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Man was this an unusual year for me and publications.

Not the part where I didn't have a novel out. That's happened before, and it will again, thanks to the vagaries of scheduling; I have years with multiple novels out which more than make up for it.

And not really the part where I only published two short stories, thanks to a drop-off in my production of new stories (after an absolute flood of short fiction writing for a few years prior). Those are:

"The Poison Gardener" (Sunday Morning Transport, paywalled)

"Mrs. Patterson's Home for Landlocked Men" (Flash Point SF, free to read online)

No, the unusual part is where I published EIGHT POEMS in 2025. There are plenty of poets who outpace that, but for me it's a lot! All are either free to read online, or out of their period of exclusivity so I have made them available myself:

"Hermit of the Crossroads" (terza rima, Haven Spec)

"Among the Briars" (villanelle, Rialto Books Review)

"Axis Mundi" (inverse mirror fib, Eye to the Telescope)

"Story Sits in Places" (rhyme royal, Worlds of Possibility)

"Hallucination" (free verse, Merganser Magazine)

"Cutting the Cord" (rhymed quatrains, Small Wonders)

"The Great Undoing" (modified sonnet, 4LPH4NUM3R1C)

"Our Rewards" (villanelle, Merganser Magazine)

. . . actually, I published nine poems, but one of them is a piece I tucked into one of my own self-pubbed collections as a bonus piece. There were two such collections this year:

The Atlas of Anywhere (secondary world fantasy; a "sequel" of sorts to Maps to Nowhere)
A Songbook of Sparks (stories based on folksongs; a "sequel" of sorts to A Breviary of Fire)

So that's it for 2025! I have three things slated to come out in January, though -- a short story and two poems -- so I'll be hitting the ground running next year. Let's see what else 2026 has in store!

(originally posted at Swan Tower: https://is.gd/9nTgOX)

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Current Mood: enthralled

At present, transmission levels are low in my area. Standard flu is high (not on this chart - v high in NYC and other areas.). Note that Eastern Mass levels are not representative of the whole state or of New England generally.

NB: it looks like at least one of my public health newsletters is using the term SARS2 instead of the probably-filtered-by-some-platforms "Covid-19". rolls eyes

The full term would be SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2)

Other infectious:

If you go looking for news on Bird Flu, you should search for “highly pathogenic avian influenza” -HPAI- which is the term many sources are using because bird flu is several different individual viruses.

The USA is still not assertively testing for bird flu; it's entirely up to individual farms and/or states to report anything to the Feds. I think this is just ASKING for a huge human pandemic of bird flu to happen soonish. Especially as bird flu is transmitted between farms on the WIND.

You'll see bird flu strains noted with the initials-and-letters scheme such as H5N1, H5N4, H5N3. Standard human flu also has designations with the same scheme; for example, the influenza type that is surging now in the US (and causing a lot of ER visits) is H3N2.

The designation of "200 RNA copies per ml" (X axis) as "low transmission" is something I figured out by reading a lot of articles and also text/English opinions about eastern MA transmission about a year ago. I doubt you could find anyone official saying "X level on this wastewater chart is low transmission."

[image: Current COVID wastewater chart Dec 2025.png]

we bought our house without seeing it in person, which is something you should NEVER ever ever do -- but the fact we the property had vast amounts of sand in the soil (vs. the more normal for around here clay) was enough to push me past the "this is a stupid idea" frame of mind into a "it will be JUST FINE" one.

there are things about this place i don't like. the upstairs bathroom is attached to the kitchen; something i SWORE i would never have. the bathtub/shower combo is like a horrible tardis that needs to be replaced -- not because it doesn't work, but because it is so ugly. SO UGLY.

i miss the 20 ft. ceilings we had in our CA house, the wide open floor plan, and the view of the valley from our H U G E windows in the living room. this house is roughly the same size sq ft wise, but half of the sq feet are up and half are down, making it feel less spacious.

what more than makes up for that is the studio we have attached to the garage which is huge and really versatile.

all of this to say that i want to take the christmas tree down today....even though our tradition has been to take it down on the 31st.

*
today we made a tray of tasty treats for the chickens (click for image -- still trying to figure out how to upload a photo without it being directly hosted).

apples, cottage cheese, and smooshed blueberries. not pictured is the pot of oatmeal and bananas i made for them. poor girls out there in the cold and mister husband not wanting to let them live in the house with us.

