Lisa M. Bradley

Day 9 K-cup Advent: McCafe Loaded Chocolate Chip Cookie. A very mild/weak roast for coffee drinkers who don’t actually like coffee. There’s definitely chocolate there and maybe some vanilla but it was easily overpowered by the pumpkin nut bread I ate with it.

I filled my critter feeders this weekend and it paid off: a cardinal, junco, tufted titmouse, chickadee, and nuthatch visiting this morning. And now a blue jay too. And a woodpecker.

Day 8 of Kcup Advent: Lavazza Espresso. Aroma that cuts through the morning fog, and on the sweet side. I drank it too fast to have any other notes. 😄

Take Up Your Skin--PDF edition | Poetry from a Crow Get more from Poetry from a Crow on Patreon

"...on nights like this
when the moonlight chases a road across the sea...
Shrug off the human guise
you wear. Under it, the sea still runs
close to the surface"

From the title poem of @writerjencrow.bsky.social's TAKE UP YOUR SKIN available on her Patreon, here:
www.patreon.com/posts/take-u...

Happy birthday and many happy returns of the day!

Don’t be afraid to Bartleby the Scrivener through life

Life’s too short for most of the things you’d prefer not to do

I hope your burden has lessened somewhat. Glad to see you on Bluesky!

Day 7 of K-cup advent: strawberry açaí. Sounds fun but I need coffee first thing in the morning, so I brewed another Door County, Jingle Bell Java. It smells heavenly, strong on the toasted pecans. Caramel, cinnamon, and vanilla make it quite yummy. Would drink it year round.

the jacarandas are unimpressed by your show of force our purple clouds of delight rise above your tear gas

I didn't publish a lot in 2025, but I'm proud of what I did publish. I'd especially love it if you'd consider my poem "the jacarandas are unimpressed by your show of force" (eligible for the Nebula, Hugo, and Rhysling awards). strangehorizons.com/wordpress/po...

I published 2 speculative poems in 2025!

If you're nominating for the Hugos, I'd love it if you checked out "Beyond the Standard Model," a theoretical physics poem that was in Analog last January:

web.archive.org/web/20250117...

(1/2)

Bonus Advent Coffee! I got a holiday pack of full-pot bags from Door County Coffee and Tea. I make whole pots on weekends. Today’s flavor is Mistletoe Mocha. It smells divine and tastes good with milk and sugar. Definitely can taste the chocolate and I think there’s some mint too, but not too much.

Day 6 of K-cup Advent: Caribou Blend, medium roast. This smelled good and I think it’s on the darker side of medium. I really enjoyed this with my maple creamer but its toasty flavor is good enough I’d probably drink it black, too.

A pelvis with lumbar vertebrae is stitched in thick backstitch in a white just slightly bluer than the white linen. Part of the iliac vein is outlined in grey-green stem stitch. A section on the left branch is outlined in darker grey-green split stitch with a honeycomb filling stitch stent on it. Intricate turbulence is stitched in single strand dark aquamarine backstitch within the iliac vein. Three blocks of text are stitched in dark grey. They read: Branches of the internal. A single trunk. A stem which opens. Deep. Deep. Deep. Dilated. A tributary. A portal. Lia’s initials stitched in white thread on the bottom left. 

Day 6 #ArtAdventCalendar • Another #SciArt #symptomatology #embroidery, this one about my iliac vein compression sydrome and the stent I have to repair it: deep dilation (2025).

TRANSCRIPT: Song of Spores by Bogi Takács Broken Eye Books (Tags: Science Fiction, Fungal Fiction) I love fungal horror and will give any sentient spaceship a shot, so when I read the description of this book, I was hooked right away. I loved the cranky insectoid grandma and the shy, shape-shifting trans character, but the fact that the antagonist is a clump of sentient fungal spores really set this apart for me. This is a book familiar with tropes and readers’ expectations but chooses to purposefully flip them around and see what’s underneath. Examining what, or who, counts as alive and why we need to classify everything this way is exactly the sort of mind-expanding question I want science fiction to ask. —Brianne Kane, Associate Editor/Books & Rights Manager

Am delighted that Song of Spores by @bogiperson.bsky.social is one of Scientific American’s Best Fiction of 2025!

