Bad prose has adverbs. Good prose replaces grammar with as many nouns as possible. "Jade firs candled mountain scruff." That's a great sentence. The best prose requires you to trace your finger along the words, repeating them under your breath, like a kindergartener learning to read.

It's surreal to see the big names post on Bluesky whatever Trump's latest atrocity is, and their comment is like "That's not what a good leader does!"

If nothing else, the last couple weeks have made being a journalist seem like an incredibly easy, if unrewarding, job.

I feel like a lot of media has "right-wing" antagonists who are later revealed to be cynical masterminds who only used the bigoted organization for their own goals, but don't actually share their bigoted views. I'm ready for villains who pretend to be bigots because they really are one.

I fucking hate using the term "elites." I think it makes you sound like a Q-anon psycho. So I'm furious that there isn't really another way to explain what's happened in the past two weeks re: the Kirk shooting and Trump's birthday card for Epstein.

The Nation pulls NO punches, from @espiers.bsky.social "There's no requirement to take part in this whitewashing campaign. Refusing to join in doesn’t make anyone a bad person. It’s a choice to write an obituary that begins “Joseph Goebbels was a gifted marketer and loving father to six children.”

Excellent real world example of how bigots aren't just hateful, they let their hate make them incredibly stupid.

Is there an article where someone explains the references on the shooter's bullets?

At a certain point, civility becomes code for "know your place." It's apparent it's acceptable to advocate for genocide or the repression of others if you wear a suit and are the "right" kind of person in their eyes. But anyone else? Calls for peace and demonstrations are somehow disavowed. (1/3)

Remember last week, when all we wanted to talk about was how some guy poked the hornets nest by saying lit fic was for old, boring sex pests and masochistic posers?

I guess the main thing I’m learning this week is that lots of elite media people knew charlie kirk personally and didn’t know any minnesota state legislators

The subtext to every one of these weepy obituaries: the specifics of Charlie Kirk's life are unimportant because people in the media are better than you, so don't start getting ideas otherwise.

I would like to take this moment to remind people that ICE snatching people off the street is also partisan violence.

"the hour floodwaters will return with biblical accuracy and destroy your bedrock, rot home from beneath your feet." I love this Golden Shovel poem by Matthew E. Henry in the terrific new lit mag @flightlit.bsky.social flight-literary.ghost.io/matthew-e-he...

If you ever see me name one of my books "dark" anything, you'll know it's a joke.

Who in your life has the biggest discrepancy between personality and appearance? One of the regulars at my last job was flamboyantly nice but looked like if Andy Serkis joined the Oathkeepers, so I was always a little leery of him until he'd wave across the parking lot and ask how my cats were.

Thinking again, as I often do, of Jan 7th 2021, when I went to work and argued with a "nonpolitical" coworker about whether or not J6 had happened. Not how bad it was, not if I was exaggerating or not, but whether or not it had happened at all. Their position was "that doesn't sound right."

Today I got to rub a Great Dane's ears so that he leaned his whole body into it and I hope you get to do something just as rewarding.

Slightly diminish a book: Beginningmarch by George Eliot

I'd do a story set one of the community colleges I've attended where everyone's got jobs and lives and commutes and they don't realize there's some malevolent force on campus that changes them when the come for night classes because they just try to forget about it during the day.

Dear publishers: Hello! Wanted to say I’m a little tired of dark academia novels set in Ivy League schools and would love to edit an anthology of dark academia set in universities across the world, in local community colleges, and online. I have a PhD and everything! Let’s talk.

The quest is ongoing, I feel like King Arthur hankering for the Holy Grail

Cormac McCarthy's tweed jackets. Very good taste in fabrics.

We spy 👀 Flight: a Literary Sampler on duotrope! We’re open for submissions, and can’t wait to read your work! Read our guidelines: flight-literary.ghost.io/submission-g...

We spy 👀 Flight: a Literary Sampler on duotrope! We’re open for submissions, and can’t wait to read your work! Read our guidelines: flight-literary.ghost.io/submission-g...

"The defendant turns and she thinks he’s going to look right at her, and her ears get hot and she looks away, straight at the witness who is saying something about the bottle of wine" Stunning @emilyrinkema.bsky.social fictivedream.com/2025/08/29/j...

"There are places in Bramble, USA where you can best tune into the wavelength of human sadness and sorrow" Visit "Its Powerful Parking Lot," flash fiction by @seanennis.bsky.social in Flight 1 flight-literary.ghost.io/flight-1/

Very proud to have helped edit this first issue of Flight Literary! Read it here! flight-literary.ghost.io

Every conversation with my landlord: Me: Here is a necessary minor repair that will save you thousands of dollars in the long run. Landlord: Oh look, the craziest person I know is hallucinating again.

Only 12 hours until Flight 1 lands and submissions open!

My next draft of my novel is 20 pages LONGER than the previous draft, but 2,000 words SHORTER?

I sneezed and my wife said "Bless you." Tell my why my response was "You're welcome" ??

My parents are planning to visit in the fall. Just had to have a conversation with my mom about the possibility that the National Guard will by occupying Philly by then, and that there might be government checkpoints in between my place and the airport.

Every podcaster I listen to is like: I'm not here to take anything from anyone. If dressing up in white robes with 1,000 other people empowers you, do that. You want to put poison in the Kool-Aide and give it to everyone? I'm not here to judge how others find joy.

Finishing up Bleak House by Dickens. I really liked it, but at the end it's revealed that one character has been raising another with the intent of marrying her and I feel like the book really breezes past that...

Can't wait for the centrist articles both-sidesing slavery.

You want to make a billion dollars? Design an app that uses augmented reality and vr glasses to project a keyboard on your cat, so when you pet the cat in different places it types for you. This post was made with a cat aggressively nuzzling my hands because they aren't petting.

Well, here's a sentence: "Federal agents have made 380 arrests in the week since the start of the operation and in some cases issued charges to detained people." apnews.com/article/wash...

New litmag by an awesome team! Check it out!

It’s #FridayReads time! Let’s boost all signals. Repost this and let us know what to repost for you. Hustling to get the next one done and you know every copy counts when it’s time to get a new contract, so…please, get you some! bookshop.org/p/books/hous... www.amazon.com/House-Bone-R...

A few folks have DM’d me abt the Frederick Douglass passage I excerpted at the rally. Here it is: “Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; 1/

Me at the slightest inconvenience:

My grandmother is 102. I am 38. Today, I realized that her age compared to mine is the same as my age compared to that of a 14-year-old. Holy shit.

My editing process is to return to a piece after a year, change everything, then let it lie fallow for another year, without letting anyone read it.

I have a story with so many personal rejections I'm going to start listing them in the cover letter.

picked up this old project with @fklein907.bsky.social and good lord I hope we finish it, what we have so far is awesome

I'm learning there can be very important differences between the requirements writing residencies list on their website vs. their application.

Having the uncomfortable realization that I agree with Trump about something: we both think the people who voted for him are disgusting garbage.

Going to start using the expression "Woke as a pope." Twist: the expression means that someone is only relatively woke despite their circumstances, but still ultimately beholden to a conservative institution which inevitably compromises them.

We have all benefitted from people who were told making the world wasn't realistic before they tried anyway.