!!!

Say no to Generative AI Art Buy art from real degenerates

Off to make some Human Art 🤘🏼

For those who don't know this story, which I first shared six years ago today....

This one time I got my days wrong at work and ended up alone in a room with my boss and the President of Ireland while I was on ketamine.

🧵

ZOHRAN: “TBH, I don’t think too much about how Republicans portray me. The power of an ideology is judged in the worth of its delivery— to be told a city-run grocery store is implausible but $500 MILLION/day to kill ppl in Iran & Lebanon is necessary speaks to a broken politics.”

If you can write out of order, I fixed mine by skipping to writing the ending and then had a place to point all the middle action towards. It's getting rewritten of course, but it worked to bring me out of the middle.

Writing rule: “Dont make all your bad guys one dimensional mustache twirlers. Thats rote and boring”

*looks at all the one dimensional mustache twirlers who lead others in real life*

Writers writing writingly: “Art imitates life.”

Submission Calls Food systems anthology submission callopen September 1st through 14th OverviewAn anthology of food systems horror and Weird fiction. Food systems include all infrastructure involved in the growth, …

Whoops! Just accidentally posted a call for our food systems horror and Weird fiction anthology, open to submissions this September. 👀
cursedmorsels.com/submission-c...

8 Story Collections That Inspired Samantha Mills’s Stunning Speculative Fiction The Nebula Award-winning novelist shares the short fiction that informed her new collection, Rabbit Test and Other Stories.

Oh oh I had so much fun writing about 8 of my favorite short story collections for Publisher's Weekly!

www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...

Shit man. Huge sympathies. What a ridiculous policy.

Someone You Can Build a Nest In Check out this great listen on Audible.com. Shesheshen is a shapeshifter, who happily resides as an amorphous lump at the bottom of a ruined manor. When her rest is interrupted by hunters intent on murdering her, she constructs a body using a metal chain for a backbone, borrowed bones for limbs, a...

Hey, the audiobook of my Nebula-winning novel Someone You Can Build A Nest In is just SEVEN BUCKS! The deals lasts a while longer.

A shapeshifting monster *accidentally* falls in love with the woman who's hunting her. We've all been there, right?

How to Write a Novel Title + How to Title a Story of Any Kind Let me teach you how to write a novel title or how to title a story of any kind. Half a dozen strategies exist. If writing a novel is like

The worst. I complained about it so much Lance wrote an article.

One of the other 3 trans/nonbinary people working at my library today came up to me clutching a copy of this book and raving that I HAVE TO READ IT because it’s SO FUCKING GOOD, they couldn’t put it down etc. etc. OK, OK I’ll read it! (as soon as I finish @charliejane.bsky.social’s latest)
🏳️‍⚧️😸🤷‍♀️🤣

Comic cover with the title "What Does HIV Mean?" by Jordan Collver & Jaime Garcia Iglesias featuring a patchwork quilt.

Comic Page 1: A young man accompanies his boyfriend in a clinic waiting room. His phone pings with a reminder for an upcoming Queer Sewing Club session. He kisses his boyfriend goodbye outside the clinic and arrives at the sewing club, holding a Vintage City bag and waving to the instructor. He pulls out an old denim jacket from the bag and and excitedly tries it on. It's covered in badges/patches and a bit tattered but still cool. He feels good in it, but the instructor notices and appears shocked with recognition. TEXT: Most gay men in the UK have been touched by HIV in the UK in some way, whether they live with the virus or not. A central strand running… through the community… but unique to each person. Today, people with HIV can live full and healthy lives. Although there is still no cure… [background sign]: CLINIC thanks to medication like pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and effective anti-retroviral treatments, HIV is a preventable and manageable condition. [phone message]: Reminder: Queer Sewing Club - 1hr And people living with HIV can’t pass on the virus. [building sign]: CLINIC ENTRANCE For many young gay men who have grown up having these options, it’s the only reality they’ve known. [handbag]: VINTAGE CITY “When I first came out… coincided with PrEP becoming more available.” (Caleb, 30, white, HIV– on PrEP) Clinic visits for testing, prevention and treatment are part of everyday life. “The issues of sexual health […] lots of people in the queer community go through as a rite of passage” (Tyler, 35yo, HIV neg) Seen as a matter of routine and responsibility. But it wasn’t always this way.

