I deplore the craven cowardice of those implicated in this report. That queer, BIPOC and Chinese diaspora authors were singled out for political examination, and denied a fair chance at SFF’s best-known awards, is reprehensible. Had my first book come out a year later, I’d have been disqualified too

love this one. One of my favourite calming comfort reads, deeply thoughtful as well as deeply emotional

🍓🍓 TODAY'S THE DAY! LET'S GET PETTY! 🍓🍓   My ex’s judgy older bro (39m) told him to dump me (37f). Now I'm broke & stuck in a 10-ft-wide Spite House next door. If I blast monsterfucking audiobooks & tell MLM reps that older bro can host Tupperware parties, AITA? www.harpercollins.com/products/at-...

I fully expect The Saint of Bright Doors and To Shape a Dragon’s Breath to be on every awards list this year (and I’m sure when I read The Mad Sisters of Esi I’ll think the same of it), but I must confess: I never expected to be on a list with Salman Rushdie lol

🐉🧧 (by the very talented—and very human—cover designer Mel Four)

standing ovation inflation: the true problem of our times

Voicemail: Hi Shelley, this is the local library. We were just wondering if— Me: OMG!! My library has finally figured out I’m a local author and are getting in touch! Voicemail: —you could check inside the book you borrowed, the previous patron left a bookmark inside that they want back

anyway, He Who Drowned the World is eligible for Hugo Best Novel, if anyone is so inclined to nominate it (thank you if you do!) I personally like it better than She Who Became the Sun, but I write to my own taste, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

wait, all I had to do was put my preorder reward short story up on my website for it to count as published, and it would make my 240,000+ words series (two books and the short story) eligible for Best Series?? I AM CRYING

cried actual tears by page 2, was snort-laughing throughout, and legit SCREAMING by the end

after months of imaginative labour I have constructed my magnum opus: a world without breasts

Oh, nothing, just @shelleyparkerchan.bsky.social unravelling then reassembling my heart with this beautiful cruel beast of a book

learned a new word: “the croton hues of the Impressionists”, where croton is this colourful tropical plant I never knew the name of! I remember being enraptured the first time I saw them, in Yogyakarta in my early twenties

as a writer I sometimes break out in a cold sweat thinking about my kid and her fellow fifth graders critiquing The Hunger Games as having “kinda a slow start”

“what kind of personality will be the engine to get me between these disparate plot points that I came up with to generate the one (1) scene I’m actually invested in” (it’s like solving a multi-variable equation where the variables are, I guess, the Issues that shape their interaction styles)

just when you buckaroos thought 2024 would be a break from book drama, here comes chuck tingle in the mix. recently i was asked to be a featured speaker for the TEXAS LIBRARY ASSOCIATION conference. a few days ago they rescinded my invitation. here is what happened. tumblr.com/drchucktingl...

have reached the “fandom ancient” stage where I can binge The Boys and reminisce about each of these middle-aged men when they were 20 and beautiful. Dark Angel and Gossip Girl are easy, Karl Urban has been in everything, but do YOU remember Antony Starr as a centaur in Xena: Warrior Princess? 😂

instead of telling me for the nth time to watch Blue Eye Samurai, petition someone in Hollywood to buy my TV rights lol

what’s the last word you looked up in 2023? mine is ‘aspergillium’ (‘implement for sprinkling holy water’) which appears in Dwight Garner’s memoir The Upstairs Delicatessen as a stand-in for a priest’s exposed penis

if you, like me, like to ring in the new year by reading a book in the bathtub…why not consider He Who Drowned the World, which is $4.99, this December 31 only, at the US Kindle store? (me, I’ll be re-reading Tana French’s Faithful Place, my second favourite of hers) www.amazon.com/Drowned-Worl...

Very well: 4 UK/IE kindle copies of SHE WHO BECAME THE SUN by @shelleyparkerchan.bsky.social, free for the taking. amazon.co.uk/kindle/redee... amazon.co.uk/kindle/redee... amazon.co.uk/kindle/redee... amazon.co.uk/kindle/redee... #KindleBookGiveaway

Highly recommended to anyone that recently enjoyed Blue Eye Samurai on Netflix!

The healthy unhealthy motivation.

earlier this year I had the half-formed idea to become familiar with all the ‘dried things’ (you know what I mean) in the Chinese grocery store, but only got as far as lily flowers, tea tree mushrooms and dried gluten…perhaps completing this delicious quest can be my new year resolution?

