@jeffvandermeer.bsky.social Have you ever entered any literary contests that required a submission fee?

#Authors born on April 14: James Branch Cabell (Jurgen), Arnold J. Toynbee (A Study of History), Jack McDevitt (Seeker), Erich von Däniken (Chariot of the Gods), Terrance Dicks (Doctor Who), Bruce Sterling (Schismatrix), and Daniel Clowes (Ghost World). #booksky

#Authors born on Apr 13: Nella Larsen (Passing), Marguerite Henry (King of the Wind), Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot), Eudora Welty (The Optimist’s Daughter), Seamus Heaney (poet), Jean Marie Stine (Season of the Witch), Christopher Hitchens, and Jeffrey Eugenides (The Virgin Suicides). #booksky

Orban lost in Hungary? And conceded?

Miracles do happen.

#Authors born on April 12 include Beverly Cleary (Henry Huggins), Carol Emshwiller (“I Live with You”), Alan Ayckbourn (Absurd Person Singular), Tom Clancy (The Hunt for Red October), Scott Turow (Presumed Innocent), and Jon Krakauer (Into Thin Air). #booksky

I can't file my tax return electronically because TurboTax is incorrectly rounding my W-2s.

I know, I know, I shouldn't use Intuit's TurboTax desktop software (or anything by Intuit, to be frank). But I don't want to enter my information into an online form either.

#Authors born on April 11 include Peter O’Donnell (Modesty Blaise), Thomas Harris (The Silence of the Lambs), Dorothy Allison (Bastard Out of Carolina), Melanie Tem (Prodigal), James Patrick Kelly (Think Like a Dinosaur), Byron Preiss (book packager), and Julie Czerneda (The Gossamer Mage). #booksky

#Authors born on April 10 include Lew Wallace (Ben-Hur), Lenin (revolutionary), Montague Summers (Malleus Maleficarum) Anna Kavan (Asylum Piece), Paul Theroux (The Mosquito Coast), Stuart Dybek (poetry) Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird), and John M. Ford (Growing Up Weightless). #booksky

#Authors born on April 9: Elias Lönnrot (Kalevala), Charles Baudelaire (The Flowers of Evil), Leonard Wibberley (The Mouse That Roared), Fern Michaels (Family Blessings), Barrington J. Bayley (The Zen Gun), and Margaret Peterson Haddix (Shadow Children). #booksky

#Authors born on April 8: Hope Mirrlees (Lud-in-the-Mist), Ralph Milne Farley (pulps), James Herbert (The Rats), Tom Jolly (Wiz-War), Barbara Kingsolver (The Poisonwood Bible), Cecilia Tan (Circlet Press), Nnedi Okorafor (Binti), and Sara Shepard (Pretty Little Liars). #booksky

#Authors born on April 7: William Wordsworth (poet), Henry Kuttner (short stories), James White (Sector General), Donald Barthelme (short stories), Susan C. Petrey (Gift of Blood), and Janis Ian (“At Seventeen”). #booksky

#Authors born on April 5: Frank R. Stockton (“The Lady, or the Tiger?”), Robert Bloch (Psycho), Arthur Hailey (Airport), A.C. Crispin (TV tie-ins), Akira Toriyama (Dragon Ball), and Deborah Harkness (A Discovery of Witches). #booksky

#Authors born on April 4: Eliza Parsons (The Mysterious Warning), Stanley G. Weinbaum (“A Martian Odyssey”), Marguerite Duras (The Lover), Maya Angelou (I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings), Dan Simmons (Hyperion), and Gemma Files (Experimental Film). #booksky

I must really be an author now -- I finally received my first book club spam scam email.

