Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Ruin Okay, diving into a sequel of an award-winner not having read the former is a recipe for disorientation and disappointment, but I hated this book so much I almost didn't bother finishing it. The enlightenment provided at the end does make it all worthwhile […]

#scribesandmakers March 20: Self-promotion day! https://khleedril.org/spark

🆕 blog! “Angels and Daemons” A few weeks ago, I was clearing out some ancient backup CDs and floppy disks from my attic when I made a curious discovery. Pressed between a copy of Windows ME and a box-fresh copy of the original Duke Nukem Forever, I found a scratched and decaying Compact Flash […]

Some words about the thought process that went into the development of Broken Spark, Chapter 9: on the nature of ship computer interfaces in the far future. Review of Dr Who, Blakes Seven, Star Trek, Knight Rider, the books of Iain M. Banks […]

Broken Spark, Chapter 10 is now available to read at https://khleedril.org/spark, along with an audio reading for the benefit of blind people. The crew of Spartacus' Ark are forced through awful circumstances to take ultra-drastic action to save their ship; their morale hits the lowest point […]

Broken Spark, Chapter 9 is now available to read or listen to at https:// khleedril.org/spark. Much humble pie is swallowed as the crew of Spartacus' Ark realize they are dealing with a dying ship, and blaming each other is not going to help. Embarrassing situations eerily recur. #books #book […]

Broken Spark, Chapter 9 is now available to read or listen to at https:// khleedril.org/spark. Much humble pie is swallowed as the crew of Spartacus' Ark realize they are dealing with a dying ship, and blaming each other is not going to help. Embarrassing situations eerily recur. #books #book […]

Like to hear a sample of my voice? There is one at the head of every chapter at https://khleedril.org/spark I'd love to hear some feedback. @audiobooks @bookstodon #audiobook #audiobooks #audiobooknarrator #audiodrama #bookstodon #scifi #brokenspark

#wordweavers August 3: Does your world have ships, either ocean, space or whatever? What kind? Oh yes! It is one massive spaceship called Spartacus' Ark and that is what it is all about! https://khleedril.org/spark

#webauthorscafe 7/21-27: Introduce yourself and your work. If you want, add a link to where your work can be found. My work is at http://khleedril.org/spark, an in-progress sci-fi serial in which a ship and its crew are attacked at very fundamental levels. #brokenspark #webauthorscafe

Sisters of Rail, 8: Food - Heat of a Dozen Mirrors A very first-person narrative of seemingly random events, devoid of the usual lubricated chatter among the familiar family members. It puts the protagonist, Charity, in unusual territory, navigating the social codes of acquaintances of […]

#ScribesAndMakers 13. Shameless self-promotion day 2 complete novels and one in serialization. Today FREE!!! With glorious illustrations. Arisu the Girl Who Sees Ghosts: (early novel, editing is rough) https://archiveofourown.org/series/2605234 R18: My […] [Original post on sakurajima.moe]

#scribesandmakers May13. Shameless self-promotion day. Let's boost away. https://rdmp.org/spark

Sisters of Rail, 7: Morn--Dusting the Ceiling Fans. Another day in the life of the buttery-smooth home garden family of blossoming children living at the edge of an idyllic hamlet dominated by its railway line, apprehensively waiting for the time a daughter gets an injured hand mended by some […]

Broken Spark, Chapter 8 is now available to read or listen to at https://rdmp.org/spark. The captain argues with his own self under the direction of the psychoanalysts to work out where the ship's problems really lie. #books #book @bookstodon #scifi #scifireading #brokenspark #reading #fiction

Let the Spacemen Beware, by Poul Anderson, starts as the well-worn trope of astronauts discovering a planet full of over-happy people with no fears or competitive spirit, but the sinister truth turns out to be an interesting take. A 9/10 from me. The review contains spoilers which are labelled […]

There is an unfortunate footnote at the end of the story, with the author reaching out in the hope that the reader is not feeling lonely like the character in this work of fiction. 6a/6

@NaraMoore Love of a Konbini Idol, Chapter 6, Fumihiko and Mikawa This is nice. Just a conversation between two people on a long car journey together, filling in backstories for the reader, strengthening the characters and providing solid backdrop to the story. 1/6 #konbiniidol #wordweavers […]

The Massacre of Mankind by Stephen Baxter is a true monument to The War of the Worlds, perfectly extending the story into a wider incursion by the Martians. 10/10 from me, it is a book I'm not going to forget. https://rdmp.org/dale-mellor/bookblog/?review=the-massacre-of-mankind @bookstodon […]

Broken Spark, Chapter 7 is now available to read or listen to at https://rdmp.org/spark. The senior officers are doubling-down hard on their sub-commanders under the impression that they are misbehaving and the cause of jeopardy to the ship. But there is a nasty virus going round and the […]

Sisters of Rail, Chapter 6: Boon — Insolently Casual Gait. Chapter six directly continues its predecessor with intensely clever writing: a discourse so constructed as to build tension and drip-feed the secrets connivingly hidden underneath the previous two installments. A change of pace […]

@Ratchman The Void; S01E02 Who the Hell is Buck Rogers? The title sets the tone for this work--and it does not have anything to do with Buck Rogers. It is a description of a day in the life of a man brought out of a 2,000 year stasis, from the present time it would seem. 1/5 @bookstodon […]

#dailyhandwriting 16. Drill for consistency: write the pangram “When zombies arrive, quickly fax Judge Pat.” 5 times.

