Photograph of a laptop sitting on a table between a notepad and pen and a cup of coffee, with the photo repeated ad infinitum on the laptop’s screen. Original photo by Engin Akyurt with the repeating image created by Gerd Altmann. The bottom of the photograph features an inset photo of coffee and notebook representative of the author Adam T, and text reading "The Villain Within: Revising the Stories We Tell About Ourselves" and "Thoughts from the Writer's Desk" alongside the Ruadán Books logo. Read the essay at links.ruadanbooks.com/t2.

"Do we only tell stories once we’ve won, or can we tell them from the messy middle, unfinished, still uncertain who the villain is?"

Adam T returns to Thoughts from the Writer's Desk with an essay on fighting rewrites for truth.

🔗 links.ruadanbooks.com/t2

#WriterSky #AuthorSky #writingcommunity

A screencap of the Publishers Marketplace deal report for Molly Tanzer’s novella FERRY-LOUPERS, to be published with Ruadán Books in summer 2027, along with a photo of the author.

We’re delighted to announce we will be publishing @mollytanzer.bsky.social’s speculative historical mystery FERRY-LOUPERS!

Read more about this novella inspired by the real-life destruction of the Odin Stone on 19th-century Orkney in our press release:
links.ruadanbooks.com/tanzer

#BookSky #SFF

Send me something to read and publish!

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

The latest from Thoughts From the Writer's Desk!

60% OFF The Drowning House Cherie Priest is our new queen of darkness, folks. Time to kneel before her, lest she take our heads. —Chuck Wendig, author of The Book of Accidents A violent storm washes a mysteriou...

Good news, everyone: THE DROWNING HOUSE is on sale in audio form! For a limited time, just *ten bucks* gets you a weird modern gothic with Scandinavian undertones and overtones alike, set in rural Washington State on a strange (and real!) little island...
www.audiobooks.com/promotions/p...

EXCERPTS FROM KAFKA'S DIARIES 281 JANUARY 20. The end of writing. When will it take me up again? JANUARY 29. Again tried to write, virtually useless. JANUARY 30. The old incapacity. Interrupted my writing for barely ten days and already cast out. Once again prodigious efforts stand before me. You have to dive down, as it were, and sink more rapidly than that which sinks in advance of you. FEBRUARY 7. Complete standstill. Unending torments. MARCH 11. How time flies; another ten days and I have chieved nothing. It doesn't come off. A page now anc hen is successful, but I can't keep it up, the next day m powerless. MARCH 13. [.] Lack of appetite, fear of getting ba te in the evening; but above all the thought that I wr

The writing life, courtesy of Franz Kafka.

Lightspeed, Escape Pod, and PodCastle: Review by Maria Haskins Lightspeed 11/25 Escape Pod 10/30/25 PodCastle 10/21/25, 11/4/25 Lightspeed’s November issue starts with Angela Liu’s “How to Set Up Your Mourning Robot”, an incisive science fiction story written …

"threads so much existential emptiness, human loneliness, and black comedy into these instructions"

So grateful to see this kind review by @mariahaskins.com for my flash story, "How To Set Up Your Mourning Robot" in @lightspeedmagazine.com 🙏

locusmag.com/review/light...

THANK YOU EVERYONE!

That is a wrap on our annual spring fundraiser, enjoy a much quieter Locus social feed. Thank you for sticking with us as we work to keep Locus thriving. You are all heroes!

If you missed your chance to donate, u can visit locus.betterworld.or...

It's a little heartbreaking that Locus is down to the wire here. Locus is so important to the SFF community. If you can chip in, please do. @locusmag.bsky.social

Last few hours to help support Locus Magazine! Chip in and get some excellent swag and rewards, or do it just to help a magazine doing excellent work for spec fic writers, readers, and publishers!

Thank you to everyone who has supported us. We can't do it without you!

There are 4 hours left to donate to our fundraiser at locusmag.com/igg26 and make a huge difference, every little bit counts. Claim your reward for donating!

Link in bio!

book cover of 1 person sitting on the steps of a ruined city and another person holds their head behind them

ENDS TODAY 4/14 @ 11AM PDT

#FundraiserPerk Don't miss this rare, limited, signed edition of GOLIATH by Tochi Onyebuchi, your shelf will thank you! You also get the April Locus E-Issue and digital art as a thank you!

Donate at https://twp.ai/9OVA03 or through our bio!

ENDS TODAY 4/14 @ 11AM PDT
#FundraiserPerk Fundraiser ends April 14! Talk to Wole Talabi for a 30-minute one-on-one video chat. Warm beverages and friendly chatter encouraged. + April e-issue of Locus and digital cover art.

