The Let’s Not Fight panel with @julietk.bsky.social @drkarenlord.bsky.social @aptshadow.bsky.social @annabelcwrites.bsky.social and @elianjmorgan.bsky.social

L & I are off out this morning to play hide & seek in London! (A limited game board for this trial run - within the Circle line.)

It's Book Quote Wednesday #bookqw and this week's word is OLD. Cade is not-quite-lost in the catacombs.

There's a panel on Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Trans History including @cherylmorgan.bsky.social and @joelcornah.bsky.social, as well as Nick Hubble, duckbunny, and modded by Sandra Bond, also at the con there's @julietk.bsky.social, though no @poopraven.bsky.social this year I don't think :(

Slower writing this week as I spent most of yesterday contemplating Why This Bit Doesn't Work; but I got there in the end & have written nearly 4K today. Maybe will get a bit more done before dinner?

(also I bet it was longer ago than that but yes fine EVIDENCE etc) Today I met a modern dog who demonstrated thousands of years of co-evolving with humans by dropping a ball in your path, waiting for you to reach it, then staring at you until you threw it. 100% success rate.

Been writing a mailing list post, with a snippet from the novel I've just started drafting -- sign up here if you're interested: julietkemp.com/newsletter

Love novellas? How about two in one book? In Wiz Duo 2, Juliet Kemp sends a reluctant knight on a quest, while E M Faulds gives her heroine a superpower that totally sucks. wizardstowerpress.co...

Downside of March camping: very nearly freezing, spent the night entirely within my sleeping bag, head and all. Upside of March camping: gorgeous sunset.

Looking forward to @easterconuk.bsky.social next week 🎉 Also to my 4 panels: 16:30 Fri: The Politics of Hope: Imagining a Better World 21:00 Fri: Everything I know about life, I learned from reading.... 16:30 Sat: Let's not fight 16:30 Sun: Getting from A to B in Under a Month: Transport in SFF

Our ebooks are now available through Bookshop.org. Go ye forth and support your local, independent bookshop! uk.bookshop.org/p/bo...

Sea and acid the other week :) 🌊 (only one of these is permanent)

It's Book Quote Wednesday #bookqw and this week's word is KNIFE. Cade is having a chat with a ghost.

The teenager may have watched too much Pottery Throwdown on C4 - he has started making the Dominos ad joke IRL.

I love these books.

Read this week: Hell's Heart by Alexis Hall: v queer Moby Dick on Jupiter. Chaotic, bitty, weird - which IIRC so is the 30% of the OG I've read. Indeed this has much LESS in the way of info dumps about (space) whales, for better or worse. Deeply entertaining ride www.goodreads.com/book/show/23...

Wrote 8.5K on the New Thing today which a) is very pleasing and b) has made my brain quite tired. Tomorrow likely to be slower as I don’t have as clear an idea yet of the next couple of scenes.

Coming in April, the first volume of Fight Like A Girl is back in print at last! wizardstowerpress.co...

Ooh I loved this on stage.

Excited about the panels I’m (provisionally) on at Eastercon - hopefully will be able to share them soon… The now-traditional Fountain Pen Meet-up is on there though :) (hello @aliettedebodard.com !)

Read and enjoyed this week: Fiend by Alma Katsu (Succession but with a demon); though I wasn’t wholly satisfied by the ending. Star Shipped by Cat Sebastian (contemporary romance with SF actors). Very much liked the prickly insecure hero.

This book is GREAT & you should read it!

Writing progress today: the nearly-finished urban fantasy novel is now 7K less overwritten; the re-outlined enemies-to-lovers fantasy-with-romance contains 1K of Actual Words (at the cost of quite a lot of staring out of the window; first scenes are Hard).

Love novellas? How about two in one book? In Wiz Duo 2, Juliet Kemp sends a reluctant knight on a quest, while E M Faulds gives her heroine a superpower that totally sucks. wizardstowerpress.co...

RIP Corsica Studios

My Friday evening: 2h running a very wholesome Scout meeting about urban biodiversity where we planted wildflowers in yoghurt pots; 3.5h dancing to banging acid techno in a sweaty concrete box underneath Elephant.

