Stop quoting Orwell memes. Forget 1984 and Brave New World. The real mirror of our times is Zamyatin’s We: a world where we happily surrender ourselves to the algorithm. ridleypark.blog/2025/09/17/t... #Dystopia #Orwell #CriticalTheory #Books #booksuggestions #Philosophy #Surveillance

Octavia Butler’s Lilith in Dawn is meant as radical, but she ends up repeating archetypes of Western femininity. Judith Butler would see her as pure performativity. My reflection → philosophics.blog/2025/09/08/b... #Philosophy #CriticalTheory #OctaviaButler #JudithButler #Postmodernism #AmReading

Aliens don’t breathe, but authors live off reviews. 💜 Thank you for reading Sustenance and sharing your words. 📝 New post: ridleypark.blog/2025/09/09/t... #IndieAuthor #SciFiBooks #SpecFic #LiterarySciFi #WeirdLit #AlienFiction #BookTwitter #BookReview #KindleUnlimited #KindleBook #SciFi #Iowa

👽 Literary sci-fi meets cornfields and confusion. Sustenance explores alien encounters, human projection, and awkward rural intimacy—with a healthy dose of crop-circle weirdness. 📕 Out now in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle: www.amazon.com/dp/B0F9VGH8FP #SpecFic #SciFi #IndieAuthor #WeirdFiction

What’s with the violet aliens on the cover of Sustenance? Midwest barns. Crop circles. American Gothic. ridleypark.blog/2025/09/08/w... 📚 Kindle edition is FREE www.amazon.com/dp/B0F9BDWKFD #kindlebooks #SciFiBooks #bookcoverdesign #Books #America #IndieAuthors #coverart #KindleUnlimited

Sartre: “Inaction is a choice.” Zinn: “You can’t be neutral on a moving train.” Butler’s alien: “You committed mass suicide.” Maybe agency is just a Modernist myth we don’t actually need. 👉 philosophics.blog/2025/09/07/o... #Philosophy #Postmodernism #Agency #ScienceFiction #Books #AmReading

🚨 Free for 2 days! 🚨 My novella Sustenance – small-town Iowa meets the uncanny – is free on Kindle Sept 7–8. Always free with KU, but free for everyone with this promo. 📚 www.amazon.com/dp/B0F9PTK9N2 #FreeBook #KindleFree #SpecFic #LiteraryFiction #IndieAuthor #BookTwitter #AmReading #Book #Books

⭐⭐⭐ I finished Anna Kavan’s Ice. tl;dr: I gave it a 3 of 5 stars. Fuller review on blog or Goodreads. ridleypark.blog/2025/09/03/i... #AmReading #AnnaKavan #Slipstream #SpeculativeFiction #LiteraryFiction #ModernistFiction #WeirdLit #ExistentialFiction #BookBlog #BookReview #Book #Review #Books

Five chapters into Anna Kavan’s Ice, and it’s less spree than seizure. A frozen hallucination where compulsion outpaces logic—dive in. ridleypark.blog/2025/09/03/i... #AmReading #AnnaKavan #Slipstream #SpeculativeFiction #LiteraryFiction #ModernistFiction #WeirdLit #ExistentialFiction #BookBlog

Facebook: deleted. Ridley: collateral damage. The bots won’t be missed. I may re-establish a Ridley-only presence, but for now, we’re free of the machine. ridleypark.blog/2025/09/02/d... #Facebook #Meta #Bots #Kafkaesque #AmWriting #Writing #SocialMedia #BlogPost #Bollox #Blogging #AuthorLife

I don’t wish to be branded an AI apologist. Some say AI art lacks feelings. I don’t need hubris to validate my art. ridleypark.blog/2025/09/02/t... #AIArt #Philosophy #Art #GenerativeAI #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #Creativity #Innovation #Technology #CriticalThinking #Writing #AmWriting

