January News & Favorites
Hi all!
So I’ve decided to add a blog component to the website here! Consider this a space for updates on any writing news I may have, but it’s also going to be a place for me to write about the best media that I’ve consumed every month. We cannot be creators without first enjoying the creations of others, and I never tire of giving and getting good book recommendations! Speaking of which, I’ll mostly be discussing books and short stories, but I will occasionally mention movies or shows if I watch a good one (though I get to watch so little TV, this probably won’t happen much). I’ll also say that, as a very spoilers-sensitive person myself, I plan to avoid spoiling any major plot points in the stories I discuss, though if I do decide to spoil anything major, I’ll tag it. This goes for all media, not just recent releases; I’ve never understood the mindset of punishing someone for not consuming every piece of media that could ever possibly interest them within an arbitrary period of 1-5 years. There’s far too much new media being produced every year to possibly do that, and that’s without taking into consideration the vast backlog of human creativity that we as a species have accumulated, so I will always respect spoilers and would want others to do so around me, as well.
First, I do have one writing update to mention. As we go into 2026, I have a couple of publications pending. One hasn’t announced their TOC yet (not sure if they will do an official announcement for it, but I don’t want to step on any toes just in case) but the other has, so I am absolutely in a place to tell you that “Ursula the Powerful,” which originally appeared in the anthology Shift, is now going to be reprinted in the charity anthology Suffering the Other! This will be coming out through Dim Shores, and they’ve already released the cover art and full TOC list. The book should be upcoming within the next few months.
Now, on to favorites talk! The most interesting and inventive novel I read this month was certainly The Strange by Nathan Ballingrud. This one is hard to categorize, taking from the traditions of science fiction, horror, and westerns all fairly equally. Set in an alternate history where space travel progressed much earlier, we follow the daughter of a diner owner on 1930s Mars following the Silence, or the time when all communications with Earth mysteriously ceased. The protagonist of this one is pretty unlikeable, yet I still found myself growing frustrated for her, especially in the first act of the book as events happen to her to propel her into the rest of the story. I also think there’s a lot of power in allowing a teenage girl to be an unlikeable protagonist; though I haven’t read many westerns, my very limited experience with the genre suggests that their protagonists are often very morally gray or even unlikeable men. If an entire genre can thrive with such characters, it surely shouldn’t be a problem for that same unlikability to transfer to a teenage girl, should it?
One thing to note with The Strange is that the setting isn’t Mars as we currently tend to think of it but the Mars that we might have dreamed about back in the 30s. Though cold, it’s otherwise habitable without any mentioned history of terraforming, and there are other, more mysterious elements to it, including the Strange itself, the eponymous mineral that seemingly gives life to machines and that changes the color of its miners’ eyes a la Frank Herbert’s spice. While this isn’t the story for everyone, those who love inventive and nostalgic worldbuilding should certainly consider checking it out!
Next, I want to talk about Phreaks by Matthew Derby. This is an Audible Original, and while Amazon isn’t a company I like using often, and I ardently refuse to make physical book purchases (which make up the vast majority of my book buying) through them, I am very particular about what audiobooks I’ll listen to, and Audible Originals tend to work out really well for my specific preferences. One of the big things for me is that I primarily listen to dramatized audiobooks. I don’t focus on audio the way that I can with print, so if one person is droning on, I will eventually stop listening, but with dramatizations, I find myself zoning out and having to replay pieces much less frequently. For similar reasons, I avoid listening to the audio versions of books that I expect will have elegant prose, huge casts of characters, or complex ideas; for me, an audiobook should be a candy bar, while I devour my meatier stories physically. As such, Audible works well for me; they have a fairly wide library of Audible Originals that are frequently dramatized, full cast productions. They are usually novella-length stories that are more entertaining than they are substantial, and since they’re made for Audible, I don’t have to worry that I’m missing out by choosing not to read them physically; reading them physically isn’t even an option most of the time!
Admittedly, because I go for easy listening, audiobooks are rarely contenders for the best thing I’ve read in a month, though notable exceptions in the past have included The Downloaded by Robert J. Sawyer and the Impact Winter series by Travis Beacham, both of which are excellent. I also had a really good time this month with Phreaks. This is historical fiction, a genre I admittedly haven’t spent much time with, and the specific story focuses on a high school girl in 1970 who gets into phreaking, a method of hacking landline telephones to get free calls. I’d never heard of phreaking before, though a cursory Google search suggests that the portrayal in Phreaks is fairly accurate, at least at a basic level. I love getting to learn about new and interesting things while also reading fiction, so getting to discover the phreaking world in this way was a delight. I also found it charming to spend a little time in a world where landline telephones were cool new technology; I’m not a Luddite by any means, but I definitely resent the modern reliance on smartphones and do actively try to limit how much I use mine. The protagonist of Phreaks, Emma, is also blind; while as a sighted person myself, I can’t speak to the accuracy of the representation here, it seemed to be tastefully done, and it seemed like a logical choice for the protagonist of an audio drama (though other scenes from the POV of sighted characters did exist in this story and weren’t really done differently).
This was also apparently the month of the unlikeable character, because both of Emma’s parents were unbearable. It was honestly impressive how much Derby got me to hate these characters, especially since Emma’s mother was going through a lot during the story that should have made her more sympathetic. I did feel bad for her, but I was able to do so without actually liking her. Emma’s father, on the other hand, I didn’t like or feel bad for; he was just atrocious.
Finally, I’d like to mention the anthology I read this month (and last; it took a full 32 days to get through). The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer is a powerhouse of a book. At over 750,000 words, this is quite possibly the longest book that I will ever read in my life, and it collects a century of weird fiction, exploring both the old idea of the weird tale as well as the New Weird movement. While it’s absolutely not an exhaustive list of valued weird fiction, it is very comprehensive, and it worked well for me as a more formal introduction to the genre (I’d read weird fiction prior to this, of course, though I’m going to be studying it more intentionally this semester and wanted to get some background in before I got started).
Two of my favorite stories in this anthology were already familiar to me: “Sandkings” by George R.R. Martin holds a very special place in my heart and will always be one of my favorite stories, and “In the Hills, the Cities” by Clive Barker is a story I originally read in a different VanderMeer anthology (The New Weird) many years ago and which hasn’t left my mind since. As is always the hope with a good anthology, however, I came across some new favorites, as well, including “Bloodchild” by Octavia E. Butler, “‘It’s a Good Life’” by Jerome Bixby, “The Brotherhood of Mutilation” by Brian Evenson, and “Flat Diane” by Daniel Abraham.
Personally, I’m getting started with the spring semester of my second year at NEOMFA (out of three total). I can’t believe my MFA experience is already half over! Time moves way too fast.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this peek at my January favorites! See you all next month!