The teenager got this after we played a friend’s copy on holiday & I am enjoying it. Strategic enough to be interesting, fast enough that I don’t get fed up ;)

Went to see Into the Woods last night at the Bridge and it was GREAT. Seriously considering going again and taking L & @doop.bsky.social before it closes. Having thoughts about stories now…

Teika Marija Smits' short story The Art of Time Travel, in the One Million Times anthology, is shortlisted for a BSFA Shorter Fiction Award. If you haven't read it yet, you can read it for free during the voting period at elsewhen.press/wp/wp-conten... If you're eligible to vote, please do!

Spring!

It is EDITING TIME AGAIN. Hopefully nearly at the final round on this book (urban fantasy ish). Currently I am fixing all the parts where I was circling the point slightly too slowly. #amwriting

To be fair to HMRC, while I don’t understand why I couldn’t do this through self assessment this year, phoning up to sort voluntary NIC payments was surprisingly straightforward and only took 10 min. Admittedly I do have an accent that plays nicely with the robot call parser.

I'm not going to pretend that is a universal vision of who we are but fundamentally I was brought up to believe in a multicultural Britain that was looking forward into the new millennium as many peoples together, not backwards into an imagined past greatness, and I refuse to give up on that.

Got to SIT OUTSIDE in the GARDEN in the SUNSHINE earlier today! And then take my new-to-me Brompton (oops n+1 error -- but I've been trying to justify one for about 20 years, so) for a test ride around the park also in the sunshine. Highly delightful all round.

The tiny thyme sprout has made it through the winter! (It was only about 3 leaf pairs big in October and I thought it had no chance.)

Going through the bsky.app/profile/east... programme participation form and there is SO MUCH good stuff on there!

Reminder to self: whenever I think "oh, I have no ideas about how to solve this book problem / piece of worldbuilding / etc", if I am willing to sit and stare into space for half an hour, something always shows up.

"Ruthanna Emrys has done what she does best and most brilliantly: she has crafted a new twist on something that feels effortlessly familiar, compelling and intriguing, with a magic system like I've never seen before. I want so much more of this universe!" -- Seanan McGuire wizardstowerpress.co...

The sea is somewhere out there. As is Skegness. Though I walked out for about 5 min and found only a large puddle.

The sea!

Love novellas? How about two in one book? In Wiz Duo 2, Juliet Kemp sends a reluctant knight on a quest, while E M Faulds gives her heroine a superpower that totally sucks. wizardstowerpress.co...

This week: working on an outline for the 3rd iteration of... well, the Scriv document is called 'quest' but that's definitely not the right name any more. I still adore the characters; hoping that third time's the charm for a story that works properly for them.

I asked the two 13yos gaming in my living room right now how often you can launch a rocket to mars and they said "about every 2 years" without even looking up

sometimes writing a thing is: deleting a sentence, retyping it, changing two words in it, changing them back again, deleting the whole thing again, then putting it back in nearly the same words but in a different order. sometimes.

Seen in the British Museum today: an Amazon chucking a rock at a Greek soldier (part of the Mausoleum at Halikarnassos, 353-351 BC); a cup that looks like a friendly gryphon (Apulia, 360-350 BC).

this is GREAT. (And very short, if you're short on time!)

I have an occasional newsletter if anyone wants to keep informed (other than on here) of writing things I am up to: julietkemp.com/newsletter/ (this information brought to you by virtue of the fact that I'm currently writing one to go out tomorrow)

Really enjoyed this recent short by @clairehumphrey.bsky.social in the January @uncannymagazine.bsky.social

Aim for February: start using my headphones again when I'm working. I know it's the single thing that helps most with getting distracted & yet I keep slipping out of the habit. Today: halfway success in that I had them on but forgot to put any actual music on 😆 Still helped!

Love novellas? How about two in one book? Wiz Duo Book 1 has wonderfully strange worlds created by David Gullen and Ben Wright. wizardstowerpress.co...