My 2022 Recap, and a glimpse of what's ahead

Happy New Year!

I hope your 2023 is off to a good start. Mine started with a cold, just the holiday gift I always wanted! I'm on the mend now, but the first week of this year I am pretending doesn't really count.

Here's a summary of the work I released in the 2022, and a glimpse of what's coming up in 2023 (including open submissions periods!):

Writing

• I had one new original story release in 2022, and that was To Catch a Flieff, a silly and fluffy holiday romance (involving a made up holiday) set on a spaceship. I originally wrote it as a bonus for backers of the Bridge to Elsewhere Kickstarter, but eventually I made a standalone ebook and audiobook. In theory, if you were hoping to nominate my writing for awards, this would be the only eligible piece. In practice, I don't think this is awards fodder at all, but it was great fun to write and I hope readers enjoy it!
• I also had one reprint story come out in 2022. "Goodnight Room" was originally written for the Yuletide fan-fiction exchange long ago, based on a person wondering what on earth was going on under the surface of the picture book Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown. I was delighted to have this one reprinted in Sunday Morning Transport.

Editing

I had two big editing projects that came out in 2022. One anthology and one... I sort of accidentally started a magazine? HOW CAN THAT BE ACCIDENTAL??? I know, I know. The thing is, I really didn't set out to start a magazine. I just apparently can't help myself... Anyway, the projects below both qualify me for Best Editor Short Form in the Hugo Awards if you are interested in nominating me for that.

• Worlds of Possibility started in January of 2021 as a project where I would use Patreon pledge money to buy one creative piece at a time and display it on my Patreon page. I had a vague idea that I would collect these for an anthology, but it was very slow at the start. Then in 2022, it sort of... got out of hand (LOL). In particular, I'm pleased to have been able to commission art from 6 different Ukrainian artists in 2022. It's not a huge thing, but I was glad to be able to put a little towards helping creatives continue to work during such a rough time in their country. I'm really pleased with the three issues (August, October, and December) that came out in 2022 as ebooks for my paid subscribers, featuring work by 11 artists and 12 writers. The contents are slowly being put up online for free, but it takes time to get proper narration for the audio and so forth – and getting proper narration is important to me since I want to make sure this is accessible to as many people as I can make it accessible for. I recently learned that one of the Worlds of Possibility authors, Pedro Iniguez, was invited to speak at the Glendale-Burbank chapter of the California Council of the Blind after they heard his story "Magic Lucha" from Worlds of Possibility, and that made me immensely happy. All Worlds of Possibility stories (and the poem "heat death" by Jennifer Mace) from 2022 are eligible for awards, so if you have any favorites, please do consider nominating them!
• Bridge to Elsewhere is an anthology I co-edited with Alana Joli Abbott for Outland Entertainment. It's all stories set on spaceships by a bunch of immensely talented authors, and this link will give you a detailed look at the table of contents and also where you can buy it if you are so inclined.