She Who Became the Sun is £0.99 on Kindle in the UK until 6 Jan, if you wanted to dip your toe into the Radiant Emperor series for practically nothing: www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B08Q...

one of my favourite reads this year was Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld, a mid-life romance scaffolded equally by the fever-dream world of late night comedy TV production, and the dispiriting reality of the pandemic

Because nobody ever told me—and the article doesn’t mention it either—this form of hormonal birth control made me weep uncontrollably 24/7, even though I had no history of depression. I thought I’d lost my mind! Would have been nice to know it’s a possible side effect www.nytimes.com/2023/12/21/w...

This is extremely sad for the genre. Small Beer have put out, over its years, a unique and incredible catalogue. I really hope @gavingrant.bsky.social is able to take good care of himself, and finds a way to keep highlighting new work and writers. www.tor.com/2023/12/20/s...

approximately everyone and their neighbour has recommended this book to me—and if that’s the case for you too, then now’s an excellent time to grab it from your (US) ebook retailer of choice

…this seems like something I would love to have in Melbourne? that it might even be possible for someone as socially ungifted as me to organise, given that I know many readers and my spouse is a musician who knows many other musicians and small suitable bars…HMM www.nytimes.com/2023/12/19/b...

Fellow Travelers destroying me, week after week

I had no idea that Curtis Sittenfeld, who I only knew by reputation as a former prodigy who writes about WASPs and US politicians, would be the author of a contemporary romance that fulfills my reading desires exactly??

I don’t feel like writing, so I’m going to maybe catch Past Lives before it leaves cinemas, go for a run, finish John McPhee’s Draft No. 4 (useful ideas about structure!), and start my anticipated read of @laurarsamotin.bsky.social’s The Sins on Their Bones. Not every day has to be a words day 🤷🏻

they told us Australians to brace for a wild summer, but I never expected Melbourne to develop a monsoon

“I do not like this one so well. all he does is yell, yell, yell. I will not have this one about. When he comes in I put him out,” I say to myself, pressing mute on anyone who annoys me for a flicker of a second on social media

I haven’t met an Olivia Atwater book yet that hasn’t instantly become a favourite comfort read. As with T Kingfisher’s fantasy romances, they don’t shy away from the structural shittiness of the world, but the protagonists are courageously moral in a way that wards off despair. Highly recommended!

ICYMI I rounded up my picks for the ten best science fiction/fantasy books of 2023 in the @washingtonpost.com (Paywall-free link below.) I've been meaning to do a thread about them, but (gestures around with flappy hands) life kinda got in the way. Better late than never....

I feel like some really great PhD dissertations are going to be written about queerness and gender subversion in 2020s SFF, and this duology will be at the dead center of that discussion.

I really loved She Who Became the Sun by @shelleyparkerchan.bsky.social, but I was nervous about how the second book of the duology would pay off that shocking ending of the first book. I needn't have worried. Everyone I know agrees He Who Drowned the World just got better.

co-signed!

I’m on a book-buying ban, but whoops, finger totally slipped on that preorder button

Gazan poet Mosab Abu Toha's collection THINGS YOU MAY FIND HIDDEN IN MY EAR, made available to download for free from City Lights Books. He was recently abducted by the Israeli army.

reading book 1 of Dunnett’s Lymond series again, and becoming vexingly reacquainted with the feeling of “am I dumb or is this harder than Shakespeare, because I understand fucking nothing”

Books of 2023. The genre is littered with series that don't pay off. Shelley Parker-Chan made sure the Radiant Emperor duology was not one of them, with an incredibly powerful series closer.

not only am I not offended, but I actively encourage my friends not to eat their icing so I can have it

chuffed to be on this list in the Washington Post, along with some very fine companions. Thanks, @charliejane.bsky.social! www.washingtonpost.com/books/2023/1...

my top three movies on the cry-o-meter in recent memory: 1. Suzume 2. Coco 3. Portrait of a Lady on Fire

the first time I’ve ever succeeded at getting tickets from a waitlist, and it was All of Us Strangers at MQFF!! my standards for timey-wimey tearjerkers are HIGH, let’s fucking goooooo

Tig Notaro

ever since I suggested that my library acquire a copy of this totally obscure book called The Fourth Wing, they now instantly purchase everything I request. stop me before the power goes to my head!!!