My latest guest turn for WU. Everything old is new again?

The best books for Gatsby fans for some festive New Year’s reading Just one night’s all we got.

Ever a delight to see my best girl getting some fresh attention. 💖

I was a slush-pile find, and had exactly zero publication credits to my name.

One of my neighbors captured this scene earlier this morning. Gorgeous coyotes near where I routinely hike. I’ve heard them but haven’t yet seen them myself.

Hub City Bookshop is looking for a new full-time Bookshop Manager. More info at hucbity.org/jobs

✨ As promised, I'm hiring a Bookshop Manager for our Bookshop in downtown Spartanburg! I'm looking for someone who can manage and schedule employees, manage frontlist buying, and make sure our events run well and are well attended. A very chill book job in a sweet small city!

Oh, thanks! I'm ignorant of this series, but a fan of her Life After Life. Well, except for the ending, but that's a small quibble.

Pleased to see A Well-Behaved Woman among these recs! I need to give that Kate Atkinson novel a look.

Many thanks for recommending A Well-Behaved Woman!

Moving Along Hello from Bisbee, Arizona. Have you been? Everything here is named Copper Queen This-or-That, after the played-out copper mine outside of town. Today you mine the antique stores for copper kettles…

A brief #fiction master class by Donald Maas today at Writer Unboxed: writerunboxed.com/2024/12/04/m...

It’s a war against influence—except, of course, the influence they want to assert on everyone else.

Such a cute little floof. 🤎

I had an interaction with fake Tessa. Based on similar DMs I got, I think the Liane Moriarty and Hanya Yanagihara profiles here are fake as well.

Also, dead salmon hats!?!

😄

I’m aware that it’s an option, but it’s somewhat cumbersome to set up and most people aren’t (yet) doing so. Looks as if it’s going to be necessary though.

😄

For example: one is a worldwide bestselling author with several TV series adaptations she wrote for and produced, but the messages invited me to describe my writing projects and offered editorial services that I can’t imagine the author would ever solicit.

Here’s a Bluesky problem I hadn’t thought about until I got several odd private messages from other authors who’d followed me when I followed back: accounts aren’t verified, or verifiable, which means anyone can say they’re anyone.

I assumed the accounts were the authors’ own when I got the “follow” notifications, but that may be my mistake. The accounts appear legit. Without platform verification, it’s going to be difficult to know at first. Sigh. File under “more reasons to hate social media.”

What’s the deal with certain authors whose names you’d recognize apparently using AI to initiate and conduct private chats? I’ve gotten three so far, and it’s really a bad look.

Given how cute Otto is, the early wakeup must feel almost forgivable.

I can’t imagine being up at 5 to write! But I did also post a sunrise picture today. 🙂 Writing starts soon.

I agree. Simplistic representations aren’t interesting, and aren’t true. Writing my novel Z, about Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, challenged me to render the layers and complexities of their beautiful and tragic story and showed me the value in the effort.

Ran away to the coast for a day and a night, and woke to this layered sunrise.

Ummm, maybe rethink whose horizons need broadening.

I am so there for it

Illness? Dental?

Remember that libraries are proof that not every goddamned thing needs to be “for profit.”

View from my office window. Sometimes the art just makes itself.