First up, books I'm in. (Anthologies full of other brilliant authors as well, so hush now!) @theslabpress.bsky.social "Hiding Under the Leaves", for folk horror: payhip.com/b/HNdvM @aanpress.bsky.social "Our Dust Earth" for dying planet Sci-fi aanpress.com/aanorder.htm...

Saturday, Nov 8 #Hopepit community connect share a snippet of your creations Post a quote, image, or music you created that illustrates a light in the darkness, bringing hope Tomorrow will be the big event to share / promote WIPs, pitches, and finished/available works!

Massive congrats too to @rainewilson.bsky.social, one of coolest and best voices around, for her BFA winning The Last To Drown. Heck of an acceptance speech too! If these names are unfamiliar to you, I urge you to seek them out pronto! Fantasy and horror are blossoming like you wouldn't believe.

And here's an interesting fact. Three of the above peeps won awards over the weekend too! Massive congratulations to Ian and Cecile for your British Fantasy Award wins, and to Dan for his World Fantasy gong for the super Heartwood anthology.

Not often I find myself washing sets of dice in warm soapy water in preparation for a workshop! Very much looking forward to this afternoon at #WorldFantasyCon. See you all in Brighton!

For those of you at @worldfantasy2025.bsky.social then this is yet ANOTHER launch you should be thinking of going to. NewCon press, run by the legend Ian Whates will be launching a 3 new books at 6pm on Friday. Come meet @neilwilliamson.bsky.social @singingtotigers.bsky.social and Cécile Cristofari

New Pitch Event! #HopePit is coming up on November 9th! See the rules below and follow @hopepit.bsky.social for more information! Similar to #BluePit, it's open to other forms of media too! #WriteSky #WritingCommuntiy #AmQuerying #AmWriting #AmAgenting#Writers #GameDev #TTRPG #Comic #TTRPG

I recorded a podcast yesterday with the delightful @henrylienauthor.bsky.social! The pod lifts up hopeful climate fiction stories but it's also an extended tutorial on #solarpunk storytelling. This ep is a great addition to that conversation! Ep. 36 coming soon! brightgreenfutures.substack.com

This climate fiction romance story is so good! Meet Me Under the Molokhia A seed researcher meets a mysterious spirit in the field, leaving both with a choice about where they will call home. grist.org/climate-fict... #Fiction #Climate #Beirut #Romance #Solarpunk #ClimateFiction

On Monday I'm presenting virtually at the Adaptation Futures conference, on the 'Beyond Adaptation: Loss and Damage and Justice' panel. 8am BST / 8pm NZT. My paper is titled 'Narrating climate un/futures through Loss and Damage and Reparations'. It'll be the first time I present on this new area.

For your timeline clense, may I offer a little grey parrot absolutely chugging some mint tea. Mr Beet co-stars with helpless giggling. (Volume up)

Very happy to have been awarded Creative Scotland funding to expand a dark SF project (similar vibes to Limelight)! A multi-POV tale of lives intersecting in a dystopian city run by a nefarious corporation (think Gotham meets Panem) with dark health tech, a heist, and an assassination plot...✨👁️

Brief notes on Copenhagen, Milford Critique Week, the Mo Siewcharran Prize Ceremony, and all the things that I should've posted about earlier this year but never got around to because Life. open.substack.com/pub/singingt...

Our pick for #solarpunk (online) bookclub for October is in! We'll be reading Solarpunk Creatures! **October 23rd, 8pm ET** Subscribe to get reminders and Jitsi links! www.subscribepage.com/solarpunk_bo... @sarenaulibarri.bsky.social @singingtotigers.bsky.social @tashanmehta.bsky.social

Delighted to announce that my debut picture book "Kid Rex To The Rescue", illustrated by the fantastic Diane Ewen will be released on the 26th of March 2026 t.co/ohez7oPTcZ (£)(screenshots below)

Spent a fabulous evening yesterday with past - and new - winners of the #MoSiewcharran Prize. Congratulations to the 2025 winners! 🥂

Very much looking forward to this! 🙌

Happy to announce that I've had a story translated into another language for the first time. 'Frank Peterson Comes Home' first published by @shoreinf.bsky.social can be found in the German anthology 'Ihr Körper, das Schiff: Die besten internationalen Science-Fiction-Geschichten' by A7L Books.

Ooooof. Morning. #tea.

We have the strongest evidence yet that life once existed on Mars. NASA’s Perseverance Rover drilled into Mars’s Jezero crater and pulled up a piece of mudstone covered in markings that resemble those left behind by metabolizing microbes on Earth. buff.ly/BdWp207 #ShareGoodNewsToo

Huge congrats to Ana Sun on her short fiction collection! Just out from NewCon Press (while we are at Milford SF Writer Workshop.) 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉 @singingtotigers.bsky.social @milfordsff.bsky.social #speculativefiction #solarpunk #climatefiction #newrelease www.newconpress.co.uk/info/book.as...

I’ve been Wombled!! Thank you for reading If the Stars Are Lit and for this lovely, thoughtful review!! 😻

An absolute pleasure to help out at this MK Lit-Fest-arranged event last night in Waterstones, Milton Keynes - a talk by Professor David Wilson, whose new book A History of Modern Britain in Twenty Murders sounds like a fascinating work of social history. Can't wait to read it! #booksky

Horror folks, it's the middle of September, and the Stoker Recommended Reading List is looking extremely small. If you're a member of the HWA, go recommend something you've read that you loved! horror.org/awards/curre...

