No literary agent who is going to get you a deal is going to charge you upfront. They make a percentage. That is how it works. If someone says otherwise or tries to "upsell" you, they are scammers.

I honestly want to take this as a promising omen. 🐈‍⬛

Goodnight from Colorado 💙 💤 (Photo taken this evening. Just after sunset when I looked north. I love this gradient, even though the phone didn't capture the pink quite right.😊) #sky #clouds #sunset #photography

Goodnight, skyline, from this Christmas moon.

I say his gently, but… There’s something unspeakably shameful The United States letting people go hungry. Not because its government doesn’t fix it — but because tomorrow a few private Americans could, and never notice the cost. That’s the part that sits wrong.

I'm featuring my favorite photo from each month for the final six days of 2025. Up first: January. This one isn't technically perfect. It's out of focus. I was running, with an iPhone, in the cold. But it was such a core memory. From the New Years Day aurora substorm. #yearinreview #northernlights

The Northern Lights are a dance of the soul in the sky, shining proof that beauty and magic exist even in the deepest darkness.

Truth!

mari drinkmas #art #marilwyd

Extremely funny to call the pope “holier-than-thou”

I’ve had some unforeseen difficulties with my move and of course everybody’s closed for the holiday season. It’s fine. I have 3 cookie recipes that I’m baking. Here’s the first one because I plan to do some packing and stuff today. It’s a breakfast cookie way too tasty to be as healthy as it is.

How are my Irvine (and other) peeps doing with the Christmas rain? Hope you are warm, dry, and safe!

I'm a regular guy, I put my trousers on the same way as everyone else: falling into them through a hole in the ceiling via a contraction operated by my long suffering dog

Made congee in the pressure cooker. Used calrose short grain rice. Dang, yo.

How the year started vs how the year ended

Other than buying our books, one of the BEST gifts you can give an author is to write a review and/or tell some friends about what you've read 😁 Thanks for reading!!!! #BookSky #Review

Red Sprites and Circular Elves Lightning over Italy apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25122... Over the past 50 years, though, other types of upper-atmospheric lightning have been confirmed, including tentacled red sprites and ringed ELVES.

Lilac sky and my favourite lane. Taken a while before sunrise in Glastonbury.

The CEO of Victoria's Secret being friends with Epstein seems too obvious. Our villains need more nuance.

@calthalas.bsky.social and me:

Not now, haunted Victorian shoes

AND OF COURSE TWO DAYS BEFORE XMAS I BREAK A CROWN IN HALF EATING PIZZA BECAUSE I DON'T HAVE ENOUGH TO JUGGLE RIGHT NOW I HAVE A NEW PLAN AND A NEW DENTIST SO I'M SURE IT WILL BE SUPER EASY TO BOOK AN APPOINTMENT *screams into the Void*

1/4 posts: Okay Bluesky fam, we don't have the polls but let us recreate "Stupid Poll Time is Best Time". 1st: COOKIES! A) Gingerbread B) Choc Chip Pumpkin C) Oatmeal breakfast cookies;

I’m going to be moving in January. I’m not able to say too much about it now, but trust me, it’s for a really amazing reason. So I have been working super hard getting ready for that. But today I’m taking a day off. Cookies will be baked, red wine hot chocolate, prepared, & holiday movies watched.

Sunset Solstice over Stonehenge apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25122... Many cultures mark yesterday's date as a change of seasons -- from autumn to winter in Earth's Northern Hemisphere. The featured image was taken just before the longest night of the 2025 northern year at Stonehenge.

"I bring you lo-ove"

#NewgrangeSolstice earlier today 🇮🇪 ☀️ The light slowly creeping through the corridor, illuminating the inner chamber, as the northern hemisphere gradually starts facing the sun again. The ancestral beauty of it all

The power of the imagination. Nothing in here is genuinely naughty, but oh my did I laugh out loud a lot. In case you too need to laugh out loud, here it is. Some of them are..."How did the artist/designer/photographer NOT NOTICE THIS" xD You have been warned.

