Hell, two of my four sisters never used their actual first names.

One solution to all this anti-PR crap would be to give them statehood along with the USVI. The real 51st state! PR has twice the population of HI yet, somehow, are treated horribly compared to HI. WY and the Dakotas plus AK combined have a smaller population.

For right wing women, 'traditional families' are the point. For right wing men, subjugating women is the point, and 'traditional families' are a tool to do that.

If anyone is selling you the opportunity to make money, *you* are how *they* make money and the 'secret' they have is convincing people like you to pay them. There will be a lot of smoke & mirrors to make it look like you have agency, but the product is your gullibility.

Yeah, being told I'm someone's favorite author, or that one of my books was what turned them into a reader... that's worth more than selling a few hundred ebooks.

Got my new proof copy of the paperback of Remembrance of Things to Come. Looks good; the pagination issues have been fixed. That means the March 1 release is now a definite "go."

This morning I woke up from a dream in which I was looking for a specific ad from an old pulp magazine (I don't remember why) and had narrowed down which mag it was in to a handful, of which the most likely candidate was a badly-damaged issue of "Strange Creatures That Burned the World."

There has NEVER BEEN AN IMMIGRATION PROBLEM IN THIS COUNTRY. There has been a racist, nationalist fear-mongering problem in this country. There has been an immigrant worker exploitation problem. But there has never been an "immigration problem."

Remember the other day when I was saluting my friend Greg Ketter, owner of Minneapolis’ DreamHaven Books? This is him the following day. Greg will never say this, so I will — now is a great time to buy books from DreamHaven. Support Americans who stand up vs. 🧊. dreamhavenbooks.com

In solidarity with today's ICE OUT OF MINNESOTA blackout, MinnMax is donating $1 to the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota for every share of this Bluesky post for the next hour.

A campground near here has a message board out by the road, and for the last few months it's said: TURN OFF THE TV GO OUTSIDE EAT HOT DOGS WITH MUSTARRRRD Okay, the first two lines are fine. "Eat hot dogs" is a bit odd. "With mustard" is weirdly specific. But why spell "mustard" with four R's?

I'm available for jury duty all week. Didn't need to go in today, but I've just been notified I need to be at the courthouse in Port Orchard tomorrow at 8:00am. It's an hour's drive to Port Orchard. What fun.

Introduce yourself with 5 concerts you've seen: Peter Paul & Mary Bob Dylan Jefferson Starship Fleetwood Mac Gin Blossoms

Just a reminder that you've never seen a Calvin & Hobbes animated movie or cartoon is because Bill Watterson didn't want to give Hobbes a voice so he could always live inside your head exactly the way you imagined him. And to this day you have no idea who he ever has voted for. But you can guess.

Hey folks of Minneapolis!! If you need a tow truck, don’t use Cedar Towing & Auction !!!! One of their tow truck drivers attempted to drive his truck through the protest of people today while proudly wearing his MAGA hat

Bluesky community! This is my official NYC mayor account. I’ll be posting updates on what’s happening at City Hall and how we’re delivering for New Yorkers. It’s great to be here.

I'm disposing of five books from the stuff in the garage -- The Genetic Code, His Share of Glory, The Sexually Fulfilled Man, Homage to Catalonia, and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. At this rate I should have the garage cleared out in, oh...about 450 years.

Hey, so it's my birthday🎂 (I'm 44!!)🎉 and instead of asking to repost my illustrations, I'll ask you to let everyone know that Side Quested Book1 is in preorder, to be launched in March! Everyone deserves to enjoy some chaotic fantasy comedy! ❤️🎶 And it's *still* free to read online! 🌟

Purely personal: I don't think there's anything left on LJ that I care about. A few years back a friend of mine died, and I realized her posts had been the only thing I was still reading on LJ, so I abandoned it -- and Dreamwidth, too, as she was the only thing that I cared about there, too.

Stopped into the green room at a science fiction convention to rest my feet, and saw Mark Hamill at the next table.

Ok, since this has come up four times in the last three days: REPUTABLE LITERARY AGENTS WILL NOT CHARGE YOU MONEY. IF A LITERARY AGENT WANTS TO CHARGE YOU FOR AN "EXPEDITED ACCESS PACKAGE" THIS IS A SCAM.