I’ve finally completed the so-called dystopia canon – Orwell, Atwood, Burgess, Huxley… and now Gattaca. Sharp premise; rigid script. 👍Completion achieved. 👎Satisfaction minimal. ridleypark.blog/2025/09/01/g... #Critique #ScienceFiction #Writing #amwriting #SciFi #movie #Review #movieReview

Never took creative writing at uni—finance swallowed that dream. What I got instead: feminist critiques, penguins, and a final essay signed “My name is not David Grace.” ridleypark.blog/2025/09/01/r... #WritingCommunity #AuthorLife #LitCrit #Philosophy #AmWriting #English #Writing #nostalgia

This is not a political post. The Venn in this diagram feels viscerally correct, but the unions don't work. ridleypark.blog/2025/08/31/n... #Dystopia #Philosophy #Satire #Orwell #Atwood #Huxley #Burgess #TheMatrix #Gattaca #Brazil #SoylentGreen #AnimalFarm #Fahrenheit451 #BraveNewWorld #RidleyPark

Editing isn’t always polish; it’s surgery. Spent today untangling a misplaced pregnancy in Needle’s Edge and stitching the timeline back together. ridleypark.blog/2025/08/30/n... #WritingCommunity #AmEditing #Fiction #Editing #AmWriting #LiteraryFiction #IndieAuthor #Writing #Books #FictionWriting

Finding Focus ⌛🧐 This is as much a reminder for me as a PSA. Time is the most limited resource you’ve got. ridleypark.blog/2025/08/30/f... #amwriting #amwritingfiction #writingcommunity #writing #writingtips #timemanagement #books #timemanagementtips #PSA #book #time

Spent more time editing Needle’s Edge than drafting it. Editing isn’t polishing; it’s grinding, chiselling, archaeology. ridleypark.blog/2025/08/29/n... #WritingCommunity #AmEditing #RidleyPark #Fiction #LiteraryFiction #IndieAuthor #BookEditing #StoryStructure #books #writing #editing #structure

Kafka gave us Gregor Samsa: turned into vermin, stripped of usefulness, left to rot in silence. Irvine Welsh answered with Boab Coyle in The Granton Star Cause. philosophics.blog/2025/08/29/b... #AmReading #AmWatching #CriticalTheory #SocialCommentary #LiteraryAnalysis #BookCommunity #Storytelling

Yesterday, I wrote about how some movies are better than the books they were sourced from, but sometimes a book and a film are synergistic. ridleypark.blog/2025/08/28/w... #Cinema #MoviesBetterThanBooks #Storytelling #AmReading #AmWatching #Reading #Movies #Film #Books #booksuggestions #Blogpost

When the movie does the book a mercy killing: from Jaws to Blade Runner, here’s my rogue’s gallery of films that outshine their novels. ridleypark.blog/2025/08/27/w... #BookVsMovie #FilmAdaptation #Cinema #MoviesBetterThanBooks #Storytelling #AmReading #AmWatching #Reading #Movies #Film #Books

Most novels behave like products. Sustenance doesn’t. Paratext as warning label. Prose that wobbles. Realism swerving into horror, SF, rural noir. Grit instead of smoothies. Closure denied. philosophics.blog/2025/08/25/s... #fiction #AmWritingFiction #AmWriting #FictionOnly

Less Than Zero was gutted. Trainspotting, diluted. Both novels exposed Reagan’s children + Thatcher’s lost boys. The films sold us photogenic junkies. 🔗 philosophics.blog/2025/08/22/f... #LessThanZero #Trainspotting #FilmAdaptation #Addiction #CulturalCritique #Baudrillard #AmReading #Books #Films

A beta reader isn’t your editor. Their job is not to fix commas or rewrite your book. It’s to tell you if the story tasted like what you meant to cook. 👉 ridleypark.blog/2025/08/22/w... #WritingCommunity #AmWriting #BetaReaders #IndieAuthors #NovelWriting #WritingTips #AmReading #Editing #Reading

