Novella writers! You have just over two weeks left to submit your novella manuscript to our open call.
Remember, we're looking for dark speculative fiction, crime noir, or dark thrillers. Send us your work!
Guidelines: links.ruadanbooks.com/Novellas26
#WriterSky #writingcommunity #AuthorSky
A typewriter sits in a black space, mirrored against the surface it sits on. White and orange text above it reads, “Thoughts from the Writer’s Desk open for nonfiction - see submissions page for details.” The Ruadán Books logo appears above the text.
Calling nonfiction writers! Our online column, Thoughts From the Writer’s Desk, is OPEN.
We are looking for unpublished, original essays about the writing life, from in-depth tips on the craft and business to thoughtful columns on genre fiction.
Details: links.ruadanbooks.com/cfs
#WriterSky
New Issue: BCS #455 out today, featuring stories stories of odd quests and identity by Alex Irvine and Bee Hyland, behind cover art by Silas Goewey: www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/issues/issue...
I often suspect that many conservatives/Republicans who whinge about "socialism" don't actually understand what it really is. Either wilfully or because they're just not, um, smart (probably mostly the former?). Sigh.
Breaking news! @scifinow.bsky.social reveals the cover to "The Quantum Dawn," the 4th (of 5) novel in my Quantum Evolution series from @solarisbooks.bsky.social and @recordedbooks.bsky.social!
Quantum Dawn will appear in ebook, paper, and audio in October 2026. Pre-order: geni.us/quantdawn
2026 Locus Awards Top Ten Finalists locusmag.com/2026/04...
People in comics & the British fantasy scene! If you were around in the 80s-90s & are willing to speak on or off the record about Gaiman, please DM me or reach out on email. I will put you in touch with someone working on a longform piece. They are wondering why no one, so far, is willing to talk.
It's live! IT'S LIVE! The Kickstarter for Year’s Best Canadian F&SF: Volume Four is now LIVE! Award-winning series, best of 2025, and (with your help) the biggest volume yet. Can you back early enough to land The Canucklehead tier and get to choose the dedication for the book??
Pls SHARE WIDELY!
One day, "It" will happen, by which I mean sudden and unexpected news that you want to celebrate. In such cases, you will want the right outfit. 🧵
We're looking at a truly wild number of sites now from one scammy asshole who has *way* too much free time.
Block all of these sites in the thread.
heads up. there is *one guy* creating approximately eleventy billion accounts to try to scam indies. pls just block this creep in all his forms.
We found EVEN MORE promo websites from this guy in the last few days ... some using ai, too ...
If you go into the Privacy Policy or Terms of Service of each website, you can see they are the same guy.
Examples (scroll down thread for more) 🧵⬇️
A full disc image of Earth, as seen from the Orion Crew Module. The planet is a pale blue, swirling with white clouds and glowing slightly lighter blue in place from reflected light. At lower left, a large brown landmass is Africa, with Spain and Portugal with twinkling lights where the planet curves. At top right, auroras glow in a thin green glow, just barely separated from the planet's surface. Earth is set against the black of space (pic: NASA/R.Wiseman)
More context on this #Artemis II image:
* This is the night side, lit by moonlight. You can see city lights in Spain & Portugal, & a sliver of day at lower right
* The Sun is entirely behind Earth, which makes it a kind of solar eclipse, but w/ Earth doing the eclipsing instead of the Moon:
☀️🌍🚀🌕
As I'm hastily putting in a few more nominations ahead of the deadline I'm remembering stuff I definitely INTENDED to nominate and almost forgot!
1. Fiona Jones for Astounding Award. She wrote one of my favorite stories of 2024, "Hello! Hello! Hello!"
clarkesworldmagazine.com/jones_03_24/
Since we’re talking about wizards today, let’s start a list of books/series that we’d suggest others read rather than the HP books.
Here’s my suggestion:
The Simon Snow series by Rainbow Rowell
🪐📚💙
#BookSky
Just an update that we are slowly but surely inching our way to 50% funded!
ignyteawards.fiyahlitmag.com/support/
The cover for Uncanny Magazine Issue 65, "The Duet" by Nilah Magruder: Two women sit at a piano. One is wearing a lilac dress with a locket around her neck, her skin is a dark shade and her hair white. Next to her, the second woman is wearing a red dress, and has black hair worn up in a bun-like style. Her head and hand are not attached to her body, giving the impression that she is not human but a robot of some kind. Both are smiling as they play together. The quote reads: "There’s nights in the deep end of summer so hot and thick and wet you can feel the dark wrinkling up your fingers like bathwater—and my last night breathing was one of those. 2 a.m. came to ring my bell and found me perfectly awake, swinging back and forth on a hanging sweetheart bench with a faded pink and yellow tulip pattern on the cushion."
