. . . is that twenty years ago today, my first novel was published.

Psych! My entire career since then has been a trick! The Doppelganger duology, the Onyx Court, the Wilders series, the Memoirs of Lady Trent and their sequel, my Legend of the Five Rings tie-ins, Driftwood, The Waking of Angantyr, the Rook and Rose trilogy as M.A. Carrick, the short stories and novelettes and novellas, the game writing, the poetry, the Hugo rocket on the shelf behind me as I type this: all of it has been my April Fool’s joke upon you! Hahahahahah, you all have been fooled into thinking I can write!

And the best part of the joke is, I’m not gonna give it up. I have stuck it out in this bonkers industry for twenty years, and I fully intend to stick it out for another twenty at least. I will keep up the gag with more novels, more short fiction, more poetry. My commitment to the bit is so strong that today marks the publication of THREE new works: the rai “In the salt-drowned lands” and the sonnet “Gorgoneia” in Vol.031 of The Rialto Books Review, and the short story “All Under Heaven” in issue #2 of Adventitious. That latter, which is free to read online, demonstrates how far I’ll go for this joke: fully fifteen years ago, in the aftermath of the Tōhoku earthquake, a (fortunately very patient) friend made won my offering in the charity auction and asked me to write a short story about Oda Nobunaga’s sack of the Enryakuji monastery. It took me eleven damn years to write the story and then a little longer to sell it, but now — once again on April Fool’s Day; see how well-crafted the joke is? — it is finally out, the latest addition to a gag two decades long and counting.

I even woke up to a poetry acceptance this morning. My joke is so good, other people are telling it back to me today!

Thank you all for being such a good set of marks for so long. I could not sustain this joke without you, and you are the ones who make it all worthwhile.