Ens permeteu que presentem els primers títols de l'any? Serà només un segon. En conjunt, ens ha sortit una programació d'acord amb els temps que ens ha tocat viure. Una programació en què el conflicte i la violència són protagonistes. Són títols que no ens faran millors, però potser menys ingenus.

Writing fiction about cosmic indifference is an intellectual exercise. You shape the horror, contain it in sentences. Even when you draw from things that happened to you, there's a patina of distance. Craft as insulation.

Writers with chronic pain: how do you decide when to push through and when to stop? I made the wrong choice last Thursday. Or maybe the right one. I still don’t know.

I suspect a beta reader used AI to write their feedback. Tidy paragraphs, little compliments, no friction. Just warmth without texture. Has this happened to you? What would you do?

Writers with chronic pain: how do you decide when to push through and when to stop? I made the wrong choice last Thursday. Or maybe the right one. I still don’t know.

I had a deadline and a migraine. The pain was a 7, then an 8. I opened the pill. Three layers of packaging. Each one a question. New essay on what we trade to make the pain stop.

It’s #FridayReads time! Let’s share some books and boost all signals. Repost this & let us know what to repost for you. Angry? Here’s one about injustice, racism, and colonialism. You know, with monsters, magic, murder, grief, and ghosts. www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0316... bookshop.org/p/books/hous...

Writing prompts force you to steal from yourself differently. I don't write steampunk—my comfort zone is Catholic guilt and domestic dread. But the clockwork heist story still ended up about the thing you didn't do. Genre changes. Obsessions don't.

I need readers who'll tell me where they stopped caring. Looking for 3-5 beta readers for an 11,000-word story about grief, the I Ching, and a kidnapping that's really a confession. If you've ever wanted to see how the sausage gets made—or unmade—this is your chance.

Vaig a escriure un bluit sobre no poder escriure. La ironia no alleuja la migranya, però almenys em fa companyia.

The drums enter through the chest before the ears can name them. There’s a specific quality to Holy Week processions — not belief, exactly, but something the body remembers before the mind can object. A new flash about fathers, sons, and the distance of forty centimeters.

New flash fiction: "The Boat" A father and son stand at a Holy Week procession. Twenty years of silence between them. Forty centimeters. I've been writing about craft for weeks. I owed you a story.

Cutting in English is surgery. Cutting in your mother tongue is amputating a finger and telling yourself to grow another one. I write in English and in Catalan/Valencian. Guess which one fought back. New essay on revision, ego, and the sentences that hurt to kill.

"Here's what I learned." I know how that sounds. But I actually did cut 17,600 words from my novel in three weeks. What I learned: your ego lies. The sentences you love most are the ones your reader needs least. New essay. No framework. Just a red marker and the truth.

Third draft to current: 100K → 81.5K. I mourned every sentence I killed. But I also didn’t love most of them, so.

OK, 50% de la revisió acabada i tinc 7 dies fins al deadline. El vostre Nadal què tal?

Si no l'heu llegit, feu-ho. Ja mateix.

Here’s your morning mood, courtesy of Jakub Różalski.

Avui és eixe dia que, els que no tenim família castellana, acabem de sopar a les 10 com a tard.

100,000 words on my desk. The novel is finished. The novel is nowhere near finished. A letter about revision, algorithms, and choosing the work over the performance of the work. ausiastsel.substack.com/p/the-100000...

I've been quiet. The algorithm noticed. But silence doesn't mean abandonment. Sometimes it means you're elbow-deep in a manuscript, cutting it open like a body on an autopsy table. New letter on Substack. The patient might survive. #Booksky #HorrorWritersChat

«tornar a la prosa de Zweig fa que ens adonem de fins a quin punt avui s’ha degradat l’estàndard de la divulgació. Zweig era un autor de masses i avui és impensable un pamflet tan ben escrit i alhora tan intel·lectualment elevador.» @joanburdeus.bsky.social 🔽 www.nuvol.com/llibres/assa...

Northern Gothic: the house rejects you. Mediterranean Gothic: the house welcomes you in, offers you water, closes the door behind you.