Jonathan Lynn (Yes Minister), and Jo Graham (Black Ships). #booksky 2/2

#Authors born on April 3: Washington Irving (Rip Van Winkle), Edward Everett Hale (The Man Without a Country), Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford (Sir Rohan’s Ghost), Donald M. Grant (publisher), Jane Goodall (In the Shadow of Man), Reginald Hill (Dalziel and Pascoe), 1/2

#Authors born on April 2: Giacomo Casanova (Story of My Life), Hans Christian Anderson (“The Ugly Duckling”), Émile Zola (Les Rougon-Macquart), George MacDonald Fraser (Flashman), Sue Townsend (Adrian Mole), Joan D. Vinge (The Snow Queen), and Jennifer Rowe (Delora Quest). #booksky

#Authors born on April 1 include John Wilmot (A Satyr Against Reason and Mankind), Edgar Wallace (King Kong), Anne McCaffrey (Dragonflight), Ishihara Fujio (“The Light Century”), W. Paul Ganley (Weirdbook), and Samuel R. Delany (Dhalgren). #booksky

#Authors born on March 31 include Andrew Lang (The Blue Fairy Book), Octavio Paz (“Sunstone”), John Fowles (The French Lieutenant’s Woman), John Jakes (Kent Family Chronicles), Marge Piercy (He, She and It), Scott Edelman (Eating the Fantastic), and Ian McDonald (Brasyl). #booksky

#Authors born on Mar 30: Anna Sewell (Black Beauty), Chad Oliver (The Shores of Another Sea), Tom Sharpe (Riotous Assembly), Dennis Etchison (The Dark Country), Jeanne Robinson (Stardance), and Cherry Adair (Kiss and Tell). #booksky

Elizabeth Hand (Bibliomancy), Stina Leicht (Skiffy and Fanty Show), and Ernest Cline (Ready Player One). #booksky 2/2

#Authors born on March 29 include G.K. Chesterton (The Man Who Was Thursday), Gentry Lee (Clarke collaborator), Eric Idle (The Road to Mars), Patricia Anthony (Brother Termite), Mary Gentle (Rats and Gargoyles), Jo Nesbø (Doctor Proctor’s Fart Powder), 1/2

#Authors born Mar 28: Nelson Algren (The Man With the Golden Arm), A. Bertram Chandler (The Bitter Pill), Maxim Gorky (Summerfolk), Mario Vargas Llosa (Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter), Russell Banks (Continental Drift), Jennifer Weiner (Good in Bed), & Lauren Weisberger (The Devil Wears Prada).

Julia Alvarez (How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents), Patricia C. Wrede (Sorcery and Cecelia), Patrick McCabe (The Butcher Boy), and Kevin J. Anderson (Assemblers of Infinity). #booksky 2/2

#Authors born on Mar 27: Charles Mackay (Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds), Margaret Irwin (Young Bess), Thorne Smith (Topper), Carl Barks (the “Good Duck Artist”), Joan Fleming (When I Grow Rich), Dick King-Smith (The Sheep-Pig), 1/2

Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene), Erica Jong (Fear of Flying), Bob Woodward (All the President’s Men), Patrick Suskind (Perfume), K.W. Jeter (Dr. Adder), and Christopher Fowler (Bryant & May). #booksky 2/2

#Authors born on March 26 include Edward Bellamy (Looking Backward), A.E. Houseman (A Shropshire Lad), Robert Frost (“Mending Wall”), Joseph Campbell (The Hero of a Thousand Faces), Betty MacDonald (The Egg and I), Robert S. Carr (The Rampant Age), Tennessee Williams (A Streetcar Named Desire), 1/2

#Authors born on March 25: Flannery O’Connor (Wise Blood), Gloria Steinem (Ms.), D.C. Fontana (TV), Jacqueline Lichtenberg (Sime-Gen), Jung Chang (Wild Swans), Susie Bright (Herotica), Linda Sue Park (A Single Shard), and Kate DiCamillo (The Tale of Despereaux). #booksky

#Authors born on March 24: William Morris (The Wood Beyond the World), Donald Hamilton (Matt Helm), Robert T. Bakker (Raptor Red), Gary K. Wolfe (Soundings), Andrew Porter (Science Fiction Chronicle), and Tabitha King (Small World). #booksky

Kim Stanley Robinson (Ministry of the Future), and Julia Glass (Three Junes). #booksky 2/2