Tag Archive: books


When People Giggle at Your Name, or the 2025 Hugo Awards Incident

Filed under: writing — 61 Comments
August 21, 2025

It’s August 16, 2025, Worldcon, Seattle, and the main presenter of the annual Hugo awards butchers almost every foreign name on the list. When trying to pronounce an unusual African name, the presenter giggles.

It’s 1934, and Frank Lloyd Wright designs his masterpiece, Fallingwater. The beautiful house sits over a waterfall. To an outside observer, it’s a marvel of architecture, a fusion of engineering and nature. To the people who actually live there, it’s an endless nightmare of leaking roofs and cracked concrete. Fallingwater’s owner nicknames it “Rising Mildew.”

The 2025 Worldcon had hundreds of panels and thousands of attendees. It had fantastic freebies and fanfic fans and fun filking. It had authors and poets and filmmakers and podcasters. It had five full days of genre celebrations, of coming together as one.

It also failed at its most basic, fundamental purpose.

The cornerstone of this annual gathering is the Hugo awards ceremony. During the days leading up to the big event, the convention attendees engage in quiet discussions about the nominees. They wish their favourite authors the best of luck. They recommend the finalist books and art to all their friends.

And then… Then the esteemed Hugo awards host (as well as the secondary host) mispronounces non-English names, over and over. (Even Denis Villeneuve wasn’t spared.) They skip one of the nominees altogether, making the audience shout in unison, after which there is some awkward fumbling. (“Did we miss one? Oh no! Why aren’t they on the list? … Clearly they have to win because they were on the second page.”)

(That nominee did not win.)

The skipped nominee was Kamilah Cole, a Jamaican-born woman, whose only fault, it seems, was having her name on the second side of a page. (Typing on both sides of the page is a brand new technological development. Very few people have heard of it. We cannot expect mere Hugo awards hosts to keep up with such groundbreaking inventions.)

A house is supposed to keep you safe and dry, even when – or perhaps especially when – it doubles as a work of art. If it can’t do that bare minimum, it becomes worse than useless. It turns into a liability.

Likewise, an annual awards ceremony that fumbles that most basic of all tasks – pronouncing the finalists’ names – fails at its most basic purpose.

It’s May 2004, rural Nevada, high school graduation. The kind of school where many students get pregnant before they get their diploma. The kind of school where the biggest scandal of the year is the video of two boys kissing at a house party. The kind of school where the History teacher stops in the middle of a joke, chuckles, and says, “I’ll finish it later” when he realizes one of the school’s three Black students is sitting in the back of the class. The kind of school where all the students get lined up against the wall every few weeks, while a gigantic German Shepherd sniffs each crotch, presumably seeking drugs, and its handler, a gun-wielding cop, smirks.

It’s that kind of school. In a small desert town with one big street, one Walmart, and more casinos than libraries.

And as the graduation ceremony approaches, I worry that the announcer will butcher my name, just like most of my American classmates have during my sole year with them. The big day comes, and I’m beyond amazed when the announcer makes sure to ask each senior how to pronounce their name – and then gets all of them right, including mine.

Beneath the bright lights, on that stage, I get the ceremonial piece of paper and hear my true name. Few people clap: they’re so used to mangling my name that they literally can’t recognize me. No matter. I exit, stage right. Less than three months later, I leave for college. I never return.

The Hugo awards ceremony features a somewhat elaborate song number, with multiple people (including the awards presenters) singing in unison, at length, repeatedly. At one point, they even get the audience to join in.

There’s a very good chance they’d spent more time rehearsing that song than the names of the finalists, for whom this awards ceremony may well have been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

During the ceremony, both of the main announcers say – repeatedly – that they don’t have a pronunciation guide for the names.

Five days later, there is still no official statement from the organizers. The announcer who giggled at the African name is silent on social media.

Aside from a Bluesky post by Elizabeth Bear, there has been no discussion, no articles, nothing beyond social media rumours. This is being relegated to the dustbin of history. An unfortunate faux pas. An oopsie.

I shall not let it fade away.