You can be mad as hell at someone and know they're wrong--and still not threaten them. There's a *lot* going on. Tensions are high. Shit is hard. Might be a good weekend for anyone feeling a certain kind of way to stay off the internet. Write something. Play video games. Have a snack. Read a book.

One day something will happen — a wedding, a graduation, a job promotion, Jake Paul getting knocked out, Andrew Tate getting knocked out the next day — and you’ll want the right outfit to celebrate. Buy that special outfit now, so you’re ready when that next unexpected moment arrives.

Okay if you're looking for my seasonal recs, in no particular order: 1. A Christmas Carol with George C. Scott. Scott brings a cold and dangerous edge to Scrooge & the cast list reads like a Who's Who of Great British Actors of the era, inc. David Warner playing against type as Bob Cratchit.

When I do a tie-in novel, often I’m asked, what do you need to know? And of course, I do know some specific things I need to know. But what I need to know most is something that hasn’t even occurred to me yet. It’s hard to convey this to folks who aren’t themselves creatives.

Finland 🇫🇮 📷: Konsta Punkka #Finland #landscapes

Look, I'm sorry if this makes me come off as some medieval peasant or whatever, but am I the only one in CONSTANT WONDER at the fact that THE MOON, a celestial body hundreds of thousands of miles away, CONTROLS THE MOVEMENTS OF OUR OCEANS?! Tell me that's not absolutely BANANAS!

Inside the mother of all Neolithic tombs ... Newgrange in Ireland. This photo, from excavator Michael O'Kelly's book, shows the chamber (with spiral carving) that is illuminated via the famous roofbox opening at winter solstice. A 5,200-yr-old celebration of the return of the sun. #TombTuesday

Silhouette before dawn. Photo taken in the lanes in Glastonbury.

baby squirrel update! 🐿️ my dad (a.k.a. world’s #1 squirrel-hater) decided to raise “squirrel” & he has melted this retired, grumpy old man’s heart he is enjoying an array of squirrel-friendly nuts & other delicacies with his squirrel milk warning: extremely loud sucking noises from this lil guy

I don't know why the idea of developing concept art with AI is somehow meant to convince us that AI isn't replacing creative professions, when concept art is one of the single most creative and imaginative parts of the entire development process.

Me while decorating the tree: I should put the Christmas ornaments a couple feet off the ground so the cats can’t get them. The cat:

This is critical. I fight hard on every project to get my writers a blank slate for their work. Once someone else writes the line or scene, even a deliberately bad, short, rough version of it, it has a shape in the writer's mind. It takes tremendous effort to erase that shape & write their own idea

Yesterday was the 14th anniversary of my father's death, the 13th of the innocents of Sandy Hook, & now the day that cost us Rob Reiner. I have so, so much on my plate & in my life, & to safeguard my time/emotions I'm blocking Pres.'s name & some others. I look forward to a bit of sanity and calm.

Love-in-a-mist #art #photography #flowers

Rob Reiner either made your favorite movie, or made somebody you know’s favorite movie. If you’re a Californian, he’s also part of the reason you or your friends can get married. He has changed more lives for the better than this asshole commenting on him ever did.

Amethyst sky this morning in Glastonbury. Photo taken about an hour before sunrise. It was such a vivid strange colour.

Vivid colours at sunrise today on Glastonbury Tor. 💜❤️

I don't think I have ever seen such an intense flash of colour appear so quickly and disappear again as quickly. I really didn't see it coming as it was raining and grey on my walk so this was the best I could get. Photo taken this morning at the base of Glastonbury Tor.

It was a terribly cruel weekend. Take a breath, watch, & allow yourself to remember that there is beauty in the world. The colors, the feeling that going down, you're looking into the eye of something beyond your ken; coming up, into the eye of the storm. Sending love & breath to all.

Another photo from this morning showing that very eerie sky. Taken at the base of Glastonbury Tor. I am so glad lots of other people have mentioned they saw the vivid colour as well or I'd think I had imagined it.

After ten years in Minnesota, I am comfortable saying that this man is so filled with incandescent fury, I’m surprised he doesn’t glow on film.