;)

*

i'm not sure what the rest of the day has in store, but i DO know i need to get some planning done for 2026. i LOVE the freshness of a new year. ;)

I have spent most of this morning doing some major cleaning up including taking out garbage, changing bedsheets, etc. and I still have a lot of laundry in the dryers. I am cooking lunch and as soon as the laundry is out of the dryers I'm going to go to my favorite cafe and see what kind of cake they have.

Current Music: Electro Coco

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Current Mood: amused

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Current Mood: curious

(As is so often the case, I'm generally up to date on reading my DW circle, but not doing at all well with commenting.)

I guess at this point we're well into the liminal last bit of the year. (I said to

scruloose earlier that I still try to hold "Christmas is twelve days, dammit" in my heart, but it's hard, especially when our observance of the the holiday at all is so low-key.) We had masked visits with both sets of parents (mine on Christmas Eve and

scruloose's on Boxing Day), and in between, Christmas Day was just the two of us and the cats and the Netflix fireplaces. My mom sent us home with Christmas stockings and some gifts (also very low-key; we still keep nudging for just not doing presents at all), and the latter included a hard copy of the most recent edition of Garner's Modern English Usage, which was a delightful surprise.

We actually had a white Christmas, which has never been a sure thing and is getting rarer and rarer at terrible speeds, but now ice and rain are arriving, to be followed by a cold snap, so I'm really glad we don't need to leave the house anytime soon. (See also: will we lose power? Very possibly! >.< But we're pretty well-equipped to deal with it.)

I'm feeling like I should be looking ahead or setting small goals or trying to find specific things I want to focus on, but so far I'm not really scrounging the brain for it. Anyone want to tell me about how you're approaching it?

(I do think I'll sign up for a GYWO wordcount goal again, despite having written almost literally zero words this year, but at this point I have the grim suspicion that the words may stay gone until a new full-on fannish obsession hits me, and that's so infrequent for me. ;_; I have so many Guardian WIPs and fragments. [And while I'm enjoying seeing all the fannish glee over Heated Rivalry, I don't currently feel fannish about it myself {which, honestly, I'm okay with}.])

Recent media, mostly books: All Is Bright, Llinos Cathryn Thomas' "read over Advent" novella, which was lovely; The Dark is Rising (book), which I'm glad to have finally read; I don't know if/when I might read the books that follow it; Snake-Eater by T. Kingfisher; Widdershins by Jordan L. Hawk; KJ Charles' Masters in this Hall (which I should've checked the series info about first, as it's the third Lilywhite Boys book and I haven't read the second. Oops); and Brigid Kemmerer's A Curse So Dark and Lonely.

scruloose and I finished listening to System Collapse, so we're out of Murderbot books. Yesterday (?) we listened to the four-minute audiobook sample of The Thief, which I might be able to work with? But wow, the voice sounds so much older than Gen to me. (Also, Kobo, four minutes is a reasonable sample length, but it literally cuts off mid-word.)

I watched the season finale of Heated Rivalry pretty promptly on Friday morning, for fear of being spoiled, which meant

scruloose, who hadn't seen any of the show previously, pretty much watched it too while feeding the cats and having their own breakfast. (I did give them some background info first.) As noted above: not feeling fannish, but I thought that was really well done overall, and the actors seem like an absolute delight.

And we've watched two movies since starting vacation (Wake Up Dead Man and Sinners), which brings me up to a whopping four [4] movies this year.

Current Mood: okay

Out for my walk today, went through the pocket park behind the house, and there was a lady with a small terrier (I think), that was going absolutely spare under some trees -

- and looking up I finally saw, right up at the very top where it had attained to, a squirrel, which was presumably the reason for the agitation.

Had some passing converse with the dog's owner anent this, who claims that he will never actually catch a squirrel, even though they are tame enough that if you go and sit on one of the park benches they will come and look you over.

Mostly the dogs that one sees being walked in the park are less vociferous, perhaps they have grown wise to the ways of squirrels.

So anyway, I passed on to the other somewhat larger park, and see no advance yet in what is supposed to be a development involving a pergola (???) and further eco-stuff but at least there is no longer unsightly work being done at that spot.

Have only very lately discovered that two objects which I vaguely thought, had I thought at all, were maybe bird-houses, are actually insect-houses. Much to my chagrin, I can find nothing about this on the park website which boasts of various eco and environment good stuff that goes on there (I am still trying to work out what the sparrow-meadow is, have not seen plume nor feather of a sparrow on my ambles).

