I know I already reposted this but I just wanted to make sure you've all seen the little fella

Read Nat's Celtic fantasy thoughts if you have ever read anything in which an elf fades, sighing, into the western twilight

We've been on the Northern Line. The idea that it's 2000 years old seems completely reasonable.

🌬️🍃🌊A RIVER FROM THE SKY🌊🍃🌬️ now on @netgalley.bsky.social 👀✨🤍 forthcoming April 2026 with @titanbooks.bsky.social 💫 🔗 www.netgalley.com/catalog/book...

do you know what would help!!!!!!!! living in a society that lets people experiment with their gender without treating it like the most important thing in the world!!!!!!! letting people get it right or wrong without politicising their decisions!!!!!!! just being chilled about gender!!!!!! aaahhhhhh

If you use generative AI, we simply cannot be friends. I’m sorry, but it is a horrid, thieving thing that floods the channels and pushes real effort to sideline, steals from artists and authors to make crap, and eats through resources at the same time: burning a rainforest to make a cheap match.

I propose to make universal the old policy of the Blackfriars conference at the American Shakespeare Center: If you do not end your paper on time, you will be forced to exit, pursued by a bear. Literally, a bear will come take your paper from you.

Trying to decide if I need to stay up until midnight to tell you that in Wales they don’t celebrate Valentine, they celebrate Dwynwen who wanted to be away from [a specific man] Maelon so SOULFULLY, she literally walked on water until an angel agreed to turn him into ice She felt bad about it, so:

It's time for your periodic reminder that we count on subscriptions to keep the lights on. clarkesworldmagazine.com/subscribe/ Thank you.

Of all the easy things you can do to help the environment, conserve water for communities not corporations, not perpetuate scams, support the labor and rights of creators... *not* using generative AI is the fucking easiest. You absolutely deserve to be shamed for using it for image and text creation

"In the fifth year of Aneira’s life there came a great frost. This frost was so cold that the streams turned to crystal and the beasts died in their byres, and the apples froze upon the branches and rotted from within, so that all that remained was an empty vessel of ice." The Ghost Apple, WIP :)

I've said this before but I'll say it again, I suggest not submitting to publications that state "By submitting you agree to grant us publication rights". Probably not legally binding but best not to submit anyway. Biggest reason is they could just not even reply and claim to have pub rights

Thread. Shitty people can make good and even great art. Likewise, dropping a favorite artist after you realize you can no longer support them can feel like a divorce or a friend breakup because they and their work were just that important to you. That shit hurts, even when it's necessary for you.

Is it just me or is the Submission Grinder down?

Wonderful Ice Age art! Some 40,000 years ago, this tiny head of a cave lion was skilfully sculpted from mammoth ivory. It is one of the oldest known works of figurative art! 📷 by me #Archaeology

Our 10-year-old journal of creative writing on environmental justice will reopen to submissions, including poetry, creative nonfiction, art, short stories AND novella-length fiction, on February 1st.

'This decision is a major setback for Sex Matters, which raised more than £65,000 to try and force the pond to ban trans people, trying to go against regular swimmers. More than 32,000 people said they wanted the ponds to remain trans inclusive – 86% of the respondents to the consultation'

I love when my translators have questions. The splendid Mikael Cabon in France needs to know if a river in Written on the Dark flows into the sea or into another river: his word choice will be different. When translators are careful it is a gift to an author AND a reminder to protect them from AI.

Why not?

I love them so much 😭❤️

This is such a moving story about trying to be yourself when you know there are people you love who don't like you back, and whether things would truly be easier if *you* were easier for them to love in return: more malleable, less queer, quieter. Three cheers for Liz and Sadie ❤️

I'm finding it surprisingly easy to try and throw my mind back to what I know of fantasy fiction before, well, before these came out and changed the genre forever, and approach this with fresh eyes and man, this stuff is sick. Its so cool.

We are community or we are less. We are engines of kindness and connectivity or we are less. When decency is framed as a radical position we must remain who we are. Our resistance is also in refusing to be less openhearted and filled with compassion.

Thread! I found this very moving and oddly sweet. I'd also give a lot to have seen the reassurance-patrolling officers' faces when they were offered a nice cup of tea and told that they were a lot more stressed about the wayward bones than anyone else.

"And that's how, after several hours, five people and a citywide network of volunteers got a 12-year-old girl her first menstrual pad." America.

big shout out to everyone attempting to complete basic tasks

“I want to live in defiance: indeed, to defy by living. What gets me through the day nowadays isn’t joy. Joy is all right but actually, I prefer spite. I will live, I will flourish in defiance of these people, and that’s what powers me through.”

