Having health insurance in the US means that you now have a part-time job haggling with your insurance company & advocating for your own healthcare. To that end, here's a tool that can help with filing claims to contest denial of coverage, created by the nonprofit newsroom @propublica.bsky.social

Today's Patreon post for writers is very personal but also something I think needs to be discussed more. The power imbalance in the arts causes desperation that negative impacts creativity. Read more at: www.patreon.com/posts/92517162

Children shouldn't have to be brave.

The vast majority don’t want book banning!

It's so weird to be in a place in America that's not holding voting today. (idk why; a weird districting thing? I checked with the state board of elections, and I'm one of a few counties in the state w/o elections.)

Happy third anniversary of the funniest political moment of all time.

puppy left my lap, what's the freaking point any more

Ann is good people (and a brilliant writer!), and while I'm so sad that she was in a horrible situation, I'm glad she's out--and I want to help support her independence.

Thinking of buying books as gifts? Place orders at your local indie NOW, before holiday rush. Ordering/buying sooner helps indie bookstores + you get your shopping done sooner. Win-win! This static-friendly GIF is also available via my public GIPHY library. See ALT text for animation info.

The right wing is banking on your dislike of Biden and assuming you’ll sit out all the down-ballot races as well. Don’t give them the satisfaction

In the 1930s, a landlord set the home a young Toni Morrison and her parents were living in on fire while they were in it because they were behind on rent. In September 2023, a landlord in Brooklyn did the same thing to his tenants: pix11.com/news/local-n...

Remember when everyone called it Rouge One?

Cross-posting on all my socials: if you're in the US, you can get at-home covid tests delivered at no cost again. special.usps.com/testkits Check your state and local DHS too

One of my favorite things about travelling is trying new foods. One of my least fav things is realizing how hard it is to get those new foods at home. I'm craving vepřo knedlo zelo, a Czech pork dumpling I had in Prague last year. Time to learn a new recipe! www.cooklikeczechs.com/vepro-knedlo...

we fixed acid rain! we fixed the ozone layer! we beat polio! we’ve rescued scores of species from the brink of extinction! the despair many of us feel about climate change isn’t that it’s too big to fix. it’s that we know it is fixable but we’re being thwarted by greedy ghouls at every turn.

morning

yehuda amichai's the diameter of the bomb is in my head today

I write books so I can afford to buy books and then every so often I also make poor financial choices and go on a trip somewhere that has cool graves (they're all cool).

He was the first person to take the telescope that everybody used to look for faraway ships and to think to aim it at the sky. Sometimes all you need to change the world is to change where you're putting your eyes.

Two pages from Ursula K Le Guin’s Wizard of Earthsea manuscript. On display in the UK for the first time. At the British Library Fantasy exhibition. Go today with your extra hour?

"AI writing is drivel, it sustains the appearance of an argument (or plot or theme) without the substance of one; it's rather like listening to a Donald Trump speech. The words follow one another like the pounding throb of a migraine but there's no message underneath it." nailed it :D

I don't go out of my way to read reviews, but they don't bother me. This morning, I was tagged in two reviews. One of them said Night of the Witch (my most recent book) had a LOT of romance and it happened super quick, and the next one said the book had "hints" of a "slow-burn" romance.

there is still beauty in this world find some

I used these numbers to contact my government reps and remind them that we don't have to play by the NRA's rules.

I missed that this was out! Did an interview with Jordan Peele to discuss the new anthology OUT THERE SCREAMING, that I've got a story in. www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/arc...

Another double episode drop! DON'T DIE is a choose-your-own style story game. You play as someone who's dropped into a series of challenges run by a snarky, human-hating entity, to see if you survive: storyloom.com/stories/122c... FREE!

maybe the book you wrote doesn't get published, but you had to write that one to write the next one that does. but if you feel like you have to get the first one published to be a "success," you're just giving yourself grief. art doesn't care about social media deadlines.

hey you don't have to put your publishing dreams on the internet if you don't want to. sometimes it helps to shout out what you want. sometimes it adds pressure to achieve it so you don't fail publicly, but that pressure is false, and "failing" in the arts is also false

140,000 people have been locked down for days because of one man with a gun, so tell me again how guns make us free

thinking about this student after the 2018 Santa Fe shooting "Was there a part of you that was like, 'this isn't real, this wouldn't happen at my school'?" "No. There wasn't, um-" "Why so?" "It's been happening everywhere, I felt, I've always kind of felt like eventually it would happen here, too."

YES WE MOSTLY DID! I talk about this in my EPL class! we also made the situation in re: environmental lead a LOT better than it was! And we're seeing the ozone hole get better after we stopped using CFCs!

This is so obviously corrupt, and yet the people's hands are tied. How can we fight this? Serious question...

An absolutely amazing read and totally worth your time.

Witchtober #3 - Midnight Spells 🔮🕯️

I once tried to trim a pillar candle with a butcher knife and the wax broke and the blade stuck into my hand instead. On the way to get help, I ran into the corner of two walls and split my forehead open. Both left scars.

When I tell you that the hardest thing to research about Night of the Witch, a book loosely based on the HRE in the 1590s, was the freaking BORDERS between Germanic principalities and dioceses (as well as whether they were Catholic or Protestant), this is why.

It's October, so here's the only real ghost story I have. The dog of my heart was Sirius--a black Lab/Great Dane mutt. That dog carried part of my soul. He saw me thru marriage and the birth of my son. After he died, I was bereft. But on dark nights, I still feel a cold nose in my palm.

God, I love talking to my kid about my career, hopes, and dreams. He's 8, and he's seen me both fail and succeed. He watched me work for years on a book that didn't get a publisher. He brainstormed titles w/ me for the new thing. He asks me how things are going. And I do the same for his projects.

"YA is being publicly challenged and a lot of what sells/circulates is now being targeted. While over half of the NYT Teen Bestseller list for almost all of 2023 has been LGBTQ, LGBTQ titles are the most targeted by book banners. I can not emphasize enough how much damage book banning is doing..."

if you watch shows with canned laughter, you're listening to a cacophony of the dead

So I really liked Ahsoka! But something was bothering me, and I realized...Sabine's lost her art. I had kinda of hoped that after the war, she would heal through art. I wanted her to not still need a lightsaber or a blaster or her armor.

Did I say 650? I meant 950+. Add your name here: tinyurl.com/y3cs2h9v #StepUpScholastic

How many of us have felt this in our bones? (source: www.nytimes.com/2023/10/09/o...) by @tressiemcphd.bsky.social )

I don't want to endlessly doomscroll, but my original problem with Bluesky remains--there's not enough content. Do I need to follow more people? (Any recs of Star Wars, writers/readers, art, and nature peeps?) Do I need to somehow switch up feeds? How do I scroll w/o reaching end of the line quick?

Happy Birthday, Ursula LeGuin. "Books aren’t just commodities...We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable–but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted & changed by human beings. Resistance & change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words."

This is devastating. Every single life lost to violence is too many. We can only have peace when we regard every single human life as prescious and irreplaceable. Every single one. Praying for her family.

This is the most delightfully weird post I've seen all day, and the post that really convinced me that Twitter is dying in favor of Bluesky

my sassy witch and @bethrevis.bsky.social’s honorable witch hunter are nytimes bestsellers 🤩

Spent some time getting lost and finding my way back out again today.

As well-meaning publishers try to navigate the coming storm of state laws against diversity, I hope they'll consider Timothy Snyder's Rule #1 (from his slim book ON TYRANNY).