I'm running this somewhat non-traditional workshop on the 18th, on conceptualising and putting together pitches, from the one-pager to a full pitch deck (structure, beats, characters). It's not what you usually get in creative writing classes but I personally find it immensely useful!

as i am progressing on my ever increasing, never ending giant space opera (tm) i do contemplate the idle thought of whether this would also work for an epic fantasy. perhaps i should do one epic per genre? i have an epic historical i want to write at some point

the last elf rebels' hideout in mount doom as they launch a last ditch attack on sauron's new fleet of dragon-vessels and its pinnacle, the "Death Dragon", a tale of courage, resilience and a little bit of magic, destined to spawn endless sequels

sometimes you eat the soup, sometimes the soup, it eats you

I said goodbye to the ice cream van man today. Back in spring...

There was a graffiti at the bus station that just said "balls" and I concur

Meanwhile, I'm making soup again.

I'm essentially writing a 200,000 word novel just to end it on a REALLY bad joke

time for some alan partridge

New #Shelfies alert! This week, we have @catamaroon.bsky.social on her collection of garden books! Don't forget you can subscribe for a free weekly shelfie in your inbox! Or follow along on our ever-growing Instagram account.

link in comments

Excuse me as I attempt to climb off my high horse

Anyway, I want nothing to do with it.

It basically says - your copyright means nothing unless it's our specific and narrow definition of it which has no actual legal basis. I'm amazed author unions are actually going along with this.

If this settlement goes ahead, it will be a disaster for copyright legislation for decades to come

Worst thing, the whole thing has been a giant waste of my time. The result will be a retroactive, expensive and unnecessary registration of US copyright for possible future lawsuits. What was the point of any of this?

Anthropic trained their model on my books in English, Spanish, Italian, German and Hungarian. They used pirated titles from both the UK and US, plus a whole host of short fiction to boot. None of which I am entitled to compensation for. But sure, it's a great settlement.

I have over 100 titles on the LibGen list, of which just under FIFTY individual book titles - the settlement agrees to pay me for... one of them.

how do you submit an objection to the anthropic settlement, does anyone know?

Getting spammed by a rather aggressive lady offering amazon reviews for some... anthology I'm in? She has a "silent army" of reviewers to put at my disposal, apparently. She's just "circled back" in case her previous e-mail "slipped through". Remarkable, really.

Fantastic book!

A bit late to it, but finally watching American Fiction

The news are just getting crazy

Surbiton is getting a Gail's?? HOLD THE FRONT PAGE!

Giant Space Opera (tm) update: trapped forever in the convolutions of unresolvable plots, caused by, you know, just making stuff up, and so doubling down by creating yet more tangled plot stuff which is completely irrelevant to anything anyway

My bud @pauljessup.com had a good article called "So You Want to Build a Generation Ship" a while back strangehorizons.com/wordpress/no...

I started The Republic of Memory by Mahmud El Sayed (2026), and interested in how it compares/diverges from Adam Oyebanji's Braking Day (2022). I honestly think the gen ship story is probably the hardest to pull off in science fiction.

I guess generation starship novels are like buses. You wait ages and then two come one right after the other.

No spoilers, but we've got a really cool Halloween #shelfie coming up for, well, Halloween

Jared (being a giant nerd) is keeping track of all the books featured on SHELFIES so far

Happy book day to me! And, no doubt, to the millions of German children rushing - RUSHING! - to a bookstore as we speak to get their hands on one of these!

There are so many short stories of mine in translations I don't even know about in anthologies I'll never see. Kinda cool.

blergh

giant space opera (tm) update: complete inability to figure out convoluted plotting as everyone's chasing a completely unnecessary object

New #Shelfies alert! This week, it's Richard K. Morgan on Poe, Pynchon, Lynch, Harper and Moorcock! Don't forget you can subscribe for a free weekly shelfie in your inbox! Or follow on our ever-growing Instagram.

⭐️ CE QU'ILS EN DISENT En cette fin de semaine, laissez-vous emporter par NEOM de @lavietidhar.bsky.social , un hopepunk lumineux et magnétique ! 🌹 mnemos.com/livre/neom/

Back to reading through Judge Dee...

ID CARDS? What is *wrong* with these people

Lovely book post today! New German edition of The Children's Book of the Future, out next week, and sitting next to the Hong Kong, UK and (also new) Indian paperback edition. Here's to growing that shelf!

Street magician on the south bank: "was this your card? No? Oh, sugar. That was a mistake like my brother."

Do you ever think, I should probably be writing books, not e-mails?

... and so is Wednesday...

Back reading through the Judge Dee stories tonight, with inevitable excerpts:

Fantastic review for Golgotha from the legendary Maxim Jakubowski in Crime Time! www.crimetime.co.uk/to-the-max-s...

First they came for the paracetamol, but I didn't have a headache so I said nothing...

‘You have accompanied me to many difficult situations,’ Judge Dee said. ‘And never complained. Well, you did complain, endlessly, but you followed me all the same.’

Honestly, I can't read books in goddamned PDF

Something very satisfying in seeing the Maror trilogy through to completion... It comes out in Germany next (Adama published next month I think), with Japanese and Polish editions of Maror due at some point... Did I mention there was a very short-lived TV adaptation attempt too?

I so wish the same people who made Bullet Train would make Hotel Lucky Seven next...

There's a 70% off special offer on the dramatic audiobook edition of The Bookman! I've always been very fond of this book - I still dream of a fancy hardcover edition one day for it...