With all the traveling I've been doing this month, I've been lax in my marketing responsibilities and, as a result, we're down 13 over this time last month. So here I am, taking a very jet-lagged moment to remind you that each subscription makes a difference: clarkesworldmagazine.com/subscribe/

…is this a good time to mention that i wrote ‘MALO MALO MALO MALO’ this year, which was in The Dark and some people quite liked? www.thedarkmagazine.com/malo-malo-ma...

this is exactly the sort of evening i should be writing in. and yet

It’s looking like September (which has contained two weeks of illness) is going to be my first miss of 2025. Oh well. Sometimes you don’t get it done. Which is also okay.

In sentences I never expected to type: my @clarkesworldmagazine.com story ‘Numismatic Archetypes in the Year of Five Regents’ has received an award from the Numismatic Literary Guild at the World’s Fair of Money. Full details here: nlgonline.org/news/numisma...

ooh! now that is an exciting email in my inbox. that’s very nice.

“Four People I Need You to Kill Before the Dance Begins” by @louisinglishall.bsky.social may sound like it’ll be a typical revenge fantasy, but the worldbuilding, anti-colonial themes, and fascinating non-human leads make it stand out from the crowd clarkesworldmagazine.com/hall_09_25

My story ‘The Eighth Pyramid’ reviewed, amongst a really strong line-up in June’s Clarkesworld!

Your Daily Dose of #Empathy (myreadinglife.com/2025/09/19/f...) Four People I Need You to Kill Before the Dance Begins by @louisinglishall.bsky.social (clarkesworldmagazine.com/hall_09_25) The format here is of a narrator telling you a story. So, you are the one being asked to kill four people.

My review of the June issue of @clarkesworldmagazine.com for @locusmag.bsky.social is now available to read online! locusmag.com/review/clark...

SFF writers! What writer outside your genre was a big influence on your work?

it’s been two weeks today since my newest story came out, and I’m still not over it: clarkesworldmagazine.com/hall_09_25/

this is so so good please read it

and now due to clerical error* i begin a seven hour stay at London Stansted airport. does anyone have any recommendations for London Stansted airport apart from not being there *the flights i deliberately booked

The Amphora of Great Intelligence (AGI) #webcomic #krita #miniFantasyTheater

My story ‘Four People I Need You to Kill Before the Dance Begins’ is out now in @clarkesworldmagazine.com! You can read it online right here: clarkesworldmagazine.com/hall_09_25/ It’s about ballerinas, and thread, and a palace called Winter’s End.

I don’t really have Instagram but this morning someone sent me a link to an illustration project based on my first Clarkesworld story ‘Fishing the Intergalactic Stream’ and it absolutely floored me. I’m in disbelief still. Someone made art inspired by my art. My brain cannot adjust to this

Very glad to hear that people have been enjoying my newest story at Clarkesworld! It’s available now for free - although if you can subscribe, you’d be helping a great team there continue to do great work. clarkesworldmagazine.com/hall_09_25/

My story ‘Four People I Need You to Kill Before the Dance Begins’ is out now in @clarkesworldmagazine.com! You can read it online right here: clarkesworldmagazine.com/hall_09_25/ It’s about ballerinas, and thread, and a palace called Winter’s End.

The September issue of Clarkesworld features fiction by Claire Jia-Wen, Sheri Singerling, Louis Inglis Hall, Alexander Jablokov, David McGillveray, Koji A. Dae, and Robert Falco. Online now at: clarkesworldmagazine.com/issue_228 Subscribe at: clarkesworldmagazine.com/subscribe/

It’s September 1 which means it’s time - for the second year in a row - to make Emily Dickinson’s black cake, as per her original recipe. This article unpacks the history of it best, both on a personal and societal level: www.atlasobscura.com/articles/emi...

By the way, this was only possible because a Clarkesworld reader and coin expert was kind enough to reach out and suggest the opportunity (and actually to physically send off the application for me). People are amazing. People who read short fiction doubly so.

We are now only hours away from New Story. In advance: I’m really, really sorry. But there was no other way.

