Child-rearing is great for hearing very eloquent, yet stark answers to universal human experiences. I.e. Do you want the light off? “No. Then I’ll see scary eyes and bodies. And scary mouths!”

Watching all this BTS Weapons stuff coming out to promote the digital and blu-ray, and Amy Madigan isn’t in any of them?! Did she have a clause in her contract to not promote the movie?! Need. More. Gladys. Lore.

Nothing like starting a new project to make you forget that videogames exist. Sorry Nier Automata, you’ll have to traumatize me some other night!

Was talking to a friend trying to figure out why we don’t like sports, and we compared them to the only “real” sport, Pro Wrestling. We figured out it came down to storytelling: wrestling tells great stories with stakes, but other sports have to “fake it”

Starting the exhausting process of querying for agents, but I just finished @melissacaruso.bsky.social’s Last Soul Among Wolves and now I’m feeling like writing a critical analysis of the interplay of American political power dynamics and the events and mythology of the Echo Archives books (halp?)

Yo why didn’t anyone tell me how good the Discworld books are?! You know, besides all the people that did…

That moment where one of your favorite hardcore bands drops an album, but you can’t get an overproduced pop hit put of your head and keep spinning that instead… 😔

Had to pause listening to @melissacaruso.bsky.social’s Last Soul Among Wolves at work because the idea of someone smacking something that looks like this (in my mind anyway) with an oar, then scolding it like a naughty dog to get it to go away was just too freaking funny 🤣🤣

Check out my horror debut, Veilrender! books2read.com/u/mvENO8 linktr.ee/oabhatti 💙📚👀📢📚😱 #HorrorAuthor #indieauthor #Booksky 📚💙 🩸📚 #horrorbooks #heavymetal

“Don’t you ever want to make bad people hurt for making the world a hard place to live?” Seems an apt quote for the time. If it strikes a chord, consider checking out my new book, Veilrender (books2read.com/u/mvENO8). #Booksky 📚💙 #writingcommunity 💙📚👀📢📚😱 #horrorsky 🩸📚 #HorrorAuthor #indieauthor

A group of amateur ghost hunters. A fundamentalist group in hiding. A long-suffering child with latent psychic abilities who summons a…ren fair pirate to help her? Sound interesting? Check out my book, Veilrender, out now! (Link in bio) 📚💙 #writingcommunity #indieauthor 💙📚👀📢📚😱 #horrorsky 🩸📚

Just dropped my first horror novel, Veilrender! Now available on Amazon (a.co/d/8AXIXZ8) and (soon) on Kobo! If you like trippy paranormal thrillers with anti-authoritarian themes, this one’s for you! #Booksky 📚💙 #writersky #writingcommunity 💙📚👀📢📚😱 #horrorsky 🩸📚

Aaand after two hours of finalizing my cover design and three straight hours of final edits, I’m ready to move onto compiling the manuscript! Now for lunch… at 3pm?! #Booksky 📚💙 #writersky #writingcommunity 💙📚👀📢📚😱 #horrorsky 🩸📚

After months away from promotion, spending my ~1 hour a day of writing time on revisions is finally going to pay off! The release of my horror novel, Veilrender is right around the corner! Just gotta do all the release things… #Booksky 📚💙 #writersky #writingcommunity 💙📚👀📢📚😱 #horrorsky 🩸📚

My hard copy of @stevewestenra.bsky.social’s TETK arrived! I figured the erstwhile hero would appreciate the shag. (Also dang these colors pop in person) #Booksky 📚💙 #horrorsky 🩸📚 #indieauthor

Oh boy, I love when I am a transfem robot in space and everything is fine! Let me just open this book...

So, I tried a personal challenge where I read and review a piece of short fiction in a day, and… I didn’t quite make it… and it was two days ago… all of which is to say that I just posted a review of @franjames.bsky.social’s Bite Radius! Go read it, it’s great! frandirekt.itch.io/bite-radius

#SFFChat Q4: Cutting this one a bit short to avoid spoilers, but I like this bit because there’s a lot going on worldbuilding-wise.

