Caro

Programme klaxon!

The programme team are working on lots of ideas to bring you a brilliant programme, but we need to hear from you!

We’ve created a *very* short survey for you to pass on your suggestions and to tell us if you’d also like to take part in programme:
forms.office.com/e/rN9T4wEX1N

Ida dressed in a cream satin ballgown, long wavy hair cascading down as she boards a green steam train carriage.

A black and white photo of Ida in a pale satin ballgown, lounging with her eyes closed and legs thrown carelessly over the seat arm inside a steam train carriage.

The steam train! Taken from the bridge, the train seen from above is pulling out of Corfe Castle station, its engine letting off a grand plume of steam. The castle is just peeking into the top left corner.

A black and white photo of Ida leaning out of a steam train carriage window, looking wistfully off into the distance, wavy hair falling around her face.

What a magnificent but of holibobs. I finally got to travel by steam train! This is the line from Swanage to Corfe Castle. Wooo woooooooo!

Princess Ida reclining on a stone platform in Corfe Castle's third tower, in front of an arrow slit. Ida is wearing a cream satin ballgown, a rose gold phoenix necklace and rose gold elf ears she made herself.

Princesses Ida and Caro pose for the cover of their forthcoming Medieval folksong album, leaning either side of a jutting corner i Corfe Castle's third tower. Ida is in a floor length cream satin ballgown, Caro in a long sparkly dark plum ballgown. (I may be lying about the album.)

A black and white photo of Princess Ida swooning dramatically half way down stone stairs carved into the rock, her pale satin gown billowing in the breeze.

Princess Ida doing a fine Rapunzel impression, peering through a rectangular stone window with her long, wavy hair flowing in the wind. Behind her through the window are a green hill and cloudy blue sky.

And what better to do at Corfe Castle than to put on ballgowns and be princesses for the day with @liwella.bsky.social!

With thanks to the numerous tourists who offered to take photos of us, and to Caro for taking photos of me all day.

Glasgow in 2024 was clusterfuck free. It’s such a shame that gets forgotten and the work of the @glasgow2024.bsky.social team is overshadowed.

Wrath Month - An Anthology of Queer Rage The punk anthology where queer rage kicks down the doors of fantasy, science-fiction and horror.

The time is NOW, people! The Kickstarter is LIVE! Time to get WRATHy. 👿

And please spread the word! RT, tell your friends, shout it from the rooftops!

www.kickstarter.com/projects/bon...

I've just read "The River Has Roots". It's a short book but needs to consumed slowly because the prose is gorgeous and rich and light and heavy. It's a beautiful thing and when I got to the end I cried at the beauty of how it all came together. 10/10 hard recommend. Thank you @amalelmohtar.com

A photo of Dublin taken from across the river Liffey. The sky and river are blue and a modern white bridge crosses it. In the centre is the Convention Centre Dublin, which has a curved glass front, and is surrounded on either side by modern mid-rise buildings.

We are Dublin 2029,  a bid for the 87th Worldcon! We are a growing group of fans and we want to host the World Science Fiction Convention, Worldcon, in Dublin in 2029 - and we'd love your help! Follow us on our social medias here - linktr.ee/dublin2029 - or support our bid at dublin2029.ie/ 💚

Promo of the event, which says: SRFC this month: OLIVER K. LANGMEAD ALIYA WHITELEY 7pm, Tuesday 13th May Star of Kings, near Kings Cross station, London £5 donation on the door (optional) And there is the cover of the book City of All Seasons, and some others by each author

SRFC is back: 7pm, 13th May!

We're very pleased to welcome

Nominated for 2025 Hugos:
OLIVER K. LANGMEAD @oliverklangmead.bsky.social

Arthur C Clarke nominated author of The Beauty:
ALIYA WHITELEY

They've collaborated on a new novel, come and hear about it!

Star of Kings, nr Kings Cross Station

Can’t wait to talk to you about this and Calypso. Congrats on the award short listings!