ICYMI! Reading for the Hugo Awards?
Try the novelette "When He Calls Your Name" by Catherynne M. Valente @catvalente.bsky.social!
It is on the Locus Recommended Reading List and placed 1st on the Uncanny Poll!
You can read it here!
buff.ly/bP23g4m
Author Steven Vickers wrote on Threads, "To confirm, this '100% AI generated' passage is the opening of Chapter 5 from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I think authors are going to get screwed in these AI witch hunts."
I agree 100% with Steven Vickers that authors will be falsely accused of using AI in the coming years. In particular, authors like myself whose works were stolen to train AI systems are at risk. When we write in our own unique styles, AI trained on us will quite likely flag us as using AI.
This is the last year that @onspecmag.bsky.social is eligible for a Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine.
They've never been on the shortlist, and it's an honour (WITH A U BECAUSE THEY'RE CANADIAN) they've long deserved.
Please nominate them this year.
hugoclub.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-...
7/X
Uncanny May 2025 featured Sam Mills' Self Care For The End of Days
Artwork for Liberation by Tade Thompson features a rocket lifting off and a silhouette of a man in the background
Cover of One Message Remains by Premee Mohamed.
Cover of outlaw planet by MR Carey features a lone figure striding across a desert with an alien sky in the background, and a green moon rising.
Hugo-nominating deadline is coming up. We gotta have all our ballots in by 9 a.m. PST on March 28.
It's a great year for SFF, and there's a lot I wanna talk about.
Going to post a bunch of stuff to this thread, but also have a longer list here: hugoclub.blogspot.com/2025/03/open...
1/X
Two boxers squaring off. One (with blue gloves) has the head of William Gibson. The other (red gloves) has the head of Margaret Thatcher. The background is an engraving of a 16th century complex machine. Image: Dylan Parker (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Uncle_Gibby.jpg CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en
William Gibson is one of history's most quotable sf writers: "The future is here, it's not evenly distributed"; "Don't let the little fuckers generation-gap you"; "Cyberspace is everting"; and the immortal: "The street finds its own uses for things":
en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William...
1/
I hear from people all the time that they want an evening session because they can't participate while at work or because they want their kids to attend.
Here's your chance!
7pm EST on April 16th. Give me 1 hour of your time and I'll teach you 5 practical ways to de-escalate and intervene safely!
It's short speculative fiction time. Here are ten of my favorites from February.
reactormag.com/must-read-sh...
Box cover for the boardgame Dune: War for Arrakis. Top Hal is red/orange, showing Paul Atreides. Bottom half is blue, showing Baron Harkkonen.
Experienced a 4-player game of Dune: War for Arrakis with friends last night. A great deal of fun! And a very engaging tactical contest between Harkkonen/Corino and Atreides/the Fremen. Play is pretty smooth, as the rules are fairly straightforward. Already loved the game solo. ☺️
My new Genre Grapevine focuses on both the escalating hype around generative AI along with its use in the war in Iran. Sadly, what all this comes down to is how AI is being used to provide ever-faster ways for the rich, powerful and corrupt to do whatever they want. www.patreon.com/posts/153096...
☺️
The contract has been signed, so I can say that my fantasy short story "Mother, Preserve Us All" will appear in issue #100 of Andromeda Spaceways Magazine this year. My first publication in a few years. ☺️
The cover for Uncanny Magazine Issue 64, “Barbershops of the Floating City" by Grace P. Fong: A woman stands facing the viewer, her qipao is a light blue color with flower designs in a darker shade of blue. Her long, black hair trails elegantly behind her while she holds a pair of scissors close to her chest. Behind there is a shadow that looks in the opposite direction, as if she is looking down at the city depicted below. At the top is a sun that crowns the two figures and bathes the entire picture in light. The quote reads: "There have been portals to the Fae realm for at least as long as humans have had fairy tales, but the first one deliberately engineered by humans was opened in an abandoned amusement park thirty-five miles northeast of Antiphony."
ICYMI! Reading for the Hugo Awards?
Try the short story "Unfinished Architectures of the Human-Fae War" by Caroline M. Yoachim @carolinemyoachim.bsky.social!
It placed 4th in the Uncanny Poll!
You can read it here!
buff.ly/KkHUnep
I finally lost my shit about so-called AIs, LLMs, enshittification & everything fucking evil that @officialgrammarly.bsky.social is doing. I'm fucking furious, and not just about what 1 company has done. An open letter to Grammarly & the rest of the LLM hype machine www.moryan.com/an-open-lett...
