. Clark. There again, though, it took over three years of doing a whole lot of work to be nominated for anything, and my first award win wasn’t for reviewing at all, though my review work and We’re Here are definitely both linked. But yeah, looking back is a hell of a thing.
And that’s about it for now! In media, I continue to play Final Fantasy VI rather slowly, am now watching the final season of Sherlock Holmes, and am almost through what Marvel Unlimited has for Generation X. I hope all is well with you! Cheers!
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