In the global forum that is the internet, I rank just slightly above a street preacher with a megaphone. I don’t expect this essay to be seen by more than a few dozen eyeballs. But my blog will live on for decades, and so will this contemporary record.

It’s 2015, Seattle, tech industry. Many of my coworkers are from India. Their culture fascinates me, as do their names. I take great care to memorize each arrangement of syllables, to commit to memory the names I’d never before encountered. Suyash, Vairavan, Srinivas, and many others. The sole Indian woman on my team is named Vijayalakshmi Deverakonda, and I’m in love with the melodious sound of her name, the way the syllables cascade off my tongue.

The rest of my white coworkers don’t share my respect for people’s names. They routinely call her “Vijay,” which is a male name, and more than a little insulting.

Within two years, Vijayalakshmi and I become workplace rivals. Afterward, we don’t stay in touch. But for a few months, I knew I’d made a fellow immigrant happy because I’d gone the extra mile to learn her true name, to treat her like a fellow human being.

Every failure can be explained by one of these two fundamental explanations: evil or stupidity. Malice or ignorance. It’s often hard to determine which of the two is the main factor. When people make assumptions, and when they build further assumptions on such shaky foundations, their ultimate conclusions diverge from reality.

I make no assumptions. I can believe that a celebrity of the literary world, the main announcer chosen by the 2025 Worldcon committee far in advance, was merely ignorant, and maybe nervous, but not evil.

I say this to myself, and then I remember that giggle in the middle of that unusual name.

Here is how to pronounce “Grigory Lukin.” The first name rhymes with “story.” It has nothing to do with the name “Gregory.” The last name rhymes with “win.” It does not at all sound like “looking.”

For the purposes of brevity, this essay will not cover the pronunciation of my consonant-rich patronym.

It’s 2017, Seattle, the same stressful tech company where white and Indian employees mingle but don’t mix. In a work chatroom, a fellow white guy makes a dirty joke about an Indian woman whose first name is Sukdeep.

I submit an HR report, as do several of my Indian workers. They’re surprised that I would care. To me, that’s a matter of fundamental human decency.

My white male coworker is a successful programmer. He gets a chat with HR, but suffers no further consequences.

The Hugo awards presenter is neither white nor male nor a programmer. But they are successful.

I live in Québec these days. Either here or in America, I can pass for a local, as long as I don’t open my mouth or show my ID. My Russian accent will never truly go away, and for as long as it stays with me, changing my name to something more Western-sounding would be futile. I shall always be The Other.

We rarely speak of this – we who have made a life for ourselves in the West, we who have fully integrated, we who have found a niche in this world. We rarely voice that deep-seated anxiety: do our new compatriots actually accept us? Or are we still viewed as The Other? Do they chuckle and mock our names when we’re not around? Do they bother to view us as fully human even as they enjoy our writing, our films, our art?

We’ll never know for sure. It shall forever be unknowable. Probably paranoia, nothing more.

And then the host of the most prestigious sci-fi and fantasy awards ceremony giggles while reading a foreign name, and the deep-seated anxiety flares up, and I think that maybe it’s not paranoia after all.

The importance of names is an ancient concept, perhaps even eternal. Even today, some cultures give their children a fake name to ward off evil spirits. Religious Jews don’t pronounce the four-letter name of God written in the Torah. Some cults insist on changing their followers’ names to separate them from their past. Many cultures automatically change women’s last names to those of their husbands. Residential schools were infamous for changing Native American children’s names as part of the forced assimilation process. In fairy tales around the world, through the ages, a villain could be defeated only if the hero learned and pronounced their true name.

And at the annual Hugo awards ceremony, the host giggles when they read an unusual name during the highlight of someone’s professional career.

Most issues can fit on a spectrum from one to ten.

Refusing to rehearse foreign names and then mangling them during an awards ceremony is more serious than a playground microaggression.

At the same time, it’s far less serious than a large-scale cultural genocide.

At the same time, it’s still on the spectrum.

Things you should do if you’re overwhelmed and nervous while presenting the most prestigious annual science fiction and fantasy award:

1. Take a few seconds to refer to your pronunciation guide.

1a. If a pronunciation guide is not available, demand one. Have the singers come back on stage to fill the gap until the guide is procured.

2. If the pronunciation guide doesn’t exist, take a few more seconds to summon somebody (perhaps even one of the singers!) to help you.

3. Apologize to the audience, invite every finalist to join you on the stage, and have them pronounce their own names into the microphone.

4. Apologize even more profusely. Admit your nervousness and lack of preparation. Give the microphone to somebody more qualified. Walk off the stage. Don’t return.

Things you should not do:

1. Don’t giggle.

2. Don’t goddamn giggle.

You may mock this essay, as is your right. In these turbulent times, as the planet gets ever hotter, as war crimes get more horrific, as genocides get swept under the rug, this is what people complain about?

And yes, sure, you’d be right. Saving even a single starving child from a sniper is infinitely more important than this issue, now and forevermore. And yet, if your first reaction was to scoff, consider this: is your name conventional? Do people ever giggle when they see it? Are you aware of the concept of microaggressions? Would you say you believe in equality, that racism is wrong, that diversity is important? When you claim to be an ally to those different from yourself, do you accept (both intellectually and emotionally) that they have certain issues which you cannot comprehend but should believe?

If there’s ever an apology letter from anyone involved, it’ll probably blame stress, and anxiety, and growing up in a social environment that didn’t have such linguistic diversity.

Over the past five days, there has been no such letter.

I’m prepared to accept that the main announcer (and their helper) was an anxiety-ridden human being, with human biases, with imperfections. I understand. There are eight billion people in this world. Quite a few of them have sins that are far worse than laughing at foreign names.

I don’t demand perfection. I demand basic competency.

This essay isn’t about the Hugo awards announcers. It’s about the stunning incompetence of the ceremony’s planners.

Here are some things I’d love to learn, but doubt I ever will:

  1. How many times did they rehearse the Hugo song?
  2. How many times did the announcers rehearse the names?
  3. Was there ever a pronunciation guide?
  4. If not, why?
  5. If yes, what happened to it?
  6. Was there ever, at any point of the planning process, a voiced objection, or even a concern, that the popular awards presenter would not be able to pronounce foreign names?
  7. If so, what was the reaction?

I’ve been a lifelong reader of science fiction and fantasy. I can go to great lengths to suspend my disbelief. But if you expect me to believe that a racist, homophobic, rural high school in one of the poorest states can find a professional name announcer, while a giant annual convention held in one of the most prosperous cities cannot… I’m sorry. Even I cannot suspend my disbelief that much.

Was the awards presenter chosen on the basis of friendship and connections and good vibes? Were they chosen because they had decades of experience in speculative fiction? Was there no one else available who had a richer linguistic and sociopolitical background?

Would it be fair to say that even if any concerns had been voiced at all, the overall sentiment was to dismiss them and hope for the best? Let’s just do it and be legends, man. We’ll do it live. Fingers and toes crossed. YOLO, eh. What’s the worst that can happen?

A system that awards top jobs based on seniority and connections rather than competency related to the job at hand ceases to be a system. It becomes a joke.

This essay is not about the US politics.

Throughout history, one of the worst and most unusual punishments was to have your name struck from historical record, as if you never existed at all.

Call it petty. Call it poetic. Call it neither, or both. I deliberately choose not to mention the name of the giggling name-mangler in this essay. Likewise for their co-host. It’s a bit ironic, since neither of them had actually introduced themselves when they started the ceremony. (Nice song, though.)

The announcer’s name will probably live on through all their many written works, but this essay will do them no such honour.

Names have power. Deleting them, even more so.

Someday, I hope to be a Hugo finalist. I’ve got about 35 years left; 40 if I eat my veggies. If I ever do get that honour, when my turn comes, will the announcer mangle my name? Will I be afforded the most basic human respect of an identity?

In this genre of dragons and werewolves and rocketships, this is my wildest, most improbable hope: that someday, we shall have awards ceremonies where people with unusual names will be treated as individuals.

May we live long enough to witness such wonders.