Primer avanç de YOUNG SHERLOCK (2026) d'en Guy Ritchie. Disponible el març a Prime Video. #YoungSherlock

Fill your feed with fiendish delights aka Horror Writers, with the Horror Writers Chat Starter Pack 🖤 #amwriting #HorrorSky

New flash: "What the Pines Remember" A woman drives home through snow. The pines remember what she was carrying. This one exists in two versions — the clean one on Medium, and the one with the weight left in on Substack. Start with Substack Then compare, if you dare. #booksky #HorrorWritersChat

I write at ausiastsel.substack.com and you can find some of my works here and in Flash Phantoms. Forthcoming in Neon&Smoke and the antology Black Sheep in 2026. #HorrorWritersChat

I write at ausiastsel.substack.com and you can find some of my works here and in Flash Phantoms. Forthcoming in Neon&Smoke and the antology Black Sheep in 2026.

My sins take shape. My sins gain sight. They turn towards me. They judge me and remember me that it doesn't matter who I think I am now, it matters who I was and what I did. And it can't be erased. Even if it doesn't matter anymore, it will weight forever. #HorrorWritersChat

I'm sorry, but my characters don't often earn -or find- redemption. They may seek it, but regrets come from past actions, and they always return. #HorrorWritersChat

Regret is in their actions, their thoughts. Without regret they are -we are- not humans, but something else. Even God has regrets, he is a bastard if he doesn't. #HorrorWritersChat

I write Mediterranean Gothic. No fog, no darkness. Only Sorolla's light were is no place to hide. Regret is a core motive in my texts. Here, we are Catholic, so regret and guilt are in our DNA. #HorrorWritersChat

Revisar una novel·la és mantenir una conversa de 100.000 paraules amb el teu jo del passat. De moment porto 40.000 i encara no ens hem posat d’acord en res.

Rereading Borges. He wrote some of the weirdest fiction of the 20th century and somehow escaped the genre ghetto entirely. Not sure what that says about genre labels.

Interesting how much new horror comes from Catholic cultures—Enriquez, Bazterrica, folk horror from Spain and Latin America. Protestant horror is often about becoming damned. Catholic horror assumes you already are. Some of us never doubted the second part.

We teach kids to read, to count, to behave. We don’t teach them how to say “my brain is telling me to hurt myself” without shame. So they grow up and whisper it to machines. Because machines don’t judge. And that’s on us. open.substack.com/pub/ausiasts...

I finally got around to putting together my own eligibility post for 2025. Here's what I published this year and where you can find it! acwise.net/award-eligib...

Burned out.

Horror where the monster is outside the family: survival story. Horror where the family is the monster: tragedy. Horror where the family simply continues being a family around what they've done: unbearable. ausiastsel.substack.com/p/my-sumer-f...

First horror piece out in the world. A boy writes about his summer vacation. Dogs, heat, his grandparents' garden. He finds something. He tells you about it. He doesn't know what he's telling you. #booksky ausiastsel.substack.com/p/my-sumer-f...

HORROR SUBMISSIONS OPEN 🔥 An anthology to honour the creator of #HorrorWritersChat, Matt aka MG Mason, is in the works. Theme: CAMPFIRE HORROR FOR ADULTS Deadline: December 31st, 2025 See attached FAQ for details --- Please direct questions about this anthology to @thatwilliambeck.bsky.social

Per què no tenim res de Thomas Ligotti en valencià/català?

I have two starter packs with speculative fiction publications - magazines, podcasts, and publishers. You can follow all or some from these lists. 1. bsky.app/starter-pack... 2. bsky.app/starter-pack...

Mediterranean Gothic happens under hard light—Sorolla's light—in spaces where sacred and domestic collapse into each other. It's not fog & shadows. It's the smell of incense mixed with sweat,the weight of white fabric against sunburned skin,the kind of terror that happens while God and family watch

The strangest thing wasn't the lack of a voice. It was the lack of a listener. Flash fiction about a man who walks into a blizzard expecting God to answer. ausiastsel.substack.com/p/the-blizza...

Fréwaka being in Irish isn't a gimmick. It's load-bearing. Some horrors live in languages that were almost erased. You can't translate the weight of a grandmother's curse if the language was beaten out of schoolchildren two generations ago. The uncanny needs a mother tongue.

⏳ Arquitectura, transcendència, cultura i pertinença. 𝐀𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐚 𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐚 a l’𝐄𝐬𝐩𝐚𝐢 𝐅𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚 (Barcelona) amb la complicitat de @lavenc.bsky.social. Us hi esperem! ℹ️ Més informació 👉🏽 tuit.cat/iFl01

Eco-horror set in the Mediterranean. Also known as: August.

Acceptances and rejections arriving the same week is the short fiction equivalent of weather in the Valencian Country: everything at once, no logic, you just keep the windows open.