As much as I hate doing this, the nominations are currently open for the Hugo Nominations. Members of the 2014, 2015, and 2016 Worldcons (voting members) are eligible to nominate works published in 2014 (more details here).

I don’t have a lot of eligible works from 2014 as I was mostly working on Falling Sky but Falling Sky is eligible in the novel category.

Additionally, my short story, “Second Hand”, which appeared in the Dead Man’s Hand anthology is also eligible in the short story category. “Second Hand” can be read in its entirety (or listened to) on the Lightspeed Magazine website.

If you liked either or both of those and felt them worthy of being nominated for a Hugo (and can nominate works) please feel free to do so.

In the past couple of weeks I’ve noticed some positive reviews coming in for Dead Man’s Hand and for my story, “Second Hand,” specifically.

Over here M. J. Starling says “I love Rajan Khanna’s card sharp stories” among other wonderful things and let me tell you I will be flying high on those comments for weeks.

Also, at The Book Plank, they single out my story along with those by Tad Williams, Joe Lansdale, Christie Yant and Seanan McGuire. The “Second Hand” review ends with “Rajan Khanna has started to build a great premise in Second Hand that will hopefully be featured in more stories or a full length book!” which is encouraging (and I am definitely writing more). 

Feedback, positive or negative, is sometimes so hard to come by with short fiction that it’s nice to get some. Especially when it’s so positive. Knowing that people are enjoying my fiction makes the writing all the more worthwhile. It also helps to keep going when things get tough.

Now, to work on the next story…

I am very happy to say that my story, “Second Hand,” is currently up to read, for free, at Lightspeed Magazine. This is my first appearance as an author at Lightspeed (I’ve narrated and edited podcasts for them before) and it’s a market I’ve long wanted to appear in. “Second Hand” is a weird western and a sequel of sorts to my story, “Card Sharp,” which appeared in the anthology The Way of the Wizard. “Card Sharp” isn’t available to read online at the moment but the story was podcast over at Podcastle if you’d like to get the full story so far.

“Second Hand” also appears in the anthology, Dead Man’s Hand, which also releases today. It’s an anthology full of weird western tales featuring authors like Tad Williams, Joe R. Lansdale, Ken Liu, Jeffrey Ford, and Christie Yant. Here’s the full Table of Contents. You can also find a list of free reads from the anthology (and related tales) here.

Sound interesting? Why not buy the book?

I am thrilled to see that editor John Joseph Adams announced Dead Man’s Hand, a weird western anthology coming from Titan Books. My story, “Second Hand,” will be in the anthology, a continuation of the story begun in my Way of the Wizard story, “Card Sharp.”

I am even more excited to see all the amazing and talented writers who I’m sharing a TOC with. I have no idea how I ended up in this one to be honest. (Jeffrey Ford! Tad Williams!).

it’s not out for another year, but I can’t wait to see it in its finished form.

Also, I may be writing a related novel to the story in this one…