Wow, Issue #7 of @newedgeswordmag.bsky.social has some Sword and Planet bangers! I loved the pace and voice of Dariel Quiogue's Corsairs of the Crater Sea, the wit and charm of @jamesenge.bsky.social's The Red Road to Lost Amarkh, and @prashanthsrivatsa.bsky.social's moving The Promise of Dilli.

I'm honored to have won the 2025 Sushila Devi Award for LOKA! 🙏 Very grateful to the Bhopal Literature & Art Festival and Shri Ratanlal Foundation for the award, and to the jurors for their kind words. 💙 to the team at Hachette India and to Cameron McClure for supporting the book! #sciencefiction

Tasavvur is a non-profit, self-funded magazine. With your help, we can continue to pay writers and artists to bring wonderful stories to light. Donate today, as your support means everything to us! Link: buymeacoffee.com/tasavvurnama 🔮 - #SouthAsian #SpeculativeFiction

Why is this so accurate and painful and also hilarious all at the same time

If you've got one thing for the weekend, let that be to watch Pluribus.

The winners of the 2025 World Fantasy Awards have been announced—congratulations to all! reactormag.com/here-are-the...

Why does Slow Horses have only six episodes? And a teaser ready for the next season! And then the next season promptly arrives in a few months, and you're seated! Why can't all shows be like Slow Horses?

This seemed at first like a very interesting, albeit mainstream, map of authors across the globe, until I came across Edward Said being labeled an Israeli and just - wow. hammockmag.github.io/literarymap/...

*A French restaurant* "Oh, waiter?" "Oui, monsieur?" "I don't wish to appear rude, but this wine...well...it tastes a bit of petrol." "Oui! That is the Vin Diesel."

In case you missed the news, The Dragon Has Some Complaints by John Wiswell is available for preorder 🎉 Preorder now, available June 23, 2026! buff.ly/SvZQ82W

It's over for us. In one day, I have now received two feedbacks from two readers who read my story and both critiques are so unabashedly Chatgpt generated, and I say that not only just they were IDENTICAL. People need to realize that if I wanted feedback from a fucking bot, I'd go get it myself.

In current social media parlance, if you say something's your favorite, it ends the conversation. If you say something's the best, it's rage bait. In between lies the wasteland of decorum.

Four books to get to know me

Congratulations to all winners!

It really bothers me that offering has only one r while occurring has two.

Huge congratulations to @wiswell.bsky.social for a well-deserved Locus win! Everyone go red Someone You Can Build A Nest In if you haven't.

We're thrilled to present the shortlist for the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction:

it is really weird that publishing decided that instead of having a marketing budget, writers should just become cult leaders

oh wow, another book I loved! a portal fantasy that I feel is somehow not getting read enough is The Spice Gate by @prashanthsrivatsa.bsky.social

Also delighted to see @prashanthsrivatsa.bsky.social's wonderful Indian fantasy epic THE SPICE GATE as a finalist for First Novel. & other great work I enjoyed from last year on the ballot, including by @vandroidhelsing.bsky.social @scumbelievable.bsky.social @vajra.me @tlotlotsamaase.bsky.social:

Delighted to be a Locus finalist for The Spice Gate, under the first novel category. Congratulations to many friends and excellent authors who have made the list!

One more day left for the Locus Award nominations voting. THE SPICE GATE is up on the longlist in the First Novel category. If you've read and enjoyed the book, please do take some time to vote. Thank you! :) poll.voting.locusmag.com

Can we do dragons next?

Fascinatingly, this nakedness (which is not a matter of shame or lack of civility but a common virtue) is compensated with flowers and jewelry that adorn the bare upper body and legs. Class distinction occurs in this manner, as is evident in old Sangam poems and post-Sangam epics.

Delighted to inform that researching people's attire for my 2,000-yr old sangam era historical fantasy has abruptly ended after discovering that most commoners roamed naked.

It is impossible not to see the correlation between this excellent article and the regular online discourse around why cozy sff has primarily been a white author's genre. The author demographic might have evolved somewhat over the last 2 years, but this is still a great critique.