Notes and video excerpts:

  1. The well-rehearsed Hugo song: https://www.youtube.com/live/py7MeV31ln4?si=0AklpGZtEfv5Cu07&t=965 
  1. “They’ve given us a script, but I cannot find it”

“Right, there’s supposed to be a binder, right?” https://www.youtube.com/live/py7MeV31ln4?si=yh96eRIiOFmtsOhO&t=1220 

  1. The mispronunciation giggle: https://www.youtube.com/live/py7MeV31ln4?si=_zCF83ds59z_JVpQ&t=3387 
  1. Khōréō name list: “There’s a lot of them” [skipping the entire list of names after painstakingly reading the two prior lists of names] https://www.youtube.com/live/py7MeV31ln4?si=0zVwe8T1eXf-JrNB&t=3403 
  1. Mangling Denis Villeneuve’s name: https://www.youtube.com/live/py7MeV31ln4?si=ZSYncwfYiwyK4Rgh&t=4969 
  1. “I’m looking for my cheat-sheet before I say something that is difficult for me to say… Let us see… I don’t know if I have any pronunciation guides. Okay, I’ll just – I’ll be corrected when I’m wrong, okay?” https://www.youtube.com/live/py7MeV31ln4?si=_7rZwfn-l5988LjF&t=6061 
  1. “And this – I do not know how to say this, but you know how to say this”

“What? I do? I do not know how to say it because nobody gave me the pronunciation guide.” [referring to “Sheine Lende” by Darcie Little Badger, who went on to win the YA prize.] https://www.youtube.com/live/py7MeV31ln4?si=dL34349j1IKwgQKK&t=7655 

  1. Skipping “So Let Them Burn” by Kamilah Cole entirely after the confusion with “Sheine Lende” pronunciation:

“Did we miss one? Oh no! Why aren’t they on the list? … Clearly they have to win because they were on the second page.” https://www.youtube.com/live/py7MeV31ln4?si=nVOK4Ivqe0IB9D5d&t=7671 

  1. Elizabeth Bear’s Bluesky post on this topic: https://bsky.app/profile/matociquala.bsky.social/post/3lwm66nrzjt22 
  1. Related to the topic of names: a very beautiful short film about a rural woman and an eccentric foreigner with a hard-to-pronounce name, and their resulting friendship. “Meeting Mr. Oscar”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcbPCcpzQ1I 

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In which the author reels

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July 31, 2025

Well, using the non-traditional definition of “reel,” but still. I’ve spent the last couple of months building up my army of loyal followers (and book enthusiasts!) over at Ye Olde Instagram. It’s been a quaint little quest, going from roughly 200 followers (lazily assembled over many many years, mostly by accident), to just over 1,500 and counting. That’s not nearly as high as some of the behemoth influencer accounts, but should be high enough to – at the very least – show that I’m serious about book promotion.

Aside from the many handcrafted memes on writing I’ve shared with my new friends, I’ve also been making reels, aka very short videos. For the most part, they’ve been my reviews of different books on writing. (There are so very, very many of them out there!) Yesterday, feeling particularly high on life, I spent altogether too much time to craft this little reel that makes fun of popular book genres. That was the closest I’ve come to making a short film in about four months, and was a ton of fun to make. (And all the little “likes” keep rolling in!)

I already had all the props on account of having accidentally developed a hat collection over the years, across my many travels. (Don’t ask about the lab coat. Long story.) In retrospect, I’m surprised by the five genres I picked – because between them, they fairly accurately represent the five humours of my personality. (There ain’t a lot of Romance in this life, but I’ve still got 35 good years ahead of me.) Incidentally, the “Slipstream” bit is more or less my default mode these days, though my walk through the sunny streets of Quebec City is a bit less over-the-top exuberant than that. (But only a bit.)

It’s an odd art form, these reels. Ditto for the short videos on Facebook an especially TikTok. (I speak not of Pinterest, for that’s a dark, forbidden land beyond my socioeconomic status.) I truly and sincerely hope somebody out there is archiving all those little videos for the future. Some of them are creative masterpieces shot on essentially zero budget, such as this little reel right here. (That was some Rashomon-level retelling, eh?) But then again, I have this intuition that the digital decay will come for them all, that almost all of them will disappear within 10 years. Definitely within 25. Shame.

