Writer people! Excellent article here. publishingperspectives.com/2026/06/plut...

Busy day doing stuff. But stuff is getting done. Yay.

remember when jody wynen ran for the district 4 minneapolis park board seat for 5 minutes last year? these signs are an unhinged appropriation of native culture by dog owners “water is life” came from water protectors at standing rock!

And writers will of course be lucky to see any money at all from the court case against Anthopic pirating all our stuff to train its AI... but more power to the music people...

Anybody who thinks they need AI to make a book cover should take a hard look at Penguin Classics. Fantastic covers, all public domain images.

Jane Friedman puts out an excellent counterargument to the Authors Guild study about library impact on author income. janefriedman.com/imho-i-would...

When I was in law school, EVERYONE took notes on the computer. Except me. I hand wrote all my notes, because I'd learned early that my brain NEEDS to have a fidget to force me to focus, and typewriting doesn't do that, but handwriting does. It did not put me behind my peers.

I had this exact argument with someone who made the "You'll get left behind! A person who uses a tool will always beat a person who doesn't use a tool!" Yo, I handwrite all my edits instead of using the computer, and I do this because THAT IS THE BETTER TOOL for the job I need to do.

Lots of people don't like to shower or remove makeup before bed but do it anyway. These are not interesting facts and there are too many podcasts where people who want to be famous just end up saying things to fill time — that should really remain in journals, trusted group chats, or among friends.

Well, it's definitely fire season. The local FB groups are full of small fire stories...though there's a big one near Pendleton, north of I-84. (this is one reason why I'm still on FB...no local news otherwise.)

ppl are engaging with a fantasy version of platner that's just kind of a scruffy chode instead of a dem-hating nazi who's voted Republican his entire life this was a response that was embarrassing but, like, legible, to Fetterman (who at his worst was never remotely as bad as Platner, also)

True for ANY electronic media. None of it is safe.

The book of Samuel is interesting to read when you keep in mind that the authors were definitely living in the ‘cry out for relief’ part of this process (one might say the FO part)

And there obviously ARE daring, inventive, groundbreaking work published by white writers. (They are often marginalized too, just not racially.) But the white books that become mainstream that people claim are revolutionary tend to be pretty milquetoast, or they tend to be comfortable in key ways.

white writers and as bad writing for marginalized writers. That stuff won’t land with every reader, sure! And not every writer regardless of background will pull it off! But wow are people within and without the industry willing to give dominant writers the benefit of the doubt.

The number of times I see readers applaud a mainstream SFFH work by a white writer and criticize a marginalized writer’s stronger take—often doing things more structurally interesting, making more daring craft choices—is overwhelming. Inventive, experimental choices are seen as innovative with

Not every marginalized SFFH writer is writing revolutionary work, but a lot of us are. Even those who are traditionally published overwhelmingly don’t get the attention of our dominant counterparts (in house and out) and publishers go “see??” It’s an industry problem, but it’s also a reader problem.

What I am irritated at is the constant erasure and overlooking of marginalized writers, especially racialized and multi-marginalized writers, never getting their chance. then our work is called didactic and pushing an agenda like other work DOESN’T have its author’s politics embedded in it.

I am exhausted by white men writing a thing that a racialized writer has written better and everyone falling over to kiss the former’s feet. A white man can stumble through his first book and wait until book 8 to make his so-called revolutionary point but a racialized writer barely gets one shot.

Same for me.

I've been saying all Evanglicals wanted to tear down the wall between religion and government power for over 30 years. That every batshit crazy thing you've heard from the GOP over the last decade is something I heard in Evangelical churches in the 80s. @swordsjew.bsky.social wrote books on this.

Your reminder that fairy tales are full of stepmothers because women once routinely died in childbirth, from postpartum sepsis, or from other infectious diseases and left behind housefuls of motherless children. Stable nuclear families are made possible by vaccines, antibiotics, and safe abortions.

Bringing back the joust, for real. Anyone who wants my patronage had best put forward a member of their house for the lists. Given the modern-day gender divide on horsemanship, I expect a lot of horse girls in full armor. They will become international sex symbols immediately.

