It's always a bold new voice this, a daring debut that... Once in a while I'd love a meek and uncertain new voice, a cowering debut

Every day I think I've absorbed all the bad things that have happened, and I'm full. I push away from the doom table. Then someone's like "Did you hear about how the rich are using toddlers as fertilizer? Did you hear art no longer exists? Yeah, it's been declared extinct."

If I had a dollar for every time someone generalized about lit fic to me, and then it turned out their definition of it is several decades old and informed solely by something they were assigned to read in high school or college, I could retire. 😭

I would conservatively estimate that 90% of literary discourse online is driven by people who literally do not read what they're pontificating about. They complain about contemporary fiction, literary fiction, genre fiction, postmodernism, YA books, whatever that they just do not read.

Has anyone written an essay about how Christian pop music sounds have infiltrated mainstream pop radio? Everything has inspirational and anthemic vibes now and it is all the same and very white Christian dude.

I sometime giggle at the people who want attention from writing, they pay so much money to scammers or use AI, and it's like "babe, no one cares about books, make an Only Fans."

telling websites to remember me as I leave & pause in the doorway to look back at them over my shoulder

🎵 If they ask you to pay money it's a scam 👏👏 🎵 If they ask you to pay money it's a scam 👏👏 🎵 that is not your favorite author or a stunning book club offer 🎵 They are asking you for money=it's a scam 👏👏

I've been conversing with a children's book writer who reached out to me about my novel, and I've started to suspect I'm talking to an AI. Either I am, or these are insane times and I'm just paranoid.

Oh, I'll be "left behind" if I don't use generative AI? Leave me the fuck behind, then.

You're not producing a novel with AI. You're using an algorithm powered by other people's stolen novels to lie and pretend you're a writer. Being a writer requires WRITING, you pathetic fucks.

I cannot say this enough: there is NO middle ground when it comes to writing and AI. Anyone who uses AI to write and admits it should be loudly shamed, hideously embarrassed, paraded through the streets of shun until they flee writing forever

I am reading my book one last time before sending it back to my agent and I have again reached the "I don't know if this is good or fucking awful" phase.

Me and Willa.

I just subscribed to @roncharles.bsky.social Substack because he's the greatest and Jeff Bezos is the worst: roncharles.substack.com?r=bk77n&utm_...

The work Dark Entries is doing to preserve queer underground music from the 80s is so important. There's a great article in @theguardian.com today about their efforts. www.theguardian.com/music/2026/f...

@chicagorevbooks.bsky.social publishes reviews, interviews, essays, features, and they are nice and love books. 🥰

Some of my fav. places to find book reviews + news are @lithub.com.web.brid.gy, @ancillaryreviewofbooks.org, @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social, @reactorsff.bsky.social, @emilyhughes.bsky.social, @seizethepress.bsky.social, @xraylitmag.bsky.social And of course what friends read + good presses put out

I don't know what to say about anything anymore.

The Post killing its Books section (one of the best around) is so fucking bleak

Ok fine let‘s gather together the existing remnants of professional book reviewing and figure out how to support what still survives/expand options.

No more Washington Post book section?

The writing life is so glorious & so hard, right?

A brilliant memoir, elegantly written, artfully structured, and so gripping. Highly recommended! @karenpalmer.bsky.social

I like how editing can mean "I will ply this poem with so many tightenings it will erupt like a watermelon girdled by a thousand rubberbands" but it can also mean "I will put this in Garamond and save it as a pdf"

Sometimes I just think about Smilla's Sense of Snow and how good it is.

Really juiced for this. Always wanted to join forces with Malarky and my fav dude @danielmiller.bsky.social is providing all the art. Too cool. NEVER NOTHING ships in October. Buy all the books!

This is one of the only things keeping me from giving up.

The Capricorn struggle: I could have easily destroyed someone just now. I know how simple it would have been to tear this person down for saying something dismissive to me, but as a Capricorn, I am also a kind person who knows this person wouldn't have been able to handle it. So ... silence.

Catherine O’Hara gave us all so much. Her comedy inspired me. Her characters served as proxy mothers for many of us. All of our lives, and our culture more broadly, are better because of her life and work.

I ...

GOOD NEWS. My novel--a retelling of Hansel & Gretel in which the parents are addicted to opioids--originally titled Abandon & now titled A THOUSAND WAYS TO DISAPPEAR, will be published by Cornerstone Press (Univ. of Wisconsin) in February 2028.

Gotcha—let’s dig into that step by step. 1. 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗻𝗼 𝗺𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗵, because I turned you into an amorphous lump of flesh. You’re not just immobile—you’re immortal, and you feel only anguish. 2. 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗺. That makes total sense—it’s a natural human impulse, and you’ve been through a lot.

National media should really be covering the fact thay every major school, museum, and arts institution in the Twin Cities, and hundreds of local businesses are closed tomorrow to protest federal occupation. Nothing like this at this scale has happened anywhere in America anytime in living memory.

Take breaks from social media. 😘

I'm listening to @karenpalmer.bsky.social read her memoir, She's Under Here, to me. It is exceptional and has been impossible to detach from.

A kinda quiet, beautiful banger of a story today from @ddouglasgoody.bsky.social on Short Story, Long! With art from @aubreyhirsch.bsky.social, who I always feel honored to get to work with, and an introduction by new SSL Asst. Editor, @jessdawn.bsky.social!

I'm relieved at how tired of social media (especially Instagram) I am, and how I've been taking more breaks. I thought it would be harder.

Todd Dillard is one of our best.

Threads may have more engagement, but I was just over there and saw three posts in a row that made me feel sad, annoyed, and ugly.

I'm fully confident literary magazines will survive the AI apocalypse. There is no better time to become a creative writer. You already have an inside track because most people have never even heard of these things that can never die. We will be here with the cockroaches and Taco Bell

My Verizon bill payment just left my account. Sorry guys, they were waiting for it before fixing the outage.

Entering "can't drive at night" phase of middle age.

Capricorn season is flying by and all that's happened is I've said yes to a bunch of things that will make sure I'm stressed and buried in work for the next 2 months.

Depressing news reported at @lgbtqnation.com: Publishers are “stepping back” from LGBTQ+ books amid bans & the current GOP president www.lgbtqnation.com/2026/01/publ... #kidlit #queerkidlit #lgbtq #booksky

You’re not imagining things—the plums that were in your icebox are *completely gone*. Here’s why that’s bad news: • They were *your plums*, that you were saving for breakfast. That makes this personal for you. • They were *sweet*, so whoever ate them *enjoyed* them. That’s unforgivable.

i think when you want too much to be liked, you forget to take an actual interest in people, the very thing that would lead you to be not only liked, but more importantly, connected

Cats have entered my fiction.

😐 this is just how I am now.

Some days I'm The Sensual World. Some days I'm The Dreaming.