don’t doomscroll. read a chapter instead.

Have been struggling recently with trying to write a political fantasy while being aware that most of the heads of the political factions (royals, priests, warlords) are too important to run around getting their hands dirty for the kind of scenes required by my plot.

How the fuck are people this stupid running countries

Seem to be waking up and saying "What the fuuuuck" more than usual these days

Criminally funny, but also I'm crying inside Norway comes for the #TechBros www.forbrukerradet.no/breakingfree vimeo.com/1168468796?f...

That argument exists because the lives of non-white people are cheap in imperial discourse. Mass death on the other side of the world has no reality outside of what space it takes up on the american tv news cycle. If it were otherwise, the old normal would have been as insupportable as the new

I started this year with an ambitious reading list and am prematurely celebrating my success in sticking to it by re-reading The Archive Undying by @emcandon.bsky.social. Not technically on the list for 2026 but I'm treating myself.

I have made peace with the typo in my post. It is not tormenting me with each repost and comment. I am not haunted by it. I can rise above the shame.

People don’t “identify as trans or queer” they ARE those things. Pronouns generally aren’t “preferred” those are just the pronouns of that person. Waffling language leads to thinking these things are optional, not factual.

Eliminating the Impossible xkcd.com/3210/

For the life of me I cannot understand people who keep insisting that "it's all in your head" will magically cause the person in front of them to stop being anxious or worried Yep, it's all in our heads. The issue is the head kiiiiiiind of controls A LOT of things we do.

from my book THINKING ABOUT THINKING, published by @abramscomicarts.bsky.social

Hello Writing Community! We are delighted to announce our Second Official Bluesky *** #MSWL Day *** February 26, 2026. 🎉🎉🎉 Agents + editors can post what they ✨wish✨ they had in their inboxes; writers can find their next best fit for querying. Learn more: manuscriptwishlist.com/2025/01/the-...

No thoughts, just royai

I talk to other writers who pushed boundaries during early oughts, mid-teens in the genre. And there's straight line from the pushing we did then to plethora of diverse books now. It may not FEEL like we did anything; monolith of same still overwhelms. But each book was a building block to next

I had an idea about a science fiction setting where two revolutionaries with vastly different methods clash, but I struggled to write it without being too heavy-handed or reminiscent of certain strands of online discourse, so I'm waiting until I am in the right frame of mind for it.

I have to admit, as a SFF writer who's accustomed to wordcount limits, I've always kind of gone "hrmf?" at fields expressing requirements in numbers of pages. Like, what does that even mean????

Age verification? We still call them Madras, Bombay, Calcutta etc.

You know, I think I need to lean into my 'brand' - or at least the brand the statue pfp crowd thinks I have. So, This week on the blog! Ancient Mercenaries were multicultural and woke! (They were multicultural, but perhaps not woke). acoup.blog/2026/02/20/c...

I lasted until 1300

you, specifically, could have prevented this

Friends, "To Kill A Language" was voted as the Best Flash Fiction in Apex Choice Awards 2025. I'm officially an award winning writer!

If you want fossil "teeth" horror shows, you want Conodonts. This somehow fit into a mouth, about 400 million years ago. It's unclear, but something very much like this thing is probably ancestral to all vertebrates--this is our great-great-...-great grandma. www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Kolkata! Happening today!

Obscure sorrows #137: when somebody voice-acts a trending thread, but they put a LOT of sauce on a line which would be much funnier if delivered deadpan.

Rakshas myths were a direct inspiration for my story "Deep in a Lightless Forest"

This was great and is 100% going to haunt me

:D

Grant Snaider @grantdraws.bsky.social

If you want to write anything good, you cannot afford to be afraid of your reader.

in the last few years, I've tried many ways at being a writer. One was treating it like this artisan garden that must be always perfect for viewing. You count every word, prune with abandon, and march forward like a soldier to their last battle.

[addressing my reflection on the filthy MacBook screen]: No! I am busy! I will not engage discourse! I stopped by here to hear some good jokes and chill in the middle of my work! my contribution to discourse will not inspire or persuade anybody! it's just noise! Worthless noise of no value! stfu!!

you should write because you love your story so much that it's all you can think about, and you should also get so pissed off at a video game that it makes you write a novel

In this month's Team Talkies, we've featured our Community and Outreach Manager, Maliha Rao, with her favourites and a writing tip! 🔮: #SouthAsian #SpeculativeFiction

Here's a comic on seeking the good life from my latest book THINKING ABOUT THINKING. Read the full comic here: open.substack.com/pub/incident...

The pet peeve no one wishes to hear is that midwestern towns have got to stop calling one stage in a field an “amphitheater.” Unless it is two theaters pushed together in a large circle in the round, sir, it is a theater.

So true

You may laugh, but the Macbeths are a much better role model for a marriage than Romeo and Juliet. They discuss their problems (killing the king of Scotland), share their hobbies (killing the king of Scotland), and resolve their conflicts (by killing the king of Scotland).

Cyberpunk #1: "Did ya hear? Jimmy got wasted on a run last night." Cyberpunk #2: "Goddamn. What got him? Corpo shred-pistol?" #1: "Nah. Forgot to re-up his grappler and it went 'ad-supported' mid-jump. Last thing he heard was a spot for Trojan condoms." #2: "Shred-pistol woulda been kinder."

In recognition of International Day of Women and Girls in Science (Feb 11), it's a great time to re-share this paper from 2010 - lots of progress and lots more room to grow. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

I wish we could renormalize being able to simply dislike a thing without having to prove your dislike is due to a massive flaw in the thing. You can just not like it. It doesn't have to be due to a pile of discourse.

Hand drawn world map with countries replaced with animals placed in their habitats Artist: Anton Thomas

In today’s @thehindu.com, my piece on the ongoing SIRs, on the problem of mass disenfranchisement, and on the Supreme Court’s failure to engage with the constitutional questions that they raise.

In a month where everything is romantic, @bookjockeyalex.bsky.social recommends an alternative. Here's 5 excellent backlist books featuring asexual characters!

The oldest known image of an owl: More than 30,000 years ago, someone skillfully scratched the figure of a long-eared owl (Asio otus) into the soft outer layer of the walls of Chauvet Cave, France. The owl is looking backward over their wings, head turned 180 degrees carnegiemnh.org/ancient-owl-...

Creating an OC who's fucked up because of their parents might seem harmless at first, but unless you're VERY careful to avoid certain topics, at some point you're going to have to think about what their parents actually did to fuck them up, and now your OC's fucked up parents are also your OCs.

Goa — today @ 5 30 PM.

making shit makes happiness

Robot character who gets blown up in every episode in a way that's initially played for laughs, but it later transpires that they're actually really bothered by it and just didn't say anything because anybody else getting blown up would have been a lot worse, so really it's better this way, right?