In any case, here are some reels I’ve made, in case you wanted to see what all I do to build a loyal geeky following. In chronological older, starting with the oldest:

How to tell when your money tree is happy

My index card system for short story markets

When a character has too much plot armor

My review of “On Writing” by Stephen King

A plucky little weed growing in the middle of the road, surrounded by rain

My review of “Writing Tools” by Roy Peter Clark

When Europeans try to write hardboiled noir…

Different literature genres

Huh. More reels than I would’ve thought. They sneak up on you!

And with that, it’s time to head back to doing absolutely nothing while, in the background, nurturing my imagination to see what else it comes up with.

Do all y’all have an all-time-favourite reel or short video to share? If so, drop the link in the comments!

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In which the author shares cool geeky updates

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July 26, 2025

I love it when a bunch of things I’m juggling pay off all at once. To outsiders, that looks like magic. To me, that’s the result of a lot of work.

I’ve heard back from a few film festivals, and they want me in! There are a couple I’m not yet allowed to announce (because they give the filmmakers the good news before posting the results online), but the one I can absolutely mention here and now is the 11th annual Ridgway Independent Film Festival (RIFF), held in the beautiful Ridgway, Colorado. Never really been to Colorado (in some alternate universe, I’d be hiking through it right around now…), but I look forward to visiting it! The festival will be in mid-October. If any of you are around those parts, drop me a line – let’s hang out, eh.

Yesterday, I signed the contract for my sixth short story publication, huzzah! The story is “Hard as a Mirror of Cast Bronze” and it’ll run in Bullet Points magazine this October. The title comes from a Biblical allegory that tried to convey how futile it would be for a mortal to comprehend God-level plans. The premise of my story is somewhat similar: what if there was someone so brilliant, so off-the-charts great at integrating and weaponizing different fields of science, that she’d be destined to take over the world? Not only here, but in every single dimension. And what if an assassin sent to kill her found not yet another version of a megalomaniacal tyrant, but… someone entirely different? Wait till October to learn more!

After I signed that contract, that set off the final stage of my internal Rube Goldberg machine, because at that exact moment, I became eligible to join SFWA! (SFWA stands for Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, aka the worldwide guild.) To join as an associate-level member, you need to prove you’ve earned at least $100 as a genre writer over the course of your life. Reader, I am very very proud to share that with this new story sale, my lifetime earnings equal exactly $100.78. Right past the finish line, woot! (It would’ve been funnier to land at $100.01, but I’ll take $100.78!)

And so… I filled out the long and detailed SFWA associate application yesterday, at long, long last, after many years of dreaming and planning and writing. It was a bit funny to encounter the “I am not a robot” checkbox during the application process. A very dry sort of pun, considering.

The form requested proof of earnings, of course. My sincerest apologies to the SFWA staffer tasked with reviewing and summing up all six contracts I uploaded. If you’re reading this, my SFWA friend, and if we ever meet, I’ll buy you a glass of water. (The annual membership fee is $100, leaving me exactly 78 cents. Heh. Good investment, though.)

Joining the SFWA will grant me access to what might be the most exclusive message board in the world, with decades-old archives of SFF writers talking about life, writing, and everything else. Also, access to SFWA convention suites. Also also, the ability to nominate (and vote) for the annual Nebula award. Also also also, a not-insignificant level of protection in the event something goes haywire with a writing contract. And much, much more… I hope my application goes through before this year’s Worldcon, which will kick off in just three weeks. As a filmmaker with a short film and a live screening, and as the (hopefully) newest SFWA member, that’ll be one helluva week!