Donate at https://twp.ai/9OVAaP or through our bio!

A greyscale background image of a bullseye reads “POP! Pre-order Gift” at the top in white text. An image of POP! by Angel Luis Colón in paperback format sits next to a photo of a POP! title refrigerator magnet. Text on a red splat above the magnet reads, “First 200 Orders” and text under it reads, “Order directly from Ruadán Books before August 18, 2026, & receive this exclusive title magnet.” The Ruadán Books logo appears in the lower left corner.

Pre-order @angelluiscolon.com's POP! and get a title magnet for your fridge!*

👑 links.ruadanbooks.com/POP

This organized crime thriller for every assistant who’s wished they could take out their incompetent boss is out 08.18.26.

*Or other magnetic surface, we're not your boss.

#BookSky #TBR

Did you know we're on YouTube? We share our launch parties and other events on our channel, so head on over to watch and subscribe!

📺 youtube.com/@RuadanBooks

#BookSky #HorrorSky #darkfantasy #booklaunch

We understand that darkly humorous thrillers make for great bedtime stories.

@jeffsomers.bsky.social's FIVE FUNERALS is available on ereaders! You could be reading it right now and discovering what @stephenblackmoore.com calls "the best sort" of choose-your-own narrative adventure.

Sleep tight.

❤️❤️❤️

Here are my top 10 dog and news reporter interactions!

Shown is a graphic that has a creamy background with elegant writing across it. coming from the top left is a black fountain pen with a gold nib. On the top right and left is the BFS logo, a silver dragon design curling around the letters ‘BFS’.

Shown is a graphic that has a creamy background with elegant writing across it. Coming from the top left is a black fountain pen with a gold nib. On the top right and left is the BFS logo, a silver dragon design curling around the letters ‘BFS’. Photos (left to right): Dr Alex Carabine; Shona Kinsella.

Shown is a graphic that has a creamy background with elegant writing across it. Coming from the top left is a black fountain pen with a gold nib. On the top right and left is the BFS logo, a silver dragon design curling around the letters ‘BFS’. Photos (left to right): Morag Hannah (MK Hardy); Alex Cochran; David Thomas Moore; Catriona Silvey.

Hey, SFFH fans! We've got all this going on this Saturday (18th April, 10am to 6pm).

Join us online for Language in SFFH.

tinyurl.com/sffhlang

BFS members = free. Non-members = £5 (BARGAIN).

👀

Digital painting of a sunflower with its golden yellow petals still folded in upon themselves and surrounded by spiky green leaves. The background is black which causes the green and yellow colors to pop.

Sunflowers are certainly spectacular in bloom but I like this stage when they are just starting to unfold too

#DrawAFlowerADay

Young adult woman with seaweed shaped hair drifting in a body of water as spooky green hands grip at her from beneath the water

Artwork I painted for the novel "Sister of the Lake" by Olga Ptitseva + sketches

Close up with a beautiful nudibranch on a rocky reef. The lower half of the image is a palette of swatches made from the nudi's vibrant colours.

Once upon a time I just admired nudis and sea slugs.

But it was not enough. Now apparently I'm creating an R package to celebrate their colour palettes? 😅

First up, my Sydney fave, Hypselodoris bennetti.

#rstats #nudibranch #dataviz 🦑🐙🧪 #marinelife #invertebrates

The PseudoPod logo on a white background, looking like a portal to an icy, mountainous landscape

A very special call: Over our 20 (!) years we’ve published stories from all the continents of the world, except Antarctica. We want to remedy that.

We’re looking for stories between 2000–6000 words from writers who are in, have recently been to, or have plans to visit Antarctica in the near future.

This angle on computer games needs. to. die. I've played computer games from Pong, to Space Invaders, to Castle Adventure, to all the Ultimas, to UO, EQ, AoC, WoW, and so on and on for decades and I still play! Anyone covering gaming has to get a freaking clue.

As a woman who has played computer games since I was a young 'un in the 1980s, I feel this pain very acutely!

I'm in my early 60s, I had a 2nd hand Atari 2600 as a teen, and have been playing computer games my entire adult life. Every time I see some variation on “it’s not just teenage boys in their bedrooms anymore!”, a headline I first saw circa 1983, I sigh a little longer. My sighs now last 96 hours.

Thyme Travellers 2 – Call for Submissions Roseway, an imprint of Fernwood Publishing, will be publishing a sequel to the award-winning and acclaimed anthology Thyme Travellers featuring speculative fiction by Palestinian writers. Editor So…

Please share as widely as possible.

This is open to Palestinians anywhere in the world, published or not.

Call for Palestinian fantasy, science fiction, and horror stories! Pro rate pay: soniasulaiman.com/thyme-travel...