Crisis averted! I found the bottle in a box of art books. Repeat: the bottle of ink has been located.

Foreshadowing in real life is the worst - I just watched my baby kitty boy bat a bottle of fountain pen ink off the shelf and start playing with it. The bottle is plastic and I took it away immediately… the problem is THERE USED TO BE A SECOND BOTTLE OF INK THERE.

SPFBO XI - Second Update (Jack's Batch) Speculative fiction book reviews.

Exciting to see a review for The Butterfly Koi out in the wild!

fantasybookcritic.blogspot.co...

That feeling when you're deliberately relaxing but you still feel like you should be writing. (What I'm saying is 'Guilt, it's time for you to take a break too.')

A messy pile of stickers, one that says ARE YOU OKAY and one that reads I’m not mad at you, are you okay, we will not look away

Sometimes you want to make things with your hands.

(For giving away in person.) #minnesota

What people in the Cities are doing matters.

A poster of Alex Pretti holding a camera overlaid with the words "Are you okay" in red. Small words in the corner say "ICE out"/

I couldn't get Alex Pretti's last words out of my head, so I made something.

A white cat with black spots cleans his soft tummy, his leggy sticking up in the air.

He is beauty, he is grace.

One sweet thing amid the awfulness right now is how wonderful the experience is of adopting a cat and feeling how his fur has gotten softer over the months due to being inside and eating good food. The concept of to be loved is to be changed in action.

The short story we started in January came to 72,000 words. Stories are sneaky like that!

So true. It’s hard too in that people should be able to make art for fun and not have to make it a potential income stream if they don’t want to. But when the cost of living goes up and pay does not, translating skill/effort into money becomes more urgent over doing things for the joy of it.

With SNAP benefits about to run out, I see that the wannabe king has reached the “let them eat ballroom” phase.

You can tell that Taylor Swift released an album by all of the work happening in the rage-bait engagement farming mines across social media.

Oh, hey, that was a total bop. Looking forward to singing these lyrics out a car window. Would absolutely Release Party again.

"Magic is here, personal pools of energy ready to keep portable technology running endlessly. As the politicians, corporations, and criminal orgs of Tokyo jockey for control in the evolving landscape, a group of rivals and friends navigate boardrooms and back alleys to transform the locus of power."

Buy the Book Do you prefer paper to pixels? Love having a local epub in your back pocket? The Butterfly Koi is coming to you on October 6, 2025 as a paperback and ebook on Amazon and paperback on Barnes and Nobles...

It's available in paperback on Barnes & Noble and Bookshop.org, and in paperback and Kindle on Amazon. Links to where to buy are all here: www.syphoncontinuity.com/buy/!

We put in our favorite extras: a sumi-e-style map of essential Tokyo locations, custom chapter headers, and a detailed character list to help you keep track of all the drama. The new cover has a delightful matte texture, perfect for spending time in the Continuity.

The book The Butterfly Koi is shown in front of leaves. The text includes A. Sherman Karlsson, The Butterfly Koi, and Syphon Continuity book 1.

The back of the book The Butterfly Koi is shown in front of a tree.

I can't keep it in any longer: The Butterfly Koi is coming out on paperback on October 6!

And, because it's the logical thing to do with an author copy, I took this out on a walk. Look at how it prances and dances in the fall air.

Image containing an orange fin, part of a word “Butt” and the letter K, over a circuit diagram

Getting so excited to announce something soon!

Yes, I did just update my app specifically so I could bookmark something.

Syphon Continuity Speculative fiction for an age of fury

We moved from Substack over to Ghost to host our speculative fiction (what if these people had all the problems of capitalism but the devices were powered by magic), and related comics and blogging. It’s wonderful to all others who moved the same.

www.syphoncontinuity.com

Frustrated little dude gripping a pencil saying “how do I pack this down into something I can actually share?” While swirling rainbows labeled “INFINITE POTENTIAL” float around them. Little dude frowns at a tiny grey box, exclaiming “all that work for THIS?!” Little dude shoves the grey box into another little guy’s hands; Frowning, stomping off, and saying “Here you go, I made this, it sucks.” Second little dude cracks open the box, swirling rainbows project out onto their face. Second little dude stares in awe at all the swirling rainbows now floating around them.

Sometimes we’re unsatisfied with a thing we made because when it only existed in our head, we saw all the things it could have been and when it’s done we know all the things that it isn’t, but we can’t see the way it expands into a million new things when someone else unpacks it in their head. 🖊️🦑

Notifications popup from iphone showing two news stories about Taylor Swift’s engagement, an automatic cat feeder notice of lunch dispensing successfully, and a weather app notification about sunshine

Would that I only ever received notifications of happy people, fed cats, and sunshine

She gets corrupted by finding a loose penny on the ground! She is the ultimate in automatic self-corruption, with no malice in her heart.

A notebook and pencil case in mint green and orange

In which I realize that I unintentionally TS12-coded my new pencil case. Someone has Taylor Swift on the brain.

Follow the @ask.syphoncontinuity.com.ap.brid.gy‬ account to get direct updates from our Ghost site. Pretty neat!

Bridgy Connects your web site to social media. Likes, reposts, mentions, cross-posting, and more...

Love how people find a way to climb the accidental walls and swim the moats, which is to say I'm trying brid.gy fed to catapult across the Activity Pub / Bluesky divide.

Sometimes I feel the question of why keeping making things amid all the awful in the world, but this is why. Because we are people and there is value in creation.

Soul Stripping Against AI, again.

“AI wins not when it becomes more human, but when humans become more like AI: disengaged and devoid of original thought.”

This hit me like a ton of corporeal, not copied, not stolen bricks.

sarahkendzior.substack.com/p/soul-strip...

Tabby cat wrestling with a catnip carrot

The orange sock plus cat in this picture startled me for a moment because on the quick scroll past, my brain said someone somehow posted a picture of my own cat. There was a guy down there, and he looked like my guy down there!