Ikea. Food court. Coffee machine. The old lady’s latte is done, but the last few drops keep dripping into her cup.
Drip.
She stands, staring, waiting. So do we all.
Drip, drip, drip.
She’ll never move. Her vigil is eternal. We shall stay here forevermore, shoppers no longer.
Watchmen.
Vigilants.
Drip…
I have a new story out today in Black Cat Weekly #230 – huzzah!
“To Rue, To Revel, To Revert” is… dark. Not going to sugarcoat it. In a world of holograms and brain chips, true justice means rewriting the soul. Any tyrant’s talents can be repurposed to serve our society, but not the way you’d imagine…
This story is about who you think it is, yes, but also every other tyrant like him. I hope you enjoy it.
I’ve just found out that I’m on the BSFA longlist!
My essay “When People Giggle at Your Name, Or the 2025 Hugo Awards Incident” is in the Best Short Nonfiction category.
For those of you not in the know, BSFA stands for the British Science Fiction Association. BSFA members will have until February 19th to vote, and the next round will be the finalists.
.I just did some quick math, and my category has 28 nominees, which include Chuck Wendig (!) and Cory Doctorow (!!). I have no expectations that I’ll make it onto the shortlist, but it’s a tremendous honour to have made it on the longlist at all.
Upward and onward, y’all. Upward and onward.
2026 has been good to me thus far. I’m very very proud to announce a new published sci-fi short story. “To Dream of Better Worlds” poses a simple question: what if prophetic dreams are more than just dreams?
This story was a great way for me to combine some of my passions: sci-fi, strange history, and things that are undeniable but (thus far) unexplainable. For the record, every quote in that story was genuine – there was no misleading editing, eh.
I hope you enjoy the story! And afterwards, please feel free to check out the rest of the stories at Horrific Scribblings.
Here you go: https://horrificscribblings.com/to-dream-of-better-worlds/
My newest published story (the first of many this year!) is in the winter 2026 issue of The Colored Lens.
It’s part of my growing opus of time travel-related works (all of which are interlinked), and I had lots of fun adding my own spin to some of those old tropes.
This story is about the ethics of changing – or not changing – the timeline on a grand scale. It’s about the secret origin of Valkyries. It’s about cold calculations compiled into a cruel-seeming codex. It’s about the third and final chances…
The opening line: “When you’re a time traveler, every hour is a happy hour.”
Enjoy, eh.
Typing this up from a capsule hotel in Tokyo’s salaryman district, Shimbashi. Not something I possibly could have anticipated a year ago, but life can be wild like that, eh.
This was one strange, eventful year – more so than usual. The biggest disappointment was having had to cut short my Continental Divide Trail thru-hike which I’d started in April. Partly because my legs weren’t entirely up to it, partly because it was so soul-crushingly lonely (walking four days without meeting anybody else was considered normal), partly because it involved long stretches of walking on the highway… It did not meet my definition of a nature trail.
An odd experience, that: anticipation, a long journey, a glorious and multifaceted failure… An unusual set of sensations. Might use that in my fiction someday.
The other big thing was the end of the relationship that lasted almost three years – my personal best. I tried. The stress of her daily life only kept rising. The first year was wonderful. It was for the best.
That was also my last tie to Quebec City, which is how, after about four years, I finally packed up and moved to Montreal. In a matter of speaking, that is. All my things are in a storage unit, my address is a PO box, and I’m technically homeless as I roam the world, trying to catch up on all the adventures I’d put on the back burner. (See my “Feral Artist Nomad” posts for more on that.)
Perhaps because of my failure to hike the CDT, my creativity went wild to overcompensate, to make this year meaningful in any way whatsoever. Wrote dozens of new stories. Sold quite a few of them. Of the ones that got published, my absolute favourite was “Hard as a Mirror of Cast Bronze.” It was inspired by someone I once knew and loved, written during the stretch of 40 days and 40 nights when I cared for her: a difficult though rewarding experience, and I believe the story shows that.