#SFFChat Q2: There’s nothing more that the titular Unlinked Prince, Kabir, would love more than to go out into the wilds and re-enlist in the Empire’s beast-control division, the Hunter Corps (their equivalent of what we’d call a military). If only he could shake those damned visions…

#SFFChat Q1: In Unlinked Prince, the world is rife with giant, aggressive beasts. If anything is to be said to “rule” the world, it’s them. As a result, sentient civilization is localized to enclaves like hidden villages/walled cities.

Intro: Hi #SFFChat! I’m O. A. Bhatti, author of the action-packed hope-punky SFF novel, The Unlinked Prince. One of my favorite “animals” is the octopus. I put that in quotes because I believe that if they had a longer lifespan, Octopi would be able to achieve feats of intelligence to rival humans’

Weird for me to do more than one post in a day, but I just posted a review for @tinylesbianrobot.itch.io’s A Quiet Universe (got it right this time) on my website and book socials (available here: linktr.ee/oabhatti). Spoiler, it was awesome, I wanna read the second, and I’m excited for the third!

Halfway through @wiswell.bsky.social’s Someone to Build a Nest In and have decided that polymorphic monsters is my new favorite genre. #Booksky 📚💙 #writersky #writingcommunity #fantasybooks

#SFFChat Q4: I feel that action scenes are great exercises in 3rd person limited PoV, so here’s a sample!

#SFFChat Q3: So, much to @staycoolmommio.bsky.social’s chagrin, I’ve only read one work by Alix E. Harrow, The Six Deaths of the Saint, which works in 2nd person POV 🧑🏾‍🍳💋

#SFFChat Q2: So far, I haven’t written anything from more than one POV, but I’m going to for my next books. I made non protag characters who I want to follow in the next books of my series’.

#SFFChat Q1: Personally, I’m 💯 3rd person. I actually rewrote large portions of both my books because I wanted to give up on the 1st person. I think I run into worldbuilding pitfalls (hard to do reliable worldbuilding w/unreliable POV). To read though?No preference: if it works it works

#SFFChat Intro: Hello! I’m O. A. Bhatti, author of the hope-punky SFF action novel, The Unlinked Prince. My advice for other writers is to just write it down, whatever it is. That’s the advice I’d give my younger self who had more time to write anyhow 😅…

#SFFChat Q4: In the vein of using parent-child relationships for the sake of characterization, here’s an excerpt where The Unlinked Prince listens in on a party for information on someone he’s investigating…

#SFFChat Q3:Two here in the same vein: the Shadowrun novel Never Deal with a Dragon and Artemis Fowl.I’d had exposure to lots of sci-fi, fantasy, and contemporary fiction as a kid, but the ways those books melded genre conventions was so formative, Idk if I’ll ever be able to write “traditional” SFF

#SFFChat Q1: I think, because of the period in my own life when I started taking writing seriously, parenthood features pretty heavily in the two works I’ve done.My protagonists thusfar haven’t been parents, but I spend a lot of time exploring the ways in which parents help build us into who we are

#SFFChat Q2: SFF is play, play is SFF. Play, like storytelling, is all about cause and effect. And in SFF you’re “playing” with the causes and effects of reality itself, creating conditions different from our world and exploring them, then relating them back to us in the ”real” world.

#SFFChat Intro: Good morning (I made it in time!)! I’m O. A. Bhatti, author of a utopian-action SFF novel, The Unlinked Prince, and an tbd horror novel. Never had an imaginary friend as a kid, but tried to “pretend” one into existence. Tbh, it was mostly so they could give me superpowers…

Just finished @tinylesbianrobot.itch.io’s A Silent universe. Review incoming (it’s great), but thought I’d share a quick preview in the form of a song it reminded me of: youtu.be/J0NT6JKg9yE?... 📚💙 #writersky #writingcommunity #indieauthor #horror #transrightsreadathon 📚🌈

#SFFChat Outro: The first five chapters of SECONDARY are on my blog. They almost make a short story - a Twilight Zone (or at least Scary Door) episode. If you like that sort of thing, the rest will be the sort of thing you like... secondary.blog/tag/secondar...

