“Plant him, Dude. Daisy his dirt pile.” This week's micro-fiction blends corporate dystopia with a gritty Western showdown. Welcome to Directive 013: Bootstraps. Read it here: josephpaulhaineswriter.com/directive-01... #SciFi #FlashFiction #SFF #dystopia #microfiction #serialfiction

McGraw Hill has renewed its contract to use my story, “Ten With a Flag,” on their Actively Learn website for educators and students around the world. Another generation will be required to read my fiction. Poor kids. :) #scifi #dystopian #stories #corruptingtheworldsyouth

Directive 012: Offcuts takes us into Central's reclamation chambers—and right back into a predator's parlor. Week 10 of the Optimised Future lore is officially live. "Put it somewhere . . . inconvenient." josephpaulhaineswriter.com/directive-01... #SciFi #FlashFiction #OptimisedFuture #Dystopia

"There was nothing that didn’t belong to him, or couldn’t, should Lorcan feel the desire. The world was a better place for people like him, and that wasn’t ego. It was scientifically proven by the most advanced algorithms to ever exist." Until the algorithm bleeds. #MicroFiction #Dystopian

Directive 010: Mislaid. A Ten disappears. His nanites notice. His concufriend notices. His wife notices last, and only as an echo. The world? Five minutes. #Directives #SpeculativeFiction #OptimisedFuture #dystopia josephpaulhaineswriter.com/directive-01...

"Central, why hast thou forsaken me?" When the architecture of a perfect city turns its back on you, where do you go? Down into the Scars. This week's Directive explores the price of a ninety-nine percent accurate world. Link in Comments. #SciFi #MicroFiction #Dystopia #WritingCommunity

"You have a visitor." The front door vanishes. The State demands compliance. And if your biology resists, they will hijack your reality to force it. DIRECTIVE 008: CORPUS PLEROMA is now live. Link in comments. #SciFiBooks #SpeculativeFiction #WritingCommunity #SciFi #Dystopian #TenWithAFlag

Directive 007: опашка The tail of a line. The kind that stretched around the block in another era, in another system, the kind people stood in and didn't ask why. In the Optimised Future, the lines are different. The waiting is the same. Link in comments. #Directives #FlashFiction #Dystopia #SpecFic

Directive 006: Visitation Rights. Something is missing from Tristan's evening routine. Something else is missing that won't let him mind. New entry in the weekly Directives series josephpaulhaineswriter.com/directive-00... #SpeculativeFiction #Microfiction #WritingCommunity #Dystopia #ScienceFiction

“Blindness was a perk, an augmented reality which clouded the ground below on even the clearest of days.” In the Optimised Future, climbing the ladder doesn't just change your view, it actively erases the people you leave behind. josephpaulhaineswriter.com/directive-00... #microfiction #dystopia

DIRECTIVE 004: LOAD-BEARING. Step into the lower categories with DIRECTIVE 004: LOAD-BEARING, the newest short dispatch from the Ten With a Flag expanded universe. The latest Ten With a Flag expansion is live on the site: josephpaulhaineswriter.com/directive-00... #SciFi #Dystopian #TenWithAFlag

"If the frame is broken, the canvas might be replaced." Directive 003: The Hanging Thread is live on the site today. Step into the world of The Optimised Future. #scifi #DystopianFiction #WritingCommunity #Microfiction #TheOptimisedFuture josephpaulhaineswriter.com/directive-00...

A creative partnership is a marriage, and like any marriage, when the parents stop talking, the kids—the stories we birth—are the ones who suffer. New on the blog: Why professional reciprocity and "Chain of Title" build every screen adaptation. josephpaulhaineswriter.com/any-marriage...

There are big things on the moving horizon—international collaborations, new narratives, and a vision for what’s next. Follow along for updates on the books and the adaptation of "Ten with a Flag." Explore the world here: josephpaulhaineswriter.com (3/3) 🧪 #ScienceFiction #BlueskyAuthors

Currently, I'm deep in expanding the world created in Ten With a Flag into a full trilogy, exploring the natural progression of a world obsessed with perfection. A world where the elite can live forever, and also regret it. 2/3 #SciFi #WritingCommunity #TheOptimisedFuture #tenwithaflag #RödFlagga

Writing speculative fiction is about finding the jagged heresy in a world of meticulous beige. I’m Joseph Paul Haines. I write stories about the cost of perfection, living without it, and the fallout of seperation. 🧵 (1/3) #SciFi #WritingCommunity #TheOptimisedFuture #tenwithaflag #RödFlagga

It's 25 days past the deadline to release the Epstein files.

