For your holiday ambiance, I've made a hypnotic yule log fireplace with ultra slow motion macro footage of flames stretching & warping like liquid as fire reacts with calcium chloride & barium. This is real fire I filmed, not CGI or AI. 10hrs, 4K, crackling sounds, no music, no ads. Happy holidays!

It's cool to be reading down an article of recent horror books going "Yes, ha ha ha YES" sickos style because they're all bangers and then stumble onto your own among them 🤩 A GAME IN YELLOW is in fantastic company here with BLACK FLAME, BAT EATER, and more 💛 bloody-disgusting.com/editorials/3...

The survey is open to non-members (I am not one) and to readers (who here is not &c.) so I encourage you to share your feelings on the matter. Don't assume that everyone already understands that AI is bad or why! I mean, people *should*, but you could say that about a lot of things.

RE: 2026

Today on the Horror blog: Becky's Best Horror 2025 raforallhorror.blogspot.com/2025/12/beck...

Did y'all think we'd forget?? That there are several active lawsuits going on that we're part of?? Because these companies stole our work!! And y'all are actively participating in and encouraging that plunder?? And you want folks to attend a seminar on using the plunder? @publisherswkly.bsky.social

Using stolen material. Stolen from writers and artists.

Darren is an old and dear friend to many writers and artists in this business, including myself. If you have the means, please consider five or ten bucks.

I'm so disappointed in @sfwa.org for this. I understand that by requiring disclosure of partial LLM-created works, as their announcement states, means SFWA's letting "nominators and the voters" make the final decision. BUT YOU'RE STILL ALLOWING SUCH WORKS ON THE NEBULA AWARDS FINAL BALLOT! 1/

HEY AUTHORS: It's the last weekend before Christmas and/or the end of Hanukkah, so people are going to be looking for last minute holiday gifts, which books are perfect for, so use this thread to tell everyone here at Bluesky about your book so they can go find it at their local bookseller. GO!

Remember how I said I have it written into my foreign-language contracts that my work has to be translated by an actual human? This shit is why. Those book translations are gonna suck. They'll save money putting out books that are going to be painful to read. That's not a great long-term strategy.

Hard no to this: French publisher Harlequin has told translators that their work will now be done by AI. They can ‘revise’ AI translations at much lower rate. It’s a subsidiary of Harper Collins so treat this as a test for rollout elsewhere

For today only, THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT: NEW TALES OF STEPHEN KING’S THE STAND is available on Kindle for just $4.99. Sale ends at midnight tonight EST. amzn.to/3Lbrzad

Guess I'll post this again

Here is my TOP READS of 2025! Featuring @adrianmgibson.bsky.social @elfordalley.bsky.social @kermichele.bsky.social @stejhoward.bsky.social @mikemollman.bsky.social @toddkeisling.com @shortwavebooks.bsky.social @jamesldulin.bsky.social #FanFiAddict fanfiaddict.com/c-j-daleys-t...

I present: Woody Guthrie’s New Year’s resolutions, January 1943.

Vitally important that we as the culture-creating underclass always throw tomatoes at these dweebs & never respect them. They won't see our comments, but establishing ubiquitous cultural canon that every ultra-rich guy is a talentless thieving loser is the first step to taxing them into oblivion.

"Hey, creatives! We know you hate AI, but what about when WE do it?" - Some C-Suite Dickhead in Corporate

I fucking loathe these smug ass art-hating self-congratulating ghouls & the system that allows them to fail upwards into unfathomable wealth on the backs of 1000s of overworked creative people whose livelihoods get passed around like trading cards every time these dillwads have a stonks circle-jerk.

You gosh-well know this article made me teary.

It's that time of year, folks! *angry synthesizer intensifies*

We do not support AI generated writing OR art here at the Tower and will accept neither as submissions. The Tower craves souls. AI is a hollow shell. It would be like feeding a dog nothing but pizza crust; sure, they might act like they want it, but it causes nothing but farts and pancreatitis...

publishers weekly pushing an AI workshop to help master Amazon's algorithms, among other horrors... is a thing. jesus. this mass delusion is going to destroy everything if there isn't enough pushback.

What Hailey said.