This was also the year I got agented! Finding a literary agent was by far the hardest thing I’ve done in my entire life – and it involved writing a whole new novel, as one does. Brandy Vallance of BBLA is excellent, and my dystopian YA sci-fi novel, “The Patron Saint of Unforgivable Mistakes,” is currently on sub, pending with a few editors. It may have been inspired by my Siberian childhood…
My filmmaking side keeps competing with the writing side: my second-ever film festival was Dam Short Film Festival in February, near Vegas, and it was the single greatest week of my adult life. The entire Boulder City came together to organize an event where every visiting filmmaker was treated like royalty, and it was cool beyond all words. I’m currently awaiting their decision for the upcoming festival in seven weeks: I should know within 48 hours. I hope they liked my new sci-fi offerings.
I made four more short films in 2025 and sent them off far and wide… That got me into three consecutive film festivals in the US in October (yay free hotels!) and might result in some more adventures in the coming months… Unless I repeat my Pacific Crest Trail thruhike, which is a very real possibility, seeing as I already don’t pay rent and have all my stuff packed up. (Strategy, eh?) We’ll see.
One definite success was getting my first-ever creative award: my film “How to Prepare for Time Travelers in the Workplace” got the second place in the comedy sci-fi category at the Brooklyn SciFi Film Festival, and that little prize alone can open up a lot of new doors for me… Incidentally, funny sci-fi is a remarkably underutilized subgenre. Hmm.
One of this year’s odder adventures began with too much beer. I was browsing FilmFreeway and applying to all the $5 festivals I could find (always an odd mix, those cheapest festivals) when I stumbled on the first-ever Worldcon sci-fi film festival. That annual convention is typically all about books, not movies, so of course I applied. And got accepted! And decided that if I attend, I may as well go for the entire week, not just one day. Seattle is always a fun town to visit, and that week was beautiful… But during the closing ceremony, the two hosts were so woefully unprepared that they didn’t merely mangle all the foreign names – they giggled while doing so.
Five days had passed with zero condemnation from any VIPs from the SFF community, and so I took it upon myself… As they say in Russia, “If not me, then who?” (“Yesli ne ya, to kto?”) And thus was born “When People Giggle at Your Name, or the 2025 Hugo Awards Incident” – the single most impactful thing I’ve ever written. It went viral. The organizers of the 2026 Worldcon in Los Angeles – a different crew – have vowed to do better. (Hard to do worse.) Some interesting conversations and debates took place…
And all of that was because once upon a time, I had too much beer, too much time (but that’s nothing new), and applied for an odd little film festival. A five-dollar bill, a click, and then a long and improbable series of events. Life can be funny like that.
I may be missing some other big 2025 developments, but I believe I’ve covered most of them. As the year ends, I’m sitting on nine sold but not-yet-published short stories and an almost-finished new novel and a few pending grant/residency proposals, and more than a few dreams. Once I finish typing this and crawl out of my oh-so-comfy capsule (it is currently 11:36am), I’ll slither over to the nearby cyber-cafe and use their computers to open a government PDF and submit a cyberpunk-ish short story for a writing contest organized by the Canadian military. My life is very strange: I have tried the traditional path; I have found it lacking.
I may go back to school and get my second Bachelor’s degree – in Physics this time. (The only anglophone universities in Quebec are in Montreal.) I may try some other fun stuff and see where that takes me. The horizon is open and vast.
And just for archival and historical purposes… Briefly: this was the year Donald Trump got inaugurated for the second time. Elon Musk gave not one but two Nazi salutes at the inauguration. It all went downhill from there, with ICE rounding up random people and sending them off to foreign concentration camps, with masked vigilantes harassing Americans without any fear of consequences, with massive protests that are nonetheless ignored by 97% of population. The AI bubble looks like it’s about to pop at long last. The US military has just destroyed its 30th fishing boat near Venezuela, as per the alcoholic Defense Secretary’s illegal orders.
…you can see how one would bury one’s head in fiction, eh?
So here is to a new year. Perhaps not a better one, but a new one nevertheless. Stay safe, my friends.
This little town doesn’t want to let me go.
I aim to move from here to Montreal (or at least move my things) four days from now, at the very end of September. And yet… Uhaul is unsure whether it can rent me a one-way intercity truck. The person taking over my apartment lease broke every deadline and will technically move in before her application is fully processed. And the landlord, who outed himself as a xenophobic racist and sexist when I finally cornered him at the sketchy, unmarked office, has made every excuse in the book and blamed everyone but himself for his company’s rather impressive lack of customer service.
