My Writing Year (2024)

A lot of writers do year-end write-ups, which I completely support because I love catching up on things I might have missed. I also want everyone to celebrate personal successes, big and small. I wasn't going to do one because I was a bit embarrassed. I worked really hard this year, and I hope you'll see the fruits of that labor in the years to come. I also taught full-time and had the privilege of chairing a third graduate thesis student and absolutely love it.

But I only published 2 pieces. When I began writing full-time 10 years ago, I don't know if my dream was to be publishing so sporadically. I have, however, refined my writing process to the point where I am not only productive but I truly love doing it. Which might be the point.

For whatever reason, God or the Universe needed to knock my ego out of the way this year. The music of the spheres decided that I needed to be humbled.

Earlier this year, our weirdest dog Baby Toot went viral for throwing up the French flag. That same week, I went viral when a video of my 2021 arrest was put up on YouTube. Baby Toot was a laboratory dog and had a very tough start, so the fact that she was celebrated internationally was a true joy. People sent her fan mail! People painted her!

At the same time, though, I was reading hundreds and then thousands of comments that made fun of everything from my voice to my looks to who I am as a person. They called me truly horrible things and made vicious assumptions about me.

The video of me went more viral later in the year, and it's now been watched by millions of people across various platforms. There are over 8,000 comments on the YouTube post, 99% of which are insults.

Then the election happened. When Trump won, a friend on here posted that those of us on the losing side should try and see the world as Trump voters see it.

I decided to try that.

I wondered: what if I was wrong all this time? I've been made fun of for being gay my entire life. My earliest memory is from when I was 3 years old and I another kid made fun of me because I acted too much like a girl to be a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

So I had to consider if the people commenting on the video and the people voting for Trump were right. Maybe I've been an abomination all this time? Am I truly too gay to live? Is my nature deviant? All queer people go through this existential crisis, I'm just a late bloomer.

I had to stock of my life. I've always felt pretty successful. I love my family and love my job. I love the world! I love baby animals. I try to be nice to everyone. I have a rigorous spiritual life, I haven't had a sip of alcohol in 2024, and I don't believe that war or incarceration are moral. I just want everyone to be able to freely be themselves and be safe and be happy and to treat each other with respect.

I have morals. I have values. Surely this means I'm not a deviant?

But despite my feelings of success, I'm also a recovering alcoholic with 500,000 dollars of student debt. My in-laws don't speak to me. I've lost more friends than I've gained over the last 20 years. I took the losing side on a number of important issues this year. I had a dear relative die and dear friends die and I never told them how I felt.

I consider myself to be a writer but my novel hasn't been picked up yet. I love running but I've never won a race. I love reading but I'm a terribly slow reader. I've been fired from jobs, dumped by boyfriends, punched by relatives, and I'm even my kids' second favorite dad.

I can be a bad friend - or have been a bad friend - and still make new friends and reconnect with old ones. I have been a really bad son, brother, son-in-law, brother-in-law, cousin, so on and so forth. I have been a bad student and a bad employee.

I've had to accept the possibility that I might actually be a failure. That there is some sort of wrongness in my actual being. I don't know how I became a person who could be made fun of en masse for my looks, my voice, and my action. I've had to accept the possibility that I might be a joke.

This has not led to transcendence. Or ascendence. But I have found that I can feel really, really low and still enjoy reading to my kids at night, I can be insulted by the world and still enjoy the sun coming up, I can be offensively gay and still look great in a jumpsuit. I love writing my little stories and I hope they find their way to people someday, but their worth (to me) cannot be measured by how and when and where they are published.

I look back on my old social media posts (these "Memory" posts are so stressful) and I get so irritated by my old self. There are things I've said that I would probably make fun of myself for in a group chat. (But I'd try not to!)

But, as I said before, I have morals. I have values. I have interests and passions. I love so many things and so many people. I love so many animals. I have an incredible relationship with my close family, and we get to see each other all the time. And, I have excellent parasocial relationships with a number of great celebrities!

I believe in love. Everyone is worthy of love.

I love love! I've always loved love. I love you!

So I will keep going, and I’m so lucky to have an opportunity to do so. I don't want any pity at all. I'm privileged and also really happy. There wasn't transcendence for me down in the ditch, but there is a freedom in knowing that, when stripped down to my boards and nails, I can still operate happily. People can make fun of me - they always have, they always will - and my choice is to keep going or not.

I choose to keep going!

I hope the road goes a bit higher in the future, but I'm not really in charge of that. I really liked my 2 published pieces this year, and I'll share them below. I hope you see big, fun things from me in 2025 and 2026.

Happy Holidays and thank you for being a part of my 2024. I hope you're a part of my 2025. I'm going to keep writing and keep running, so hopefully you'll see me on the page or on the sidewalk or you'll get in touch.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/15/police-bodycams-online

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New Roundtable Discussion at Lambda Literary

I on a super fun Grist and Lambda Literary roundtable with the wonderful Ailbhe Pascal and Anya Markov, where we talked about queer climate fiction and I said wise things like, "Nature is a very gay concept. It just seems like it’s very queer. Just being in nature, being happy, flowers, all of those things – gay, gay, gay."

