Loved this drabble from Justin Ocelot!

I really enjoyed this story!

Thank you! 😊 I'm glad you liked it. ☕

Journalist friends/followers. How do you feel about portrayals of journalists in tv and film?
What do you want to see portrayed that you normally don’t and what do you hate?

how-i-experience-web-today.com

A website for recipes jenniferrecipes.com shows an ad blocking an entire process for making cream cheese at home. The ad is a lifehack that tells you to pour dish soap in your toilet.

Like this delicious recipe:

Me, a college professor and graduate program chair: soon, we're not going to have a choice when AI is integrated into the background of every tech.

Me, a progressive Sunday school teacher and Bible study leader extremely skeptical about a literal cartoonish hell:

Feel like I should write a newsletter about my ok-hate relationship with book advance review copies (aka ARCs)

It makes me nuts that this is the version of the book that gets most read by early readers because it's not the final version, in a big way not a small way

Reason n+1 to get off Substack

Same goes for every "genius" academic or scholar.

Man, we have the same conversations every time a major story like this breaks. It’s exhausting. It is SO HARD to publish a story about gendered violence for a whole host of reasons, a main one being that victims (rightly so!) don’t want to talk.

I could not put down @xiranjayzhao.bsky.social's Iron Widow and can't wait to read the next book! I'm immediately recommending it to my friends, family, and everyone on Bluesky 😊

Reminder that in this house we do not trash other genres of books to support the genre we like the most. One, come on, we're grown ups. Two, the bottom line is people reading and loving books. Three, every writer you know has friends working other genres, don't trash their friends, thanks.

The angry reactions to these kinds of assertions remind me of the desperate desire litfic people sometimes have to see their genre viewed as inherently "higher-minded" or "more cerebral" or "just plain better" than "genre fiction."

Anything can be High-Minded and anything can be schlock!

(also TECHNICALLY speaking, all fiction is fantasy, people seem to hate it when you mention that though)

Well, it's all fantasy, it's just some of it has wands and some of it has laser guns, and often the main difference between their tools is whether they work via an allegedly rational basis or through the benefice of the gods. So I don't mind it being thought of as a large single category.

Get your fix of my latest short fiction in @100footcrow.bsky.social! The story's an ode to service workers and the million small, daily interactions that impact us in unseen ways.

#writing #fantasy

Fics & Dip

Would you like to support an #author, read more of my #fiction, and discuss the books, movies, and shows that do international affairs the best (and worst)? Then please subscribe to my newsletter, Fics & Dip, at nicolesune.sbitani.com!

#amwriting #amreading

I plunge my hand down and feel the #sand between my fingers. This will do.

I fuse the grains together into a shield and pull it up to face my shocked attackers.

I gesture to the ocean waves and smirk. "Just wait until you see what I can do with that."

They all turn and run. Cowards.

#vss365

"The term “cakewalk” describes a dance form that came to characterize a specific musical genre in mid-19th c. U.S..

Dance historian and musicologist Davinia Caddy’s exploration of the cakewalk traces the history of the dance from its roots in African-American slavery"

I've seen people trying to defend it today by saying "No, no, I just use it to brainstorm, bounce ideas, I do the actual writing" and with all the kindness in the world I need to tell you: if there is a stage of writing you are not good at, you need to get good, not use the plagiarism machine.

Being fluent in a foreign language does not make you a translator

“Learning styles” aren’t real.

The publicly held idea that standardized tests reflect merit and giftedness is something many educators and researchers reject, even as those tests continue to structure who gets opportunities and who gets treated as a smart person.

What's something that experts/practitioners in your field universally agree upon, but that remains a "hot take" among the general public?

I made deliberate choice early in my blog days to not write about certain topics -my spouse being one - because I wanted certain precious things in my life to remain mine alone. Having guardrails on what you will/won't write about is healthy. But it does leave us w/many one-sided disaster narratives

Lmao wait I’m adding my own book to this bc it is also magic school kids bsky.app/profile/runw...

We don’t control the past. We barely have a handle on the present. But we can guide the future. And that’s why writing middle grade fiction is so important to me. Ages eight through twelve are a critical time in figuring out who we are as distinct from friends, from family, from school, society, and the media we take in. These are formative years and young people need and deserve tools to help them make sense of their world. I have this image that runs through my mind. It takes place 10, 20, 30 years from now. A cisgender, heterosexual, heteronormative, dudey-dude-bro, football playing, fraternity faithful guy is walking down the street. I mean, Dude-Bro. Total stereotype. Drunk as drunk on PBR at 4 in the morning. And in the other direction, walking towards him, is someone he identifies as trans. And somewhere in his notions and connections of transness, is Melissa’s story. And he thinks of Melissa as a person, and he sees the person across the street, and that real, live, possibly-trans person makes it through the night. And nothing happens. Nothing happens. - Alex Gino

They want to be part of it. They deserve that opportunity. It’s important that I, as a mainstream author, say, “I see you. You matter. Your life experience may not be like mine, but it is no less valid and no less real. I will do whatever I can to understand and accurately include you in my stories, in my world. I will not erase you.” People all over the political spectrum often ask me, “Why can’t you just stay silent on these issues? Just don’t include LGBTQ material and everybody will be happy.” This assumes that silence is the natural neutral position. But silence is not neutral. It’s an active choice. Silence is great when you are listening. Silence is not so great when you are using it to ignore or exclude. But that’s all macro, ‘big picture’ stuff. Yes, I think the principles are important. Yes, in the abstract, I feel an obligation to write the world as I see it: beautiful because of its variations. Where I can’t draw on personal experience, I listen, I read a lot – in particular I want to credit Beyond Magenta and Gender Outlaws for helping me understand more about the perspective of my character Alex Fierro – and I trust that much of the human experience is universal. You can’t go too far wrong if you use empathy as your lens. But the reason I wrote Alex Fierro, or Nico di Angelo, or any of my characters, is much more personal. - Rick Riordan

When it comes to kid lit and creators, I think a lot about two Stonewall Award speeches I was lucky enough to be in the room for -- both are must reads.

1) Alex Gino, for MELISSA: www.alexgino.com/2016/06/ston...

2) Rick Riordan for MAGNUS CHASE: www.readriordan.com/2019/06/07/2...

ok here are more magical kid lit books off the top of my head that you can share w/ the kids in your lives instead of the one that supports a human trashbag who uses that support as proof her hatred is valid

(again, a push for the ENTIRE Rick Riordan Presents line: books.disney.com/character-se...)