Missed this when it came out over Christmas - a nice synthesis of current research on #Neanderthal diet (featuring some thoughts from me) in @nautil.us nautil.us/eat-like-a-n...

Reminder that Blue Monday isn't a real phenomenon, it was made up by the boyband Blue in 2002 to make me wanna call you in the middle of the night, make me wanna hold you 'til the morning light, make me wanna love, make me wanna fall, make me wanna surrender my soul

Something beautiful for the weekend! ✨ A rare rock crystal tool made by Neanderthals between 200,000 - 40,000 years ago. From a Mousterian level at the Merveilles rockshelter, Sergeac, Dordogne, France. 6 x 3.3 x 1.5 cm. Musée d’Archéologie Nationale, Saint-Germain-en-Laye 📷 by me #Archaeology

I have a fantastic student who wrote a great paper on knitting patterns from a book/media history/history of documents point of view recently and wants to do more research... this is a bit outside my wheelhouse — friends, do any of you have readings you'd suggest?

Knitting Nurses! Prompted by @sarahebull.bsky.social yesterday I poked around #NewberryLibrary for 20th c. knitting patterns. These WWII Red Cross directions for a MAN'S SOCK from May 1942 looks to have been used by nurses or housewives to create at least 13 pairs for the war effort! #FiberArts

My cousin asked me to recommend some good cozy fantasy books but she couldn’t remember “cozy fantasy” so she called it “heavy on the bread and hard cheese, light on the stabbing.”

…Probably the least vague vagueskeet ever… but just a thought. Rarely has a writer’s famous thesis been proven so true, in so brief a series of images: “Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them.”

Things are bad, so US #KindleBookGiveaway: 10 copies of Terry Pratchett's Lords&Ladies, which was the 2nd DW book I read that I liked (and, as with Small Gods, I *loved* it). You can read it cold. It doesn't tie into current events, really, other than a lot of asskicking. #GNUTerryPratchett

Watching snow for the first time

TOMORROW IS THE WINTER SOLSTICE AND Y'ALL KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS. It is time for the women (defined broadly) to hunt the Year King through the woods and tear him apart with their bare hands!

As a multiple language speaker it's also frustrating to see people using AI for translation because the English speaking world tends to treat translators like workers for hire instead of co authors of text and this feels like more of it. Translation at the literary level is creative work. (2/?)

So, since we have Yet More Discourse going on, I wanna toss out a thing because I keep seeing it come up. Writing is not always fun, and that’s actually pretty normal.

In case it doesn't go without saying: I have not used gen AI to create text in any of my books. I have not used Grammarly etc to "clean up" the text. I have not used it to research any of my books, except where it might be built into search engines under the hood (I do not use labelled AI results).

For "Entries From My Grandmother's Diary Pertaining to My Father's Early Inflammation," our final December story, @marcc.bsky.social collaborated with his grandmother, Hazel Criley, for this striking story about a child's pyrokinesis in the 1930s.

🌌 Heads up: @innerworlds.bsky.social is open Jan 1–14 for marginalised authors and Jan 15–31 for writers 🌌 Send 500–2,500 word SFF or supernatural horror with a strong emotional or psychological focus. Pays £0.02/word. Guidelines: horrortree.com/taking-submi...` #WritingCommunity #AmWriting

column in this week's New World on Brigitte Macron calling feminist campaigners "sales connes", and the difficulties of translation: www.thenewworld.co.uk/marie-le-con...

Welcome back to the Churchlands, please reconcile yourself to the divine, all currencies accepted www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/cric...

Sophie Kinsella has passed away at 55. Her Shopaholic books were among the most prominent of what was called "chick lit." Their popularity changed genre fiction. How terribly, terribly sad.

Complimenting writing you liked is both fun and easy once you get over the social awkwardness barrier, which, in my experience, is smaller than it looks.

I called my father and it was bishop-on-bishop violence, a growing problem in these troubled times. The *biter* was George Bell of Chichester and he was moderately certainly that the *bitten* was the Bishop of London but he couldn't remember who.

Make that 58 rejections and five submissions outstanding 😅

Movie you've watched more than six times with a gif. Hard mode: no Stars (Wars nor Trek), LOTR or Marvel [harder mode: no movies your children watched repeatedly]

I get about one acceptance per calendar year and I spend a lot of time thinking there will never be another one.