I am very wary of my five-year-old stepdaughter. Am I a bad person? | Leading questions www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle... If you don't want children, you should not become a step parent. However much you love your partner, if they come with kids you don't want, they are wrong for you.

Our FIFTH Substack is now live! This highly informative piece is not one to miss! 🥰🥳 read it here: thenotsosecretagents.substack.com/p/how-to-fin...

Stop calling everything a one pan recipe! It's not one pan if I need to cook rice and a vegetable separately to make it a full meal!

I'm setting off for Cambridge this week, going to spend a couple of days in some archives for my new project, then off to the University Press bookshop on Thursday evening to talk about Literature for the People! A few seats left? Where are you, Cambridge #booksky People?

I want a love story with a long timespan - lovers coming together against all odds, fated romance, something that keeps me hoping until the very last page #mswl

I'd love a mystery, with a sleuth who is a fish out of water, or who gets pulled into investigating against their will #mswl

Hello Friends! Welcome to #MSWL Day 2025! 🎉 This is our first #MSWL Day on Bluesky, and we have new features to share! Rather listen than read? Here’s a how-to! vimeo.com/1055984106 Here’s our Bluesky search guide: youtu.be/LnZt1MCjKZE?...

On the hunt for #darkacademia novels, particularly those that are a bit more upmarket and less magical - The Secret History vibes. If you have a crime novel set in a university, boarding school, library - it might be for me. #mswl

boosting this for @manuscriptwishlist.bsky.social #mswl day! I will post a few other specific wants throughout the day and you can find more info here: www.theblairpartnership.com/literary-age... with our submission guidelines here: www.theblairpartnership.com/literary-sub...

I live a perfectly commutable distance from central London. I had to get there before 9 for a job recently, train being the only option. It cost me £100.

I just said to a friend I feel like human authors will end up like organic veg in the next few years. A few will pay more for something ethically sourced, environmentally friendly, that didn’t kill bees and that still contains the human spirit.

They’re putting my bill up by £19 a MONTH and you can’t shop around for water companies so we just have to lump it. Nationalise now!!!

If we're talking about blurbing books again, can we agree that some people blurb only books they like, regardless of whether they know the author? The assumption that it's all just backscratching is pretty dismissive of the people who try to do this unpaid labour with some integrity, imho.

Unsolicited writing advice, no. #1616: In a world in which the average writer earns only £7000 a year, be sure why you want to do this. If it's to make a fortune, or hang out with famous people, or to be famous yourself, forget it. It isn't a lottery. It's a slog. Only joy makes it worthwhile.

what's particularly bonkers is the sheer expense, political effort, complicated negotiations and pain for exporters - for a result which the public have now largely disowned

My tiktok fyp is wall to wall Robbie Williams and Alexander from Traitors 😭 I did this to myself

The thing that gets me about AI is if you want to get an answer to something that is sometimes right and sometimes bizarre or simply disastrously wrong, you can just ask me. That’s how I answer questions

How wonderful to see not one but TWO of our fabulous authors as judges for the #Nibbies! We are so proud of both @leenanorms.bsky.social and RAMZEE 🥰

Workers are the big unspoken tension in Reeves' speech, both in a 'uh, where are you getting these workers from?' (starts a row with the Home Office) and 'uh, what terms are you employing them under?' (starts a row over workers' rights legislation with practically everybody in the Labour party).

Labour MPs who follow me on here — I know you’re there! — please do push for this change of 6 weeks pat leave at 90% of pay. And please also push for an increase in statutory maternity pay — to minimum wage! — and for pay to cover the full 12 months of leave.

Rejections from US editors are either 3 carefully constructed paragraphs of kind and insightful feedback, making it clear they finished the entire manuscript, or "no thanks"

there IS no history of protest in the US (or the UK) without the Quakers

LOL at the idea of anti-Trump resistance people 'welcoming' the Quakers to social justice protest

You should definitely consider submitting to Rhian if you fit in her MSWL, because she is very organized, a perceptive and thorough editor and cares intensely about authors' rights!

Unsolicited writing advice, no. #165345: Getting published is hard enough. But staying published is harder. The literary world is filled with once-successful authors who can't get a publishing deal any more. That's why it's important to stay in touch; keep flexible; change, when you have to.

I don't think the Seer ruined the game, there were a lot of ways it could have played out and Charlotte was very unlucky in how it did. Overwhelming likelihood was too faithfuls in that room.

My seven month old keeps unlocking my phone with face unlock. Taking this as proof of my youthfulness.

"If you miss #TheTraitors, don't worry, The Apprentice is back next week" yeah alright, if you miss Christmas don't worry, it's Ash Wednesday next week. Fuck are you on about.

The endgame is always disappointing, isn't it? Just rewards mistrust and selfishness. The good guys always lose. #thetraitors

*hands over £5 a month to Only Xan*

I actually think Frankie saying to trust her because she's a mummy when she knows Charlotte is struggling to have kids is a bit fucked up? #thetraitors

I think Frankie and Charlotte will both be voted out and the others will split the money. #thetraitors

Iconic, really. #TheTraitors

I suspect this is because the “murder mystery” format as developed in Victorian fiction is an attempt to impose rational order on chaos, and so creates the illusion that someone is in control, that someone will fix this mess, even if everything except the murder mystery is batshit. It’s reassurance.

David Lynch knew the essential secret of storytelling: you can do whatever the fuck you want as long as you’re also trying to solve a murder

He accidentally did a Nazi salute... TWICE. While talking about the future of Western civilization. He is who we think he is.

Had such an interesting chat with @zoegrunewald.bsky.social on my Times Radio show this weekend about inherited trauma. She told this story about a sudden and mysterious jolt of anxiety when arriving in Canada, the scene of a distant family trauma. Really worth your time 👇🏻

My authors who start other projects when I'm out with their books are so much more resilient in the face of inevitable rejection. And they are more likely to get 2-book deals when offers do come in. Never let your writing career become all about one, make-or-break book.

Unsolicited writing advice, no. #1749: On submissions: Don't let waiting for a response stop you from working. Submissions are already stressful enough without spending months at a standstill. Start work on something else. It helps you gain objectivity, and might give you something else to submit...

I'm now open for submissions at @tbpagency.bsky.social! I'm dying to see your exceptional crime, thriller, mystery, whodunnit, gothic and high-concept book club fiction: More on me: www.theblairpartnership.com/literary-age... Submissions guidance here: www.theblairpartnership.com/literary-sub...

it's going to sound gimmicky but I think that women shouldn't have to read the Gaiman piece but all men should read it to the end, just as all men should have read all the long reads about the Pelicot case, so many seem to still not realise the extent to which so many men hate and want to hurt us

Pretty sure it's not up to women to "think carefully" about taking a higher-paid job than their partner. It's up to their partner to get the fuck over himself and be pleased for her.

Robert Jenrick’s explicit argument is that the grooming gangs scandal proves that integration in the UK is a failure, that the state actively covered it up, and his solution is…to get a retired judge to have another look at it?

When Americans send me books set "during the Civil War", but don't specify that it's the American civil war or that they are American, and I assume it's set in 1642 with royalists and parliamentarians and get very confused

How to be a half-arse human: ‘You probably aren’t going to have clean knickers all the time’

Hoorah for Leena Norms and the half arse attitude I'm taking into 2025 www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Great to see Baroness Lola Young on this list!

Interesting piece about what all writers can learn from watching a show like The Traitors: joelmorris.substack.com/p/the-traito...