And, to wrap this up with even more good news – I started writing my third sci-fi novel! (This one, in a surprising twist, will feature zero time travel. I know, I know.) I’ll keep the title secret for now, but the working title is… let’s call it “Inhuman Insurance Inception.” That more or less sums it up. It’ll be a multi-POV tale of the ethics of assimilation in general and first contact in particular. Aliens and humans. Hackers and webcams. The so-called civilized humans and the isolated tribes. And more…

So far, I’m 4,000 words in, with an outline and a lot of juicy quotable tidbits already prepared, and I’m going to shoot for 2,000 or so words per day. It’ll be easy, considering the plot has been boiling inside my brain for many many months. Should be fun, eh.

And with that… Gonna sign off, watch some surprisingly poignant reality TV (I know, I know…), and get ready for another day of writing.

Hope y’all are having a wonderful weekend.

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In which the author experiments with ultra-minimalism

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June 26, 2025

Been sleeping on the floor these past five weeks. This has been due to a very logical set of decisions culminating in a pretty eccentric conclusion. I wrote about it a few posts ago, but briefly: my attempted thru-hike from Mexico to Canada ended prematurely, all my things were in storage, and I still had my empty apartment’s lease till July 1.

Ipso facto, didn’t make much sense to deal with a moving truck for just a few weeks.As of right now, my studio apartment has one small cooking pot (no lid), one fork, one pocket knife (mangos are hard!), a small pile of clothes, a laptop, a cellphone, a few chargers, some hygiene stuff, and two empty backpacks. Oh, and the sleeping bag I use on the floorboards (I’m not a barbarian), though without a mat (I’m not a king). There are also kitchen appliances (fridge, freezer, stove), but they’re more or less a default setting for rentals.

And… that’s pretty much it. Since mid-May, I joined a nice little anglophone library, attended a book sale, and have acquired a small stack of books that I haven’t quite read yet. In other words, the usual routine has been reestablished.I like to think of myself as a minimalist with a bit of an art hoard, but this is mighty minimalistic even for me, eh. This strange little lifestyle design experiment has had some interesting outcomes…

For example, I don’t miss my art, or my cool gem and mineral collection. Not sure if that’s because I’d gotten so used to them over the years, or because mentally, I’m still in a flux over the failed thru-hike adventure. (Not bad, just weird; a lot of compulsive walking.)

I have internet access through my phone’s frankly exorbitant data plan, and I use my phone as a hotspot whenever I need to do something on my laptop. I’m not streaming anything because I want to preserve all those gigabytes, and I rather miss Netflix. And gaming, even though I realize how addictive that hobby is. (I literally dream of Skyrim.)

Ironically and unexpectedly, the thing I miss the most is radio. Just a plain old little radio-clock cube thingy that can be set to a local station, to babble at me in that beautiful blend that is the Quebecois French, because, frankly, it’s impossible to learn from any app. (The continental French is an entirely different animal.)

One objective improvement has been my productivity. With my desktop in storage, I haven’t made any new short films, but now I have so much time (and so few distractions) to simply write. Over the pasy five weeks, I’ve written five short stories. They range in length from 333 to 5,400 words, and one of them has already been accepted by a Canadian anthology, woooo! (More on that later, once the contract is signed.) Also, I’ve just signed the contract for another anthology – this one will be about superheroes, and will feature my February story “To Fly or Not to Fly.” (Inspired by my experience with bureaucracies and the time I jumped into traffic to save a feral toddler.) The other stories I’ve written recently (and earlier) are awaiting replies from a wide variety of magazines. There’s one particular (and major) magazine that has been sitting on my new submitted story for quite a while now… I’m cautiously optimistic, given that their usual turnaround time is just a day or two.

All in all, this has been the most productive stretch of my life, writing-wise. Perhaps it’s the near-isolation, or the sheer emptiness of my living space (my studio isn’t big, but it looks huge without 97% of my stuff), or the fact that the weather is finally good enough to go on looong walks (think 2-5 hours) without being threatened by the elements – just walking and thinking and meditating on new plots and absorbing random new experiences. (Quebec City didn’t get its T-shirt weather till late May. I love this town, but I swear, the spring is getting colder every year.)

Or maybe it’s none of those things, and the wacky desert adventure, where each day had more new experiences than a fortnight in this town, reshuffled my brain and finally helped me internalize the way the narrative process works. I had so many stranger-than-fiction encounters in that desert… I miss it.