Gift Link: www.chicagotribune.com/2025/12/16/c...

Every writer who generates a slop image for their work is a class traitor. "I can't afford a visual artist" So your solution is stabbing artists in the back? Stealing from them? Furthermore, slop-generated imagery suggests slop-generated writing. That's how you're presenting yourself.

Do Your Part t-shirt is $20 at The Yetee (today only) buff.ly/MPV1yjz #ad

A character on American Gothic (1995) writes a check for $50k and says, "This will pay for my son's college!" Graduate watching today: "NO IT WON'T."

Richard Chizmar is using Stephen King to print money and y'all just eat it up. Numerous authors have come forward about not being paid, not to mention the ones suffering in silence, collectors have waited over a decade for books, but that doesn't matter as long as you get your Kind fanfiction.

Once more for the people in the back.

Don't pay submissions fees folks. Don't look at it as anything special when publishers say they're "waiving" submission fees because they shouldn't exist.

When we miss the Old Internet it's not just nostalgia, it's missing a time when online culture was driven by people who were really good at written communication rather than people who really liked to be on camera and hear themselves talk.

NEW BOOK 🔵 THE SIXTH NIK 🔵 JUNE 23, 2026

To all the readers who've picked up one or two (or fifteen!) of our titles this year, to all of the bookstores who've supported our authors and titles, and to all of the authors who continue to share their work with us... I can't thank you all enough for helping to make our 2025 so special. 🖤

Merriam-Webster’s human editors have chosen ‘slop’ as the 2025 Word of the Year.

With Stranger Things finally ending this month, I guess I should get one last round of promo out of this... “★★★★★ Like a grown-up version of Stranger Things. FACE THE NIGHT is a compelling blend of small-town mystery and supernatural horror [that] succeeds brilliantly on both fronts.” –IndieReader

Got myself a lil’ Christmas prezzy, and when it comes in an all black envelope, you know it’s from @toddkeisling.com

The limited hardcover of @lairdbarron.bsky.social's NOT A SPECK OF LIGHT is going to be a thing of beauty. @toddkeisling.com and I just wrapped the interior layout. The limited hardcover features all-new art by @slimyswampghost.bsky.social, plus the artwork you'll find in the original paperback.

Writers: just a note to say it's okay to get up from the keyboard and take a little free time to rest the brain. It's okay to write for fifteen minutes a day. It's okay to write for hours too. Just give yourself the grace of time to relax. Don't bring grind culture into your art.

Report Leading Cause Of Death In U.S. Is God Needing Another Angel

Reviewing the interior layout for the limited-edition hardcover of @lairdbarron.bsky.social's NOT A SPECK OF LIGHT. We are moving forward. There are still about 30 copies left unclaimed. badhandbooks.com/preorders/no...

This morning, Disney announced a deal with OpenAI. Read more about the WGAW’s advocacy against the theft and exploitation of writers’ works by AI models: www.wga.org/contracts/kn...

When audiences decided the opinion of a critic they read regularly was not as valuable as the thumbs up and thumbs down of 150 random critics, many of whom were only published on their own personal websites. The volume of opinions dwarfed educated ones. That was the first big crack.

"I can't afford to support my favorite author right now, I—" Reviews. Reviews are free AND they are a gift to authors that can keep on giving (i.e., exposure, marketing, algo boosts, etc.) Please, give the gift of reviews to your authors this holiday season. It really can make a difference!

So Down & Out went out of business in October without paying their authors, including the great @beaujohnson44.bsky.social. Now they’re back “under new ownership”? Do what you want, but I’d encourage writers to stay away from this one.

Good writing day. Passed the 10k mark. Lots more to come.

I said it before, will say it again -- generative AI fetishizes "ideas" while sneering at effort, execution, and education. That, despite Gen-AI being built on and out of other people's effort, execution and education.

The Thing (1982, John Carpenter)

Art by @slimyswampghost.bsky.social for a new @lairdbarron.bsky.social story, "The Glow of a Moldering Star," which will appear exclusively in the limited-edition hardcover of Laird's collection NOT A SPECK OF LIGHT. 40 copies left: badhandbooks.com/preorders/no... @badhandbooks.bsky.social