Tom Mock

This was an instant favorite from everyone on the journal 🙌

In The Mood For Love tribute poster

Happy Valetines to my fellow
In The Mood For Love girlies!

A screenshot from reddit depicting the question "What is the difference between being a writer and being unemployed" and answer "You wouldn't be unemployed. You would be self employed with no income".

i have never been this accurately disrespected.

5 more days until this #itchbundle of SFF Friendship books (and, unfortunately, the concept of friendship) are gone forever!

Sounds great to me. Anything that fits the genre is fun.

Tom Mock's SPFBO Opening Reads Newsletter Get weekly emails of my read of the openings of each of SPFBOX's and XI's 300 entries.

Follow along as I get caught up to SPFBOXI by joining the newsletter: subscribepage.io/wuOG1f

SPFBOX Opening Reads Day 72 (Covers with Cassidy) Landbringer | Sigils & Sushi | Of Wind And Lightning | To Dance With Dragons | I wanted to read more of a voice-driven dystopian steampunk. 3 other openings didn’t quite grab me.(From Cov…

you can read more about the 3 books i passed on from today on my blog:
tommock.com/2026/02/11/s...

Landbringer Sade has always lived in the shadows of the Society, su…

The prose is competent and engaging, the voice is terrific, and the dystopian steampunk setting comes alive. It’s done enough for me to read on. I’m in.
www.goodreads.com/book/show/75...

I want to know more about our MC and this world, and I’m curious about how she’s gotten out of the terrible situation she ended ch1 in (if she did get out), not to mention my anticipation of the queer romance turn (always welcome).

My critique here can only be as pointed as they may seem because there is so much working so well in this opening that I'm taking every detail in and seriously thinking about it.

While a more concise, active start with more pointed establishing details would have made this an out and out triumph for me, it’s still an engaging beginning with a compelling, flawed MC who has been through a great deal in her short life.

Our MC has been with this group a while, we learn, but not everyone survives long, and that’s reason to dissociate from any newcomers, but still, something to add more context to these people would have been nice for me.

Character details are hard to come by. There are almost no names to speak of, and the other vagabonds are reduced to a “girl” or a “boy” whether or not we hear about their expressions.

These things are just barely hinted at. I feel I understand more about the establishment magic users with their white flashes of deadly magic, perhaps because they seem straightforward enough.

Our vagabond gang are all young, most much younger than 20. I don’t know why they’re all so young, but it’s interesting. I would have liked to understand more about them and why they’re driven to this deadly peril.

In place of these physical details that keep us locked on our MCs immediate experience, I found myself wanting more grounding in the context of what is happening and who is doing it and why.

All the particulars slow the pace and begin to feel repetitive: the danger of the environment, the fear of a deadly fall, the need to succeed.

It’s absorbing stuff, but as it goes on the story begins to drag. The leap finally comes. The action is full of grounding, active details, tho maybe just a little too full.

The narration is maybe a little overwritten. We wait a good while for something to finally happen. We’re ready to jump, but the jump is put off in favor of commentary from our MC that is a little more style than establishing substance.

It opens on an otherworldly scene of jumpers waiting for their chosen airship, choking on the fumes of the open air. The raid begins. It’s active and impactful.

This first-person fantasy leads with voice and does a good job of establishing the conversational patter of its young narrator.

Karen Lucia's Landbringer

172.
Karen H Lucia, Landbringer

A gang of miscreant youth raid a passenger airship in a world above the mist covering the surface of the planet in this dystopian steampunk.

Landbringer by Karen Lucia

Day 72 of my #SPFBOX opening reads (Covers with Cassidy)

I wanted to read more of a voice-driven dystopian steampunk. A gang of miscreant youth raid a passenger airship in a world above the mist covering the surface of the planet in Karen Lucia's Landbringer.

@karenlucia.bsky.social

Short couplets, song lyrics, or something longer?

Anybody else write poetry into their fiction? I’ve got a few couplets I’ve created for my fantasy wip.

That’s just it. Their bar for racism is “did he use a slur? Did he say ‘I have x people?’ If not, it’s fine, just a difference of opinion! He said what he said in good faith!”
🤦‍♀️

Four identical images in print form of snowdrops. White flowers on lush green stems

Sarah Ross Thompson, contemporary fine art printmaker #WomensArt
#Snowdrops #February

kindle cover for someone else's horror story by rebecca crunden; shows an old wooden room with candelabras and rising fog

🕯️🥀🍂 SHORT HORROR STORY 🍂🥀🕯️

One night, Jace finds a runaway in his barn. A boy with a horrifying story.

❌ no romance
🕸️ gothic-horror
📔 26 pages

🔖 universal link: mybook.to/b4aB7L
💌 itch.io link: rebecca-crunden.itch.io/someone-else...
📖 goodreads: www.goodreads.com/book/show/12...

[ #booksky ]

At least it’s been fun, if often interrupted