Or maaaaybe the secret factor here is that I’ve been doing a helluva lot of reading. In addition to going through my gigantic “to read” list (it’s in triple figures!), I’ve also been devouring the Wolrdcon finalist packet. Worldcon is the biggest annual sci-fi/fantasy convention (held in Seattle this year), and since they picked me for their short film festival, I figured I might as well go for the full event, not just for one day. $275 bought me full membership privileges, the convention pass (it’ll be so much fun to finally meet all my favourite authors), and the PDF versions of all the short stories, novelettes, novellas, and novels (and many other categories) that made it to the final round of voting.

I take my newfound responsibility seriously, which is why I’m reading all of them. Every last one. They are delicious, eh. Currently almost done with Adrian Tchaikovsky’s “Service Model” – that novel is an absolute blast. (Think Wall-E mixed with Fallout.) I’ve literally laughed out loud – and often – while reading it. Five stars, highly recommended.

So, yeah, inspiration galore. About a week from now, I’ll move into my new apartment (it’ll have a balcony! but no bathtub…) and get all my things from storage, and my life will once again have Netflix, and video games, and other time magnets. Here is hoping the new habits will stick.

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In which the author gets agented!

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April 11, 2025

I spent a very long time anticipating the day when I’d be able to use this header. And, of course, then I wrote it three days too late. But hey, time is a flat circle, right? (In my defense, I’ve been doing a lot of celebrating, and even more editing and rewriting.)

My awesome new agent is Brandy Vallance of Barbara Bova Literary Agency. (The same agency that brought us “Ender’s Game” – wooo!) Brandy is an author-turned-agent, an expert in the craft of writing, and the best advocate and supporter an author could ever ask for. Together, we shall find the perfect home for “The Patron Saint of Unforgivable Mistakes.” (And then, afterwards, for “Time Traveler’s Etiquette Guide” – and many more to come!)

Brandy was one of the very first agents I queried when I started agent-hunting over a year ago. The query odyssey was long and convoluted, and this post is not about that. Some other day, perhaps. Suffice to say, I’m not merely happy that I’ve leveled up as a writer – I’m ecstatic that I won’t have to deal with query trenches ever again!

Being agented is… wild. It’s a wild feeling, eh. I don’t have the numbers (and I don’t think anyone does), but I guesstimate that only 1% (if not less) of the folks who finish their novel ever end up agented. From what I’ve heard, it’s gotten even more difficult after covid. Some think that’s because millions of people had a chance to finally write their novel during the lockdown. Others blame ChatGPT: when anyone can generate a bunch of slop in a single afternoon, the number of queried novels goes way up, resulting in severe bottlenecks.

Whatever the case, it feels so strange – though in a good way – to be an actual agented writer. That’s not something you can buy, not something that’s awarded based on your looks or height – that’s based on merit. I’d started tinkering with my first novel way back in 2015, and didn’t finalize it till 2024. The novel Brandy and I will focus on had taken me just eight months to brainstorm, write, and edit. (Yes, that timeline is pretty symbolic, I know.) Between 2015 and now, I tried my hand at quite a few short stories, some of which actually got sold. I’ve been writing non-fiction Kindle e-books since 2011, and while they are, well, not fiction, that also gave me a fair bit of practice.

I’ve never taken a writing course, though I do have a growing collection of books on the craft of writing. (My top two recommendations are Chuck Palahniuk’s “Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different” and Damon Knight’s “Creating Short Fiction.”) I don’t know a single person even remotely close to the publishing industry. I’ve never been to writing workshops or retreats, and I can’t even imagine what goes on in MFAs. I’ve never been to a writing conference, and the only real-life pitch I’ve ever done was during a small panel at last year’s New York Comic Con – something I’d found completely by accident. (The feedback I got after my 60-second speech? “…I like the title.” Oof.)

I’ve been a lifelong reader, though, and a careful learner, with lots of time to think and brainstorm.

