Writers with kids face many extra challenges to our schedules/productivity/sanity. But also, they will just randomly drop the most banger story prompts.

This is an incredible friend

who up strokin' they sword while lamenting the social realities

a comic about fishing (1/7)

Absolutely chuffed, so proud of my neighbors down the coast.

Here’s to actual good news:

I have the immense privilege of being not only in the same @viableparadise.bsky.social cohort as Allison, but now the same critique group. She's SO SMART you guys. Get IN HERE while the door is open.

"Move fast and break things" but the things are kids and the people allowing tech bros to break them are educators.

These statements are couched (heh) in terms that sound like ones of politeness: say please and thank you! But they encode entire hierarchies. And that is explicitly what JD is doing here: trying to make the United States into a place of hierarchy instead of one of equality.

I don’t play Magic at all but this warms my heart. Vivi, my BOI 💖 so on brand of him

The most shocking thing that Sam Altman and his cohorts have achieved is making Big Tobacco look positively lazy by comparison.

Amateur writers: I can get away with using an LLM so long as I thoroughly check the manuscript myself. Pro writers: I can not be trusted with the Find and Replace tool.

*turns to camera with a dead-eyed stare* Wow. Shocking. Who could possibly have predicted this. Certainly not any sensible software engineer who hadn’t been chugging SV’s latest batch of Kool Aid.

Every book you read (borrowed from your library or purchased from your indie bookstore!) feeds your own inimitable humanity and is a battle won against the smooth-brained world the AI slop machine is trying to create. Fight back! Make art! Read books!

Seeing a rise in new accounts searching for and responding to any posts about beta readers with offers to beta read and or provide sample edits and my very strong advice is to only ever share your book with people you have known for a while and built up some kind of mutual trust with. Be wary!

Site for connecting feudal lords with chivalric retainers? You mean SwornHub.

Well, I'll be damned. It's royalty free and there's already six, generic manufacturers lined up. newatlas.com/infectious-d...

A great milestone of writing wisdom is reached when you realize that twists don't hit because you did Clever Plot, they hit because your audience wasn't expecting to have their emotions activated.

“FDA’s New Drug Approval AI Is Generating Fake Studies” Meanwhile, RFK Jr’s commission issued a report that was “later found to be filled w/ citations for fake studies … We still don’t know if the commission used Elsa [the FDA’s AI tool] to generate that report.” 7/23/25…1/ h/t @awkword.bsky.social

Hugos, unsatisfied with standard dose of annual drama, double down.

To say I'm obsessed with this book would be a gross oversimplification. I'm rabid. I'm a terrible little goblin. I've scaled your three-story house and I'm clinging to your window in the dead of night, pressing this book to the glass so that you might read it.

Not expecting better from Worldcons institutionally, but I would like SFF culture broadly to care at least as much about real names in real other languages as they do about fantasy ones, such that you would take it upon yourself to get it right, even if no one chases you with a pronunciation guide

"Nae Fascists" Seen in Leith, Edinburgh, Scotland

A DARKER SHADE OF MAGIC x HOUSE M.D. An ambitious blood-magic medical student must unravel a government conspiracy before a murderer can close on a corporate takeover of death itself. HANDS RISE RED (103k) is a queer anticapitalist cassette-punk adult fantasy. #amquerying #A #F #questpit

I don't want to 'utilize' AI. I don't want to become 'more efficient'. I don't want to outsource the process of actual thought to a machine. I want to struggle with my words and chip away at my own soul until something shining and glorious and mundane and fucking human emerges. That's being alive.

Just a reminder for aspiring writers out there: - it took me 10 years to find the right agent - my first 4 books never got published (and one in the middle) - my daily goal for writing is just 500 words - it’s mostly luck & showing up - spite is my main motivator - I still have imposter syndrome

“what did i see to be except myself? i made it up here on this bridge between starshine and clay, my one hand holding tight my other hand; come celebrate with me that everyday something has tried to kill me and has failed.” — Lucille Clifton

realized while emptying the dishwasher that Yoda is precisely wrong. not malevolently so. but there is no do and there is no do not. there is only try. this is clear to a man in his mid-fifties and so should be clear to a 900-year-old Jedi knight

Among each day’s new horrors, at least we have this guiding light.

The cause of decency and human dignity always seems hopeless until it doesn't. The fact that we're all headed for death doesn't excuse us from working to make it better along the way.

How to change a swastika that cant be removed

If a reader dislikes your politics, then no amount of subtlety will prevent them from accusing your story of not being subtle enough. Not even if the politics of the story are about your right to live. Don’t go quieter to appease the callow.

The ol “how to stop a vampire” trick still slaps

There's a transmasculine version of this. If someone assigned female can become a man, it means there's nothing so special or powerful about men. Each of us has the biological truth of equality between the sexes within us, as demonstrated by the ability of some to pass from one to the other.

The heroes of Stonewall included trans people. Orwellian authoritarian attempts to rewrite history are just that.

I HATE bug but I love this book. I cannot overstate what an accomplishment that is. Brigitte is a phenomenal writer and this book is fun, heartwarming, and heartbreaking, all at the same time.

I had to beg for a draft of this for a year, but @crkellogg.bsky.social finally let me read it. Absolutely fantastic, and more than worth the wait. (Even if your dystopian predictions keep coming true)

I consider it my great fortune to have met Shen at @viableparadise.bsky.social, and my distinct privilege to have read a draft of this book last year. Gorgeously rendered and sharp enough to draw blood, this book will rip your heart out.

I’m quiet, not because I’m not paying attention but because I am trying to keep up with it all. Right now that feels impossible, but damn it I’m trying. Socials are at the bottom of the list on a good day. Call your reps. Hold your loved ones tight. Celebrate each other fiercely, and don’t give up.

Calling this AI like Gemini is like calling a horse a giraffe cos they're both ungulates. Scientific machine learning is useful & supports the workers in their jobs. Chatgpt, Gemini, Midjourney, StableDiffusion et al do not help the worker. They replace them. And those people lose their livelihoods

We're thrilled to announce Laura Cranehill's WIFE SHAPED BODIES! Sorrowland meets The Last of Us in this ecofeminist horror debut in which a newlywed covered in mushrooms like all the wives in her cloistered community pursues an intense connection with a woman who makes her question everything.

I would like to personally invite any Nazi, fascist, Christian nationalist, white supremacist, transphobe, etc. who has ever read any of my stories to a one-way trip to Chicxulub, 66 Mya.

anyway

Love to see everyone reposting a Nazi salute across the timeline. With criticism and horror, yes, but also, fucking hell, lads, do ye have to give the richest AND most juvenile AND most performatively despicable man on earth this much attention?

I will be aggressively focusing on the things that bring me joy for the foreseeable future. So much so that it may seem delusional. I don’t care. It’s joy all the time here.

Last month I was shopping for a fire blanket to hang over the pellet stove for safety, and the 5-star blanket had thousands of reviews about how easy it was to install, how good it looked, and how safe it made them feel. The 1-star reviews all said "the fire blanket caught on fire"

I just think we should all consider wearing dead salmon as hats, as a social experiment.

@crkellogg.bsky.social @brigittewinter.bsky.social @sr-spieler.bsky.social @neversaydustin.bsky.social @apottern.bsky.social new cryptid hallucination story prompt

2024's short fiction theme was apparently "biopunk" Upon interrogation, @scottgoblue314.bsky.social said, "the sounds I'm making while reading [sound] like if a modem were being choked out and then gasping on helium"