Another is @thelincoln.bsky.social’s “The View from Inside: On Adding Interiority to Your Fiction.” I really appreciate their sharing their expertise, which has transformed my writing. (Ask the members of my writing group!) countercraft.substack.com/p/the-view-f...

The Republican party--including its activist judicial wing--is fundamentally an anti-democratic party whose primary goal at this point is nullifying or undermining democratic elections.

Yeah I have my MFA. Master of AI Inputting.

if i was a harper author with some weight to throw around i would be having words with my agent and my editor

Gross. (From Publishers Lunch newsletter)

He's got a hot dog costume on under those robes.

Sorry, but The Devil Wears Prada 2 is a very lazy name. Why not mix it up? How about Mammon Wears Chanel. Lucifer Loves Hermes. Beelzebub Buys Balenciaga. I don't know, just spitballing here.

Bumpin that youtu.be/ji-xlmwFFhA?...

Truly rude how every problem you solve in a novel draft creates two more problems.

Really thought this was about Haruki Murakami and thought "it's true, he's kinda icky with women characters and talks about jazz and pasta too much but some of those novels do hit"

He's still hung up on arugulagate, huh?

I always love Derek Guy's threads and agree with a lot of this, but I think this thread glosses over the fact that many people who critique the ostentatious celebrity-focused wealth porn in fashion ALSO critique this in other art forms e.g. rich people buying up paintings for their private homes.

el oh el

I know people are stupid, but you're really complaining that an Ancient Greek poem isn't adapted with modern British accents? "A striking departure from the unwritten Hollywood rule of characters in historical epics employing British accents" www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie...

In unrelated news, I’ve been ripping through audio and print books this year and just started rebuying my favorite ebooks in print. Haven’t picked up my Kindle in ages.

There is slo much AI slop in Romance on kindle it's more or less killed my reading on the app. Unless it's a real author I already know, I don't touch it.

oh cool 👍 i am sure my already-precarious industry will be unaffected by the rising mountain of slop 👍

Oof

Wow, huge congrats @danielkraus.com !!

The literal military, with the ability to throw people in jail for making statements that cast the organization in a bad light, is incapable of the level of message discipline you are saying is needed.

Thank you! 🙏⚾🕵️‍♂️🤖😱 bookshop.org/a/88357/9780...

Why is it always "Chekhov's gun" and never "Chekhov is fun"?

On making money writing (or not) and whether book reviews are too positive (or not) countercraft.substack.com/p/on-making-...

Randomly got fed some sort of “Weird Books” Instagram Reel, and was pleased to see two favorites included. @ambersparks.bsky.social & @thelincoln.bsky.social!

On making money writing (or not) and whether book reviews are too positive (or not) countercraft.substack.com/p/on-making-...

I'm shocked anyone can be shocked this is the result. Pro-AI people would be better off arguing cognitive decline is fine, a new AI future will require less intelligence, we'll compensate with other skills, etc. than pretending that offloading your thinking to machines won't degrade your thinking.

I don't know why we accept the opinions of people who exclusively work developing software as having insights into the broader world of "work." In the fields I know best (teaching/writing) when they say AI can do this, I know they're wrong. A simulation of the thing is not the thing.

"Bracing"? I think I'd use "salivating" there www.nytimes.com/2026/04/30/o...

all men aren't my brothers, some of you guys suck

The AI spam emails are so frequent that I can't even be bothered to see what emails are real or not anymore unless they are from someone I personally know.

Children's book character or 2026 menswear nerd after reading some Derek Guy threads (complimentary)?

A little frustrating how every great idea for a novel-in-progress requires rewriting all the past chapters. Thanks, brain.

And much of this is because corporations like TurboTax and H&R Block lobby the government to keep things this way so people buy their services.

Attention all of academia

It seems odd to write this and not mention Substack, newsletters, and BookTok (even if to dismiss them)

The United States now has the most government restrictions on academic freedom of any high-income country. www.chemistryworld.com/news/academi... Raw data from @vdeminstitute.bsky.social —> academic-freedom-index.net/research/Aca...

There's free shipping at Bookshop.org this weekend to celebrate Indie Bookstore Day, if you're looking for a new read bookshop.org/p/books/meta...

Natural outcome of the president openly running the country as a pro wrestling heel, using WWE style theatrics to juice ratings when he feels like people aren't paying enough attention to him

be more like uncle david

I say let's give it a try and find out

There's free shipping at Bookshop.org this weekend to celebrate Indie Bookstore Day, if you're looking for a new read bookshop.org/p/books/meta...

“fuck it, we’ll do it unalive!”

Lincoln’s is honestly one of my favorite newsletters—a seriously solid mix of craft talk and industry info, and if these things interest you and you’re not reading it, consider that perhaps you should be?

Let's hope that if The Correspondent does cause a boom in "late-in-life transformation" novels, writers over 60+ will be given more serious consideration (not just 39 year olds who are good at writing older characters).

I did a quick explainer post on BookScan vs. book scan vs. royalty statements. (Pivoting off the Lindy West discourse). Also, a little publishing gossip… countercraft.substack.com/p/why-booksc...

Remarkable: 100% of the ads in Northern Virginia heavily featured Trump to turn out voters for the redistricting referendum in the closing days, a source tells me. That's right, all of the ads were all about Trump. This backfired for him spectacularly. New piece: newrepublic.com/article/2093...

The opportunity of LLMs was to see what kinds of thought-free simulated writing they could generate and use those outputs to judge what's worth our human time. Instead, we're being drowned in bullshit writing. biblioracle.substack.com/p/bullsht-wr...

Slop is the right lens to view AI through as its main effect is to clog up every system with a vast volume of gunk. The dream of the AI companies of course is to charge us to spew slop and also charge to filter slop, with the result of everything become even more unequal and costly.

I won't link to the stupid Free Press article, but man the "conservatives try to understand a single book" challenge remains impossible huh?