Nick Badot

The Children of Gods and Fighting Men: an epic historical fantasy novel set in medieval Ireland (Gael Song) The Children of Gods and Fighting Men: an epic historical fantasy novel set in medieval Ireland (Gael Song) eBook : Lawless, Shauna: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

The e-book for Children of Gods and Fighting Men is £1.79 atm on Amazon

www.amazon.co.uk/Children-God...

Hello! I am launching a ✨new✨ newsletter, starting in July.

FIVE PROMPT FRIDAYS will deliver five random writing prompts into your inbox every Friday, 100% free to join!

Sign up at the link below, and tell your friends!

paul-carroll.kit.com/five-prompt-...

I am @octocon.bsky.social, selling books in the trade room. €1 per pb, €2 per hc, 50% discount for committee members and volunteers.

Page 1 Terran omega Four panels, all black. Deep space. Our camera doesn't vary, we are looking at a tumbling space ship, a salvage ship. Panel 1. Behind the ship, In the background is a small thing that looks like a google map pin. Caption: ++REPEAT ++ SALVAGE SHIP RESPOND ++ Panel 2 the ship continues to tumble. The pin is much larger now, about the same mass (if not shape) of the tumbling ship Caption ++SALVAGE SHIP THIS IS BLACK OMEGA ++ PLEASE RESPOND ++ Panel 2 The ship continues to tumble the Black Omega, is now very largely, cropped by the panel, still behind the tumbling ship and obviously larger than it. Caption: Nothing Caption: No response. Ship appears to be dead. Panel 4 The tumbling ship remains, surrounded it now is the centre of the Black Omega, the ship so large it now dwarfs the little scrapyard junker. Caption: But... I am detecting three lifeforms. Caption: I can send a drone...?

Page 2-3 Double page spread. Left hand side a large full page panel. Terran omega floating in space. An armoured heroic looking character carrying a staff of pure light and wearing a helmet that’s a cross between dr fate and galactus. Floating behind here (and where’s she’s flying towards) is a large chunky salvage ship (which is big and blocky and has two very obvious hands for gripping salvage) Terran Omega : "No, I think I'd like to do this myself" Second page has a column of panels. First: Terran omega flying towards a door (she flies gently while standing) Second; her hand reaches towards the door and is cracking with energy Third: her helmet and staff now inside the airlock of the ship Terran: I'm inside Terran: ... Radio: *static* Terran: Hmmm... on my own. Terran: Ok Fourth: she’s walking carefully down a corridor filled with smoke Terran: Now. Let's look around.

First two weeks of my new weekly Patreon comic is up and are free to read (the black and white and green version will be free, but parallel to that I’m doing a full colour version for patrons) come follow along at Patreon.com/pauljholden

The paperback for Songs of Broken bells with a backdrop of a brick wall. There are bells on ribbons hanging next to the book. Glowing text says Releases in 1 week! To the right of the book there it’s text that says "This is an easy recommend for folks looking for rich, queer-normative worlds with lots of diversity and world building, cozy-but-not-cozy fantasy, and lighter romance/friendship subplots that aren't the central focus." -ARC reader

In just 1 week my debut novel will be officially out in the world 🫨 It’s so hard to believe I wrote a book that people can actually read.

THE DEVOURERS is lightly discounted on Bookshop.org again, stick it to Prime Day if it is indeed Prime Day.

If you want a sample of what the Deadlands can bring YOU, please read my short story "doorbell dot mov" that they published just last year!

psychopomp.com/deadlands/is...

Change in distribution and abundance of southern right whales. (A) Shows historical and contemporary wintering distributions (Figure 1 from Carroll et al., 2018), and (B) shows decline in abundance and subsequent recovery (solid line is the mean, dashed line shows upper and lower 95% CI). Modified Figure 1 from Jackson et al. (2008). Contemporary sightings are divided into regions where large aggregations are seen during winter: Argentina (ARG), Brazil (BZL), South Africa (SAF), southwest Australia (SWA), south central Australia (SCA), and New Zealand sub-Antarctic (NZSA) and regions where sightings are typically of small numbers of individuals per year. The large aggregations are IWC management units and correspond to historical whaling grounds, although another 5 whaling grounds show little sign of recovery. Summer feeding areas are poorly described and so not shown.

The global whaling industry experienced a boom c. 1840-1950 as technology allowed whalers to hunt the Southern Ocean around Antarctica.

Under standard models, we would have expected krill populations to have *exploded*.

Instead, they DROPPED exponentially.

Let's talk about the KRILL PARADOX.

Seriously, the EIC @btricebasa.bsky.social did incredible work here.