Comic Page 2: A colourful 80s flashback of the instructor as a younger man wearing the same jacket... it was his! He looks up anxiously at an imposing hospital building and is ushered in through the back entrance by medical staff in PPE. He sits alone in the waiting room. We next see him standing in the middle of a lively dancefloor surrounded by men dancing and chatting. He turns to his right and sees a man unravelling like a spool of thread, followed by a closeup of him stitching a badge onto his jacket with that same colour thread. He turns to his left to see another man in a different colour also unravelling, followed by another badge in the same colour. He is left holding several different coloured threads with a jacket covered in badges. Now he is sitting at a table with a small group of other men who are happily painting some protest signs. Some chat, while one lovingly puts some paint on another's nose. TEXT: Far from it, when HIV was first identified in the early 80s… [sign]: HOSPITAL it was a matter of life and, very often, death. [sign]: STAFF ONLY [sign]: DON’T DIE OF IGNORANCE For many gay men who lived through the 80s and 90s, HIV represents fear, loss, grief – “The AIDS Crisis.” “Literally loads of my mates died in the eighties… I was just going onto the scene at that time and the people that you would bump into…” “…suddenly they just wouldn’t be there…” “and no-one really talked about it.” (Brian, 56yo, white) “It was a fear-filled time… But…” “…there were still times when people showed incredible love to each other… I think it would be wrong to see the whole of the 80s and 90s in one big black cloak of doom and gloom. It wasn’t that.” (Paul, 64, white)

I've just been given the go-ahead to share the new comic I made with @jgarciaiglesias.bsky.social about his research!

"What Does HIV Mean?" 1/2

Yet another reason to never, ever shop at Target.

This story is horrific. Worth noting that Target is not the only retailer using AI for theft prevention. It’s an entire industry. And if you’re looking for alternatives that are safer to shop at in this regard, you’re very likely out of luck. Small, non-corporate businesses probably your best bet.

Tool: Describe Your Taste What makes a piece of writing good to you? Knowing what you like is an essential part of figuring out what you’ll enjoy writing.

Today's #writingabtwriting article is all about describing your taste. As in what do you *really* like. Specifically. It's an interesting exercise that can help you enhance your own writing.

#writingcommunity #booksky #writing #author #anwriting

🎉 Woohoo! Congrats! 🎉🎉

2026 Interview Series: Bookstagrammers and What You Should Know This year, for The Buzz series, I am interviewing marketing-minded authors and other book-loving creators who are doing great things in our industry. In my last post, I spoke with popular books pod…

Curious about the best approach to Bookstagram? Hear from the Bookstagrammers themselves, via PR specialist Ann Marie Nieves. Today at WU.

White ceramic tea tray with two large bellied glass pitchers, one filled with a golden-hurr green tea and the other empty except for a mass of damp tea leaves at the bottom (with this method you leave a little water over the leaves to prevent oxidation from the air). A low round teacup of white porcelain with a celadon interior and black and white striped, textured exterior sits near the middle filled with tea. In the background a white ceramic hand holds a leaf shaped silver metal strainer speckled with leaf bits on the tips of its fingers. A tiny red glass ladybug sits on the open palm. Nearby a celadon snail teapot completes the collection.

Today's tea was almost the last of my 2025 Dragonwell as I try to make room for 2026. Might just take the rest of it to work to drink there. 🍵 🫖

It's been around for almost a decade now, I think, so it's very well supported by a small community. I don't think they advertise at all.

There's 750 words

750 Words - Practice Writing Every Day share.google/MfM1y4hwjQHp...

That is an amazing bookmark 😍

It shouldn't be, but likely is, especially if they are willing to fight you about it.

I think that's why people are mentioning it in addition to all the publicity work, it's a long-term abuse that persists after the short term one.

Oh certainly. The whole process indicates a total disrespect for the author's time and frankly, sanity. But if she then won a booker or nobel she'd still have to mention this prize every time, or risk having to give the money back.

Your bio is how you are introduced at every writing festival, every book reading, every time you publish something new. They are asking to be permanently associated with your name for the rest of time. I don't think it's unreasonable, I do think it's predatory that it doesn't have a time limit.

first cup is hitting #teasky

We lose again: Windham-Campbell Prize manqué Was going to post this on Substack, but they don't let you indent blocks of text.     Today’s insanely long installmen...

Helen DeWitt on turning down a $175k Windham-Campbell Prize because she wasn't able to handle the prize's mandatory publicity requirements. Imo a moving, deeply relatable, and darkly funny story about money, obligation, mental health, & executive dysfunction
paperpools.blogspot.com/2026/04/we-l...

A pink floating 'raft' of cherry blossom petals fills the canal beside the Philosopher's Path.

Blossoms along the Philosopher's Path.

A pink floating 'raft' of cherry blossom petals fills the canal beside the Philosopher's Path.

A pink floating 'raft' of cherry blossom petals fills the canal beside the Philosopher's Path.

🌸💦PETAL RAFTS🛶🩷

Towards the middle of April parts of the canal beside the Philosopher's Path (哲学の道) become a river of petals.
The phrases 'hana-no-ukibashi' (花の浮橋 'floating bridge of flowers') and 'hanaikada' (花筏 'flower raft') both describe water thick with petals.
#哲学の道 #京都

Looking through one of the four windows of the Orion spacecraft, a tiny crescent Earth is illuminated against the blackness of space and grows smaller as the crew journeys closer to the Moon. Part of the window edge is visible; the rest is darkness. [Alt-text slightly revised from ESA/NASA version]

We are so, so small. #Artemis