Splendid, eh.
I’ll get out of here one way or another, even if that means pulling a cart full of stuff all the way from here to Montreal, but damn, the escape velocity this move demands is really something.
I’ve lived in Quebec City for four years and one month: longer than I’ve lived anywhere since college. Too long…
When, somehow and at some point, I finally stash my things in a nice, heated storage unit in the big city, I will be technically homeless for quite a bit: a few days at a hostel, a couple of big, fancy parties (the kind that only Montreal can offer!), and then I’ll kick off my two-week film festival tour: a daisy-chain of three festivals in Brooklyn, Pennsylvania, and Colorado. The first will involve crashing at my sister’s basement, while the other two provide free lodging to their filmmakers, huzzah! So many new friends, new experiences, new memories to bury the old…
That fortnight-long adventure will end on October 20th, after which (barring last-moment acceptance letters from the last two festivals in November), I’ll have absolutely nothing on my agenda for about four months, which means I’ll step wayyy out of my comfort zone and give Workaway a try. It’s a fun little setup: you find a host, pay for your plane ticket and insurance, work about 20-25 hours a week, and get a free place to stay and free food, as well as tons of natural beauty (or urban hustle, if that’s more your style). I’ve just sent an introductory message to an absolutely amazing farm in Ecuador, and if they actually reply… That’ll be amazing. (Giant-sized turtles! Organic fruit! Perfect night sky!)
And if they don’t, in fact, reply – well, my carefully curated list of favourite Workaway hosts (all based in South America, because these winters are getting to me) will set me up with more adventures.
Sometime around February, I’ll fly back to hit up more film festivals. Over the past few weeks, I’ve applied to about a dozen writer-in-residence openings and grants. (That involved typing up a chapter from my creative non-fiction proposal in record time, and then submitting it literally five minutes before deadline!) Frankly, no idea if I’ll get any of them. The odds are stacked against me, but aren’t they always? Can’t win if you don’t try. I figure that my list of film festival screenings (seven so far, with more on their way!) and published story credits has me firmly in the “emerging Canadian writer” category, and that ain’t nothing.
…but if I do not, in fact, secure any of those coveted writing/filmmaking opportunities, then there’s a very very good chance that, come April, I’ll open up my storage unit, drop off my stuff, pick up a carefully pre-packed backpack (tactics, eh), and fly out to San Diego to repeat my Pacific Crest Trail adventure. Unlike the one in 2022, hopefully it’ll involve a whole lot less yelling at my accountant every few days and a bit more fun. (Might even join a tramily!) In that particular eventuality, I won’t rejoin civilization until late August-ish, or just in time for the 2026 Worldcon. We’ll see.
I’m getting over the big breakup, but – as always – in my own way. For some reason, this month had quite a few deadlines for short story anthologies… So I went ahead and wrote a short story for each of them. All 10 of them. The grand total was roughly 26,000 words. Wordcount aside, this has been the single most productive month of my life, because my brain was in desperate need of a distraction. When you feed your subconscious mind 10 different prompts and tell it to get on it, the end result can be pretty amazing. I followed Charlie Jane Anders’s advice on writing: transmute your feelings into art, let them pass through you, and create something beautiful… Or something, in any case. Realistically, I expect at least three of those stories to get accepted. Almost certainly won’t get all 10. Five or more acceptances would be amazing.
Quite a few of my stories (three? four?) are coming out between now and New Year’s: the publishing industry’s schedule works in mysterious ways. I will, of course, share the links here with all y’all.
In another world, where my luck was a bit better, I would’ve finished the Continental Divide Trail thruhike right about now, give or take. That would’ve resulted in a very very different year… For one thing, my relationship would still be intact, though every bit as doomed. My short story portfolio would’ve been much smaller. I wouldn’t have attended the 2025 Worldcon, wouldn’t have written this essay that’s gone viral, and that, in turn, wouldn’t have opened some rather interesting doors for me… On the other hand, I would’ve had a whole lot more experiences and adventures and new friendos.
