My number one piece of writing advice is: don’t do it if you don’t actually like writing

Oh, your plucky heroine disguised as a boy to hide her identity? Yeah, you left him unattended for 15 minutes and I told him about testosterone. Where is he now? Damn I dunno he took off like a pack of wolves was chasing him, you might have to find a new plot now.

The 1921 census required every household to identify a 'head' - assumed to be a husband - but it offered no way to record same-sex relationships. So how did women and gender non- conforming people record their lives? Often subversively, as some examples show 🧵 (1/6) #LGBTplusHM #lgbthm26

HELLO I'm so delighted to finally officially share A TRUE GENTLEMAN, the graphic novel I’ve been working on for the last few years & is very close to my heart. Inspired by a lot of real queer & trans history and my own disability, with big marsh, big ships & BIG YEARNING #books

I am feeling super energised creatively at the moment, which is really cool and great and also makes me feel VERY ANNOYING because I want to talk about the things I'm making all the time but most of my friends are employed and cannot yap with me for hours at a time

Every so often I think about editing that book I drafted last year and I remember all the little details it needs, like the fact that the two main characters are autistic in a far-future setting where language to describe neurodiversity has been lost and I'm like ah. This is so much work.

my newest novel, YOU’RE NO BETTER—a teen thriller about messy trans kids and serial killers—has an official summary! this book is a rough one, and it tackles a lot of ugliness, but I love it so much and can’t wait to share it 💕

I think it would be quite nice for me to be able to wake up in the morning and think about my plans for the day, and more broadly about my own little life, instead of immediately having to ponder the overnight actions of The Guy Over There

In November I did a lot of thinking about how I was upset that I hadn't ~done more~ in 2025 (ignore the fact that I started a new job in December 2024 and bought a house in September. Apparently this did not count as reasons to not have ~done things~). REGARDLESS, I wanted to be less disappointed!

I realise I'm just a freak, but living in a multicultural city is the best thing of all time, it's just the best possible human experience and i can not understand why anyone on earth would be like "weve got to destroy this"

If you're a writer your job is to do cartwheels wearing a silly hat with bells on for pennies while secretly believing you are harnessing the cosmic force that holds reality together. You can't actually do one or the other. It has to be both.

if they do, you can't make fun of british people for like...a week

the gay trans man dilemma is if you defend fujoslop you're a straight woman who's fetishizing gay men and if you criticize it you're a misogynist who hates women and in either case you're not allowed to have opinions about content as a queer man which definitely does not feel like misgendering

I keep waffling over 'maybe I should post something about new year' but the fact is that I didn't achieve much of what I planned to last year due to other, big and semi-unexpected life changes (have you ever moved from a flat to a house without a car or a functioning lift? Don't recommend!)

Reading really good classic books is wild because it makes me want to post things like "hey have any of y'all heard of The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin. It's really good" like yeah. It's Le Guin. But this is my second of hers ever and it's SO GOOD??

As we enter the New Year remember fear of making bad art is holding you back. Fear of people not liking your work is holding you back. Rejection is holding you back You'll make bad art, you'll have people not like your work, and you'll be rejected. Moving past it is half the job of being a creative

Love staying with my parents because when the (smart? For some reason?) TV is on it's impossible to use the internet for almost anything. Like oh I want to watch a video? 360p max. I want to scroll bluesky? Hahahaha good luck seeing those images

To me, my X-Mas!

Simply Having A wonderful

Rare footage of St Paul’s Cathedral testing its giant flamethrower

Love being a white man who's into Roman history. White men who are into Roman history are, famously, normal 🫠

Wrote a quick blog post highlighting some of my favourite books from the @specawards.bsky.social! Feat. four very good independently published fantasy books from four very different fantasy subgenres. leoastrum.wordpress.com/2025/12/13/s...

He's not, because the processing of Santa Claus's own "naughty or nice" data is necessary for the performance of a task carried out by Santa as a competent authority. (DPA 2018 s35(2))

I *think* what's happened here is that bluesky's moderation tools, including muted words, turn off if you're under their 'haven't validated your age' restriction. No more vpn-less bluesky for me 🙃

Has bluesky broken its muted words feature? I just tried to mute something THREE TIMES and it just flat out hasn't worked. When I go to my muted words menu it says I have nothing muted (I have... a lot muted) and when I added something to the list it didn't show up. Wack

It's very interesting to be in your 20s and watch some bluesky folks largely in their 30s and 40s make generalising statements about the state of your brain, understanding of the world, or what your childhood was like. I'm not going to be a reply guy. But some people are very wrong 😂

Here we go

If some guy stole my shit and made millions off it while wiping out my job prospects, and you, as my friend, bought that guy's cheap mass market replica of my shit, you and i would for obvious reasons have a problem. It being a massive company, not a guy, actually makes it even more of a problem.