Thanks #AI #Spellcheckers like #Copilot. Useful #ideas. #Nature and #Wilderness are clearly #synonyms. #humour #satire #screenshot #writing #editing

Beauvoir’s The Second Sex → Welsh’s Trainspotting. 2 classics, 2 registers. My Needle’s Edge sits somewhere between: pared-down motel grit vs. dialect-rich Scotland. ridleypark.blog/2025/08/22/t... #Trainspotting #AddictionLit #LiteraryFiction #AmReading #AmWriting #BookTalk #ContemporaryFiction

A meme about male flatworms across the net, but worms aren’t male or female. They’re hermaphrodites fighting with hypodermic penises. Winner = father; loser = mother. Sometimes both. ridleypark.blog/2025/08/21/w... #WritingCommunity #Gender #Power #books  #speculativefiction #AmWriting #Writing

I've read 22 books so far this year, a parade of intellectual triumphs and spectacular flops. ChatGPT offered better advice than humans. Sorry people. ridleypark.blog/2025/08/21/b... #2025Reads #ReadingInsights #BookReview #AIRecommendations #Goodreads #ThoughtfulReading #Reading #BookList

Zach Cregger wrote 50 pages of Weapons before he even knew if he had a story. Pantsing: thrilling if it pays off. ridleypark.blog/2025/08/18/w... #WritingCommunity #ScreenwritersLife #CreativeJourney #StoryDiscovery #WritingInspiration #AmWriting #Screenwriting #Pantsers #Plotters #Film #Writing

Hot take patrol: if you don’t understand how language works, you’re not qualified to critique LLMs. The licence to comment has conditions. 🚨 philosophics.blog/2025/08/17/i... #LLMs #GenerativeAI #PhilosophyOfLanguage #LanguageMatters #Semiotics #Poststructuralism #PhilosophicsBlog #AuthorLife #AI

AI doesn’t feel? Cute. Neither does language, yet here we are, moved to tears. Saussure, Wittgenstein, Derrida walk into a blog post… and unmask the fallacy. ridleypark.blog/2025/08/17/g... #GenerativeAI #WritingCommunity #AIandArt #LanguageMatters #Saussure #Wittgenstein #Derrida #Poststructuralism

The first rule of writing is that there are no rules. Lists comfort; they also constrict. Don’t build your cathedral from scaffolding. ridleypark.blog/2025/08/16/t... #WritingCommunity #AmWriting #ArtNotRules #IndieWriters #CreativeProcess #AuthorLife #BookMarketing #IndiePublishing #WritingTips

The origins of Needle’s Edge: a novel born from years of raw observation, lived experience, and a refusal to play by the rules of morality tales. 5 minutes on my writing process. ▶ www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Njp... #AmWriting #WritingCommunity #AuthorLife #FictionWriting #AuthorInterview #Video

What do She’s Come Undone, Citizen Kane, and a bear on a sledge have in common? 🐻❄️ The answer might get me flagged for spoilers. 📍 Read it here: ridleypark.blog/2025/08/14/s... #Goodreads #BookHumour #LiterarySatire #RidleyPark #SpoilerEtiquette #Rosebud #BearsOnSleds #BookReviews #Spoilers

What if AI doesn’t need to be intelligent or have feelings? I use it to tell me what my manuscript reads like, Woolf, Vonnegut, or a cereal box. No feelings required, just a difference engine. ridleypark.blog/2025/08/13/d... #AI #Writing #Authors #GenAI #AmWriting #Creativity #Editing #BookWriting

Human exceptionalism seems to expand beyond Thesists. Creativity is recombination. Humans & AI both do it. Only AI admits it. philosophics.blog/2025/08/11/t... #Creativity #AI #Philosophy #HumanExceptionalism #Myth #CausaSui #NoBears #GenAI #Cognition #Remix #Podcast