Full list here: www.scientificamerican.com/article/scie...

And all the people (especially the women) around these sleep-deprived workers have to endure their tantrums, walk on eggshells, work even longer hours, and cover for their mistakes and mishaps.

Day 5 of K-cup Advent: Cinnabon Classic Cinnamon Roll. I love cinnamon so this was a treat! It has a light aroma but plenty of spice and made my biscotti even more enjoyable.

It’s been so hard to get back into my workout routine since the holiday. I’ve done a little every day but I feel like such a weakling.

My deepest condolences to you. This thread absolutely aches with love and admiration. I miss her too now, and I never had the pleasure of meeting her.

Day 4 Advent: A light breakfast blend. It’s a nice break from the super sweet lattes. It tastes golden, even after adding my maple almond milk creamer. I don’t usually go for a light roast but sometimes change is good.

A photo of a farm worker in a field holding a sign saying farm workers support striking Starbucks workers. #NoContractNoCoffee

Farm workers stand in solidarity with striking Starbucks workers.

Starbucks baristas have been fighting for a fair union contract for close to 4 years. Just like many farm workers, @sbworkersunited.org is fighting back against greedy union busting employers.

#NoContractNoCoffee

In the new year, please consider that your lit mag or newsletter deserves better than to rub elbows with nazis. Close your Substack and use literally any other platform. You will gain readers like me who avoid Substack no matter what great art you are producing there.

Day 3 of K-cup Advent: Horchata latte. sounds amazing but this was never going to live up to my expectations. It smells like cinnamon and vanilla, but tastes a lot like yesterday’s cereal latte. Too sweet and it uses dairy instead of rice milk. I might have to start making my own horchata for lattes

HALFWAY TO GOAL! $750 out of $1500! Please support the Giftmas effort on behalf of the Edmonton Food Bank.

Follow the link below and you can get a sweet, easy recipe perfect for a holiday potluck.

The Stranger Next Door: The Domestic Fantastic in Classic Nordic Children’s Fantasy - Uncanny Magazine The beautiful blend that can come of mingling domesticity and the fantastic is having a moment right now, as exemplified by the genre of cozy fantasy, but as we would expect, contemporary writers aren...

New essay out today in @uncannymagazine.bsky.social ! The Stranger Next Door: The Domestic Fantastic in Classic Nordic Children's Fantasy. My wheelhouse? Yeah. Definitely my wheelhouse. www.uncannymagazine.com/article/the-...

Want to help immigrant children facing deportation alone? Give to the Young Center for #GivingTuesday! ALL DONATIONS MATCHED UP TO $45K TODAY!

Last year we worked with 2,000 children in federal detention, fighting for their release to family & immigration/asylum claims. I'm gonna share how. 1/

Look at this cover art!!!!

Donate Strange Horizons is a volunteer-run not-for-profit, funded almost entirely by reader donations—so if you like what you read, here's some information about how you can help us.

On this Giving Tuesday, please consider a direct donation to Strange Horizons (or ask people to donate on your behalf as a gift!) It's tax deductible, and we're certified through Benevity if your employer does matching donations.

strangehorizons.com/wordpress/do...

Thank you for sharing your experiences.

Today’s Advent coffee is Cinnamon Toast Crunch Latte. The aroma is light, the taste a little sweeter than I like, and there’s a kind of dark aftertaste. Good to try it out in a single cup rather than buying a pack!

The header and footer at the top of the image read: “Kindle Daily Deal” and “99c today only!” In the center of the image (which has a background of lush crimson rose blossoms) is the front cover of Stephanie Burgis’s A Marriage of Undead Inconvenience, which shows an ominously closed entrance-gate at the top of the cover and a bat with its wings outspread at the bottom, all framed by climbing roses. Four arrows point at the cover with four chunks of text, reading: “Beauty and the Beast, but he’s a vampire” “She’s brilliant, and he loves it” “Tea is very important” and “She *really* loves libraries.”

For one day only, my cozy-spooky romantasy novella A Marriage of Undead Inconvenience is 99c in the US!

The @nytimes.com called it "a charmingly subversive treat." 🦇

Check it out!

www.amazon.com/Marriage-Und...

#romancelandia