ISSUE 001: PHANTASMAGORIA | PDF to Flipbook Created with the Heyzine flipbook maker

Having complained in the past about the dearth of #sff lit mags in Ireland, I'm delighted to see (and have a piece in) Labyrinthine's inaugural issue PHANTASMAGORIA

Ireland's first #zine focusing on the gothic and the new weird and absolutely gorgeously designed

heyzine.com/flip-book/0b...

WITHOUT A SHADOW OF A DOUBT Líadan stared down at Casca as his chest slowly rose and fell. A bumblebee breezed above his head, legs brushing against his ear, causing it to twitch and swivel. Casca opened one eye and lazily swatted at the bee, and then yawned, revealing a toothless maw. The corner of Liadan's mouth twitched up, and she gave the shadowkat a scratch between the ears. He was surprisingly solid for a creature made of shadows. Small black tendrils twirled around her fingers as she pet him. He bunted his head against her hand, purring loudly. FUN FACT Casca the Shadowkat is based off of my very own toothless shadow, Livia. She had severe stomatitis as a kitten so had all of her teeth removed and has lived happily toothless and pain free ever since! I love her little muppets mouth when she yawns, so I just had to include a Casca yawn. SONGS OF BROKEN BELLS PRE-ORDER TODAY!

I’ve admittedly fallen behind on posting SoBB snippets, but given that it comes out in LESS THAN TWO WEEKS 🙀 I figured it was time to remind you all about my writing.

Pre-order ⬇️
Universal Link: books2read.com/songsofbrokenbells
Itch: voicesofvalhoon.itch.io/songs-of-bro...

Hmmm risky one but environmental impacts of AI (while significant) are overstated to the point it risks becoming the cause célebre of the environmentalist movement the way plastic did a few years ago (which was also overstated). Frontlines of environmental justice are the same as they always were

THREE DAYS LEFT. This ebook is FREE for the next three days!

On the night that humans all go out wearing monster masks, there’s a monster in a small Irish town wearing a human mask.

#PucaFestival #Halloween #SpeirGorm #Samhain

Shadows & Sorcery | Sean Hill | Substack Weekly fantasy flash fiction right to your inbox. Click to read Shadows & Sorcery, by Sean Hill, a Substack publication with hundreds of subscribers.

Anyway, you can sign up to and read all of Shadows & Sorcery for free because it's my weird little project and I wanna share it with people. Never be without something to read again!

shadowsandsorcery.substack.com

#Fantasy #DarkFantasy #FantasyReads #FlashFiction #IndieAuthor #WritingCommunity

Apex Magazine 2026 An award-winning digital literary magazine of science fiction, dark fantasy, and horror.

The Apex Magazine 2026 Kickstarter is just over 25% funded! That means we're a quarter of the way to securing another year of dark speculative fiction! Will you help us get there? www.kickstarter.com/projects/ape...

Any authors in the 🇵🇭 who managed to publish directly via B&N? A friend is asking how you worked around the US/UK/EU/CAN/AUS limitation without going through an aggregator like Draft2Digital. Thanks!

Submissions Broadly defined, the type of fiction we are looking for is “fun”. [Go to Submissions]

Translunar Traveler's Lounge is open for speculative fiction, 5000 words and under. Please check the guidelines before submitting, but other than that, don't self-reject. translunartravelerslounge.com/submissions/

Thank you 🙏

Excellent. I think I will make good use of this

Thabk you! I always had kind of a pop culture blund spot for swift so this may be the perfect time to amend that

I figured you might have something to add yo this one :)
(Plus one of these is actually was one of the songs we both listened to when we started dating ~5yrs ago so doubly fitting)

Alright Bluesky, gimme your best movies/books/songs etc. for breakups. I'm talking the stuff that drills under the skin and then brings it home for the catharsis and the ugly crying

The full cover, back and front, of my book, The First Fire of Halloween. The front features a púca, the mythical Irish shape-changer, as a muscular human figure with a goat's head. He's standing in a field in darkness, with a fire blazing in front of him. Inset in the dark sky above and behind him are a pair of yellow goat's eyes. The title is in orange against the sky, and my name is in black against the fire. On the back cover, the blurb reads: Thief. Trickster. Murderer. Humans have forgotten why they once feared the púca. But he will make them remember. In the small Irish town of Athboy, there is a hill where the first fire was once lit each year to mark the beginning of Samhain. Bonfires would then be lit across the country, launching a festival to celebrate the last harvest before the harsh months of winter. On the night when the boundary with the Realm of the Dead was at its thinnest, it was believed that the spirits of the dead wandered the land. In recent years, that fire has been lit again every Halloween night. Jamie Sheldon is an American girl visiting the town with her parents for an archaeological dig. Rone O’Callaghan lives on a farm near Tlachtga, the ancient site on the Hill of Ward. Both teenagers are close by when a local man is murdered. The circumstances suggest the killer may be acting out some ancient ritual. The truth is even more macabre. This Halloween, as humans wander the streets wearing monster masks, there is a monster among them wearing a human mask. The most treacherous of all the ancient faerie folk . . . The shape-changing púca.

