This week on Planetside… A pantser changes her drafting process to improve her revisions in “Handling Longer Projects Without Relying on a Plot Outline” by Adriana Kantcheva: www.sfwa.org/2026/01/27/h...
It was coincidental that the Kickstarter arrived these days but still, what a great Christmas present! #13thAge #rpg
Argh, and precisely the day we have guests for dinner ☹️ Dusting off plans to sneak out the window 😉
Just finished The Two Lies of Faven Sythe. Another enjoyable #science-fiction space opera by @meganeokeefe.bsky.social: Couldn't put it down, and I could almost hear the rousing orchestral march by the end. :)
Every time I walk past this neighborhood I think "Switch the K for a G and you've got an awesome title for an #OSR adventure module!" #Dnd #RPG
Haven't finished reading it, but my impression is that it doesn't go to the granular combat-moves detail that DW does (H&S, volley, defend, etc, plus playbooks' combat moves), is this correct? So is Grimwild's combat more summarized and less blow-by-blow than DW's?
Authors, if you see this, it’s a sign to post the first line of your book (or book-in-progress).
"Really, I should stop punching people in zero-g."
+1, buenísimo. 2300AD me parece uno de los mejores rulesets para SF realista. Suerte en la campaña!
@karjedon.bsky.social se ve genial! Con qué reglas es? Expanse RPG? Traveler? Otro?
13) Disclaimers: SF checkout patterns of Seattleites don’t prove correlation with anything. I don’t have industry insider knowledge, so don’t assume anything here makes sense. Thanks to the Seattle Public Library for making all this data open for us data geeks to play with! 🧵 ends.
12) Takeaways: Books in my genre published in 2023/24 averaged 199 checkouts/year by Seattleites. That’s ~12.6% of my baseline heavyweights', and ~4.5% of SF all-up heavyweights' (Dune). Thus, numbers skew towards well-known brands/series. And yet, the numbers also show every book has an audience!
11) Third, the adage about series sales somewhat halving between books is visible in Murderbot, as well as in The Blighted Stars+sequels, and in A Desolation Called Peace. I think this sucks, as taken together, these series tell GREAT stories! Dauntless+sequels dropped little between books, though.
10) Second, the best-performing book I read was James S.A. Corey’s The Mercy of Gods (which was released just four months ago!). I think this confirms the brand power of James S.A. Corey + The Expanse. 🚀
9) First, only one book series over performed the baseline: Martha Wells’ Murderbot. No surprise there, as that’s one cool series 😊
8) OK, I’m going to assume that people who read the space-SF books I read might be interested in reading the space-SF books I write. So, compared to my baseline, how do the SF books set in space I read fare? Here’s the data, insights follow below:
7) (Side note: In 2023/24 forty SF books were checked out more times than 1984. Really, people? Really??? 😠)
6) Here’s the top SF books chart, with my two reference points. Leviathan Wakes ranks 32, and A Memory Called Empire 46. These two modern classics’ TAM is therefore ~1400-1800 checkouts, or ~16-20% of that of a 1965 SF classic twice (thrice?) made into a movie (which is unfair to my references).
5) Thing is, though, I like SF set in space, dealing with complex, nuanced political and social issues. I’m therefore arbitrarily setting my two reference points as Leviathan Wakes and A Memory Called Empire (both of which I 💖). If Seattle’s SF TAM is 8700, what’s the TAM for my reference points?
4) What SF did Seattleites read in 2023/2024? Here’s the top ten list for Seattle Public Library checkouts. Some are duh!-obvious, some not so much. Interestingly, three are from this decade (orange). I’m assuming ~8700 checkouts (Dune) is the total addressable market (TAM) for SPL SF readers.
3) First, a general overview on formats: In 2023/24, 87% of all SF checkouts were in digital formats (ebook + audiobook). Perhaps signing physical books is on its way to not being a thing anymore?
2) Criteria: I included 1) novels (physical, ebook, audiobook; no graphic novels); 2) tagged for “Science Fiction”; 3) published between 2021-2024; 4) checked out in 2023 or 2024; 5) with no franchise tie-ins (mostly Star Wars / Star Trek books); 6) and nothing tagged “juvenile” (so adult SF only).
1) In 2022, while planning my querying strategy, I geeked out on SF novel checkouts data at the Seattle Public Library (here’s my 2022 result: www.letorres.com/post/2023-12... ). To end this year, I decided to update that report with 2023/24 data. Thread begins🧵
Oops, clarifying that the above is not a ranking; the books are in the chronological order in which I read them.
This year I read (just) 23 #SFF books! Thanks @dr-bethany-jacobs.bsky.social @meganeokeefe.bsky.social @emilytesh.net @abraham.bsky.social @richardswanauthor.bsky.social @shannonchakraborty.bsky.social @christopherpaolini.bsky.social @marthawells.com & everyone else, for the great reads! On to 2025!
Just finished These Burning Stars. Awesomely absorbing adult space SF, complex characters I wanted to both strangle and root for, a story loaded with twisty revelations in every chapter, culminating in a... sorry, won't spoil :) Ready to jump to book #2! Thank you, @dr-bethany-jacobs.bsky.social !
Today I finally finished the final draft (is there such a thing?) for A Cóndor to the Stars, my new science-fiction space drama novel that's a mix between The Expanse and Manchester by the Sea😮with a heavy dose of South American Andean culture 😮😮 Now it goes off to beta readers!
Admito que soy más fan de 13th Age que de D&D, y de acuerdo en que es cierto que es para una audiencia bien particular. A mis jugadores les encantan las jugadas locas como la del swashbuckler (que uno de mis jugadores usa todo el tiempo)...
Finished The Mercy of God's, by James S. A. Corey. Very different than the Expanse, but still an unvarnished look at the reality of humanity once we peel "civilized society" out. Couldn't avoid squirming, couldn't stop reading. Great SF! Looking forward to the sequel!