My method was simple: I just sat down and forced myself to overcome my hesitation and my self-doubts, and then I started writing. Perhaps not every day (though I tried to), and with a lot of outlines, powered by stubbornness and perseverance – because waiting for a muse didn’t prove to be a reliable strategy. And then… I developed a very thick skin: some of the rejections were hurtful; many queries just got ghosted, without even a token reply. I spent a lot of time spent querying, and revising my novels, and keeping the wordcount below 100,000. And I was patient. Very, very patient.

And even then success is never guaranteed. The nudge for my new novel (think “Ender’s Game” x “Chernobyl” x “The Umbrella Academy”) came from the most unexpected and unlikely source, though that’s a whole different story. If not for that, “The Patron Saint of Unforgivable Mistakes” might never have been written.

So if you’re currently in the query trenches, and you’re reading this… I don’t have the secret recipe, or the secret sauce, or a $9.99 book of advice that would boost your chances. You almost certainly already know all the advice I’ve mentioned. There’s nothing I can do to actually help you with your query, but I hope you will find some solace and encouragement in my words. I was just a guy, and then I started writing, and it took me a very long time, but I got signed. I’m not so insensitive as to say, “If I could do it, then anyone can do it” – but I hope my example will give comfort to other outsiders, to other folks who have no credentials beyond their love of fiction and their penchant for writing.

Onward, eh.

Ever onward.

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In which the author finishes his second novel

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March 24, 2025

Short version: HUZZAH!!!

Longer version: I stayed up all night, adding last touches to my final edit of “The Patron Saint of Unforgivable Mistakes,” a dark-academia Young Adult sci-fi novel. It’s quite different from my first novel, “Time Traveler’s Etiquette Guide” (which is still in the query trenches) in that it actually follows the three-act arch, and has recurring characters and the big showdown and all. Heh.

Stylistically, it’s Chernobyl + Ender’s Game + X-Men. It explores a very simple process: if the environmental pollution in the 1990s Russia reached the point where children started getting either cancer or superpowers, how would the government react?

It was partly based on a true story… I was born and raised right next to Seversk, aka Tomsk-7, aka one of the worst nuclear disasters in history. It wasn’t as bad as Chernobyl, but it was bad… Widespread birth defects. High rates of cancer. A lot of weird stuff happening… When I try to tell my childhood stories to my friends, whether in the US or Canada, they usually think I’m making them up, or at the very least embellishing them. So, I figured, why not go all the way? Why not actually embellish them and turn them into a very strange, very dark sci-fi novel?

Throughout the novel, there are short interludes: real-life news reports, excerpts from military dispatches, think-tank analyses on Russia’s plunging health rates, etc. I like to think it’ll give the readers something to chew on: educational as well as entertaining.

I set the action in the 1990s because that was the last decade without advanced technology: cellphones already existed (there’s a Nokia phone that features prominently), but they were very very rare. And that’s also the decade I know best. My family left Russia in 2003. I never went back. Probably never will. Whatever the hell it’s become now, I’m not familiar with it – so I wrote about what I knew. About corruption. About ineptitude. About horrifying accidents. About cruel teachers who would watch you get pummeled right outside the school and then do nothing.

There’s some levity and romance there, as well, but… Let’s just say Disney won’t base a children’s movie based on my novel. And that’s all I’ll say. Spoilers, eh.

The last thing I did before passing out at 7am was put together a nice-looking query and a synopsis (it took some work to condense it from 2,500 words to 850!), after which I sent the whole thing to one very special agent, who will have the first dibs on the manuscript. Toes and fingers crossed!

But perhaps most importantly, this giant psychic weight is off my shoulders now. I’ll fly off to New Mexico less than a month from now, and I’ll be able to start my big Continental Divide Trail thru-hike with a clear conscience. If I hadn’t finished this novel, it’d always be on my mind, if only a little. (And before you ask, writing and editing on your phone is possible, but it’s the least convenient of all possible options.)

And so… Done. Done at last. Might goof around and write a short story or two, but I’m definitely not starting the third novel’s draft in the coming weeks. Time to have some well-earned rest, eh.

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