ArmadilloCon: Austin's convention for SFFH readers & writers!

Bridget the cat infiltrates the 'Abbey Road' cover shoot and becomes THE definitive fifth Beatle.

THREAD.

My parents' cat Bridget vanished. As the weeks dragged on they became ever more worried, so to distract himself my dad began to paint Bridget's adventures, imagining her travelling through time and popping up at some of art & music's most important moments.

I've collected his work here...

A nice shout out for Summer in the House of the Departed, my West Texas haunted house novella! For fans of melancholy ghosts and occult rituals and holes in the sky swallowing your small town.

Another 2025 book we really love: @joshrountree.bsky.social 's Summer in the House of the Departed!

#BookSky #Horror #GhostStories

not that the present economic picture is rosy, but i do think that popular culture — and specifically nostalgia bait television — is a big part of the reason that our public memory of the 1970s, 1980s and even 1990s seems to miss the real economic pain that marked each of those decades.

The Apologists by Tade Thompson Clarkesworld Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine and Podcast.

Good morning Womble!! First up this morning, excited to dive into @tadethompson.bsky.social "The Apologists" from Clarkesworld!! Then it's book 5 in a #StarTrek series, "The Empty Chair"

Happy reading!!!

#BookSky 📚🪐💙 #SciFiSky

clarkesworldmagazine.com/thompson_11_...

Post a book quote that you love. #booksky #bookchallenge #writers #authors #readers #booklovers

A small hedgehog has green and red circles on her spikes and a gold one. On the branch in front of and behind her are 2 more gold balls. The branch has a few green leaves. It all looks very festive although the balls on her spikes are probably grapes.

It's time! Behold the Christmas hedgehog! From Verdun, Bibl. mun., ms. 0107, f. 008. Our thanks as always to @etreharne.bsky.social who found her.

HINT HINT PEOPLE WHO MAKE SCARY MOVIES

Absolutely nobody asked for this BUT

English Anglican cathedrals that have burned down, fallen over, and sank into the swamp: a thread.

The only mail worth mentioning is book mail.

States of Grace by SGJ @sgj.bsky.social

So happy to have it in my hands!

What have been your don't-miss 2025 books? Here's one that you might have missed at ArmadilloCon when all the copies flew out of the dealers room! This one includes stories by a bunch of people we like: Mark Finn, A. Lee Martinez, Adrian Simmons, and more!
#FanFavorite #amreading #giftideas

John Picacio's talk about The Invisible Parade at ArmadilloCon 2025 was one of this year's highlights. This is a gorgeous amazing book, with so much heart.
#FanFavorite #giftidea #awards

These are so heavy. I assume it’s all the history? Maybe the blood.

Wait so it's the Tortoise Tortoise???

colorful illustration of a mounted band of royal figures galloping past a gap in the forest through which you can see a distant castle

'The Enchanted Forest ' (1920)
Maud & Miska Petersham

The Vasari corridor bending around the Mannelli tower, whose tall stone edifice blocks its otherwise gentle descent. Last week my story about this building made it a celebration of resistance against conquerors, as the bend in the corridor shows the citizens of the city defying the tyrant who wanted to blast his corridor through the ancient tower that was the birthright of an old respected family, and was forced to go around, leaving this bend which has stood ever since as a symbol of resistance against the tyrant. From the inside, it's a super awkward narrow twisty space where you have to turn, and anyone with a walker or a scooter struggles to make the turns. Looks very different depending on your point of view, literally and figuratively!

“Inventing the Renaissance” is a history of histories of this (not so) golden age. Much of making history is simply adding new POVs to the braid as historians ask new & more diverse questions w/ each generation. I hope you’ll enjoy my effort to show the process at work! 25/25 https://buff.ly/4j6qkoS

Aspic Advent - Day 12... Aspic Advent - Day 12...

Do not stare into the void, I beg you.
www.barrettmanor.com/julie/archiv...

All of the other reindeer used to laugh and call him names…

Abstract landscape: swirling storm clouds with a wall cloud and rain underneath, yellow field and trees

For #ArtAdventCalendar day 13, one from my 2018 Turbulent Skies Project.

I Can See It…With My Imagination
44x60 112×152cm
Oil on Canvas
2018

Home Grown by Madeleine Vigneron Clarkesworld Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine and Podcast.