I think it's more than a little fair for trans folks in the book community to be wary of readers who still love HP in 2025 and/or read HP-inspired romantasy novels.

This was my favourite while judging! An utter delight of a book that's so sincere, takes place in an obviously well-researched magic system, and is phenomenally weird. I had so much fun reading this one and the win is very well deserved.

Just made hoooopefully the final edits to a short story coming in an anthology next year! I am very excited to see the whole thing come together

Look you just have to make the cool weird shit that excites you. You must. In this world besieged by bland, scrubbed boring, computer slop, you must. Make the thing you’re embarrassed to make, the thing that feels “too much” because otherwise we get drowned in a sea of cowardly work made by a button

Lrp - my previous job was law firm house style. Things that mattered included the margins between bullet point and text, whether numbers had a . after them, breaking or non-breaking spaces in clause references...this all mattered There are several AI companies claiming to draft documents now.

i know WHY this is but that just makes it even more of a kick in the pants lmao

Man, I'm trying to write something which includes information about media adaptations for books in a fandom I'm no longer plugged into and it REALLY shows just how completely lacking media journalism is now. It's incredibly difficult for me to find sources on my own-

I have the biggest friend crush on one of my new coworkers it's so embarrassing. But I want to be her friend soooo bad. World's most blatant Zelda special interest from a Profoundly Online individual but I do not. Know how to make workplace friends

"we knew you weren't autistic and never suspected your brother had ADHD", say my parents - the man who tracked down the manufacturer of the London Tube tile dyes for his bathroom and the woman who has never been on time for anything in her entire life

Perhaps it makes me a bitter person, but it WAS satisfying to see that the guy who left the previous company I worked for to move to an AI company got laid off last month because the company hasn't been successful enough. Sure, leave your stable job of a decade to join a startup. See how that goes

Above all it’s offensive that we should deliberately try to reduce the number of *successful* asylum claims. We are still a wealthy country. We welcome a (shamefully) tiny share of the world‘s refugees. It should be an honour & pleasure to welcome people who need sanctuary. Shame on Labour. /end

I arrived at my parents' house (haven't been since June, when it was unfurnished and had no water) fifteen minutes into my mother's drama society meeting and was unceremoniously shuffled into the spare bedroom. There are SO many boxes in here holy shit

When people say that Wuthering Heights doesn't have anything to do with race or that no film has engaged with race, what they mean is that for them Romani people do not count and they also haven't been paying attention. I'm going to share a little material from a recent talk. Content note: racism 1/

With alt text.

COULD NOT AGREE MORE Also, use sources in a way other than 'I don't like this and I'm going to rip it apart.' Citation is praxis. Cite what you love, give it credit, treat it with respect. We are all part of a long tradition.

Because I moved to a new, unfurnished place, I bought + assembled a bed. But the bed was cheap. And my little brother was very late to helping me assemble it and I was very tired when putting it together Anyway like a month and a half later the bed falls apart every time I move. I hate it here

Sometimes I wonder if our many years of jokes about writers hating writing and doing anything but writing, etc, have convinced people that the writing part is the hurdle and the goal is just to have a thing in hand. But I am here to tell you: the writing is the best part. The act is the thing.

i love body modification + HRT <3

Mantra for the month is definitely 'do it tired' because what with the move and my job I don't think other settings exist and I would like to do things, actually

After hundreds of hours of reading and research, my 2025 Starter Guide to transfeminine literature is finally live! No matter your experience level, there's a book for you! 🏳️‍⚧️📚 #transbooks The list covers a vast range of genres. There are 78 handcrafted recs on this list, and I've read all but two.

There's no distinct past self, to me - that was me, they just hadn't figured some stuff about themselves out yet. "Once I transitioned" is a concept that didn't happen all at once and is still happening; there's no 'before' and 'after' that couldn't erase everything between those points, either.

A List of Things Said to Have Been Ruined by Women 🧵