#SFFChat I'm one of many trans authors (or authors writing trans characters) whose work is in this bundle started by Ian Haramaki! It's available for just under 6 more hours, and you get 22 books! itch.io/b/2931/dark-...

#SFFChat Q4: Easy peasy: I’m most of the way through @tinylesbianrobot.itch.io’s A Quiet Universe, and am DEF gonna read the follow-up A Sea of Silence to prepare for book 3 this summer. Also honorable mention to @stevewestenra.bsky.social’s The Erstwhile Tyler Kyle, which I enjoyed last month.

#SFFChat Q3: So,The Unlinked Prince’s eldest sister is transfemme. But in keeping with my attempt to make an inclusive setting it was REALLY hard to convey that from his POV because he doesn’t really care about gender.So this is the one place it comes up that has nothing to do with gender identity 😅

#SFFChat Q2: The primary setting of The Unlinked Prince, the Stellar River Empire, stands in apart from some other nations in its world. While there are considerations for beings with intelligences beyond that of people, people are people, and that’s it. (Cont.)

#SFFChat Q1: I may be a cishet sashaying all over the place, but gender is an integral part of how I approach character work. Because my characters are real people, and real people perform, are subject to, lock themselves into, and rebel against gender & said dynamics (cont.)

#SFFChat Intro: Woah! Hectic Thursday made me forget to check in on the chat! I’m O. A. Bhatti, author of The Unlinked Prince and an upcoming horror novel (out this summer, if the time gods are kind)! My pronouns are he/him, I’m a father of two, and I will have my revenge🤩

Been enjoying @tinylesbianrobot.itch.io’s A Quiet Universe, but it took all my willpower to not slap the phone out of my kid’s hand when he tapped the moon in a Daniel Tiger game (if you tap it, it gets bigger!!😬). Everything is fine. #Booksky📚💙 #horror #indiebooks #sff #writingcommunity

#SFFChat Outro Thanks again for hosting! If anyone wanted to share my new pin I'd really appreciate it: bsky.app/profile/tiny...

#SFFChat Q4: This is from my WIP, Veilrender. Idk if it's the weirdest thing in the book, but I remember being proud of how grody it was after I'd finished writing it. Enjoy?

#SFFChat Q3: Again, so hard because I love weird stuff. Maybe Children of Dune? At some point I have to revisit that book because as existential as those books get, the middle part where Leto II's on his vision quest is heady AF. I came away understanding it, but I'm still fuzzy on the details...

#SFFChat Q2: This is a hard question because I can't write "normal." I do find I challenge myself by mashing up "formulas." Unlinked Prince, for example is a detective novel/espionage thriller/action-fantasy. Mashups are a great way to get weird with it, assuming you fully commit to each aspect.

#SFFChat Q1: In my opinion, weirdness/strangeness IS SFF. It's all about bucking convention in the name of (at the very least) creativity. This is worth keeping in mind in a world where homogeneous tropes, images, plot structures, etc, are propagated in the name of trend-chasing/profit.

#SFFChat 🤣 Diabolical idea. "Prince Kabir Al-Hazred Fatima Bashir Ammalaiyla at your service. Don't know what a 'meet-and-greet' is, but I wanted to pop in to tell you corporate bloodsuckers you're on fucking notice under the authority of the people of the Stellar River Empire. Tread lightly."

Been a while since my last post. Turns out it’s hard for my brain to commit to socials when everyone in the house is sick, and harder to get back on the #Booksky 📚💙 wagon when I committed to reading outside my comfort zone (turns out it’s comfortable for a reason). Solution? Read more dynamic books!

My review for @stevewestenra.bsky.social’s The Erstwhile Tyler Kyle is live on my website, Fable, and Storygraph! As usual, they’re available through my linktree: linktr.ee/oabhatti. #Booksky 📚💙 #writersky #writingcommunity #indieauthor #horrorbooks #horrorwriting #queerfic 🌈📚