Next time you're feeling ennui, pick up "a moment on the lips" by Brian Hugenbruch and remind yourself of the giddy delight that comes from devouring the world:

my latest books cartoon for @theguardian.com

New blog post: "New Story Day, and Catching Up." Whereupon the wayward author realizes he has a pile of announcements to make that he should have been doing all this time.

--this is me: I'm "and more!" My story "Camino Mundo," is buried somewhere in that nebula; it's a mash-up of hard sci-fi and western, told from the perspective of someone who's worked hard and is ready to pass the torch along. I'd have started advertising it sooner, but, y'know: work.

Sweet merciless iambs, drawing you into the gaping maw of some stellar beast… I may or may not have been hangry when I wrote this. 🤔

Serious question for @colbertlateshow.bsky.social about the new #LOTR movie: will it feature the Fox? And if so… will it be a Fox + Bill the Pony buddy comedy where they solve crimes in Bree? #badboysforlife

No need to bug me — I’ve come prepared. Image of the poem (through award season only) can be found at: the-lettersea.com/wp-content/u... (And thank you @deborahldavitt.com!)

Noticed this on FB.

And finally, on the 12th day of #12DaysOfPoetry, I offer a poem from my chapbook, Whiles Changing Lanes, which came out last year from Bottlecap Press. "Riddles of the wind" is a bleak and unsparing free verse poem (even moreso than "Homecoming" was), but sometimes we find variation in greys.

I missed the 11th day of the #12DaysOfPoetry, because Reasons. So let's make up for lost time. "Homecoming" appeared in @analogsf.bsky.social last year, and it was on their poetry page for a while. Now it's gone. Which is on-theme for the poem, honestly.

On the 10th day of #12DaysOfPoetry, I return to “wind through a long-forgotten outpost,” published by @penumbricmag.bsky.social in 2023, and demand of the world a day for when it’s neither pertinent nor applicable.

For those curious! My eligible poems are listed on my website in a few places. My personal favorites were: * “Homecoming” (Analog) * “Citation may be required” (Baubles from Bones) * “Fire in the blood” (SpecPoVerse) …and “Riddles of the wind” from my chapbook.

On the 9th day of #12DaysOfPoetry, I’m sharing my second of three favorites from 2025. @bfbzine.bsky.social picked up this blank-verse rumination on AI and the soul of art, and now I’m happy again to share it — “Citation may be required.”

Day 8 of the #12DaysOfPoetry is a new year, a new poem day, and a new issue of @kaleidotrope.bsky.social! This is “Face to face” — because why not start off the new year with eldritch SF horror?

It’s Day 7 of #12DaysOfPoetry, and the last day of a brutish year. So today’s poem acknowledges your travails (past and future). This is “Look Again,” from @kaleidotrope.bsky.social’s Winter 2023 issue.

With Day 6 of #12DaysOfPoetry, we move on to my 2025 publications! First up is the meditative tale of "Hermit of the Crossroads" in @havenspec.bsky.social, with an anchorite whose presence protects the realm: www.havenspec.com/hermit-of-th...

Day 6 of #12DaysOfPoetry coincides with New Hearing Device day for me. To that end, I offer “Worlds I Didn’t Hear,” which bowed last year at @strangehorizons.bsky.social. There’s probably a whole collection here somewhere. 🤔

I’ve just been bashed in the head by my garbage bins and a windy day. There’s a lot of blood. If this is how I go, I call dibs on regenerating into Sylvester McCoy.

For Day 5 of #12DaysOfPoetry, we exchange fire for ice! Not because I nearly broke my neck walking the dog this morning (or not *just* because of that); we also moving from free to blank verse (iambs). @sfpoetry.bsky.social's Eye to the Telescope published the crystalline "Under the Skin" in 2021:

2025 Round-Up and Awards Eligibility for #Poetry: nine (9) short poems, and one chapbook that, at 40 pages, straddles the line between chap and full-length.

For Day 4 of the #12DaysOfPoetry, I'm pulling one of my three favorites from 2025. "Fire in the Blood" 🔥 is available in Issue 1.2 of SpecPoVerse (Pages 36-37). It was written on the 10th anniversary of the passing of someone who departed far too early. Sometimes unfinished stories leave a wake. 🐉

post a perfect album from the 90's that isn't nirvana, soundgarden, pearl jam, or alice in chains

Day 3 of the #12DaysOfPoetry seems like it needs a bit of a pick-me-up, so I'm pulling out a golden shovel from 2021 that's nominally about coffee. ...or is it? If you wander over to Abyss & Apex, you'll find "That is not what I meant at all."