Just fyi that there are several immensely talented artists who have for years honed their craft on developing ghibli-like aesthetics and y'all chatgpt-ing your summer picnic snaps for 6 seconds of awe and clout

I've been thinking a lot about my author career lately, and the precarious position I feel like I'm in. I haven't put out a book since 2022, and my next isn't until at least May 2026. All the publisher folks who first acquired my debut are gone. My momentum is very stalled.

Yes, I watched the whole 50 minutes. And no, my opinion has not changed.

⚔️SECOND BONUS POEM UNLOCKED🪐 It will be a Sword & Planet poem chosen through open submissions! Subs will open shortly after the crowdfund ends on March 15th, and we'll provide further details then. Meanwhile, onward to 350+ shares of the original post and unlocking a third poem!

I have killed so many darlings in my current WIP they've become an entire book by themselves, where the darlings stage an uprising for retribution

Is there anything more useless than a Thai red curry in a menu that also has Thai green curry?

FYI, many of these excellent South Asian writers / editors are on bsky, so please follow them if you don't already. In order: @gautambhatia88.bsky.social, @prashanthsrivatsa.bsky.social, @amalsingh.bsky.social, @vajra.me, @blaftrakesh.bsky.social, @lavanya.bsky.social, & @indrapramitdas.bsky.social

Why do fantasy novels have impossible large libraries, but very few characters who are writers?

WELCOME BACK PRASHANTH SRIVATSA! @prashanthsrivatsa.bsky.social will have a brand new story in one of this year's issues. See cool previews and sign up to be alerted when the crowdfund launches: www.backerkit.com/c/projects/b...

Some of the titles I gush about: @vandroidhelsing.bsky.social's THE WEST PASSAGE, Samantha Harvey's ORBITAL, Layla Martinez' WOODWORM, collections by Mariana Enriquez, Puloma Ghosh, @gigiganguly.bsky.social; novels by @lavanya.bsky.social, @amalsingh.bsky.social, @prashanthsrivatsa.bsky.social&more!

Why do fantasy novels have impossible large libraries, but very few characters who are writers?

this was such a good read, if you haven't you really should

The Spice Gate is on the Locus Recommended List! It happily falls under the First Novel category. Along with some phenomenal names who published their works last year inc @gautambhatia88.bsky.social, @amalsingh.bsky.social, @indrapramitdas.bsky.social, @vajra.me, @wiswell.bsky.social among others.

Super thrilled to see two of my works in the Locus Recommended List! My debut novel, “The Garden of Delights” and short story “The Gulmohar of Mehranpur”! Congratulations to everyone I share this list with, @prashanthsrivatsa.bsky.social @gautambhatia88.bsky.social @indrapramitdas.bsky.social

Top Ten Tuesday: Best Debuts of 2024 (Part Two) sifaelizabethreads.wordpress.com/2025/01/28/b... @ajclack.bsky.social @fireflypress.bsky.social @prashanthsrivatsa.bsky.social @harpervoyagerus.bsky.social @jesspopps.bsky.social @chickenhousebooks.bsky.social @harrietconstable.bsky.social

One down, three to go! Reading my way through the @newedgeswordmag.bsky.social mags that arrived recently. All good stories in the first issue, two spectacular - Sister Chaos by @brynhammond.bsky.social, and The Pillars of Silence by @prashanthsrivatsa.bsky.social. A joy to read. On to the next!

So much of SFF is about power structures. And yet, time and again, the lessons we gain from works that warn us of blind fealty and idolatry we fail to extend to the authors who penned them.

There are two kinds of readers. Those who say "just bear with it until the second half, it all pays off" and "this book doesn't grab me in the first 3 and a half lines, imma dnf" and very likely they are the same person talking about a book they're reccoing vs one that was recco'd to them.

I'll play along myself. Just grabbing the first three books on the top of the stack on my desk, and I'm dying to read them all: The Reformatory by @tananarivedue.bsky.social The Spice Gate by @prashanthsrivatsa.bsky.social The Grimoire Grammar School PTA by @caitlinrozakis.bsky.social

What I'm reading this week.

RAKESFALL also made the NYT 100 Notable Books of 2024 list, as a book on “the thorny question of how to endure fascism and kill kings.” www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Arcane Season 2, also known as Arcane Seasons 2, 3 and 4.

This has been an excellent read so far.

Spineless stuff from Spines. www.thebookseller.com/news/new-pub...