Country Singer, songwriter Charley Crockett well said......

Just received an email from Amazon KDP stating they've received "an infringement claim" on one of my books and to send documentation proving I hold the publishing rights... Well, I'm self-published, so that might be hard...

Frozen bamboo photo by mantaroq.

Snowstorm over Tunbridge Wells, UK - photo by Steve Baker.

Better late than never - my Christmas book haul. My TBR shelf is close to buckling.

Watched Avatar 3 on Imax 3D (gotta be) and really liked it - such a cinematic feast. But can all the people who prefer high frame rate, and those who prefer low and can't stand 48fps and wish it was kept far away from cinema (me) agree on one thing - that variable frame rate is incredibly jarring?

Bit fewer than last few years

India Muerte and the Ship of the Dead is free for Kindle today as part of the Mary Cariola Center Holiday Megasale. www.amazon.com/gp/product/B...

I make a Reddit request for sexually weird and transgressive sci-fi and get recommended this short story I've not encountered before. clarkesworldmagazine.com/johnson_10_09/ Fucked up and good.

Lol the crazy thing is, no, you’re not running out of good ideas. There are tons of great ideas everywhere. You’re just not willing to fund them because you’re all cowards.

Geez, the book spammers aren't even trying anymore. (Bonus: this email was originally in German)

Standard

Girlfriend was telling me today how she realised most people start on 40k books with Gaunt's Ghosts or Eisenhorn, but I introduced her to the books/universe with Twice Dead King: Ruin by @frogcroakley.bsky.social as her first read, with no context. It's still her favourite.

Convincing you to read my novel with the first sentence. Share yours if you want ☠️ (India Muerte and the Hunt for Black Atlantis)

Pleased to announce book 6 of my pirate fantasy series, India Muerte and the Dragonfire Pearl, is finally out! #booksky www.amazon.com/gp/product/B... Cover art by Martina Stipan.

Me putting on my publishing business hat to assure you a) if everyone did this no series would ever get past book two, b) as someone who just dropped installment seven into his long-running series a decade after book six, you may not know when a series "ends". Try to enjoy the books for themselves.

This is one of the most beautiful things I have witnessed, the craft here is impeccable.

This is called "going on holiday"

Just finished On the Road by Jack Kerouac. Did Dean Moriarty really need to sweat, giggle and rub his belly THAT often? He's a human being, not some demented hobgoblin.

"No, YKA, which refers to the sizing system used by a clothing brand, is not bigger than horses. YKA is a sizing system for clothing, specifically for the brand "YKA," and is not a biological creature. Horses are large animals, while YKA is a sizing system used to categorize clothing sizes."

Absolutely applies to books too. People don't listen much to authors, but enthusiastic readers sharing their love for a book is a superpower.

Brilliantly creative and uniquely dark worldbuilding - I really hope Nate Crowley writes more in this universe, its begging for it. I need to know about High Sarawak at the very least! @frogcroakley.bsky.social

This looks so good. www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hwN...

Doom: The Dark Ages was so good. I think it's my favourite of the trilogy already, despite less glory kills. Love that shield and melee satisfaction.

Check and MATE! Your move, robot.

Got a bit worried about how AI might affect indie authors and ended up writing a great 2am screed about it on Reddit www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/co... #booksky #AI

The good part of AI is that the only thing a writer can do to combat it is to become more human. Make your writing weirder, hornier, more violent, absurd, poetic, difficult, political, jagged, dreamlike, ironic, surreal, alive. You don't have any choice but to plumb the depths.

OMG this. Authors are a group of people in which imposter syndrome runs rampant, creating work without a performance element so without immediate feedback from the audience, often with no idea how our work is faring, no control over it, often with out of date sales data. Prime brain weasels fodder.

Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah. #landscape

as ever fascinated by the utter shamelessness of pretending 'toxic masculinity' means 'all masculinity is toxic'. If I tell this guy I saw a black dog does he think that means all dogs are black?

Started my plunge into the original work of one of my favourite 40k writers Nate Crowley @frogcroakley.bsky.social Zombie POV weird body horror sounded right up my street. Hoping for lots of body parts gruesomely dropping off. #booksky

If all porn is made illegal, you can also make illegal the expression of any person you hate by defining them as obscene and pornographic. "Existing while visibly trans" will be argued to be pornographic. Women dressing insufficiently modestly will be argued to be pornographic.

But speaking of SWERFs, this kind of legislation will obviously make sex work way less safe. We’ve seen over and over and over and over and OVER that criminalizing sex work drives it underground, helps trafficking flourish, and stops SWers from going to the police when they’re assaulted.

I don’t care if you hate porn. Please for the love of god don’t get stuck there cognitively. Anti-porn legislation + how trans and NB people (even cis drag queens/kings) are being consistently described as sexually deviant = the groundwork is being laid for all queer expression to be made illegal.

Castel del Monte, Italy; Mont Saint Michael in France, Castlehill in Edinburgh; Temple of the Sacred Heart on Tibidado Mountain in Barcelona.

Cracking on with a writing commission and some odds and ends - then can get to editing the finished first draft of India Muerte and the Dragonfire Pearl ☠️

I enjoyed this www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKgI...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kk5c... Welp, there goes my nights.

Is it just British people who use way too much fairy liquid when doing the washing up so the sponge is a perpetual suds machine for the next week and then they don't rinse the goddamn plates afterwards leaving them dripping with great bubbling scads on the draining board and apparently that's fine

The coolest video of me ever taken. Morocco, earlier this year, and my first experience riding a horse since one time when I was a child. Unforgettable.

A pirate goes to the skin doctor and says, “I have these moles on me back.” The doctor takes a look and says, “It’s okay, they’re benign.” The pirate says, “Count again, I think there be ten.”