However, I can at least point dr rdrz at this site where I perceive that insect houses are quite A Thing: designed to provide safe nesting, hibernation, and breeding spaces for beneficial pollinators such as solitary bees, butterflies, ladybirds, and lacewings'.

I assume solitary bees are a specific species, and have not actually been expelled from their hive for some vile transgression, to roam the earth etc etc etc like an apian ancient mariner.

An all-new Burning Wheel Bundle presenting The Burning Wheel, the medieval-themed tabletop fantasy roleplaying game about vibrant, dynamic characters whose beliefs propel the story.

Bundle of Holding: The Burning Wheel

Morbid question, but let's be serious here: If you were trapped in a house with nothing to eat but your recently deceased pet, wouldn't you at least think about it?

People talk about this like it's so shocking, or like it means your pet obviously doesn't really love you, but c'mon. I love my cat, but I'd eat her in a heartbeat if she was already dead and there was nothing else left. She's my cat, she's not my baby. It's not like I've gone full on Donner Party - and let's be clear, if that was all that was left on the table, and they were already dead, I'd do that too. At least, I'd think about doing it. I suppose I might not be able to bring myself to go that far, but I wouldn't find it shocking if another person did!

The Long Back Yard

#
It's being a rather difficult day. Went to bed late and unhappy; woke up about 4:30, still unhappy, whereupon the Coon Cats leapt into action -- or at least, onto the bed. In less time than it takes to tell it, I had a cat on top of me, a cat to the right of me, and yes! a cat to the left of me. These guys know their job; I went right back to sleep, and didn't wake until after 8.

It was very nice to sleep and wake up rested, but it has kinda thrown the whole day sideways.

I've done a little bit of writing, and will maybe do some more, later, if I don't just decide to make a blanket fort and read. I did manage to call Dead River to find out when my next oil delivery is, because we're coming up on another multi-day interruption in the Usual, and my oil tank is down to less than a quarter. It's a big tank, but I don't want to test exactly how big. The good news is that my next delivery is!

Tomorrow.

It's looking some miserable out there in the Real World. There's water pooled on my driveway, which will this evening become an ice rink, and it would just be better all around, if, once Winter was Declared, we just stuck to snow as our default precipitation.

Well.

I've done some writing, one round of PT homework, more or less decided what lunch will be, though I still need to turn on the oven. Still need to do my duty to the cats, which I guess I'll do while the oven's warming.

And then? We'll see. Though honestly, that blanket fort is looking dern good.

How's everybody doing today?

The cats agree with the blanket fort idea:

Christmas is done and gone for another year, and thank goodness for that, but god, those four days off were nice. The horrible cold snap has finally broken, which means TRULY INSANE AMOUNTS OF SNOW. The movie theatre is closed due to a burst pipe. I fucking hate winter so goddamn much.

Things at work are way too quiet. Not for my sake, because I love doing nothing, but because my techs have barely any work to do. Hopefully sales can get their asses in gear and things pick up soon.

Worlds End was a great show with a dogshit ending, much like last year's, only more so on all counts? Maybe I will do a post about it later this week. Long live Mixed Nuts Mayhem.

I need to get back into Stardom properly this year, starting with Dream Queendom tonight! Also gonna jump back into Nooj with Wrestle Kingdom, since I fell off regularly watching back when EVIL was dominating the G1 lol. Maybe I should start sneakily watching wrestling at work to get more in, the days are simply too short!

( Album #503/1001: Magazine - Real Life )

Movies Watched in December: Anaconda, Avatar: Fire and Ash, KPop Demon Hunters, The Housemaid, The Mastermind, They Live, Memoirs of an Invisible Man, Song Sung Blue; Silent Night, Deadly Night; Starman, In the Mouth of Madness, Ghosts of Mars, Prince of Darkness, The History of Sound, Five Nights at Freddy's 2, Big Trouble in Little China, Escape from L.A., Zootopia 2, Escape from New York, Christine

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Current Mood: enthralled

Since we met in 1977, MyGuy has always eaten the spongy white stuff which dwells between an orange and its skin (whether he picks it off the whole peeled orange or nibbles it away from the cut-open peel).