In sentences I never expected to type: my @clarkesworldmagazine.com story ‘Numismatic Archetypes in the Year of Five Regents’ has received an award from the Numismatic Literary Guild at the World’s Fair of Money. Full details here: nlgonline.org/news/numisma...

Ooh - looks like I’ll have another reprint coming out this year…

August story complete. Next Monday we restart the clock, the fear begins again

I’m not a write every day person. Not sure I ever will be. I need time to think, and recharge. I try to write a story every month. This year I’ve kept that up (even if one is a pretty shoddy, last-minute flash). I’d like to do more - I’d like to do a lot more. But one a month is tiring as it is.

just seen an AI generated rant about one of my stories, which…is a first. please don’t subcontract disliking my work to the machines. you’ll be missing out on one of life’s true pleasures. i heartily encourage everyone to make the effort to dislike it themselves

twelve days until New Story comes out. please seek shelter and adopt the position

got some proofs today and yup; still valid

this is the ideal bedroom wall. you may not like it, but this is what peak bedroom wall performance looks like.

We’ve been going through a lot of old family letters - a lot of them addressed to a mysterious ‘Caesar’. One - otherwise a fairly mild discussion of fishing in Scotland - ends with the immortal sign off: ‘Have enclosed two Kabuki characters for you and a photograph of my mother's demon doll.’

I haven’t been posting much the last few weeks but we are now just seven days away from me having something interesting to say

went for a walk, saw a weasel. what a wonderful world

I’ve been enjoying all the submission stats people have been posting lately, so thought I’d put up a few of my own: Apex: 0/9 The Dark: 1/9 Clarkesworld: 5/16 Strange Horizons: 1/3 PodCastle: 1/8 Interzone: 0/8

63. A split fingernail is scarier than a decapitation.

I’ve just had some really fun news about ‘Numismatic Archetypes’! Will be able to tell all by the end of August.

Well. That is the goriest, weirdest thing I’ve ever written. Hope that pays off.

actually quite alarming to read through this draft and see how fast I drift into iambic pentameter without conscious effort to do otherwise

experiment in pantsing update: wrote 2K building out into the void and then had a sudden realisation of how it all should work. spent today going back and adjusting and now ready to get the back half out. another triumph for ‘just write something and it will sort itself’

it does not matter how good you make your game’s block/parry system; I will not use it. My defense is “punch more.” I cannot be taught

proper special horror in checking a submission queue and finding out your story is at the top of it

So apparently, if I don't keep encouraging people to subscribe to Clarkesworld, they don't. clarkesworldmagazine.com/subscribe/ All new subscriptions go towards increasing staff pay. They deserve it, so I can't be silent.

My story ‘The Eighth Pyramid’ is out now at @clarkesworldmagazine.com! It’s available to read online here: clarkesworldmagazine.com/hall_06_25/ It’s about Meridian, the city of ziggurats, and the forbidden voices of the dead, and skipping dinner by mistake. Also, frogs.

Big recommend for the @diabolicalplots.com newsletter! Like all reasonable adults I use The Submission Grinder on an hourly basis, and I thought there were no unknown markets left I could be updated on. I was in fact wrong, and I am two submissions the wiser for it.

Sat down to plot out New Story. the more i write the more i realise there is no story here. this was not in my plan

For the release of ‘Unit Six: Intro to Manticores’, I was asked to complete a short interview about my inspiration. I did, but I told them frankly they might not want to publish the answer. They uh, agreed with me. So. Here, for the very first time. Two years on. The truth behind my inspiration.

I decided to push on with another ghost story. That became ‘founders keepers’ which came out in Trollbreath this year. But before I got to that, I wanted to write about manticores. I wanted too very badly, all of a sudden. And I did. apparitionlit.com/unit-six-int...

I’ve just realised this month is the two year anniversary of my first ever publication! I’d decided in the spring that I would write ghost stories. I then wrote one with the explicit aim of containing ‘no tension and no uncertainty’ and uniformly received feedback that this was not a good plan.

Writing is freedom, obviously. But…it’s compromise too. You’re never going to have the 35k novella ready as well as the 9k novelette, the flash piece (on a theme), the short of under 3.5K, the short that’s over 2K, a short that’s no more than 6K unless it features krakens. And that’s fine.