I've decided that the accumulation of reviews of on-line serializations I've done for Mastodon now constitutes a sufficient body of work that it deserves its own web site. Also, posterity, just in case.... https://rdmp.org/serials #reading #readinglog #scifireading @bookstodon

#scribesandmakers 28 Shameless self-promotion day. https://rdmp.org/spark When your only course of action is to switch an intergalactic ark off and back on again, how do the symbiotically connected cargo and crew deal with that? How to be human again?

@NaraMoore Love of a Konbini Idol, Chapter 5, Fukitsu Deep, empathetic dive into a dark soul, paralleled by environmental suggestions like, ‘There was a doomed feeling about the place that went beyond the squalor. The shadows were too deep. My eyes kept being drawn to them, expecting to see […]

🆕 blog! “Revenge of the Mutant Algorithms - Universal Soldier Bin” I gently lowered my face into the autoshave. A hundred AI blades started re-sculpting my beard into this month's mandatory fashion. The snug rubber vacuum seal held tight against my skin while the microbots collected the […]

In this context I would love to share with you a talk from #FOSDEM, which I really enjoyed! "Lessons Learned from Open Sourcing the UK's Covid Contact Tracing App" by @Edent#fosdemhttps://ftp.fau.de/fosdem/2025/janson/fosdem-2025-4411-lessons-learned-open-sourcing-the-uk-s-covid-tracing-app.mp4 I […]

Sisters of Rail, Chapter 5 picks up where the interlude left off and transforms it into a critical juncture with some second-hand recounting of the succeeding events. It is an interesting way to break the structure of the work, and allows for opposing personalities to be juxtaposed and examined […]

#writerscoffeeclub 1st Feb: Shameless self-promotion. What writing project are you working on? https://rdmp.org/spark funnily enough!

Anyone going to FOSDEM next month? "The modern-day fediverse is an impressive achievement, but it also leaves many issues to be addressed. Servers can go down, content can disappear and users can lose access to their identity. Authorization mechanisms are under-specified and rich interactions […]

Broken Spark, Chapter 5 is now available to read or listen at https://rdmp.org/spark. The ailing ship, Spartacus' Ark, has made it to a service facility to deal with the ignominious problem of a software fault, but things go horribly wrong there. #books #book @bookstodon #scifi #scifireading […]

@Edent Revenge of the Mutant Algorithms: 2, The Myth of the Fall of Icarus. Alternative ending to the ridiculous story of Icarus, equally ludicrous. Icarusʼ maiden flight was successful, and he uses the new-found technology to launch an army of winged naked ladies against the gorping forces of […]

@NaraMoore Love of a Konbini Idol, Chapter 4, Konbini Suto A priest is brought, in protest, to help, but both the stricken girl (whose boss and original lover died and became a ghost) and her saviour fall ill with fever. Eventually they recover, and it turns out that romance is probably not […]

#writerscoffeeclub 6. What’s your current writing project? How’s it going? #brokenspark https://rdmp.org/spark A story about a massive space ship which is attacked, and has to fight back, at every level from viral to massive mechanics. Not only, but it was done so subversively that no one is […]

@daisy Sisters of Rail, Chapter 4. In a break away from the homestead, we get to spend an evening out with the family head and find out what his occupational patrols are about. So this chapter introduces two more (presumably) main characters into the plot, and we have a quarrelsome threesome […]

@Ratchman Today I stumbled across *The Void*, an amazing online project of prose and some contributed illustrations, clearly shooting for the television market. To be clear, there is a lot to read here: three seasons of 15 episodes each so far, the first episode, presumably typical, being some […]

Broken Spark, Chapter 4 is now up, with the Spartacus' Ark slowly going senile, and Captain Doulton losing his grip on things. The audiobook is also available. #books #book #bookstodon @bookstodon #scifi #scifireading #brokenspark https://rdmp.org/spark

@NaraMoore The mix of queer sexuality, Japanese folklore and dark mysticism is heady, and the tension is ratcheting nicely even at chapter 3. https://yuribynaramoore.yoshino.garden/hanayami-shin-%e8%8a%b1%e5%ab%81%e7%a5%9e/ #konbiniidol #wordweavers #pennedpossibilities #reading #bookstodon […]

@NaraMoore The exchange is interesting mostly by the exposure of the sexuality of the protagonist: a girl who passes as a boy. 2/3

@NaraMoore Love of a Konbini Idol, Chapter 3: Hanayami-shin The plot continues to unfold in the simple first-person narrative, exposing the hero once again to the ghosts and spirits around her. In a trait now becoming established in the prose, the chapter breaks near the end to a different […]

@[email protected] @[email protected] Sisters of Rail, Chapter 3. Gentle, creamy-smooth description of an evening in the household of the large young family of a poor farmer with high morals and sweet-sour sibling banter. 1/3 #bookstodon #reading #fiction #sistersofrail #books […]