Yesterday I tried it. It's delicious! Michigan State University claims it also has as much vitamin C as the fruit.

What else am I missing?

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Current Mood: surly

Posted by John Kovalic

https://www.dorktower.com/2025/12/26/elves-3/

https://dorktower.kovalic.com/?p=19853

HEY! Want to help keep DORK TOWER going? Then consider joining the DORK TOWER Patreon and ENLIST IN THE ARMY OF DORKNESS TODAY! (We have COOKIES!) (And SWAG!) (And GRATITUDE!)

https://www.dorktower.com/2025/12/26/elves-3/

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Hey all, if you'd like to join the crafting hangout, it is tonight from 6-8pm ET!

Video encouraged but not required!

Topic: Crafting Hangout

Time: Mondays 6:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

Link

Meeting ID: 973 2674 2763

Hey, y'all, I hope you're doing well.

I'm feeling sort of low. Does anyone have a cheerful story to share? If so, I'd love to hear it!

I did a load of laundry (bed sheets, so also stripped and re-made the bed), hand-washed dishes, vacuumed the bedroom rug (I used to think the old vacuum did okay on the bedroom rug, but it was even doing poorly there because the new vacuum just glides over it and I don’t have to go over a spot more than once to suck up the dog hair; such a treat!), cut up chicken for the dogs' meals, and changed kitty litter (thankfully I’m done with the crap litter and back to the usual). I turned the last little bit of chuck roast into soup.

I finished Boyfriend Material and read some fanfic. I watched the Bills game. NGL, getting that two-point conversion would’ve been exciting as heck, but I wish they’d gone for the safe (safer) play. It’s no fun watching your team lose. *pouts*

Today I tried the Cinnamon Plum tea. It was pretty good, and not too cinnamon-y. But I also didn’t let it steep as long (as I did with the Cinnamon Orange) for the first cup, which might have helped.

Bad news: I felt myself starting to get stuffy today. I hope that whatever I catch from Pip is mild.

Temps started out at 1.8(F) (BRR!) and reached 32 (according to Pip; I missed it). There was actually a little bit of sun in the morning, but it didn’t last, sadly. Freezing rain started during the evening and we're supposed to get more overnight. (Spoiler alert: we did get more overnight. o_O)

Mom Update:

Mom sounded good when I spoke to her. I can’t wait until I can see her again. I want to see for myself that she’s looking as good as she’s sounding. My brother visited her in the morning and Sister A in the afternoon, so she did have some company, which is good.

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sistawendy

December 2025

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Page Summary

swan_tower - 2025 publications in review
princessofgeeks - Heated Rivalry--a slight digression
cvirtue - Covid still low in eastern Mass, not so for Flu
liminal_space - but i'm not a grinch
greghousesgf - (no subject)
minoanmiss - Xollotl
minoanmiss - Bloody Andrew Jackson's Favorite Nut Milk
umadoshi - Post-Christmas mishmash | Recent media
oursin - Not really the call of the wiiiild, I guess
james_davis_nicoll - Bundle of Holding: The Burning Wheel
conuly - Would my dog or cat really eat me if I died alone?
rolanni - Rain, rain go away; come again in May
merridia - [503] they all sound the same when they scream
princessofgeeks - Heated Rivalry E1
jesse_the_k - Pithy Realization
minoanmiss - Someone has a bad attitude
dorktower_feed - The Eliopoulos Elves 2025 3 – DORK TOWER26.12.25
unicornduke - crafting monday
lydamorehouse - Monday Blues
spikedluv - The Day in Spikedluv (Sunday, Dec 28)

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Page generated Dec. 29th, 2025 09:23 pm

Maura's Acolytes

Network

2025 publications in review

Heated Rivalry--a slight digression

Covid still low in eastern Mass, not so for Flu

but i'm not a grinch

(no subject)

Xollotl

Bloody Andrew Jackson's Favorite Nut Milk

Post-Christmas mishmash | Recent media

Not really the call of the wiiiild, I guess

Bundle of Holding: The Burning Wheel

Would my dog or cat really eat me if I died alone?

Rain, rain go away; come again in May

[503] they all sound the same when they scream

Heated Rivalry E1

Pithy Realization

Someone has a bad attitude

The Eliopoulos Elves 2025 3 – DORK TOWER26.12.25

crafting monday

Monday Blues

The Day in Spikedluv (Sunday, Dec 28)

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December 2025

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