We are ten days out from Christmas which means that if you are Welsh, it's the time of year when a skeleton horse might show up at your door and challenge you to a rap battle. If you lose the horse gets to come inside and drink your booze. Happy Christmas from Mari Lwyd!

It’s so strange I don’t hear republicans crying about big government. We’re in a police state now and they just don’t seem to care.

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

U.S. pals: Do. Not. Donate. To. Salvation. Army. There are better charities out there. Much better.

I just finished the latest book in the Sworn Soldier series by @tkingfisher.com and I loved it as much as the first two. Eerie, insightful, and unsettling. Highly recommended if you’re into queer horror. (Also Lt. Alex Easton might be my favorite nonbinary protagonist across media.) #BookSky 💙📚

“When I Walk Through That Door, I Am” by Jimmy Santiago Baca is an incredible book/epic poem that is extremely relevant to the ICE and immigrant-detention crisis in the United States. Highly recommended for everyone even if poetry isn’t normally your thing. #BookSky 💙📚

#HorrorWritersChat Write out of spite. Your WIP should be a fuck you to someone, whether they doubt your craft and potential success or a fuck you to fascists cunts.

If you're doing this so you'll be revered as the greatest author to have ever graced this earth, don't bother. Write because you want to. No one owes you anything. #horrorwriterschat

Since other people are doing WIP pitches: Drafting: Trans man tries to leave his too-picturesque-to-be-real New England hometown. It's not that simple. Querying: I was obsessed with a certain podcast episode so I set it in 1871 and ended up with something completely different. #HorrorWritersChat

Hi! I'm Sal, writer of ghosts and queer people and the real-life horrors of mundane cis-hets. Am drafting one thing and querying another, so no recent or upcoming releases for me. (Yet?) #HorrorWritersChat

Illinois Gov. Pritzker vows to pursue Trump officials who participate in an illegal National Guard deployment to Chicago: "If you hurt my people, nothing will stop me - not time or political circumstance - from making sure that you face justice under our constitutional rule of law."

another thing I wish the reporting was harder on is the distinction between deporting people and detaining them. deportation is terrible, traumatic, tears apart families. But at least they can call home, explain what happened. The detention centers are a black hole.

I love playing with perception in horror stories, and the way we second-guess ourselves about what we saw or *thought* we saw or convinced ourselves we didn't see. Windows and mirrors are both GREAT for this. #HorrorWritersChat

That characters' queerness is simultaneously the thing that will save them and the thing that made them feel they needed saving in the first place. It's a double-edged sword, and the fact we can pick it up and wield it is the thing the others around us want to keep hidden. #HorrorWritersChat

There's nothing to see, only dusty darkness, which is strange as I've been hearing the scratching noises for weeks. I look down at my bandaged fingers and wonder again how I hurt them.. #HorrorWritersChat

The forbidden room is also the very heart of the story, the source of the haunting - so taken that way, the ones I've built on are variations on "yourself as the actual worst" - what you're afraid to see in yourself; the person you're afraid to be; the person you can't help being #HorrorWritersChat

A beautifully lit parlor full of people smiling and chatting as if nothing was wrong. It's obvious they heard me open the door but are pretending not to. No one ever wants to look the truth in the face. #HorrorWritersChat

What I’m writing now is about scary things outside (that you might think you’re safe from, but…) I feel like classic horror has to use both. #HorrorWritersChat

This is tough because I don't think I use them that much. I have one book where windows and mirrors are used, but for characters struggling to see something clearly. They know it's there, but can't quite make it out. Maybe I use them to veil stuff 🤔 #horrorwriterschat

Here's what I find scary: not being able to see what's happening, not being able to see yourself. You can't see out the window to see what's attacking you, because the escape pod rolled over onto it. You can't see yourself, how bad your injuries are, because there are no mirrors. #HorrorWritersChat

I can interpret this a few different ways, but for me it might be the question, “What’s really inside of you — and what if it gets out?” #HorrorWritersChat

At night, a window can become a mirror. An old, flaking mirror can become a window. Is there a fundamental difference? A being who can pass through one, see through one, can see and pass through both, & through still water. Pick your fears carefully. What are you summoning? #horrorwriterschat

Well, part of why I'm writing is to confront the things that scare and upset me, so if there's a Bluebeard room in my brain, that's the first door I'm breaking open. That said, there are themes I have no patience for or interest in: 90% of r*pe plots, for example. #HorrorWritersChat

#HorrorWritersChat - A reflective silver teapot or even a cup of tea may act as a mirror. It's no accident Narcissus died while admiring his reflection in a pool of water. All of a sudden, there you are staring at yourself in reverse. It's you but it isn't you. It's inside and outside. Horrifying.