AI’s not here to dethrone Nabokov. History’s clear: the printing press didn’t kill manuscripts, and photography didn’t kill painting. ridleypark.blog/2025/08/10/s... #AIWriting #TechCulture #GenAI #AIWriting #FictionWriting #AuthorWorkflow #AIWritingTools #WritingLife

Authors Talking to Authors While the Readers Are Elsewhere Authors’ forums are full of talented writers — all shouting “Read my book!” at each other while the actual readers are elsewhere. I’m not hunting fellow gardeners; I’m looking for bees. And you don’t find many bees in a greenhouse full of…

“Most art isn’t high art. Most writing isn’t literature. Readers don’t crave artistic purity. If AI helps them get there, let them. What's the outrage? #AIWriting #GenerativeAI #HighArt #LowArt #LiterarySnobbery #CreativeProcess #WritingCommunity #BookCulture

Predictive text: proof that Markov chains are running the asylum. Start typing something poetic, and it hands you a bureaucratic nightmare. Maths is everywhere—even if you pretend you’ve never used algebra. philosophics.blog/2025/07/29/o... #MachineLearning #StochasticLife #MathBehindTheCurtain

Chapter 28 of Propensity is a standardised test. Not a joke. Not a metaphor. Just 100% narrative deviance. Free to download. ridleypark.blog/2025/07/29/o... #RidleyPark #Propensity #ExperimentalFiction #WeirdBooks #MetaLit #Chapter28 #FreeChapter #IndieLit

Not sure how many more “how to sell books” ads I can take. I don’t write for trends. I don’t bend to the market. I write literary fiction, often without plot, without mercy. Blog: ridleypark.blog/2025/07/28/e... #writing #litfic #authorthoughts #indiewriter #bookmarketing #fuckthetropes #soapbox

Came back to my manuscript like Gandalf in Moria. “I have no memory of this place.” Too long a break and suddenly I’m editing ruins, not pages. Note to self: finish the damn scene before the ink dries. #AmWriting #WritersLife #EditingWoes #FirstDraftHell #WritingCommunity #WIP

📝Writing feels like art. Editing feels like punishment. Word count drops, confidence erodes, and somehow that typo still made it to draft nine. #AmEditing #WritingCommunity #IndieAuthor #LitSky #BookTokAdjacent #WritersOfBluesky #CreativeProcess #RidleyWrites

Editing isn’t polishing — it’s retelling a dream so it makes sense to someone else. My latest edit revealed a 13-month pregnancy. Turns out, reality still matters—even in nonlinear fiction. #Editing #FictionWriter #NarrativeCraft #RidleyPark

Nobody tells you publishing is a full-time job—unpaid, unthanked, and occasionally unhinged. #writing #authorsky #indieauthor #writinglife #selfpublishing #editinghell #bookmarketing #authortok #writingcommunity #publishinggrind #writerproblems #creativeburnout #indiebooks #behindthebook

Discovered a major plot hole in draft 4—turns out, my protagonist was somehow 8 months pregnant and sprinting through high-stakes scenes. #WritingCommunity #AmRevising #PlotProblems #StoryStructure #FictionEditing #TimelineTrouble #PregnancyInFiction #NonLinearNarrative #IndieAuthor #RidleyPark

🚨 New release: Temporal Babel 🚨 A man is found naked and unconscious on a desert highway. He doesn’t speak English. Or Spanish. Or anything we understand. #TemporalBabel #NewRelease #SpeculativeFiction #LinguisticMystery #BookTok #IndieAuthor #LitFic #SlowBurn #LanguageIsWeird #Bookish

What happens after collapse—when power doesn’t shift, but dissolves? Not a utopia. Just something new. ridleypark.blog/2025/07/18/l... #SpeculativeFiction #PostEnlightenment #RidleyPark

I review JG Ballard's Crash in this blog post. #BookReview #author #writing #cars #autoerotica #novel