We have decided the world needs short fiction clubs instead of just book clubs. All those people who don’t finish a book in time and fumble their way through the meet-up can switch over and live a shame free life. Selfishly I recommend picking your material from a plucky, small press magazine.

Publishing expert @alicektg.bsky.social takes the pulse of Australia's literary festivals & their challenges – cancellations, culture wars, climate change and new hate speech laws – as Adelaide announces Constellations: Not Writers Week. @aunz.theconversation.com theconversation.com/what-is-the-...

I’d like to report a murder

I hope you write through the self doubt

Look at this phenomenal list!!

Three(!) short stories by me and Corey on the shortlist for the Aurelius awards this year and two of them are literally just FROM MY PATREON? (Our story in Interzone also got nominated!) Seriously what is happening. aurealisawards.org So excited. :D

Do one of the things that makes you feel better, because if you aren't doing any of that, you will run down. Today I did some writing. I'm a writer, & if I don't write, I run down. It's very easy for me to forget this, despite decades of knowing it. And so I am here to remind you to do your things.

and you may find yourself reading everything you wrote in your notes app at 4am and you may tell yourself this is not my beautiful story

Run don’t walk!

I hope you don't keep forever revising and polishing out of fear. It'll never be perfect, make it as good as you can and then move on

And *none of you* thought to mention the new secondhand bookshop that just opened up near my house??

I hope you have the courage to start that idea you don't think you're ready for

The things one impulse buys while one’s husband is buying warhammer

I hope you know you're a good writer

Imagine you were about to appear at a writers' festival to talk about your first book... then the whole thing fell apart. I wanted to find debut authors who almost talked at Adelaide Writers' Week. These are 21 folks I've identified so far but *please* let me know who I've missed or mixed up.

Alright time for a new pinned post. Follow along with my daily writerly encouragement bot to lighten your feed in 2026! Hand built to soothe my anxieties and maybe yours as well

Micro commute horror story. Dude somewhere in the carriage loudly lecturing friend about crypto. *cheeky train nap* Wake up 20 minutes later. Dude is still loudly talking about crypto.

Hey I'm posting this again to keep it rolling. I'm a Kobo reader now and I really appreciate Kobo plus

For many years I lived in an apartment without aircon. My list of places I could go to escape the heat in metro Melbourne

Have your fire plans ready folks.

Great initiative!

I say this often but it bears repeating: if you make your money from creating art then you NEED to find an art or craft where you just do it for fun and don't try to be perfect or make any money from it, and when anyone tells you to monetise it you say 'No', because otherwise your soul will die.

Apt for the NY resolutions conversation

Good pep talk for people who listed “submit more short fic” in their resolutions list

Whole thread.

Omg omg omg

This year has been unrelentingly miserable. But the best thing—the thing that has sustained me—has been @othersidespec.bsky.social. After almost a year and a half of work, we officially launch in 2026… and we open to submissions at midnight! Make OTHERSIDE your first sub of the new year? 🌈 🪐 🗡️

10/10 recommend going to pubs where your friends can bring their parrot

TL;DR be a decent human, do the work, and make some friends. The rest is just dumb fucking luck, but even if you don’t have the dumb fucking luck, *you will have been a decent human, done some work, and made some friends.*

Signs I had too much caffeine too close to bed last night: waking up to an utterly bizarre half story(?) idea on my notes app. Good job 4am me, I remember none of this but you were having a good time!

I hope you know you haven't magically forgotten how to write a story between one project and the next

Making art is not all joy and fungus reanimated bunnies! That’s okay. That’s normal. That’s part of why art is important and also why artists and writers need to be paid for their work. If you keep dragging yourself back even when it’s hard, you’re doing fine.

Adding to this in the current AI discourse that sometimes it is hard and that’s part of the art, too

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.

Thread for Melbourne/Naarm folks

There's always a bigger infinity

I started a thing! But because Bluesky doesn’t have an algorithm no one has seen it yet (a blessing while I tested if it worked). Follow along for daily random writerly encouragement from my brain (and a lot of notes on my phone at weird hours)!

It's time for slower art. The constant churn and grind pushed by techno capitalism has reached its inevitable conclusion with AI slop. Let's make our best work and be patient with our process. Let's release art that's worth stopping for and savoring. Let's show each other what humans can do

Birthday gift achievement unlocked: Getting into vinyl

Containment Protocol: Sasha Bonkowsky's review for There Is No Anti-Memetics Division is to be kept on Reactor's homepage with as much visibility as possible. Visitors are heavily advised to KEEP EYES on the review AT ANY COST.

i like that being an author or writer is one of the few creative endeavors they can’t really turn into a Bake Off style competition show because there’s very little screen interest in watching twelve people in sweatpants mainline snack foods while clacking away on a laptop

It’s my birthday. A great gift would be reading my stuff!

It’s a good day to be sitting in the sun angrily reading Audre Lorde

Refilling the well. Good day for it!

You don't have to kill ALL your darlings, okay?

Welcome to my Australian rom-com advent calendar! If you're Australian and want to read local, or from overseas and want to broaden your horizons, I've got you covered. Day 1 is The Wedding Forecast by Nina Kenwood. No one does emotionally realistic mess like Nina - this book is a masterclass.

Please don't let the fear of not doing something well stop you from trying it for the first time. Write a messy story. Paint a crappy flower. Whittle the worst wooden bear of all time. The best gift you can give yourself is to have fun and grow.

It begins!

One of my faves. Delighted to have my physical copy arrive a few days ago!

Just a few days left to get your 2025 Aurealis Awards entries in! The Aurealis Awards close to 2025 entries this Sunday, November 30. Check out the updated entries list and make sure you get all your eligible work entered before the deadline!