I seem to be responding to my TV watching lately by starting short stories. One was "The Magic of the Holiday", and last night I reacted to something on the finale of "The Voice" by writing the first couple of pages of "Hand Me Down," about a dead wizard's familiar. Like I needed more projects.

Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard.

I was walking around town, running errands. It's cool and rainy today, and it was misting/drizzling, so I wore my black fedora. As I was coming around a corner, a guy in a brown fedora was coming the other way. He smiled and greeted me. A total stranger. I guess we're both Brothers of the Fedora.

Squirrel Girl : *waves hi*

Well, we've put up our Christmas tree. We'll probably add more ornaments later.

When we hit puberty I discovered girls. Jack discovered both girls and boys, and really, girls were just a passing phase for him. After that we drifted apart -- not just because of that, but because we were following different paths in school and had developed different interests.

After reading some of the powerful posts about World AIDS Day I find myself wanting to post my own feeble contribution. When I was four I met a kid named Jack who lived across the street from me, and who was just two months younger than me. We quickly became best friends.

Also, though... people spend way too much time worrying about 'their style'. Your 'style' is what comes out when you get out of your own way and just draw with the tools that you're comfortable with.

I moved a list of 503 subscribers to my newsletter from Substack to Beehiiv, which sent my latest newsletter to 487 of them. I don't know what happened to the other 16 addresses. If one of them was yours and you didn't get the Misenchanted Newsletter #194, let me know.

Every $1 invested in SNAP generates $1.80 in economic activity. It’s not about the money, Trump just wants Americans to go hungry.

A habit of mine: I come up with background details I don't need, in case they might come in handy someday. If I need a retro-punk band, it's Voltage Spike. If I need a 1920s cozy/puzzle mystery novel, it's The Chinese Cruciverbalist. If I need a high-level super-villain, it's The Threat.

If generative AI was that wonderful, they wouldn't need to force it on us, make it the default, constantly harass us to use it. No truly useful tech innovation has been forced on people this hard in my lifetime. Something new and cool is invented and people fall all over themselves to try it.

An important message to the people of New York City. More information at zohranfornyc.com/birthday

Police officers who publicly declare that they’ll quit if a mayoral candidate they dislike wins the election are (1) usually bluffing—sure buddy, toss away that paycheck and pension—and (2) exactly the sort of cops cities would be better off without, ones who don’t see themselves as public servants.

Sixty-some years ago my father picked up a second-hand rocking chair for my mother. This spring my sister passed it on to me. We stripped and repainted it, got new foam for the entirely-trashed seat, and on June 18 we ordered fabric for a new seat cover. The fabric arrived today. Finally.

Augh. I just realized that I don't actually have the right yet to reprint one of the stories in Remembrance of Things to Come. I will in a few months. So I'm going to withdraw the book from sale until March 1, 2026, when the rights will be mine again.

It varies, yes. But options can be renewed. I had a story optioned for eighteen months, renewed for another eighteen, and another, and that was all the contract allowed for; to renew again they would need a contract amendment.

My new short story collection, Remembrance of Things to Come, is scheduled for release October 3rd, both ebook and paper. The ebook is available for pre-order on Barnes & Noble and probably other places (though not Amazon yet). I'm publishing this one through Draft2Digital.

its just not defensible in 2025 for democratic candidates and officeholders not to have a clear position on asserting the equal rights of transgender americans. if you're unwilling, step aside and let a patriot take your place.

Walk this way

Looks like my new short story collection will be published October 3 -- assuming I can get my software to cooperate in getting the files ready to upload.

As I've seen it come up, no, authors don't get paid for writing blurbs for other authors. We do it (mostly) to pay it forward and to bring attention to work we think is good. Also, if an editor/publisher tried to bribe me for a blurb, that email would go up here and on my personal site SO FAST

So if one wants to produce audiobooks somewhere other than ACX, where would you recommend?

As I work through editing the stories in my new collection, I sometimes find myself admiring my own writing. It's nice to be reminded I was, at least sometimes, good at my job.

I'm listening to Taylor Swift's "reputation." Anyone who dismisses her music as mere fluff for teenage girls is not paying attention. I particularly like "Don't Blame Me."

It is the job of the Democratic party to sell and defend the policies that most Democratic voters want, not to present a candidate slate that is palatable to moderate Republicans who might switch if they hate their own candidate enough.

So I checked on which of my books were pirated in the Anthropic AI case. After weeding out duplicates and others that don't qualify, there are forty-seven.