For Day 2 of the #12DaysOfPoetry, we move to free verse, light of touch, and a poem that presaged a lot of what I put in my chapbook. This is "droplets," from the October 2021 @penumbricmag.bsky.social:

I love @swantower.bsky.social’s idea of the #12DaysOfPoetry, so for Day 1, please enjoy a time-traveling villanelle from @havenspec.bsky.social — “For the attention of my future self” (And Happy Holidays from my present self!)

Beaming this morning because a poet I really admire, @writerjencrow.bsky.social, wrote a glowing review of ‘While Changing Lanes’ on her Patreon.

I’m sure this won’t get drowned out by Capitalism Day, but: “In All Its Infinite Variety” is live over at @hellitself.bsky.social. I still enjoy this story, even after all this time, and I’m glad it found a home!

As I always do with boycotts, I urge: be tough with corporations, gentle with individual buyers. For some people, Black Friday sales are the way they get their kids jackets that fit, shoes that hold up to the weather. Yelling at them doesn’t help the cause.

I don’t know if anyone else notices or cares, but when I see a presentation in which the speaker uses obviously generated-AI images to illustrate their slides, it makes me immediately less confident in whatever other content they’re presenting.

Happy “Mass Unsubscribe from Mailing Lists” Day to all who celebrate #nopemas

tfw you nearly hit a deer when you’re pulling into your driveway. #countryliving

I have an AMA starting now on Reddit. www.reddit.com/r/SecurityCa...

Remember folks. The original bluesky ethos by us bluesky elders (apparently I count?) is block and move on. Don't quote dunk, don't pick fights. Block, and move on. This is what made this site unpalatable to the right early on, and we can continue to make it unpalatable to them.

Welcome to October — care for a mind-bending sci-fi cocktail? I have a recipe for one in the current issue of Abyss & Apex, if so…

My advice to people, as it has been since the USENET days, is simply this: Everything that can be made public on the Internet one day will be made public. Say what you want and what you feel is necessary, and remember it will be found.

For the Monday morning crowd: my first-ever poetry chapbook is now available from Bottlecap Press! While Changing Lanes is a long commute, and bad weather, and eldritch horror, and moments where the sun finally comes out. 19 poems, 40 pages. Check it out!

Happy Friday -- I have *checks notes* 19 new poems for you today.

Reading contracts isn't the most awe-inspiring part of this work, but it is one of the most important. Please go read this thread up and down and remember that this stuff all matters, whether we're talking individual haiku or brick-sized doorstoppers.

Also: two (2) new poems available just this morning in Issue 2 of SpecPoVerse! One about a life trying to begin; the other about ideas trying to live after the end.

I'm a little late in posting this, but I had to dust and disinfect my promotional drum before I started the beat. New poem today at @bfbzine.bsky.social! "Citation may be required" is blank verse, and about A.I., but don't let either of those scare you.

There's a spider outside the bathroom window this morning, working on a web in the fog. It's an architectural marvel, and large enough to catch a bear. I don't know what they're procrastinating on doing, but it's working wonders.

What's better than one new issue of Worlds of Possibility? That would be *two* new issues. Check them out! (I'm in the one on the right, but this isn't Left Twix v. Right Twix -- they both look amazing.)

My villanelle "Lesson's End" (Samjoko, Summer 2024) is a finalist for the Rhysling Short Form category! You can find it at www.samjokomagazine.com/beyond-the-d... -- it's the one in the middle.

show me a picture on your phone that has your energy that isn’t a selfie

They're not wrong. 😇

Movie you’ve watched more than six times using gifs (“Hard mode” no Star Wars, Star Trek, or LOTR)

Dreams last night about tornadoes ripping through and narrowly missing the house. Could feel the ground shuddering and smell grass and sod falling back off the roof. But I’m not sure why Dream Me decided that “in an open doorway in the center of the house” was a good place to take cover. 🤷‍♂️

¿TRES leches? ¿En esta economía?

Share a movie scene that lives rent-free in your head.

Thank you to all the contributors in April's #Penumbric! Vekhan Sametyaza, @swpisciotta.bsky.social, @the-lettersea.com, Denny E. Marshall, Martins Deep, Janis Butler Holm, Eric Wampler, @mynachang.bsky.social ... www.penumbric.com/currentissue... #fiction #poetry #art #scifi #fantasy #horror