Oh, interesting that TSOM started as a short! Hope to read your novella some day.

Glad you found it interesting! Are you working on something at the moment?

I’m a huge fan of The Lovecraft Investigations - here’s hoping this new series meets its funding goal.

Industry Insider – The 40% ceiling: Gender equality in the Scottish literary sector - The Society of Authors Grab a cuppa and find out more about English novelist and game writer Naomi Alderman. Best known for her speculative science fiction novel The Power, which won the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction in...

On Thursday 1st May I’ll be talking to Dr Christina Neuwirth about their fascinating research into gender inequality in the Scottish literary sector - do join us! On zoom and free for SoA @societyofauthors.bsky.social members: societyofauthors.org/event/indust...

a woman is holding a glass of wine with the words cheers written on the bottom ALT: a woman is holding a glass of wine with the words cheers written on the bottom

I just realized that webinar is an anagram of winebar. Suddenly, a way forward appears.

Tile reads: Dear March - Come in - (1320) Emily Dickinson, 1830 - 1886 Dear March - Come in - How glad I am - I hoped for you before - Put down your Hat - You must have walked - How out of Breath you are - Dear March, how are you, and the Rest - Did you leave Nature well - Oh March, Come right upstairs with me - I have so much to tell -

Dear March - Come in - 🪻

Perhaps we *do* need to start anthropomorphising LLMs - not as reliable researchers or trusty assistants, but as familiar spirits or demons. They WILL lie and deceive, and twist your words, and seek to get you into trouble, while following the letter of their instructions.

A fox looks up at Ayr Baths in the early 1980’s before the flume was put in and the urban myth about someone sticking razor blades in it

This is brilliant - and, well, mea culpa, I suspect.

@slnieckar.bsky.social @teacherkika.bsky.social

Yes this

🎶
when you go, will you send back
a lettuce from America?
🎶

Purchased 1981

Esq Tom Phillips, Canto XV: [no title], 1981
https://botfrens.com/collections/14375/contents/1119171

Excellent review of a fascinating short story collection. I loved Schrödinger’s Wife - strong recommend.

A Swiss police officer holding a dog up to the luggage racks.

You can’t store your dog up there, mate

Without downloading any new pics, what’s your energy going into 2025?

Oh my god these look amazing. Where are they? Feeling the need for a trip out west…

Wonderful interview with Alan Garner.
Such a powerful, rich-&-strange maker-teller.
Your favourite Garner novel?
Mine: The Owl Service.
“She wants to be flowers, but you make her owls. You must not complain, then, if she goes hunting.”
*Shivers*
Those commas.
www.theguardian.com/books/2024/d...

Interview with Louise Bourgeois

The book Smart Blonde by Dolly Parton on a blue library trolley

We don't have an elf on the shelf but we do have a

Ah, mine’s later - 1986.

The white/green Greenwitch makes for a better set with the rest of them. Wonder if it’s an earlier printing than the version I have?

My childhood copies — a bit less pristine, and the print is almost too small for me to read these days, but they’re no less loved for all that. Almost time for the Christmas re-read…

Day 1 of the #HooklandChristmasTree. We retrieve the Bloody Boy ornament from the box of china Mummers. Some say it's not blood that makes his skin red, but crabapple bark dye. I say best not spoil the seasonal magic. Besides, we all know where the skin of his drum comes from.

I see it's moving further to the left.

There is a tunnel beneath the Royal Mile, from the Castle to the Palace, that’s haunted by the ghost of a boy piper. There is a tunnel beneath Rose Street that’s haunted by the ghosts of Xmas shoppers. There is a tunnel beneath Dalry Road that’s haunted by the sad defeated ghosts of Hearts fans.

Imagine The Void is haunted by the ghosts of 18th century hangovers

Respect.

Writing tip: Kill your darlings. Bake them in a pie and serve it to your editor at a grand dinner. When she compliments the chef, say, "Oh, do you like it? Aren't you curious about what meat it is?" and empty a sack onto the table. It is your darlings' decapitated heads!