A hand holding a copy of an ARC of A City Of All Seasons by Aliya Whiteley and Oliver K Langmead. The book is held so the spine is uppermost and facing the camera.

#BookPost is the best post. Thank you so much to @titanbooks.bsky.social for this exciting ARC from Aliya Whiteley and @oliverklangmead.bsky.social

Lots of reading for me to do ahead of @srfantasyclub.bsky.social next month.

A screen grab of a schedule from EasterCon showing four panels. 1) Can we separate the art from the artist? 2) Found family in SFF 3) Andor returns 4) Feminism in SFF

The schedules are out for EasterCon in a few weeks. Here’s where you can find me.

Booktempting is a team sport!

SUBMISSIONS OPEN We’re seeking fantasy, science-fiction, and horror short stories that embrace punk and queer rage. There’s a glass ceiling in SFF representation, and we want you to throw a brick through it. Bring us the coven that burned Salem and your roaring bear-serkers. We want gangs of acid-wash werewolves, furious bipyromancers, flesh-eating femmes, and vengeant celestial bois—a cast of the downtrodden who make ruins of their oppressors. Wrath lies at the heart of queer liberation—it can be a spur to action and the only righteous response to a world that would prefer we didn’t exist. So crash mainframes, collapse empires, and break normativity. Pride month is over. It’s time for— WRATH MONTH

Instructions for Subs: Kneel. Good author. Stories can be fantasy, science-fiction or horror Stories must be queer (broadly defined), and fit the theme of punk / queer wrath Length up to 6,000 words Payment is $0.08 per word No multiple submissions, no reprints No AI-assisted writing ever ever ever Subs via our website (see below), no cover letter needed Submissions open until the close of May 31st 2025 Full details: www.bona-books.com/submissions

Ok, Bsky - a MISSION for you.

We want as many subs to Wrath Month as possible, from as diverse an array of voices as possible. POC voices, disabled voices, neurodiverse voices, trans voices, ace and aro voices - everyone.

Scream it from the rooftops, folks!

Still no sign of the rail replacement bus 10 minutes after it was due @serailway.bsky.social …

And station staff are misdirecting people to the old stops out the front of the station.

Putting your info on signs behind the escalators, where no one will see it, on ad screens that change regularly is the opposite of useful.

@serailway.bsky.social Am at London Bridge and on the verge of tears because the stop for the Hayes rail replacement bus has changed and the signage is terrible so I missed my connection. Another hour before I get home at least.

It's a great pleasure to be back @srfantasyclub.bsky.social , and in such fine company, to talk about Sinophagia and Chinese horror with the fabulous @liwella.bsky.social. Join us tomorrow evening at the Star of Kings in King's Cross. #books #SFF #horror

Collection: I Want That Twink OBLITERATED Artwork: Cover artwork for IWTTO by Stephen Andrade Short Fiction: “In the Garden of the Serpent King” by James Bennett “Dusk and Dawn in the Grand Bazaar” by John Berkeley “The Dearth of Temptation” by Christopher Caldwell “Narcissus Munro, Thief for Hire” by Kieran Craft “Shoggothtown” by Julie Danvers “The Tutelary, the Assassin, and the Healer” by Aliette de Bodard “A Heart of Broken Steel” by Rien Gray “Jenseti, You in Danger Girl” by Brent Lambert “Tea, Shade, and Drag Crusades” by Bailey Maybray “The Three-Bussy Problem” by Ng Yi-Sheng “Ganymede” by Anthony Oliveira “In Sheep’s Clothing” by Caleb Roehrig “Your World Against Mine” by Adam Sass “Hazard Pay” by Malcolm Schmitz “Dotch Masher and the Planet “MM”” by William C. Tracy “Yesterday’s Heroes” by Charlie Winter “Plezure” by Derrick Webber

BSFA longlist nominations close on 15 January, so here is a handy list of the categories we’re eligible in, and the works that qualify! If you have enjoyed I WANT THAT TWINK OBLITERATED, please consider us for one of your nomination slots!

