As authors, so much of our success is beyond our ability to influence. Here are the things we can and can’t control.

We've removed the paywall from this guide so everyone can access it. 👇 Stay safe.

Farmed Octopus was going to be the name of my grunge band. This is censorship.

My crafty wife once "made" her own paper by putting otherwise perfectly-good paper in a blender with water and then rolling out and drying the pulp into new (admittedly interestingly) textured paper. Generative AI does the same thing with the words of writers but without the interesting texture.

EASTWARD SINGS THE WIND In a land of song-based magic, a musician forges a friendship with an enigmatic foreigner and causes him to question his secret allegiance to the tyrannical god-king who plans to invade her land. #Bluepit 📖 #YA #F #Q #DIS

Thread with all my #bluepit📖 posts 🤍

Kavi gets BFF Ryhan to be her Practice Boyfriend so she can become the perfect girlfriend to her actual bf Aaron Mirza. It’s her last shot at love & relationships—due to a Qasam—& has to be perfect if her family finds out, she’ll lose everything—inc dreams of studying Medicine in🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 #BluePit 📖 #YA #Q

THE VISCOUNT WHO LOVED ME X THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA Exiled to Lucerne by a scandal, disgraced Olivia Rooney falls for the one man she cannot love, and risks repeating the tragedy that once broke him. #BluePit📖 #W #A #NA #R

The derelict enemy warship holds valuable intel, but Revera's extraction team have their own secrets, which they’d kill to protect. And fulfilling her duty may come at the cost of reigniting a cold war, and losing both her honor and humanity's future. #BluePit📖 #A #SF #Q #BluePit #amquerying #FMC

DIE HARD x RED MARS Sol followed a girl to Mars. But when he finds out there is a conspiracy to dethrone her father, the old billionare head of MegnaCore driving the Martian colonisation, he must solve the mystery and save the new space elevator before they touch down #BluePit #BluePit 📖 #SF #A #W

A pair of interplanetary librarians become entangled in the disappearance of a powerful government official on a world ruled by oppression and censorship. #BluePit 📖 #A #SF #Q

If Andy Weir and Ali Hazelwood cowrote a novel, it would be CHEMPORTAL. In this sci-fi romcom with real chemistry, two awkward scientists living in an alternate Toronto must overcome their mutual dislike to save the world from starvation. #Q #A #SF #R #BluePit #BluePit📖

EVENT HORIZON X STAR TREK A relationship broken. A ship in distress. Horrors that shatters minds. A song that changes reality. Jett Valla and Eddie Stone stand between life and death for a million souls. But can they save each other? 03 March Release! #BluePit 📖 #A #H #SF #ND

DONKEY SKIN x DUNE Sianna is set to free her city from the grip of the greedy emperor, even if she must strike a deal with Elias, the king of a rival country. That was before she fell in love with Cyrelle, the runaway princess who fled a marriage with Elias. #BluePit 📖 #P #A #F #SF #LGBT

PlanetSide Consulting: The Possession Of Ares Murderbot x Firefly #Bluepit When terraforming stalls, you call in the consultants. The men and women of PlanetSide are guaranteed to get your planetary engineering moving again. A snarky, swashbuckling, gunslinging western-in-space 🚀 #SF #W #A #scifi

An underground lab. A dead chemist. A strange machine he tried to destroy. 🕴️ A mobster family 🔪 Everyone hates each other ⌛ A mysterious time machine 🦠 A deadly pathogen killing everyone 🚫 A claustrophobic huis-clos setting An unhinged short story free on Kobo Plus 🖤 #BluePit 📖 #P #A #T #SF

A reality dating show gives Cera hope to escape soulmateless extermination in 2 yrs until another contestant is killed by the robot host, forcing her to work alongside the irritatingly attractive Ryde for her happily ever after—and to make it out alive. #bluepit #A #SF #R #H #W #Revising #WriteHive

Dear Cera, You've been selected for LAST CHANCE MATCH, a gov't funded dating show where SQUID GAME and BLACK MIRROR meets LOVE ISLAND. Find a match + you will not be exterminated as soulmateless in 2 yrs Are you ready to find the one who's to die for? #bluepit📖 #bluepit #A #R #SF #H #W #Revising

Bayle, the butler, needs to help turn his employer's antique orbital into an academy. Nora is determined to protect her cottage from a corporate land-grab. If they put their heads together, they could solve each other's problems.🥰 Unfortunately, it may also tear them apart.💔 #BluePit 📖 #A #R #SF #W

A reality dating show gives Cera hope to escape soulmateless extermination in 2 yrs until another contestant is killed by the robot host, forcing her to work alongside the irritatingly attractive Ryde for her happily ever after—and to make it out alive. #bluepit📖 #bluepit #A #R #SF #H #W #Revising

#Bluepit Mass effect x Treasure Planet/ Master and Commander in Space 6 years after the Death of Earth and Humanity's Uplift into the Jada Empire. Elise Clarke is enlisted into the Royal Fleet. Can she overcome her trauma and prove Humanity can find a place in the Galaxy? #Q #SF #SFF

G'morning #Bluepit! For your consideration, I present to you an #Agentsguide to CAVERN CLIPPER (TREASURE PLANET x JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH x THE LAST EXILE) #Bluepit 📖 #A #SF #F #W

Hard Scifi Thriller ft. Cold War-esque espionage, humanity on the brink of extinction, and a poet-turned-sniper who just wants his lovers back. 🪼Poetry meets Particle Physics 🪼Biopunk Cosmic Horror 🪼Earth as a Myth 🪼Interstellar Life #bluepit📖 #bluepit #W #A #LGBT #ND #SF #T #ND #LGBT

✨CHILDREN OF BLOOD AND BONE X INDIANA JONES✨ This New Adult Fantasy features: 💀Multiple POVs 💀African Mythology 💀Dark Magic 💀A Deadly Quest 💀Complicated Relationships #BluePit #BluePit📖 #NA #F #OV #POC #W

#BluePit📖 #Q #A #F #R A pitch card for QUILL 🫐🪶 #litagents, if you love cozy fantasy, tender romance, explorations of grief and loss, and unique magic systems, this is the manuscript for you!

THE LIES OF LOCKE LAMORA × BEST SERVED COLD × THE BUTCHER BOY When a Court Jester snaps and brutally murders the tyrant king, he must perform and slay his way out of a kingdom in chaos, hunted by loyalists, hailed by rebels, while his sanity slips and fractures. #BluePit 📖 #A #D #F #H #W #DIS

The Tragedy of Lancelot: A teenager finds herself protected from a shadowy organization by a mysterious cyborg with connections to her estranged mother. Who is Lancelot and why is he sworn to protect Gwen? -Mysterious protector -teenager dealing with anxiety -intense action #YA #Q #R #bluepit📖

THE ADVENTURES OF AMINA AL-SIRAFI X GODKILLER After causing a magickal outburst that engulfs her home, Naomi flees aboard a pirate ship. She’s lured in with the chance at a new life, but malevolent gods and mortals seek to drag her back and use her magick for themselves. #BluePit📖 #A #F #Q #LGBT

“Humans. I’d seen them before: one or two here and there over the years, a small pack once. It was always the same: crowds silently parting to make way for a lone hunter, dock workers going out of their way to avoid a human ship’s berth. But this one wanted to talk to me.” #BluePit #Q #SF #LGBT #A

New Atlantis: Intergalactic Zoo (115K words) is a #sci-fi novel with multiple POVs that will appeal to fans of the diverse found families of The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet & The House on the Cerulean Sea. The novel features ... #BluePitHype #BluePit📖 #SF #Q #A #LGBT #ND #TR #WIPSnips (1/7)

When a secret society of curse breakers is struck by a deadly curse that drains their magic, Alice stands accused. To clear her name, she must sail south with a techno mage and a necromancer,solving ancient riddles and battling sea myths before the curse claims them all. #bluepit📖 #q #f #mg #nd

F/NB WAYFARERS x MURDERBOT Everything fell apart when the human came aboard. Instead of nice meals and quiet cargo runs, Tai's stuck with bickering crewmates, sinister criminals, explosions, and worse, a human who wants to be friends. #BluePit #BluePit📖 #SF #A #Q #R #LGBT

TENEMENT House of Leaves x The Giver Inside, the Tenement is an infinite maze of halls. Outside, there is... Nothing. When Noah Walker's mom mysteriously goes missing, he vows to learn the secrets of his strange world. Even if it means tearing the whole thing down. #Bluepit #Bluepit📖 #YA #M #D

🔥WHAT will GROW from the ASHES? A young woman's quest across ruins of former US becomes larger than saving her village from raiders. It offers humanity a way forward in a world desperately in need of change. Nature will reclaim the land🌱We create anew #CliFi #Hopepunk #BluePit #BluePit📖 #Q #A #SP

SHERLOCK HOLMES with BEES When a singer with ties to royalty vanishes, it's up to detective Arthur North to find her. As he digs, he uncovers a plot to place his people, the bee-like zizzun, in the crown's crosshairs. Can he uncover their connection before it's too late? #BluePit #BluePit📖 #W #F #M

EARTHLINGS! BODY SNATCHERS x THE RUNAWAYS When a 2nd generation alien sleeper cell is ordered to abduct her human friend, she saves her and goes rogue. Now her fellow operatives must track her down, but should they help her to sabotage the coming invasion instead? 📖 #Bluepit #W #YA #SF

16-year-old Jess, who sees people’s future corpses in their reflections, must race to change fate when her visions reveal that her only friend is about to be murdered. #bluepit📖 #bluepit #YA #M #SP #W

HOW HIGH WE GO IN THE DARK  x THE END OF MEN After a women’s plague, a farmer contemplates the end, when a woman who shouldn’t exist kills a thief on his farm. They flee reprisals across a frozen prairie & battle into the wilds where survivors plan to save humanity. At all costs. #BluePit📖 #A #SF #Q

New year, new #WipSnip:

Monthly reminder: Many people have a book in them, but it takes a special kind of freak to leave the Land of Laziness, cross the Plains of Procrastination and Insecurity Mountain, find the Blade of No One Made You Do This, and use it to cut your chest open and yank that book out.

"Sloppy?" I am not ok with this.

I resolve to make no resolutions. Inspired by Gödel.

Happy anniversary to the Endangered Species Act (1973). Rawr.

I was thinking about what gifts people used to give to readers (besides gift editions of famous poets' work and illustrated histories of wars and such), and while I was thinking about it, somebody brought a book to the counter.... (1/10)

No matter your beliefs, as most of us pause our striving to make sense of the chaos of existence this time of year, thank those still laboring today over land, sea, and air to bear our loved ones home. And may those who are alone or unhoused find some peace today.

IMPORTANT! #writing #artists #readers

Heron, white clouds, blue sky. Remembering the Everglades, 2018. I imagine they're still there, in all their glory.

Happy Quirk of Orbital Mechanics Day for those who celebrate. In my novel, calendars are meaningless, but seasons are vital to food production. Annalemmas mark the day's arrival, and the people celebrate, but know harsher (and better) days are yet to come. Stay warm. Below the equator, stay cool.