Podcasting

• The OMG Julia Podcast is where all my Worlds of Possibility audio pieces go, and I also sometimes do interviews with creative people about their processes. In 2022, aside from Worlds of Possibility content, I did interviews with C. S. E. Cooney about her fantasy novel Saint Death's Daughter, Maya MacGregor about their YA ghost story mystery novel The Many Half-Lived Lives of Sam Sylvester, Izzy Wasserstein about her short story collection All the Hometowns You Can't Stay Away From, Erin Roberts and Mario Ortegón about their contributions to the Dungeons and Dragons adventure manual Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel, and R. J. Theodore about their steampunk swashbuckling space fantasy books The Peridot Shift Trilogy.
• This Is Why We're Like This is a podcast I cohost with Geoffrey Pelton. In this one we revisit films and tv shows people remember from their childhood. It's a little bit analysis and a lot irreverence. In 2022 we opened with some wintertime specials, The Canadian misery that is The Dog That Stopped the War, and a Disney short Geoffrey remembered fondly, Donald's Snow Fight. In spring we had Gwynne Garfinkle on to remember her contribution to the Boston area public television kids show Zoom (not to be confused with the modern video conferencing platform) and a fever dream of a show from the 70s  that Geoffrey and I had never heard of, Hobo Kelly. In summer we had our friends Chia and Dan on to talk about something Chia remembered as being very romantic, the 1978 made for TV Disney movie Child of Glass (whew, that did not age well...) and then we talked about dangerous toys from the 70s that basically are the reason why Dan got into special effects as a career. Next, our friend Kelly joined us to watch a truly bizarre movie, the 2002 live action spinoff movie of a Disney Parks attraction that mostly has nothing to do with that you see in the parks, but does have Christpher Walken armpit farting a lot... The Country Bears. After that Kelly brought us a bunch of Canadian commercials, mostly for theme parks. And finally, we had my chess playing name twin on with her chess podcast co-host to talk about a movie they remembered from their childhood, Spaceballs.
• In a truly silly turn of events, in 2022, I discovered I have a name twin who hosts a podcast all about chess. I learned this when someone accidentally tagged me instead of her on Twitter, and then somehow, I, a person who has never played chess in their whole life, got sort of sucked into a small corner of chess twitter. I'm still not entirely sure how this happened, but it's been very amusing! Julia and JJ even had me on their podcast to ... attempt to discuss chess. Again, a game I know nothing about! If you want to hear that episode, it is Chessfeels Episode 14: Oops! All Julias Rios!
• I also did one episode of The Skiffy and Fanty Show in 2022, a discussion of the movie An American Werewolf in Paris with Shaun Duke and Becca Evans. This movie apparently made Julie Delpy swear off commercial films, and ... yeahhhh, you can see why.

Narrating

I did a handful of narrations in 2022.

• "The Book You Find When You Really Can't Afford to Get Pregnant" by Jeana Jorgensen – In June, after Roe v. Wade was overturned, I asked an author who won a feminist flash fiction contest I judged in 2018 if I could reprint and podcast her winning post-apocalyptic birth control story.
• "Fencepost" and "Tree" by Marc A. Criley and "A Saturday Out" by Lena Ng –  These were the Worlds of Possibility pieces that I personally narrated in 2022. They both feature art by Ukrainian artists as well.
• "The Only Thing Different Will Be the Body" by J.A.W. McCarthy – I narrated this haunting horror story about angels for Pseudopod.
• "Oracle Gretel" – This was my first foray into narrating specifically for audiobook outlets. For its tenth anniversary I made an audiobook version narrated by the author. It's only available via amazon/audible, but it was really a test case to see if I had the tech setup at home to create an audiobook that would meet their standards.
• "To Catch a Flieff" – Once I had ascertained that I could actually make an audiobook at home, I went ahead and made an audiobook of my original story from 2022. This is a lesbian romance in space, and it's available in audio from multiple places, not just amazon/audible.

What's next?

In 2023, you can expect more Worlds of Possibility issues, including material I plan to find in my next submissions period, which is coming up in the first half of February! The Moksha portal is closed for now, but come back on the 1st of February to submit flash fiction and poetry that leaves the reader feeling happy, peaceful, and/or hopeful!

I've also got plans to make that Worlds of Possibility anthology a reality this year, and I'll be running a fundraising period for that print book in the spring.

Annnnnd, I have another anthology project in the works, but I am not quite ready to spill the beans on that just yet. I CAN say that my co-editor and the 11 authors we have currently attached are all amazing, though! We will be announcing more about that a little later this year, and we'll also be looking for more stories via an open submissions call that will probably happen in the summer.

I'm also working on another narration for Escape Pod at the moment, but more on that when it actually comes out.

What else? Only time will tell! If you want to keep up with everything as it happens, do subscribe to my mailing list! If you have the ability to pay, you'll directly support Worlds of Possibility, but if not, you can still get all the news and free Worlds of Possibility pieces when they go up. Subscribing to This Is Why We're Like This and The OMG Julia Podcast via your podcatcher of choice is also helpful if you want to support either of those!