Karen Osborne

I really, really hope that the feedback from SFWA and the professional writers they've worked with will make them understand that this is not a tenable business model.

4am cat definitely wants to help

4am cat is being very cute tbh

4am cat cares not for your novel edits

I am (glacially) working on a game based on the ARCHITECTS OF MEMORY universe and I don't have to talk to Tor about that because I still own my game rights

I can print out tee shirts with the phrase "Space plus bullshit equals death"

(and I will)

ARRIVAL was made from a Ted Chiang story that was first published in the Starlight 2 anthology. The movie grossed a worldwide total of over $200 million.

obviously we don't know how much he made licensing it, but the point is: that's Ted's money.

Money flows TOWARDS the writer.

This is going mildly viral so I'll continue: you do not want to have to license your own IP from some mag when you want to print stickers or tee-shirts to take to a book signing for the rest of your life

I can't imagine they're going to have a staff big enough to handle those requests from everyone

I’ve always wanted to work with Sheila and Trevor and Sheree so watching this happen is sickening.

I have had MORE THAN ONE inquiry about film/tv rights to my short stories and while nothing's found its way past the inquiry stage, you DO NOT want that potential paycheck going to someone who is NOT you

NOVEL PUBLISHERS don't even take your novel's film/tv rights!

New writers: DO NOT give away your subsidiary tv/film/merch/derivative rights for a $300 short.

Not even for legacy mag cred.

These are very ordinary and undamaging stories in the grand scheme of things; as a white woman I know I'm lucky. I know many women that have experienced MUCH worse.

And then there was the old white guy that introduced himself and started telling me how he could help me get published, that he had lots of friends in the industry and then LAID HIS HAND ON MY SHOULDER

at which point I told him I had two novels out with Tor

Never going to forget being on a panel about audio/video production as an event video professional with a real honest to god live video production business and getting talked over the entire time by three old white guys who had occasional podcasts they made in their living rooms

the other thing I realized while watching HADESTOWN was that I’m probably never going to get the chance to do theater again

The other day I was whining about how I can keep track of 1k little tiny items in my very organized workspace where everything is lined up and perfectly spaced and yet at my house I can't remember where literally anything is and have had to re-do my wash 3x so far because I never remember it

..oooh

The problem with leaving things for Monday Karen is that Monday always comes

I could go on and on, but let's just flash back to last night at dinner, when my ever-suffering husband stared at me across the table while I dropped HADESTOWN facts at him. I couldn't stop. He had to know! Did you know that in the Broadway show Eurydice has the flower at the end?

*stares @ camera*

My teachers were always disappointed with how I could never keep up with a calendar or homework planner. I wanted to. I just couldn't do it.

I kept my datebook from my second or third year of newspaper work because it was so painstakingly complete. I have never been able to repeat this feat. (4/?)

I tried soccer once. I was put on defense. I remember the games I was playing COMPLETELY disappeared from my attention if they were at the other end of the field. I might as well have been on Mars.

But things I liked -- reading, violin -- I could focus on for hours. (3/?)

My diaries from the early nineties were pretty much 100% trying to figure out how other girls worked and how to be one of the other girls. I made lists upon lists upon lists of rules to follow about clothes to wear, attitudes to have, things to say. (2/?)

So much of my life makes sense if I look at it through a lens of being a neurodivergent child that was simply never diagnosed because girls in the eighties "couldn't be" neurodivergent -- and as a result spent thousands of hours figuring out how to mask enough to get along (1/?)

Just saw a community theater teen version of HADESTOWN where the entire audience was openly weeping at the end.

I don’t know what else to say but

Art for everyone all the time

Yes, this was the case when I had it.

“Is there such a thing as 'Indian' science fiction? A short history and new anthology of speculative writing from India” —

www.moneycontrol.com/books/is-the...

A new interview with @moneycontrol.bsky.social on the IF Anthology of New Indian SFF and the history of Indian SFF.

This is how you get what you want when you’re a writer with a dayjob and a family. No residencies, no grants, no sabbaticals. Just four ayem, your half-hour lunch, and a little too much caffeine.

Right! They don't have to explain anything. Somehow Palpatine returned and so can Bond.

Especially in an industry where meeting expectations is often not enough!

"What these pundits are nudging us to do, ever so politely, is accept that women, in the main, are accustomed to being a little degraded, a little underpaid and ignored and dampened in their ambitions, in ways that men are not and never will be."

THIS

a man in a suit and tie is asking if he can leave ALT: a man in a suit and tie is asking if he can leave

Nothing like walking into your office on a Monday morning to discover a couple of mice died right in the middle of the floor sometime on Friday night

Ooooh this looks STRAIGHT down my alley