Just started this and it’s absolutely brilliant. Mind-bending in all the right ways.
Kudos, @qntm.org !!
My favourite book-related podcast, with some spooky tales for the Witching Season, including a morsel from yours truly! 👻 🎃 😈
For those in the know, the final round of a truly insane mono white attrition… major respect to my valiant opponent (many GGs…)
#magicthegathering #mtgarena
No such sky wonders this time but a fabulous weekend nonetheless!
Unsolicited writing advice no. 13:
No artist needs artificial intelligence if they have the real thing.
Unsolicited writing advice, no. 940000:
The senses are a way of connecting with your readership. Use them all. Don't forget scent, touch and taste as well as just sight and sound. Describing something ordinary via an unexpected sense can suddenly make it fresher and more interesting.
I know this was the cover format back in the day but I’m imagining a modern reader seeing this and thinking ‘Do not remember the scene with the penguins in 1984.’
Clearly I’m in a simulation.
I recently wrote (and have out on submission) an SF story where Miles Davis plays a pivotal role! lol
A balcony, wrapped around one corner of a red brick former warehouse built when dreadnoughts ruled the waves. Metal railings, walled with decaying raffia. Pretty pots of dead plants. Worn decking, black with lichen, slick to the touch. A door, the pane above the handle broken.
I am delighted to have an article in this issue of Pulse.
An old factory on the shoreline, slowly rusting into the lake. Two chimneys reach defiantly into a lead white sky. Chill air laced with a chemical tang. A patched road leads to a loading dock. A badge on a faded blue lanyard. Name blurred. Face still recognisable.
The palace stood at the very centre of the frozen lake. Walls of ice so old, so compressed they were blue. Ramparts like broken teeth. A single entrance, just a crack, pulled apart by time and weight. A dark blue nub the size of a child’s hand: a bell. But to summon whom? Or what?
I finished five novels before BLACKBIRDS was ever published — none good and all necessary to write. That doesn’t include the many more novels I began and never finished. I still think of myself as a failed novelist — my failures outweigh my successes and I am glad for that. Failure teaches.
Currently in exactly this mode.
Stop worrying about word length, Mark, just write everything down!
Thanks! It was my response to the exercise set by @rodduncan.bsky.social at his Worldbuilding talk at States of Independence on Saturday.
I’m seeing if I can do a few a week for my own amusement 🙂
Heartily agree with this advice! Reading aloud is one of the essentials in my writing process.
The cottage had once been part of a castle. Stonework dusty with pale green lichen. Three deep-silled windows, dark as eyes. The smell of earth and rotting wood. A glint by the doorstep, a half-buried brooch, revealed by rain.
New Review - a really interesting quest tale with a band of very different characters awaits in the great Clockwork Boys by T Kingfisher - many thanks to @titanbooks.bsky.social www.runalongtheshelves.net/blog/2025/3/...
current news vibes:
- White House introduces new "if you don't buy a Tesla you go to a Tesla Reeducation Camp in El Salvador" initiative
- Trump threatens to scour the Shire
- SEVERANCE season 3 canceled by DOGE
- Democrats institute new plan of "wait for it all to be over"
- the gyre widens
My partner described lo-fi jazz (which I listen to sometimes) as “like being on an elevator to Hell”.
I retaliated, calling BBC Radio6 Music (his fave) as “like being on a rollercoaster made out of custard and razor blades”.
He called me a “typical Aquarian”.
Music War continues!
Thought-provoking. I like the way you write. Kudos.
10/10 from @stewarthotston.com for the #Severance finale - read his review and season overview here
scifibulletin.com/us-tv/severa...
A goblin adventuring party
We were both working until the idea of crumpets and a movie occurred, and now it seems work is done…
Who are some of the writers who made you?
Iain M Banks
Robert Silverberg
H P Lovecraft
Philip K Dick
Richard Morgan
William Gibson
Tolkien
Julian May
Bruce Sterling
Jane Austen
Anthony Doerr
Looking forward to seeing people at States of Independence tomorrow at DMU. It's a free festival. So if you are near Leicester, do come along and enjoy the many events, stalls and lovely people.
The only one I had before was for the Rolls-Royce armoured car!
Awesome book haul this morning - three Haynes manuals courtesy of fantastic sale at the Tank Museum - love those guys!
You ultramaroon! 🤣