Is this the MOST Halloween book you'll ever read? Maybe, but it IS set around the Irish hill where the bonefires were first lit. It is a story about the very roots of Halloween; the horror, mythology, and the harvest festival that lies between life and death.
#Halloween #Samhain #Tlachtga #SpeirGorm

Songs of Broken Bells releases October 17th, but you can make this indie debut author's day by pre-ordering it right now!

Universal link: books2read.com/songsofbrokenbells
Itch: voicesofvalhoon.itch.io/songs-of-bro...

(I recommend watching with the sound on 😊)

A guide to SONGS OF BROKEN BELLS By Lilly Lockwood Adult High Fantasy Word Count: 98k Background is floating embers with a string of bells on either side

EVEN BROKEN BELLS CAN RING The hungry flame inside Liadan has been silent, kept hidden, for the last fifteen years. But something has called out to it, awakening it from its slumber. And it is oh so ready to burn. Vasil, her best friend and the one sworn to end her life should her magic reappear, defies his pact and spares her life. He vows to keep her safe, no matter the cost. Minno, a follower of the god of truth, was never meant to find themselves caught up in the wildfire of Liadan's life. But the fates must have had another path in mind for them. Aila, daughter of the god of entropy, promises herself as Líadan's only chance at surviving the torment of the hungry flame. Though, perhaps even the child of a god lacks faith sometimes. Their fates are intertwined in the never ending motion of the Maelstrom, and it is their choice alone to decide if they walk the road the fates set before them, or choose another path.

On the left: You may like SoBB if you enjoyed The fantasy setting of pathfinder 2e The narrative style of Steal the Sky by Megan O’Keefe The unique pantheon of Priest by Matthew Colville The MCs struggle with magic in Imbued by Helyna L Clove On the right: TROPES &THEMES Queernormative setting found family multi POU magical flora & fauna Living magic Crisis of faith Manipulative gods and saints Paying the price Magical corruption Two romance subplots (sapphic slowburn + second chance disaster bisexuals)

SNIPPET "Liadan, it's pitch black in here. I can't see anything." "That's part of it, just give me a minute." Liadan reached inwards for her flame, feeding it the memory of Aila hugging her the day they kidnapped her from Newhen, silently praying that the Maelstrom let her keep it. A small flame appeared in her hand, illuminating just her face. She held it still for a moment, and then with her other hand swirled it out, where it found the wick of a candle. She jumped it from candle to candle until they were surrounded by a soft light. The Maelstrom let her keep the memory, instead peeling back the skin from her thumbs, leaving muscle exposed to the cool air of the cave. She dismissed the flame in her hand and breathed deeply, the candlelight growing and shrinking with each breath. On the right is a picture of one of the main characters, Líadan. Líadan from Songs of Broken Bells. She is posed holding a candle, looking down at it and guiding the flame up with one hand. She has orange skin, black spirals that coil up her arms, silver hair in a bun, and curled black horns. She is wearing a yellow dress and a green cloak.

It would be extremely radical and very cool if I could get up to 10 pre-orders for Songs of Broken Bells (we’re halfway there!).

Universal link: books2read.com/songsofbrokenbells
(Paperbacks ordered from my payhip store come with a bookmark and art!)

Itch: voicesofvalhoon.itch.io/songs-of-bro...

You stand up as soon as the plane lands because you're in a rush to go nowhere. I stand up when the plane lands because I have Evil in my feet that cannot be contained. We are not the same

The best part of visiting Burger King is when the butcherman hops over the counter to lovingly place a crown on your head and says: "Here is your burger, king."

Tried to buy a mask before travelling - none in the supermarkets or the euro shop.

Me: Any masks?

Pharmacist: (cheerfully) No!

Me: If not in a pharmacy, where can I get them?

Pharmacist: *internal server error*

Me: ...

Pharmacist: Have you tried the supermarket or the euro shop?

Unbelievable

#SFFChat

The Figure is ambitious and pragmatic, and naturally becomes a leader - but he may find he isn't as ruthless as he thinks he is

#SFFChat
The Sentence by @gautambhatia88.bsky.social is criminally underrated - legal science fiction that examines whether two parties of unequal power can ever be truly equal under the law (amongst many other things)