Well, it's been a crazy year. Frankly, it's been a crazy life. I put off my pursuit of writing so many times, but as the whole country around me was on fire and my job disappeared at the end of 2019, it seemed a good time to focus on it an see what would happen if I took a risk, rolled the dice, and jumped out of the plane without a parachute. It wasn't until it was the only thing that I was doing that things started to happen. In 2020 I got a short story published in a magazine, then two novelettes in two anthologies. It was exciting to see my words on the page in actual books. That got the ball rolling. As I look back now, on 2021 and the works I've managed to get out there, the ball of flaming fear, molten uncertainty, and corrosive anxiety has not gone away, but it's certainly shrunk. I feel a great deal of satisfaction seeing just how much happened for me this year. 14 anthologies housing 14 of my stories (a novella, several novelettes, and a couple of shor...
Short Stories by Barend Nieuwstraten III