Lovely internet friends, acquiantainces: wonderful book readers, publishers, sellers and related trades, enjoy MrsRJ's Christmas card. Have a lovely holiday. (Forgive my awful photograph.)

I got a blue-footed booby plush and I keep sending pictures of him to my friends and then telling my wife that I'm sending everyone I know photos of my booby.

Just remembering the time I had a creative writing lecture during my MA that was just the lecturer explaining the plot beats of his novel for AN ENTIRE HOUR. It.... Did not sound like a good novel.

I like that mistletoe increases the odds of being kissed. More plants should offer temporary environmental status. Brawling under lingonberries. The soft yearning of a love that dare not speak its name beneath the nightshade.

Had someone ask me how I was, and when I replied that I was tired, turned around and went "Ugh, Aren't you always?" and I had to look at them, and say "Well, I do have chronic fatigue syndrome."

About that time 🕰️

Sometimes I convince myself my disability doesn't affect me that much and then I remember that working three days a week in an office (for a stretch of six weeks) significantly impacted my health for 18 months afterwards 🫥

One of the best decisions I made this year was getting a custom altar commissioned.

THE LIGHT RETURNS THE LIGHT RETURNS

*googling why does my rat have a handlebar mustache*

Happy Solstice for the homies, and curses of the Long Night for my enemies.

The snoot beast himself

The only issue with having pet rats is that wild rats, even the gross scrungly ones, start to look more and more friend-shaped

If I had been in college and generative AI could have let me turn a photo or a drawing into a Gustave Dore-style woodcut (something I really wanted to do), I would've used it in a heartbeat, and I never would have learned to define form using cross-contour lines.

i just got to take a moment to let this contributor list sink in. I'm in the same magazine as Mary Ruefle?? Jorie Graham?? MARGARET ATWOOD??? absolutely wild.

Seated Dog, Colima Mexico, ca. 100 CE

Wallace Polsom, “The Whisper of Lace Wings” (02 May 2019), paper collage, 15.9 x 20.2 cm | wallacepolsom.com/post/1845996...

important

Worth remembering every time a Murdoch paper talks about protecting women

Louise Glück for the day that is in it.

at my wedding, my mother turned to my long-time writing mentor and said "you did more to bring up Kym than I did" loool 💀💀

what really sucks is it's gonna make the award mean less and eventually meaningless, so good job sfwa, a+ work going along with all the other jerks who are hellbent on ruining their own reputations for a theft machine that kills the planet

if you're a real person and not a thieving bot, you could see if any of the books at thebraag.co appealed to you?

having to reconfigure the braag website's security settings because it was getting fucking inundated by bots doing card-testing attacks was not on my to-do list for today, but after fighting with it I think I've got it working

Heard a couple of times that we're a folklore press, which is a lovely reputation to have and completely understandable, but to clarify: our first anthology is of folklore-themed fiction, and our goal is to publish a range of speculative fiction. Our next anthologies won't be specifically folklore!

Rare photo of me and @jayhulmepoet.bsky.social hanging out together

Four could be argued to be too many but it's good to have at least a couple of extras for emergencies.

Decided to go full Hogfather for Christmas this year, and put The Death Of Rats as my tree topper.

"Tyger, tyger, burning bright..." A Staffordshire pottery figure group broadly contemporaneous with William Blake's poem. The tiger's so cute that I didn't notice at first the gruesome nature of the subject. #bookologythursday #WilliamBlack #Staffordshire #ceramics

Alright folks, I'm looking for poetry collections about cities - anyone got any suggestions?

Morning. Birds Perched on Winter Branches, Maud Earl.

I love your art actually

#TwinPeaks #CharlieBrown #Snoopy artwork by @schumisnoopy.bsky.social

A creative freelancer local to me is rebranding as a mental health guru (no qualifications) medium and pagan (?) priest. It's all very 😬😬😬

im sorry shiv but on a deep and visceral level i need all my detectives to be little freaks

chewing Piranesi's Carceri d'invenzione until what i want to say about them falls out

HARD BOILED DETECTIVE: another cruel sunrise over the city of the damned. another corpse. another widow. another cup of black coffee to drag my sorry ass back to life- *sputtering* ME: do you like it? it's an ethiopian washed process single origin DETECTIVE: ME: are you getting apricot notes

Everyone eats a little differently #pokemon #art #illustration

When 97% is 'no clear consensus', and 52% is 'the will of the people', it's time to face facts that Governments do what Governments want to do regardless of what their people actually want.

My mate Rich and I used to work in a bookshop in Croydon. He was stood behind the till when a customer asked him, "Do you keep stationery?" and he replied, "No, we move around."

Work in progress on a lich and her pet Rakshasa

A sonnet for one of my favourite beasts, originally published in Fourteen Magazine a year or two ago!

Day in Winter by Xavier Mellery (1845–1921)

Forest with decorated and illuminated Christmas trees, Willem Wenckebach, 1898.

my wife: could you get rid of the cobwebs in the corner by your altar please? me: those are my enviromental storytellling cobwebs, they indicate that corner is more esoteric than the others my wife: ...

Day 14 of #HooklandChristmasTree decoration. The ruffled fox trots the tree. There are people who doesn't believe in the ruffled foxes of Hookland and their showing Christmas Eve mercy to all the chickens of the farm. A pox upon them and all those with weak imaginations.

When my grandmother was 9 years old, she and her family lived in Texas and they were extremely poor. She lived with her mother and stepfather and three sisters. My great-grandmother made all their clothes, and they scrimped on everything so that they had enough to eat.