Maybe this is cheating, but windows at night from the inside look an awful lot like mirrors. One of my short stories was inspired by that image - tall, wide windows in a New England church sanctuary, to be precise. #HorrorWritersChat

The room you don't enter in my haunted house is a sitting room. A place where past trite conversations linger, a place where conservative conversation is favored in light of anything deep or unique identifying. A room where everyone plays pretend. There's nothing real in there. #horrorwriterschat

This is tough, because I feel like there are so many different ways this question could go. But at least in my LWF series, there's an undercurrent of ableism (and lots of other isms), where the townsfolk try to hide away differences. #HorrorWritersChat

A lot of things go unsaid in my stories. Not about the supernatural horror or actual events, but the internal thoughts and feelings that characters keep locked away from each other, and even themselves. #HorrorWritersChat

Hello! I'm Sal. I live in western Massachusetts and I write about ghosts and queer people. Most of my work takes place in small town New England, where being different can be its own brand of horror. #HorrorWritersChat

Fantastic collection of short stories by Kim Fu. Fascinating, powerful, unsettling. Highly recommended for folks who like speculative fiction. #BookSky💙📚

The Gestapo violence is horrible--but it's noteworthy that almost every ICE attack that gets recorded includes bystanders at a minimum telling them they're evil, and sometimes being even more engaged. Proud that so many are standing up to the thugs.

Hardbacks are books. Paperbacks are books. eBooks are books. Audio books are books. The delivery mechanism doesn't matter. What matters is the enjoyment of story.

Nonchalant white people in this moment are the same ones Martin was talking about in that Birmingham jail.

The settler colonial empire founded on genocide & the continuing reverberations of chattel slavery has reached its culmination in a dictator who embodies its ethos, who it willingly ceded to when it had many opportunities to stop him, & in the empire's totalitarianism death throes many are at risk.

I respectfully and wholeheartedly disagree. I use AuDHD because my ADHD and autism are inextricably linked - in good and bad ways - and the intersection between them is a core part of who I am as a person.

Just added a simple list of authors and books withdrawn from the prize, for readers who requested a simpler way to use our story to go through and buy all these books (or request from libraries).

hear me out here, what if none of it is a 'distraction' and they're just doing a lot of horrible shit simultaneously

Cool so how is this going to be enforced?

Immigration thugs drew their guns on a disabled kid & dragged him from a car outside a school. Then they somehow left a bunch of bullets on school grounds. When agents were contacted to pick up the ammunition, they told the school to use it for target practice. www.huffpost.com/entry/la-boy...

Poetry book by a nonbinary black author from Minneapolis. Here’s a review from The Brooklyn Rail because I’m nowhere near qualified to comment on it myself, except to say that every American everywhere should consider reading it. 📚💙 brooklynrail.org/2024/09/book...

Open letter on the Polari Prize longlist and the inclusion of John Boyne, who openly expresses his transphobic and misogynistic views. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

"A few minutes before his death, al-Sharif posted on X: “Breaking: Intense, concentrated Israeli bombardment using ‘fire belts’ is hitting the eastern and southern areas of Gaza City.”"

Prominent Al Jazeera journalist killed in Israeli airstrike on Gaza

www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/8/...

BBC International Editor Jeremy Bowen has confirmed that the entire Al Jazeera team in Gaza City has been killed.

Just to be clear about what this says--not only is transition rare among the general population (<2%) and not only is detransition rare among those who do (lowest estimate is 1%, highest is 10%), but *transition regret* is only a third of detransition. A fraction of a fraction of a fraction

#HorrorReaders #QueerBooks #Booksky 📚💙