This set of observations is produced by my scrolling Reddit and otherwise listening to people talk about "how to write." A) there is no requirement that any of your characters has any sort of "arc" let alone a redemption. B) there is also no requirement that your fiction has a plot.

Happy New Year! May 2026 brings you fresh joys, fruitfulness, and all good things ✨🎉

tomorrow, dec 27 at 8:45am: my story Our Bones Are the Mortar, beautifully read by Sarah Niles with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, airs on BBC Radio 4 alongside Dickens, Wilde & others. tune in here 👻🎄!! www.bbc.com/audio/play/l...

So many fabulous puns in the comments!

this little story of mine in @reckoningmag.bsky.social (now narrated by @annapele.eu ) is a nice bit of uplift if you're struggling with the world right now <3

400 years ago, Jubilee Marsh was walled off from the sea. Mid-2000s, the Royal Society for the Protection Of Birds bought land and decided to ‘rewet’ the marsh. In London, the Crossrail project needed a place for dirt. Cue collaboration & a successful bird refuge buff.ly/ofngNQR #ShareGoodNewsToo

In DreamForge Anvil Issue 22, we look for connections via music, gifts, and a cup of tea. SUBSCRIBE: dreamforgemagazine.com/subsc... READ Free Online: go.dfstory.com/anvil22

Thanks to @sfwa.org for being so responsive to concerns around the Nebula Awards and LLM use. The Nebula should honor human creativity, as the revised rules now state. However, we also don't want to see writers tripped up on eligibility or hit by witch hunts over minor LLM usage like spell check. 1/

I've seen some people saying that the new SFWA rule on "AI" in the Nebulas will prevent people from being transparent about their LLM use. Newsflash: They wouldn't have been anyway. It would cost them readers. It would cost them votes. It would potentially cost them opportunities with publishers.

hello, writerly & creative friends! i've been working on an unhinged random title generator. ^-^ features: - 55+ different title structures - 6k+ words in lists! - no gen-AI = endless possibilities for chaos 👀 I hope it inspires you! (or makes you laugh!) perchance.org/sffh-title-g...

A paid writer's residency working with Nottingham Women's Centre and the Feminist Archive is open for applications. Share with anyone who might be interested. #booksky #writer #nottinghamcityofculture #nottingham #eastmidlands

Why does every day this week feel like Friday?

Britain could hit another milestone in the months ahead by running the grid for a period entirely with zero carbon power, renewables and nuclear. news.sky.com/story/n... #solarpunk #cyberpunk #solarpunkart #sciencefiction #future #community #ecopunk

my story "Our Bones are the Mortar" (originally published in @khoreo.bsky.social and then Flame Tree Press) will be read live by the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a few days. ticket and streaming details in the post! perhaps my long-standing animosity with London will finally abate

How lucky was I, to get to read “Appendix: Witness Interview Transcripts” as part of Fitzrovia Futures last night within the most amazing Fitzrovia Chapel? With thanks to @stephenoram.bsky.social and Christine Aicardi for graciously allowing me to participate! fitzroviafutures.uk

Today I learned about https://subjecttoclimate.org/ , a #climate #education website for #usa #teachers . Might be useful to some #solarpunk folks :)

Just as well #Whamageddon doesn’t begin until tomorrow, as luck would have it, we’d heard it twice in the space time of 15 minutes. #itbegins

🚀IMAGINARIUM, a festival of East & Southeast Asian speculative fiction. Hear writers, artists, creators & producers - from YA, general adult, kidlit to gaming, theatre & more - ONLINE Sunday 30/11. Available on playback! writingourlegacy.org.uk/event/imagin... #books #speculative #fantasy #solarpunk

My solarpunk novels are on the sci-fi shelves along with Dungeon Crawler Carl at We Be Book'N the cutest, coolest indie bookshop in Monroe.There are also copies of Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Winters anthologies (wonderful holiday gifts). #solarpunk #shelfies #indiebookstores #solarpunkwinters

New paper out proposing the concept of weather commons, resisting ideas of technocratic & top-down weather modification! Beautiful weather commons figure by Aoi Yoshida/AOI Landscape Design https://www.nature.com/articles/s44168-025-00302-w #weather #climate #commons #geoengineering #solarpunk

Stories that need to be read. Featuring @singingtotigers.bsky.social @liamjhogan.bsky.social @davidcleden.bsky.social @coreyjwhite.com @rickandwrite.bsky.social @rosemaxwell.bsky.social and many more. payhip.com/b/LNWd2 Paperback also available from theslab.press

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 😅 👀