The books that stay with us are rarely the ones trying to please everyone. They’re the ones written with conviction, trusting the right readers will find them.

There is no gentle or kind way to say this: I cannot respect your writing if you use AI. It's shameful. The hard graft is the price you pay for creating art.

Romantic sigh 😍

The invention of the home computer and the subsequent "everyone learns to type" factor did indeed lower a lot of barriers to becoming a writer! It also radically changed publishing. Editors (or assistants) used to read slush. Now it's 99% agented-only and even agents can't keep up! 1/17

Hi! It's Read Caribbean/Caribbean Heritage Month, and I'm an award winning West Indian speculative fiction author with works across genres. Here's a thread of some of my stuff if you're wondering where to start. (Note: Most of my shorts are free to read online!) 1/6

This entire thread but especially this

"Expecting me to read books and look up words is discriminatory" is for sure a viewpoint that crops up online, and it's very important to make fun of it every time

I’m millennial enough to remember Rick Perry doing one good thing which was mandating this vaccine series for all TX girls aged 11 or 12 & him getting destroyed for it in the presidential debate & the TX govt promptly overturning it. The seeds for RFK were sown long ago.

Every cover is gorgeous. #collectiondevelopment bookshop.org/a/4013/97805...

Not to be depressing this early in the morning but at least two manuscripts that I’ve seen recently that are very clearly AI generated have received offers of representation. Multiple offers. I feel like I have a front row seat the death of an art form, watching it bleed out in real time.

I'm attending a digital humanities event in Montreal. There was a keynote on AI and something about the talk made me wonder if it had been written by Claude. I said as much in the Q&A. As I posed the question, the speaker shifted, looking slightly uncomfortable. What he said next shocked the room +

Writers (and publishers!) please grasp this fundamental fact: A press should have two accounts. 1. Author royalties. These are to be spent on NOTHING. It's the author's money. 2. Publisher profits. This is what is used to run the press and pay the publisher. These stream never cross!

Sir Ian McKellen.

🥂

I’m personally seeing many queries that are bad in the exact same way: poorly constructed, huge opening paragraph with no essential information, etc. Basically the opposite of what any conventional query advice says to do. But this is what AI is generating/telling authors to do.

Not only is PBS is the best deal in streaming (and it’s not even close) they have TONS of free programming even without donating. Masterpiece & Ken Burns stuff require a subscription but stuff like Frontline, News Hour, and most of the kids shows are FREE

UK publishing generated £7.4 billion in revenue last year. Compare that to: Premier League football: £6.6 billion Home entertainment: £5.6 billion UK film industry: 2.8 billion Now tell me again why authors don't deserve fair contracts and better pay.

This is like thinking can offload working out with the 50 and 100 pound weights so they can save their strength for the very first time they deadlift 300...

Remember when writers didn’t use AI and instead just stole their wife’s work and claimed it as their own?

every time I say this, someone didn't know: you can get the NYRB, the New Yorker, the LRB, Paris Review, The Spectator (weirdly not New Statesman), The Week, both French & Italian Vogue & New Scientist among many many other magazines FREE via the Libby app from your local library?

📢 Hey friends and fiends! 📢 I'm (finally) working on the 2026 Queer SFF Book list and I want to make sure I don't miss YOUR book! So if you have a adult SFF book coming out this year (2026) that has a queer MC, please take this opportunity to SHOUT IT OUT in the comments or QTs!! 📚❤️🧡💛💚💙💜📚

This is what novel plot revision feels like

I have two sweaters from Urban Outfitters that are 10 years old & in perfect condition. A sweater that cost twice as much from Madewell just three years later didn’t survive one wash. It’s like we went over a cliff, the drop in quality was that sudden.

Fraudsters are AI-mincing books and republishing them onto Amazon. This was done to The Isle in the Silver Sea - I assume in the hope people would accidentally click on it. It's been removed, but this is a warning of something to look out for, to my fellow authors.

A new cohort of The Writing Circle is kicking off! This is a six month small group writing support group: 2 coworking sessions a week, 1 monthly craft chat, and feedback. Join for a supportive writing community that will help you level up in your work. www.katherinelockebooks.com/writing-circle

This is cinema

Sarah’s book is jaw-dropping, and Meta has been pulling this clown shit for over a year. As the article points out, it’s clearly a personal vendetta rather than good crisis comms. Too bad the Streisand Effect exists!

Conservatism is inherently antithetical to creativity. Creativity is about imagining how something could be when it currently isn’t, whereas conservatism is about preserving things the way they are and not making anything new and different.

Wrong to the point of malpractice

So, @edzitron.com ate his Wheatties this morning

Counterpoint: No I will not

We haven't solved the power issue. Or the cooling issue. Or the chip availability issue. Everyone's power bills are going up. We created a new mental illness called Ai psychosis responsible for actual suicides. And our model is just wrong 9% of the time. But you're just not evolved enough to get it

I once DNF a book because it had whole chapters in italics. My eyes don’t deserve that kind of abuse.

Writer friends! The AI-generated email scams targeting authors are getting more sophisticated. I got one today w/ a real editor's name on it, which could be very convincing to someone who doesn't know how actual editors communicate, so I annotated it to highlight red flags. Spread the word, ok?

This is why I detest genAI. Creativity isn't having "a cool idea, but not knowing how to write". Creativity is the little decisions at each paragraph/line for what you intentionally include or omit. Good ideas are free and abundant. They're not special. Refining them into a 'piece' is special.

Oof this whole thread

the fuck it will

Having met your long term partner before the app is the Millenials' equivalent of Boomers buying a house at 23.

Completely beside the point but as someone who gets their news from reading or PBS & Canadian news, cable news by comparison seems insane. When did they all become carnival barkers? Why are they shouting?

The publishing industry views Bluesky as some tiny unimportant island out somewhere in a far-off ocean. It's not worthy of their attention like Amazon Algoland or The Republic Of Instagram Influencer Collaborativepost is. What they don't realise is just how much the island's inhabitants love books.

nostalgia is a trap, but it's also true that you used to be able to buy romance novels with horny covers in the grocery store, and those WERE the days

Quick* observations from one source**: Edelweiss - 2585 titles labeled as sci-fi, fantasy, horror, magical realism, or folklore/fairy tales/legends/mythology published or forthcoming in 2026. 57% are coming from Big 5's. *using search filters **Not cross-referenced with r/fantasy, Locus, etc

I shouldn’t be seeing spencer pratt headlines in 2026, I’m a human being and I have rights

physical book: The Goblin Emperor ebook: Yesteryear audio: Famesick

Bring back the ancient knowledge

My biggest conspiracy theory is that telling working class people that engagement in the arts is a middle / upper class thing and to do so makes you a class traitor is a psyop to make them disengaged with themselves and the world and the beauty of being human, so that they accept worse treatment.

Getting AI to read to your kids is crazy. Don’t you want to do the voices???

Guys! GUYS! It's back! It's coming back!!! The single greatest literacy promotion in human history* is coming back! All you 80s and 90s kids know what's up! *(this point may be a little hyperbolic, but just a little) people.com/pizza-huts-b...

Please do not ask bookworm if they are going to finish the books they have before buying more. It is very offensive in our culture.