~Team Bona

💙🏳️‍🌈✨🧙‍♂️🚀🏳️‍🌈💙

A boy and his chicken

Book cover: text, YOU ARE HERE: NINE MORE STORIES, IONA DATT SHARMA, on illustration of grim South Asian woman with greying hair, orange hair scarf and shoulder tattoo of a violet, holding a floating Earth

Blurb text: It is not a sin, to love a wild thing… A witch falls out of the sky; a dragon joins the resistance; a smuggler of magical trifles loves a girl she can’t have. A spaceship lights up for Diwali; an arch in the woods leads to wonders; and in a small community in lunar orbit, for no reason understandable by normal people, romance has been abolished.  Here are nine more stories, of hope and passion, grief and bureaucracy, and how you can’t go home again but it doesn’t mean you’ll never be found. (In a white room, full of ghosts, a woman cries and will never be found.) You Are Here is a follow-up to the author’s first collection of short fiction, Not For Use In Navigation (2019). This new volume collects eight more stories, plus an exclusive previously unpublished novella, Wish You Were Here. Published 1 January 2025.

Happy new year! The book is out- You Are Here: Nine More Stories, a new short story collection including a brand-new novella. Dragons, smugglers, witches, Indian mothers, meddling lesbians, telepaths who love to troll you, space! 🌈🚀🏴‍☠️🪔 🐉

available most places, paperbacks at Amazon, links below.

Copyright and Artificial Intelligence This consultation seeks views on how the government can ensure the UK’s legal framework for AI and copyright supports the UK creative industries and AI sector together.

If you’re a creator or work in the creative industries or otherwise have a heart, then please add your voice to this UK Gov consultation on AI and Copyright. I said ‘freelance’ for company and ‘unsure’ for super-granular legal stuff but made my voice heard. You can too. www.gov.uk/government/c...

Lyfe hath gyven thee lemons. Take them to the forge of Lemoncrafte and roll D6.

Result:
1) Lemon armour
2) Lemon armour +1
3) Bootes of Lemon Strengthe
4) Rindblade
5) The Vitamin C Philtre of Mordenkainen
6) Legendarye Lemon Plate (Citron Paladin onlye)

A colourful Goodreads infographic showing that the poster has read 69 books in 2024, totally 26,719 pages

That’ll do.

Spent NYE as Womble intended, planning my TBR challenge for 2025 and cursing that copy of War and Peace I just bought, which will be occupying my June.

Make coming to @srfantasyclub.bsky.social your New Year’s Resolution for 2025 👇🏼

The Lions of Al-Rassan by @guygavrielkay.bsky.social. It has revenge, politics from the personal to the geopolitical and everything in between, romance, wonderful women characters and an ending that has your heart in your mouth.

What are people's most ARCHETYPICAL novels? Not your FAVORITES per se, but the ones that best exemplify your tastes in novels, distilled into a single work?

Mine is probably Susanna Clarke's "Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell."

"Twelfth Night Till Candlemas"

The story of a 40 year book-quest and of its remarkable ending

And about goblins and Christmas; the perils of ChatGPT; and the real value of librarians and so on

Substack emptycity.substack.com/p/twelfth-ni...

Personal blog davidallengreen.com/2024/12/twel...

Promo for the forthcoming event: Text says: SRFC this month: Award-winning Edinburgh Nights author T. L. Huchu The Best of Chinese Horror curated by Xueting C. Ni 7pm, 14th January Star of Kings, Near Kings Cross station, London £5 donation greatly appreciated And there are the covers of two books: T L Huchu's The Legacy of Arniston House and Xueting C Ni's Sinophagia

SRFC is back on 14th January!

We are very pleased to welcome

T L Huchu
and
Xueting C Ni @xuetingni.bsky.social

Come and meet them!

7pm, Tuesday 14th January
Star of Kings, near Kings Cross Station

We rely on word of mouth for people to find out about us - any reposts are greatly appreciated