And last but certainly not least!! Congrats to our khōréō team member Madeleine Vigneron for publishing “Home Grown”! 🖤🧡 clarkesworldmagazine.com/vigneron_12_...

Well, that only took a month.

What began as a quick aside in an entry on the gazetteer for my Mesopotamian rpg metastasized into a 200pg, 103k words module that I'll sell as a separate product to the game.

I should have finished the game first, of course.

New Kindle feature offers instant spoiler-free answers to questions about your books “Ask this Book” is now available on the Kindle iOS app in the U.S. for thousands of English-language books.

hi, this is super fucked up

A black and white comic of the author talkin to themselves, they say “ahhh a new year, a fresh start”. They then look at the calendar in shock seeing it’s already May. “HUH? MAY??” they say. Then they say “that’s fine, I have the whole summer ahead of me!” They look at the calendar, now it’s September. “WHAT?! HUH?” They hold their head in their hands, despairing. “No, no, it’s okay, there’s still time” they look at the calendar which now says December and shriek “STOP!!” At it

Happy old year

The Scar by China Miéville book, book review, books, reading, reader

y'all if you haven't read The Scar by china miéville, you need to get on it—there's a giant pirate city, a whole slough of badass protagonists, an island populated by deadly bloodsucking mosquito women, and a very very big fish.

bookbybook365.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-... #booksky #linguistics

Text: #notjustaliens. Victoria S. Meadows, Astrobiology / Exoplanets. Background: Starry night sky. Inset: Photo of Dr. Meadows.

Text: Dr. Victoria Meadows leads the massively interdisciplinary NASA Virtual Planetary Laboratory, which she started in 2001 with the goal of developing a scientific foundation for the search for habitability and life beyond the Solar System. Background: Starry night sky with graphics of a star and exoplanets in front of it.

Text: Dr. Meadow’s research includes studying the present and past Earth as analogs for exoplanet environments, theoretical modeling of star-planet interactions, and using simulated spectra of exoplanets to understand how to best detect signs of life in a planetary environment. Background: Starry night sky with graphics of a star and exoplanets.

SETI Institute logo. Graphics: (top) Black hole. (bottom) radio telescope dishes at the Allen Telescope Array. Background: Starry night sky.

Dr. Victoria Meadows leads the massively interdisciplinary NASA Virtual Planetary Laboratory, which she started in 2001 with the goal of developing a scientific foundation for the search for habitability and life beyond the Solar System. 🧪 🔭 👩‍🔬

#Exoplanets #Space #Science #SETI #NotJustAliens

The Wildcraft Drones by T. K. Rex ⋆ Stelliform Press Read about short story collection THE WILDCRAFT DRONES by T. K. Rex, linked stories about the evolution of sentient drones and a transformed humanity.

The pre-order page for my debut solarpunk collection, The Wildcraft Drones, is now live @stelliform.press !!

www.stelliform.press/index.php/pr...

Text reads: Fed up with your world? Visit ours. Clarkesworldmagazine.com The Clarkesworld robot (center) looks to the right at the cover of Clarkesworld #230, which is in yellow, orange, and brown and features a futuristic cityscape with a small craft approaching. Cover art is "Neo Mars" by Guy Warley.

In light of the astronomical increases for my health insurance next year, I thought it would be a good time to encourage people to subscribe. (A few hundred should cover it. Sigh.)
clarkesworldmagazine.com/subscribe/

Is there ever a point where it's actually too late to pursue a passion or change careers?

Is it age, timing, responsibility, fear, or just mindset? Curious to hear real thoughts and experiences.

Open conversation 👇👇

We weren't sure you would do it, but you did! We already have a some room reservations for ArmadilloCon 2026!
Add yourself to the list of folks signing up for reader-y, writer-y fun in Austin next fall!

#Austin #BookSky #AmReading #WritersLife

We have confirmed dates for ArmadilloCon 2026. We'll be back at the Austin Southpark Sept 11-13, 2026!
Celebrate the joy of "the hotel contract has been signed" season with us!
✅ Mark your calendars! We hope to see you there!
✅ Maybe go crazy and reserve your room?!
armadillocon.org