Check it out here: https://lambdaliteraryreview.org/2024/02/dreaming-up-a-hopeful-future-a-conversation-with-grist-authors-on-queer-climate-fiction/

Some recent news

My story “Pastora, in Blue” is up at Isele Magazine (2023)

I have a very short story (“We, the Sisters Who Live Upstate”) up over at HAD (2023)

“Is the Sky Falling or Are We Rising Towards the Lord?” is up at Fairy Tale Review (2023)

My micro “The Seeds That We Bury, The Fields That We Reap” is up at hex (2023)

My novella The Nuckelavee is out from Alien Buddha Press (2023)

My story “Devil’s Island” from PANK’s Environmental Futures Folio was named a Notable Story in Best American Mystery and Suspense 2022

I won something!

I’m honored that my story “The Pioneer” won the fiction prize in the Agnes Scott Writers’ Festival Contest (Agnes Scott College). It was selected as a finalist by the incredible novelist Jen Beagin, and then selected as the winner by former US poet laureate/Pulitzer Prize winner Rita Dove and award-winning playwright-librettist Jacqueline Goldfinger. Which is just insane.

I’m so thrilled about this, particularly as the story has been printed in the Agnes Scott Writers’ Festival Magazine alongside some of my dearest writer friends, including Paul Cunningham, Nate Dixon, Zack Anderson, Hannah V Warren, and Emma Catherine Perry.

“The Pioneer” is a very gay story about a secret love affair between an astronaut and a cosmonaut on the ISS, and I wrote it as a sort of homage to Jim Shepard’s classic short story “Love and Hydrogen.”

I’m especially thrilled because “The Pioneer” is a standalone chapter from my novel-in-progress, titled The Pioneers, and it’s such a nice acknowledgement that my book is on the right track.

If you have a few minutes, I’d love it if you read the story, which is here: http://writersfestival.magazines.agnesscott.org/fiction/the-pioneer/

New Essay at TechRadar, New Poem at Hobart After Dark (HAD)

I’ve got a couple of new pieces out in the wild and I’m so happy about them. First, my essay “The search for the elusive queer parent in gaming” kicked off TechRadar’s LGBTQ+ Gaming Week, which is such an honor. Read it here: https://www.techradar.com/news/the-search-for-the-elusive-queer-parent-in-gaming

Second, Hobart is one of the first literary magazines I ever read and I’ve been a fan for years. When they launched its quirky sibling, Hobart After Dark, I was desperate to have a piece in it, and so I’m thrilled that they published my sestina/flash fiction/essay/experiment about gay friendship, “Gobliny-Ass-Yaffingales.” Read it here: https://www.havehashad.com/hadposts/gobliny-ass-yaffingales

New Essay at Observer

Hello! The world is awful at the moment, so I distracted myself by spending some time with some queer poetry and art. The fruit of that time is this essay for Observer, which imagines H.D.’s Sea Garden poems in conversation with Paul Cadmus’ painting “Two Boys on a Beach.” Check it out here: https://observer.com/2021/01/an-escape-to-paul-cadmus-and-h-d-s-beautiful-queer-beach/

New Story in BOOTH

Hi friends!

I’ve got a new story - probably my favorite one I’ve ever written - up over at Booth, and I’d love for you to read it! It will be a special treat for those of you that enjoy any of the following: Alaska! Fin whales! Choir practices run amok! Harried librarians! Ancient plagues! Truckers! Alien conspiracies! Extinct species of manatees! Evil possessed children! The swift condemnation of anti-vaxxers!

Please check out “Wild Gods”

New Interview at The Future of Storytelling

If you want/need to take a little break from doom-scrolling, I was interviewed by the Future of Storytelling about my story "The Flotilla at Bird Island" in the short fiction collection Take Us to a Better Place: Stories. We also talk about health equity, writing the future, literary friendship, and more! https://medium.com/future-of-storytelling/q-a-with-author-mike-mcclelland-c8fcf4371de4

New Essay up at Vox's The Goods!

https://www.vox.com/the-goods/21422918/best-money-alcoholism-tarot-deck-wild-unknown-archetypes

I've never written about being an alcoholic (though if you've seen me drink this will not come as a shock). I was quiet in part because of embarrassment, and in part because I didn’t think I had much to add to the great writing out there about the disease.

Then this not-quite-tarot deck came into my life, and I just had to share my experience. Friends and mentors also helped me realize that by keeping my drinking life out of my writing life I was allowing alcoholic thinking to lurk in the warm, silent dark.

I never would have found help if I hadn’t had openly alcoholic friends to reach out to for guidance. So consider me open (though I’m very much a work in progress), and please read this essay if you get a minute.

Little piece in THE NEW YORK TIMES!

I’m teaching a course on prose poems this fall so I’ve set myself the goal of writing and publishing more prose poetry. So I wrote my own little version of a prose poem about how Simon and I met, and I’m so thrilled that it’s in The New York Times today. I’ve been a fan of the Modern Love column since it launched and over the years I’ve read some that have actually changed my life, including those by friends like Amy Bonnaffons, Aubrey Hirsch, and Kera Yonker. So being a part of it in a (literally) “tiny” way just such an absolute thrill.

Here it is!

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/26/style/tiny-modern-love-stories-coronavirus-its-ok-if-you-meet-someone.html