On some level, I’m pretty sure that all the stories I’ve written (and sold!) over the past four months have been an attempt to overcompensate, to do something worthy and productive after my much-anticipated hiking adventure ended far too soon. My life is quite a lot different now, because of everything I’ve done since my return from the desert, and my 2026 will be quite different as a result of that.
The other me, the one who (hypothetically) finished the CDT, would be gearing up to do the Appalachian Trail, aka every introvert’s nightmare (it’s where the entire east coast comes to hang out), and would be making a fair bit less art. Maybe. Possibly. Hard to tell for sure.
These last few days of September are filled with giddy anticipation: I want to fast-forward through the remaining time, to jump straight to September 30th, to get it over with, to start my new adventure. The type of giddiness and impatience that every nomad knows…
But meanwhile, I need to get ready for a little going-away party with my local friendos – one tonight, another one tomorrow. A fun way to pass these last few evenings, before embarking on my Feral Artist Nomad adventure of uncertain duration.
And so it goes.
I’ve recently found myself burdened with an inordinate amount of free time and utter lack of responsibilities of any kind. I’m choosing to use this opportunity to tap into my creative side, to a point. Last week, I wrote two new short stories for upcoming anthologies. (There were quite a few anthology calls with September deadlines!) I’ve also submitted my earlier short stories to 14 different submission calls. (Huzzah for simultaneous submissions, eh?) And just now, mere minutes ago, I sent an application for my first-ever fellowship. It feels existentially terrifying, though I suspect everyone secretly feels the same way: fake it till you make it, put on your big-artist face, push on, and persevere. Or push on, in any case.
…two and a half years is a pretty good run for a relationship. She had promised to change. That was a lie. It was for the best…
As I wrote in my shiny new author thread on the Codex message board (you should join if you’re in the biz! It’s mighty active, and their archives are amazing), my filmmaking side and my writing side are in a constant competition. Funny, that, considering my foray into filmmaking had started out as a way to stay sane while querying literary agents. As it stands right now, my filmmaking forays outweigh my writing ones, even if you include the recent viral essay. It took very little time to procure a list of the five most recent screenings and honours. (No prizes yet, but quite a few “finalist” laurels.) And thus the fellowship application was for my filmmaker self, not the writer self. I have this interesting idea for a crowdsourced sci-fi-esque mockumentary, and all I really need is a big ol’ external hard drive and a few weeks of uninterrupted time with no cellphone reception. (An anathema to most Millennials, I know.)
…she was incredibly particular about her water. I always made sure to carry a bottle of her favourite brand in my backpack. Most times, she didn’t even touch it. Now I have 20 of the damn things left in my fridge. Forcing myself to drink them because when I break my lease and move out, it would be beyond foolish to pack them…
I’d sent out my very first agent query in March 2024. Completed my first short film in June 2024. My first screening: October 2024. My first red carpet with adoring fans shouting my name in the darkness: February 2025. My first viral essay (which opens up a lot of possibilities…): August 2025. Things are accelerating, and I don’t think there’s a way to get off this ride, much like a rollercoaster which takes your initial consent and terrifies you the entire way down, up, and down again, over and over, until you finally reach the end. There is no way to leave before the ride is done. No good way, anyhow. I hadn’t realized these aspects of myself had even existed. And now, as any self-respecting gamer, I want to follow that progression tree all the way to the end. How far can I proceed? Is there an end at all? A whole new universe – two of them, actually – both with a nearly infinite amount of shiny and delicious knowledge to consume, absorb, enact.
…she was the last reason for me to stay in this beautiful tiny town. The big city to the west has far more parties, and more cultural events, and a gigantic airport that would not require me to carpool twice and dedicate an entire day just to get there and back. I’ll break my lease any day now. I’m curious about spending November-January doing light Workaway labour in some tropical country, or more than one. I’m curious about many things…
I believe that certain actions permanently alter your personality. There is a version of you before and after losing your virginity. Before and after having your first drink, first drug, first communion. (If ever, that is.) This morning, I’d been the sort of artist who had never applied for a grant or a fellowship of any sort. Here and now, just a few hours later, I can no longer say that.
The future is terrifying.
But also fun.
Bring it.
Grigory Lukin.com 