Dragging this thread up from last month because see this is legit it for some people.

No, Gothic Fantasy Idea, I don't have time for you right now. Keep your crumbling estate and magical puzzles and cats who know more than they should to yourself for a bit.

Ever relevant, this poem by Mary Oliver, especially today.

Anybody else want to join me and Cheyenne in exercise against our will three times a week? I’m starting tomorrow. For the pony. (I won’t exercise for myself, but will for a friend’s horse in solidarity. Motivation is weird like that.)

Cheyenne would like you to know that being made to do light exercise 3x/week is abuse, actually. "Look at this fleece cooler!" he says. "It makes me look like a camel when put over my saddle! Who cares if it keeps me warm on the walk to the arena? I look subpar! And then there's the actual work!"

I feel like that bumper sticker is excellent marketing for our anthology Saltwater Sorrows, edited by @rhondaparrish.bsky.social Lemme know if you agree: www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/...

Ex-debutante. Single Mother. Treasure Hunter. Solomon's Seal in audiobook, brought to life by Kristi Burns, is $12.99/€9.99 all month long for Kobo's Start a New Series sale: www.kobo.com/ca/en/audiob... Price-matched at Payhip: payhip.com/b/rgxXP As a bonus, it'll be $1.99 in eBook next week!

Yes, I only wrote 1k words today BUT I expressed my creativity in other ways and also learned stick figures are hard to draw, actually.

It is a good time to be a patron.

Nothing is more fun than writing your character's internal thoughts, where they know 100% that a certain thing is This Way, and they are 100% wrong.

Let it be so.

You have been warned about the peril. 👀

Sometimes you know you will cut a scene because it doesn't belong in the book, but you have to write it anyway. I don't make the rules.

I have paid my 4th quarter business taxes. I am now sad. Fellow humans making self-employed money in the US, your 4th quarter taxes are due by January 10th.

It’s a really really really good book — I am practically salivating for book 2

Proud to have reached the stage of my career where, like many authors before me, I market my book via my non-existent drawing skills. A Song to Wake a Thousand Sorrows, a Cartoon in 8 Parts. Buy direct: payhip.com/b/YQI6i Buy anywhere else: books2read.com/u/mdYzPW

Me going in to 2026:

Ends in a few hours!

Conservatives have nothing left to sell voters asset wise anymore. They’ve destroyed housing, ruined affordability and fucked the environment. So now they’re trying to buy off men’s votes by promising them women as free indentured servants with less rights and less protections.

Last day for the boxset sale on Kobo!

I am so tired of the "If you don't use AI you're going to be left behind!" spiel being given in every walk of life right now. The internet, drowned in dreck, is becoming unusable. Quality—already in a downward spiral from a push to release the minimum viable product—is rapidly deteriorating. 1/

Anyway here is the most successful promo I've ever done for a book. YOU DO NOT NEED AI.

My body has no idea what to do with the sheer amount of fancy cheese I have fed it in the last 36 hours. I have zero regrets.

If you need to cure your post-holiday-relatives hangover by hanging out with fictional people, Kobo's boxset sale has you covered! Skyla has curated an excellent list of starter sets, and linked to the full sale if you want to browse further.

Make a Bond movie casual. The World is Kind of Enough, I Guess

If you're a newsletter subscriber, check your inbox, in which you can find a little holiday surprise. Or, you know, you can click here, too: dl.bookfunnel.com/3kapkqfkkz I'm wary of sharing works in progress, so this is only open to my newsletter subscribers, and it will ask to verify your email.

Help some ponies out!

Cheyenne and the barn cat decided to take their friendship to a new trust level today. The cat likes to climb on my shoulders so I picked him up while I was standing next to Chey, and he clambered straight from my shoulder to the pony's back.

Impossible, here are my top five in no particular order: Katabasis by RF Kuang Silent All These Years by Skyla Dawn Cameron Hekate by Nikita Gill Thief of Night by Holly Black Wooing the Witch Queen by Stephanie Burgis

Supposed to be working on one of two things and instead wrote a 2k outline for an urban fantasy series I can't work on for at least 2 years 🤷‍♀️

What's everyone making for holiday dinner? I'm last minute deciding.

Excellent and deeply resonant for many of us in publishing right now.

I was going to get up and get more coffee, but Her Majesty Hexarus Havoc Anderson-Manus, Queen of the Household, has demanded a lap.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that an author in possession of a deadline must be in want of ten new series ideas.

I'm glad for all the people with SAD who are happy days will now get longer but I have the opposite of that where sun/daylight drains my will to live and ugh here we go again.

You totally need this book in your life, and the audiobook is excellent like I listened to that audiobook and forgot I wrote the damn book, it was that good (also my memory is shit and I forgot key events in this book, so that helps, too)

I. Love. This. Book. It healed something in me. It's gorgeously gothic and brilliantly executed and speaks to my soul.

I reread this every winter. Sooo good, go buy it.

Me, every Friday: Tomorrow I will leave for the barn EARLY and return home early with ALL the writing time. Me, every Saturday at 12: Finally heading to the barn where the Barn Time Vortex opens and time loses all meaning until I realize in a panic I need to make it home by 6 for writer's group.

I realized that in the absurdity this year has been, I hadn't posted any shorts. I wrote them, hidden away in a notebook, but I didn't share them. This one seemed like it probably applies to a lot of us right now. michellemanus.com/you-are-not-...

My friends, I say this with all the love in my heart: Right now might not be the moment for “But we should be TOLERANT and NUANCED about the plagiarism machines!” Your tolerance and “nuance” will be weaponised by the grifters and their apologists. Please respect yourselves more.

This entire thread up and down. Everything I write, I learn from. My first novel will probably never (though never say never) be ripped apart and turned into something publishable. But I think of it often. I learned so much from it, and I can go back and read paragraphs and see myself in the words.

The #1 movie when you were 10 years old is how your 2026 is going to go. Being born in the middle of the year I choose to believe I can go with the year pertaining to the latter half of my 10th year, as the alternative film was the Phantom Menace, and surely that is an atrocity not to be borne.

So much good stuff here! The Waverly Jones box set is perfect for getting your misanthropic PI fix with bonus side of craving bar food, bc Waverly's always eating it. I also just binged the entire Spirit Caller box set last week and highly recommend it if you need a good paranormal series.

Breaking my social media hiatus bc @skyladawn.ca and @kristadb1.bsky.social cyberbullied me into making a direct store. Behold its great and terrible glory: payhip.com/michellemanus In honor of me surviving the store's making, you can get 20% off your order with the code LAUNCH20 until Dec 13th.

I am going on an indefinite internet hiatus for the sake of my sanity, so I am going to drop this here for anyone looking for books. michellemanus.com/my-books/

My horse made poor decisions today, so his auntie Skyla made this adjustment to his photo. Yes, those are porcupine quills. 18 of them. He's fine. Hopefully he makes better decisions in the future.

Niken did the art for Ladies Occult Society, and is doing the interior art for the Tranquility series appendix (the "artbook" by an in-series character). She's a great person, loves her cats, and I would like her to not have to worry about vet bills right now.

One week left on my Halloween sale at payhip.com/skyladawncameron Here's some of what's featured! 🧵

What it's like in my head: