Barbara A. Barnett
@babarnett.bsky.social
Fantasy & horror writer. Musician. Occasional orchestra librarian. Odyssey Writing Workshop grad, critiquer & blog editor. Taos Toolbox 2024. SFWA/HWA/Codex member. Repped by Emily Keyes. She/her. https://babarnett.com
Apropos of too many things lately, here's a spite poem I wrote a few weeks ago **makes unflinching eye contact while jamming more em dashes in** full disrespect to anyone writing with AI and also to the idea that we should change our voices and styles because the plagiarism machine is copying us
“Why are you wasting time when there’s such an increasing lack of it ahead?” Great new story from @babarnett.bsky.social ! A fun, quick read, but delivered with a sort of quiet restraint that makes the strangeness feel completely believable.
Gavagai@gavagai.com · 3w agoIn today's featured Editor Pick: Most travelers know better than to follow a raccoon into an airport access hatch. Knowing better, though is not quite the same as deciding not to do it. It's The In-Between Places of Terminal C by Barbara A. Barnett. Read it for free at gavagai.com
So thrilled to have this story published!
Gavagai@gavagai.com · 3w agoIn today's featured Editor Pick: Most travelers know better than to follow a raccoon into an airport access hatch. Knowing better, though is not quite the same as deciding not to do it. It's The In-Between Places of Terminal C by Barbara A. Barnett. Read it for free at gavagai.com
New on the @odysseyworkshop.bsky.social blog: excerpts from a Q&A with graduate, author & guest lecturer Barbara Ashford, who talks about how acting and improvisation has informed her writing www.odysseyworkshop.org/qa-excerpt-b...
Q&A Excerpt: Barbara Ashford | Odyssey Writing Workshops
odysseyworkshop.org
On a 400-word humorous flash piece about a zombie bunny rabbit: "the premise is implausible and poorly researched." I remain at a total loss as to what I was supposed to have researched. Is there an actual procedure I don't know about for raising bunnies from the dead?
S R Jones @aegisimmemorial.bsky.social · last mo.If you see this, please tell me the worst/most baffling bit of creative feedback you've ever recieved. Mine is still the time somebody told me my aliens had names that were too alien. Not that they were unpronounceable, just that they didn't sound enough like human names.
Present Me: (happily types away, sure Past Me had thoroughly mapped out this novel revision) My only note on the chapter I just reached: "Ugh I don’t know what the f!@# to do with this scene now." Present Me should perhaps have less faith in Past Me.
Seems like a good day to do some work from the outdoor office
New on the @odysseyworkshop.bsky.social blog: excerpts from a Q&A with author & guest lecturer @gregvaneekhout.bsky.social, who talks about voice in middle grade vs young adult fiction and how to deal with parental figures in middle grade novels
Q&A Excerpt: Greg van Eekhout | Odyssey Writing Workshops
odysseyworkshop.org
I did not spend the afternoon on novel revisions as planned, but I wrote a new flash story instead so I guess yay productive revision procrastination? And with that out of my system, NOW back to the novel.
Today’s surprise: opening a sunroom window to find this little dude staring at me from on top of a bush
Important Notice: The @odysseyworkshop.bsky.social Blog Has Moved! odysseyworkshop.wordpress.com/2026/05/18/i...
Important Notice: The Odyssey Blog Has Moved!
The Odyssey Blog has a new home on the official Odyssey Writing Workshops Charitable Trust website: Please update your bookmarks and RSS feeds so you don’t miss future posts. Email subscripti…
odysseyworkshop.wordpress.com
Mushrooms lending a bit of fairy garden chic next to the back patio
When you’ve unintentionally chosen the perfect bookmark for a story in the anthology you’re reading.
New on the @odysseyworkshop.bsky.social blog: Excerpts from a Q&A with author & guest lecturer @maggiestiefvater.bsky.social, who talks about four-act structure
Q&A Excerpt: Maggie Stiefvater
Maggie Stiefvater was a 2026 guest lecturer for the Your Personal Odyssey Writing Workshop. Maggie is the New York Times bestselling author of The Listeners, The Raven Cycle, The Scorpio Races, and…
odysseyworkshop.wordpress.com
New on the @odysseyworkshop.bsky.social blog: excerpts from a Q&A with award-winning author & YPO grad & guest lecturer Jill Tew, who talks about finding comp titles & how she prioritizes her reading choices as a professional author
Q&A Excerpt: Jill Tew
Jill Tew was a 2026 guest lecturer for the Your Personal Odyssey Writing Workshop. Jill is the award-winning, critically-acclaimed author of dystopian romance and middle grade novels that imagine B…
odysseyworkshop.wordpress.com
Yay exciting space stuff! A welcome distraction from (gestures at everything down here). Also: space stuff!
NASA's Artemis II Live Mission Coverage (Official Broadcast)
YouTube video by NASA
youtube.com
New on the @odysseyworkshop.bsky.social blog: author & graduate Shay Kauwe talks about her Your Personal Odyssey experience with "Developing a ‘Second Sight’ for Writing"
Graduate Essay: “Developing a ‘Second Sight’ for Writing” by Shay Kauwe
Shay Kauwe is a Your Personal Odyssey graduate and Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) author from the island of Oʻahu in Hawaiʻi. She grew up on the Homestead in Waimānalo but moved to Russia because s…
odysseyworkshop.wordpress.com
I have yet to see 1) a consistent definition of cozy horror or 2) examples that aren’t actually just straight-up horror of some flavor. Having a sense of humor doesn’t make the horror “cozy” IMO.
Haven’t done much other than pimp Odyssey blog posts on here lately. To sum up: Weird-ass short story written. New novel draft in progress. Rehearsals. Concerts. Tech-related headaches. Teaching prep. Too much snow. Too little reading for fun. Swearing incoherently at the news. Internal screaming.
a man with long hair and a mustache says no there is too much .
Alt: A man with long hair and a mustache (Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride) says, "Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up."
media.tenor.com
Seeing people complain about 15 minutes of music in another language and I’m like (laughs in opera)
New on the @odysseyworkshop.bsky.social blog: excerpts from a Q&A with author & Your Personal Odyssey guest lecturer @henrylienauthor.bsky.social, who talks about nonlinear storytelling & the relationship between unreliable narrators and linearity odysseyworkshop.wordpress.com/2026/02/09/q...
Q&A Excerpt: Henry Lien
Henry Lien was a 2025 guest lecturer for Your Personal Odyssey Writing Workshop. Henry is a graduate of Brown University, UCLA School of Law, and Clarion West Writers’ Workshop. He is the auth…
odysseyworkshop.wordpress.com
a man in a suit and tie is sitting at a table with a can of soda and says yes very sad anyway ..
Alt: A scene from Loki in which Loki is sitting at a table with a can of soda and says “yes very sad anyway”
media.tenor.com
The Independent@the-independent.com · 6mo agoMorale plummeting among ICE agents over long hours, quotas and public hatred: reports
I'm a writer. I should be able to articulate things clearly. But right now my thoughts on current events are mostly an incoherent string of cussing.
New on the @odysseyworkshop.bsky.social blog: interview with graduate, author & Your Personal Odyssey instructor E. C. Ambrose, who talks about teaching YPO, shifting from pantsing to plotting, and how critiquing and teaching have helped her own writing.
Interview: Graduate & YPO Instructor E. C. Ambrose
Your Personal Odyssey instructor and Odyssey graduate E. C. Ambrose writes knowledge-inspired adventure fiction, including the five-volume Dark Apostle series about medieval surgery, The SingerR…
odysseyworkshop.wordpress.com
i know we're all busy but i just overheard a plumber say "parlez-vous français ? non ? you motherfuckers don't even speak french, do you" to a pair of french bulldogs
I'm teaching an Odyssey Online class, and there are 10 days left to apply! No actual acting in front of anyone involved, just writing.
Odyssey Workshop@odysseyworkshop.bsky.social · 7mo agoThere's still time to apply for an Odyssey Winter Online Class, including All the World's a Page, taught by the awesome @babarnett.bsky.social! Apply today!! App deadline 1/18!
I’ve been interviewed about my upcoming Odyssey Online class, All the World’s a Page, over at WOW! Women on Writing! A short read if you’d like to learn more about the class or want to procrastinate on holiday-related drudgery.
Interview With Odyssey Writing Workshops Graduate & Instructor: Barbara A. Barnett
If you're looking to invest in yourself in the new year, you may consider signing up for a course with Odyssey Writing Workshops . Their cou...
muffin.wow-womenonwriting.com
Thanks to @sfwa.org for being so responsive to concerns around the Nebula Awards and LLM use. The Nebula should honor human creativity, as the revised rules now state. However, we also don't want to see writers tripped up on eligibility or hit by witch hunts over minor LLM usage like spell check. 1/
Thoughts on the Nebula Awards, LLM usage, and where we draw the line | Jason Sanford's Genre Grapevine
Get more from Jason Sanford's Genre Grapevine on Patreon
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(finally looks up to see what’s happening in the world after recovering from Christmas concert hell week) 👀 (immediately looks down and thinks that horrible Christmas on Broadway medley wasn’t so bad in comparison)