74% of the way there! Thank you so much, darlings! 😘

Alicira. Inharise. Katerin. Rekare. Witmara. Betsona. The world of the Seven Crowned Gods is *full* of powerful women. Check it out! itch.io/s/187134/pow...

Just a reminder (because this really ticks me off), James Talarico is not the face of some kind of new Christian Democratic politician. They've already BEEN here. Senator Warnock is a reverend who still preaches on Sundays. The journalists & podbros making this claim need to open their eyes.

Oh gosh yeah. So many sad layers there (And yes, I think Southern is promoting repellent and harmful ideas. That doesn't mean she deserves to be raped. I won't tolerate victim blaming in the comments--not even the "shouldn't have trusted Tate" kind. The rape is the responsibility of the rapist)

Yeah this has been angering me all week. How can it be ethical to keep this kind of news for a book? Haberman has been part of the problem of normalizing tr*mp & MAGA for the past decade.

One example of what's available on my Patreon...this is the weekly free writing update. Check out alternate week postings of Vision of Chaos, the process of building what will be Into the Vortex, the horse memoir, or a monthly short story reprint from my files! www.patreon.com/JoyceReynold...

Little bit of horse training blather. Choose your favorite link! joycereynolds-ward.com/blog/marker-... joycereynoldsward.substack.com/p/marker-tra... jreynoldsward.dreamwidth.org ko-fi.com/post/Marker-...

this is what some people really sound like regarding AC and hot places, and it’s a silly argument either way.

It’s not sustainable to live in places where it gets dangerously cold in winter, considering that it uses less energy to cool than to heat. Everyone who chooses to live in those places anyway is decadent and foolish.

Writer Beware is also still waiting for boilerplate contract language from Must Read Magazines...

This is actually in my wheelhouse - passive ventilation and cooling demand reduction will be insufficient to deal with higher outdoor temperatures. Virtually every single building in the northern hemisphere will need mechanical cooling to keep indoor SET <26°C.

Nods.

My husband spent the better part of the day fighting back blackberry bushes because, realistically, in Washington State, any day you're not fighting blackberry bushes is a day they're winning. He's been spraying them for 2 weeks. Today, he went after them with hedge-trimmers and a machete.

went to a high school graduation party today and at one point the whole living room - including both grandparents and youths - was engaged in a unanimously spicy discussion about my great-aunt and uncle's town chasing out a proposed data center, and how the kids see AI cooking their friends' brains

I have a new post up on Patreon. This one is about endings; why some work and some don't. I have a few examples of endings that did NOT work for me. What makes a good ending in your opinion?

There is no solidarity with this lot other than white. The working class in America is heavily non-white so they tell on themselves. And the white women enabling him need to recognize they don’t matter any more than non-white, especially Black people, of any gender. Then there’s the “class” BS!

Graham Platner is a bold experiment from the DC consultant class in "what if we stopped running against Trump, which is cringe, and started running against women and jews, which is based??"

Also a lot of white socialists who fetishize not just Soviet economics but Soviet authoritarianism. They don't mind cops, they just want to run the cops

I’ve seen overdetermined worldbuilding sections of fantasy epics that don’t have this much scaffolding.

These sneering, stupid screeds against using air conditioning are getting people killed.

This! When I was a kid, I learned very early that when you play Monopoly & you run the bank, nobody is auditing you, counting out the money for every transaction—just their half. We need to reckon with the idea that the value of money is currently set by people playing banker to the world.

This is a (minor) plot point in Starter Villain, where all the "billionaires" in the book are horribly illiquid, starved for cash, and have so fucked up their finances that they can't even get a loan based on their paper worth anymore.

This is the piece that so many people ignore. One reason I don't say *everything* I think in social media, in email, or over the phone. Sometimes I don't even write it down.

That’s all real but it doesn’t explain the cases I find most jarring — the people who I know have long railed against realpolitik the people who misrepresent facts about Platner the people who misrepresent arguments against him the people who take it as given that he is the only one who can win

"Are we facing the existential threat of fascism or aren't we?" We are, and that's why I don't think now is the time to compromise this hard.

I am the Feminist Agenda your parents warned you about