Some say that Lindsey Halligan is a wildly incompetent lawyer. Others say she gets her cases resolved incredibly quickly.

“If you’re someone who loves shooting off fireworks every night for weeks on end, I’m kind of done with your hypocritical, self-righteous, manipulative incongruence, BS of “Thank you for your service” because you obviously don’t mean it.”

Just heard that Lady Gaga is having a baby and I’m here to tell you, if she doesn’t name that child, “GooGoo,” she’s missing a helluva opportunity.

Has anyone else noticed that Trump always gives a timeframe of, “Two Weeks,” when specifying when he’ll make a major decision? Two weeks to decide what to do about Iran. Two weeks on Putin sanctions. Forget TACO. How about, “Two Weeks Away Trump,” or, you know, “TWAT.” Works for me.

In case you were having a good day, remember that at this very moment a religious zealot, a warmonger (unjustifiable) with a (justifiable) persecution complex, and an infantile, orange megalomaniac are all that stand between us and war in the Middle East. Have a nice day.

Happy Paraskevidekatriaphobia Day!

“You know you are living in a fascist country when you are constantly going over reasons in your head why YOU are safe.”

Huckleberry is happy as well, but for the Hucka-Hucka Burnin’ Love, chillin’ is his happy place.

Miss Molly is happy.

I was shot at and stabbed in the line of duty and the draft dodger-in-chief wants to take away Veteran’s Day? Not just no. Fuck no.

I’m here to end the debate once and for all. Sean of the Dead IS an Easter movie.

I hope you all are in the spirit of the holiday and watching plenty of zombie movies!

Also on Reddit today, someone thinking that I am apologetic for being a white dude. Nah, friends. I think we all know that being a white dude in the US is pretty great. My sin, if you will, is thinking everyone else should have the same latitude in life that I get just by being a white dude.

“For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury: For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:” We LITERALLY declared independence over the things Trump is now doing. www.archives.gov/founding-doc...

Stop telling us to talk to our representatives. We’re screaming! Stop telling us how bad it could be. It already is! Stop asking for money. Tell us what you’re going to do with it! Stop reacting. ACT!

It’s not a question of if we’re going to lose our country. Here’s the fact: We already have lost our country. Judges can no longer protect us. It isn’t a question of what we’ll do to stop it, it’s a question of what we’ll do to take it back. Speak. Up. Now.

Hmmmm.

Were Ambrose Bierce alive today, I dare say there would be a new entry into The Devils Dictionary: Waste, Fraud and Abuse (n) 1. Any benefit provided to a person on the opposite side of your political viewpoint. 2. Money that could be going into the pockets of the rich instead of the poor.

So I just wrote a hundred page feature in ten days while working fifty hours a week at the day job. Why? Because someone asked me to and I said yes. Professionals don’t miss deadlines.

If you think this can’t happen, remember that of the 125,000 Japanese Americans who were interned during WWII for years without charge or trial, two-thirds were U.S. citizens. Including me.

In his 1957 filibuster, Strom Thurmond said "Negroes ... are not so well qualified to vote as are the white people.” A Black senator just broke the record Thurmond set with that speech. talkingpointsmemo.com/news/cory-bo...

Five years sober today, and if you think doing that through the pandemic and through Trump has been easy, well, let’s just say that I’m very happy that I now understand that alcohol just makes everything worse in the end, not better. I don’t think I could handle worse.

Was just reading John Quincy Adams' oral arguments before SCOTUS in the Amistad case and this part seems, uh, pretty relevant

We’re past a constitutional crisis. We’re well into constitutional collapse.

If you have friends or family in the US military, it might be time to start asking them hypotheticals. What if they were asked to invade Canada? What if they were asked to fire on protesters? What orders would they follow? Make them think about it before the orders come.

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