Taking a brief break from Milford Critique Week (where I'm having a fab time at the wonderful Gladstone's Library @gladlib.bsky.social) to celebrate the #bookrelease of my #solarpunk short story collection "Futures to Live By" by Newcon Press 🌻 www.newconpress.co.uk/info/book.as...

It's time again for great deals on indie author / small press queer romances: today we have 17 books on sale: www.queeromanceink.com/sales/ Join the QueeRomance Ink newsletter list, get 4 free books: www.queeromanceink.com/join-our-ema... #salessaturday #gayromance #lesbianromance

It seems some of the pre-orders have begun trickling out to people today. (I'd expected it to be next week! 🙀 Eek!) If a particular story resonates with you, I'd love to hear about it 🌻

"it fits a tech industry playbook to grow a business first and later pay a relatively small fine...for breaking the rules...Anthropic (is valued) at $183 billion." It's what I suspected: Anthropic did the maths on how many authors have registered copyright (only 500k out of the 7M titles stolen)

Very few folks have entered this, so odds of nabbing a free copy are high 😅 👀

Commentary: Cory Doctorow: Reverse Centaurs – Locus Online share.google/OlyUg71wEsQs...

If you've been wondering how this turned out, I'm doing better. We do need a lot for my care going forward. But in a horrible twist of fate, we were victims of the sudden downpour-turned-flood in Quezon City yesterday—specifically, our house's first floor. Grateful for anything you can spare.

Hard at work signing sheets at Newcon Press HQ that will be bound into the exclusive hardback copies 😊

finally, the perfect weather for reposting my story about fighting the sun in @podcastle.org podcastle.org/2025/04/08/p...

The Story Seed Library, a library of #solarpunk art and story seeds, has just released a Ukranian version yesterday and is now available in six languages storyseedlibrary.org

Looking for #solarpunk artists from whom I could purchase prints of their work.

Incredibly excited (and still a bit stunned to be honest 🙀) to announce that the collection of my #solarpunk short stories "Futures to Live By" by NewCon Press is now available for pre-order in paperback or a signed limited edition hardback: www.newconpress.co.uk/info/book.as...

Last month I released my #solarpunk ebook for some emergency hope. At last you can get your hands on the paperback. Discover Neon Riders on Barnes and Noble. #climateaction #scifi #sciencefiction #booklaunch www.barnesandnoble.com/w/neon-rider...

So thrilled the article @susankayequinn.bsky.social and I co-wrote is finally out in the world!

I've finally got my contributor copy of Bright Green Futures, which features my solarpunk piece The Doglady and the Rainstorm about a dog walker that just wants to leave the dogs under her care in their homes… and stay away from the inevitable rainstorms. 🐶🌧️☀️

12 days left to get us funded! 🚀 Help us continue printing optimistic sci-fi and fantasy: www.kickstarter.com/projects/sam... #solarpunk #scifi #fantasy #scifibooks #fantasybooks

Just read the proof of an article I co-wrote with @singingtotigers.bsky.social about #solarpunk and changing our relationship with nature for The Ecological Citizen journal! Super excited for that to come out in August!

Andrew Dana Hudson asks if these Green New Deal posters are solarpunk? What do you think? #Solarpunk #SolarpunkArt @solarshades.club

Thrilled to share the news that THE UTOPIA OF US has been shortlisted for the The International Rubery Book Award! Many congratulations to all the authors who, collectively, made this such a fantastic anthology, and huge thanks to editor Teika Marija Smits for bringing them all together!

Fantastic time at @sfsfsocial.bsky.social this afternoon - lovely people, interesting discussion, wonderful reading by @annasmithspark.bsky.social & I had fun reading from my books too. Looking forward to the next one already.

📢 It's here! The Strange Horizons Fund Drive 2026 has begun! 📢 Help us raise the $20,000 we need to fund our fiction, poetry, and non-fiction for next year! Beyond that are our stretch goals including some compelling special issues! Donate at the link ⬇️

Ok SCIENCE as to why I was smitten by these gorgeous botanical illustrations &had to use them for the cover of this #solarpunk collection! @renanbernardo.com @sarenaulibarri.bsky.social @tkrex.bsky.social @brightflame.bsky.social @daniellearostegui.bsky.social @singingtotigers.bsky.social

National Climate League Report (Canada) The authors reviewed the climate plans and policies of 53 municipalities across Canada to gather information to answer a set of questions relating to 23 policy indicators.

And we are live on KS - www.kickstarter.com/projects/526... - The “Mmeory” anthology is launched with a theme of memory manipulation - magic spells, cyborg memory edits, very unreliable narrators, time travel gone wrong. Help us bring this book to life. #sff #fantasy #book #ks #booksky

Ahhh I'm a Shirley Jackson Award Nominee! Can't quite believe it, but such an honour to see The Girl with Barnacles for Eyes in amazing company - thank you @tenebrouspress.bsky.social & @alexebenstein.bsky.social for first believing in this weird tale! 🖤✨️ www.shirleyjacksonawards.org/2025/06/09/t...

🌸💀✨️ Issue 7 is out now! ✨️💀🌸 12 stories ready to break your heart, make you wince, fill you with bittersweet longing, or just make you kind of uneasy. You will feel things. inner-worlds.ghost.io/issue-seven-... #SFF #Horror #SpecFic #Fantasy #ScienceFiction #SpeculativeFiction #FlashFiction