It was such a pleasure to be asked to nominate books for this list! I chose not to have the NYT publish my list but I'm very glad to see a couple of the books I nominated landed in the Top 50, including @blacktopkid.bsky.social's RAZORBLADE TEARS and Cormac McCarthy's NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN.

The 50 Best Thriller Books of the 21st Century

Hundreds of novelists, librarians, editors and other book lovers voted. See how their ballots stack up.

nytimes.com

Is it even writing science fiction if you're not teaching Word to stop putting red squiggles under an entire world's worth of new vocabulary?

Home after four weeks away! Returned to an empty fridge, of course, but my non-perishables provided.

this is really, really bad, and Spokane is ... not exactly on the national radar. I know there are infinite people and places that need help, and everyone's resources are finite, but some options if you are so inclined:

NPR@npr.org · 2d ago

Wildfires in Spokane have destroyed hundreds of homes and led to evacuation orders for 60,000 people. n.pr/3Sbed19

I actually started this process a couple years ago, then got distracted by PENITENT and wrote it first. But the last time I started this second draft, the long novel's 4000-word prologue (I know, I know) fell off and became its own 60,000-word novel. So I have that done too. It's a bit ridiculous.

Matt Bell@mdbell79.bsky.social · 2d ago

Some writers love the "retype the novel from scratch" second draft step from REFUSE TO BE DONE. Some hate it. Almost no one is doing it to a 311,000-word first draft, an absolutely ridiculous situation I'm prepping to embark on. (This isn't the novel coming out in 2028! This one will be... later.)

Some writers love the "retype the novel from scratch" second draft step from REFUSE TO BE DONE. Some hate it. Almost no one is doing it to a 311,000-word first draft, an absolutely ridiculous situation I'm prepping to embark on. (This isn't the novel coming out in 2028! This one will be... later.)

Today is the last day of a four-week summer trip and I am currently lying in bed reading an enormous doorstop of a novel, probably the actual best use of a vacation day.

Partner’s 10-year-old boy, at the bowling alley: You’re winning again! Me: You have to understand. I’ve been cursed to be good at everything I’ve ever tried. Boy: Even flirting? Me: Ask your mom! Boy, max volume: MOM IS MATT GOOD AT FLIRTING???

Here's the official announcement from Regal House. I wrote a little memoir about first reading Gabriel García Márquez to go with the announcement.

Regal House Publishing@regalhouse.bsky.social · 4d ago

We are delighted to announce the winner of our 2026 Fugere Book Prize For Finely Crafted Novellas: Lawrence Coates for BOOM. Congratulations, Lawrence! #novella regalhousepublishing.com/lawrence-coa...

Beginning the long arc toward home after a summer mostly away, I texted a friend, “I just want to sleep in my own bed and get tattoos” which is probably the most honest I’ve been about my mental state in a long time, haha. Can’t wait. (Later this week for both!)

Watching movies with my Midwestern Catholic NASA-obsessed family, working through the Holy Trinity of Project Hail Mary, The Martian, and Apollo 13. The mysteries of the faith.

In the past week, I signed two book contracts, something that will likely never happen for me so close together again. (The actual deals happened months apart, but it took time for the contracts to wind their way through the various agency/publisher legal departments.) Let's go!

My dad passed away in March 2025. Tonight, visiting my mom, I drank the last Budweiser he left behind in his mini-fridge. Cheers, dad!

“If you do not answer the noise and urgency of your gifts, they will turn on you. Or drag you down with their immense sadness at being abandoned." —Joy Harjo "I usually solve problems by letting them devour me." —Franz Kafka

write the book you want to read because you will have to read it over and over and over when revising

"This is what you should teach me, how to be like Odysseus—how to love my country, wife and father, and how, even after suffering shipwreck, I might keep sailing on course to those honorable ends." —Seneca, Moral Letters

After a week spent with a 10-year-old following me around yelling, “Matt, search it up!” followed by truly endless queries, I thought, Am I an AI?

"…the fiction writer is trying to create a false memory with the force of history." —Samuel Delany, About Writing

Turned in a book, ran to Lake Superior. Pretty great way to start a day!

Endlessly proofreading my TYPO manuscript for typos, I'm reminded of refusing to be done revising REFUSE TO BE DONE, my book on revision. Maybe it's time to write a book that doesn't so obviously contain its own self-mocking Sisyphean task?

Tell that to my Uncle Buffalo Ed.

Holly Pelesky@hollypelesky.bsky.social · 2w ago

your uncles names are not real those are made up

I'm switching between editing the draft of my next book and looking up Youtube hints for an incomprehensible game my partner's 10-year-old is playing in Roblox, all while he sits at my elbow and narrates what he's doing. "Is your book done yet? I have more questions I need answered!" I wish, kid!

I love the Upper Peninsula of Michigan so much. What a great end to the day.

"There was the built world and the natural world, and then there was my own life, lived as every other life, one step at a time, a long way from where I was born, sunburned, aching, my lips cracked, my mouth dry." —J.M. Ledgard, Terra Firma Triptych

Maybe my most common thought these days reading the news or scrolling social media (or, worse, reading news about social media) is, “I shouldn’t even have to know who these people are.”

I'm excited to watch The Odyssey! I find much of the discourse around it unbearable! In between those facts, I ever so briefly recognize the long-missed monoculture. Despite all the problems it's always had: Let's all talk about the same thing! Let's be unbearable while talking about the same thing!

Hey all! I have a couple more spots in my workshop on domestic fabulism if you want to join us! (Or watch it after, which also works!)

No Place Like Home: Writing Domestic Fabulism with Amber Sparks

Learn to write domestic fabulism with author Amber Sparks. Transform ordinary home and family stories with fantastical elements in this online seminar.

writingworkshops.com

The two eras where I've likely been shittiest toward other people's ideas are immediately after giving up Catholicism and God, and then what Max describes here: good enough to critique the writing of others, not good enough to be useful or at least not harmful. They're versions of the same problem.

Max Gladstone@maxgladstone.bsky.social · 3w ago

Among the many dangerous stretches of the art-journey, some of the most perilous are those moments when you’re good enough to identify flaws but not good enough to critique them without destroying your fellow artists

“If you hate yourself and everything you do, you will love AI, because it negates the self, and when you use it, you are doing nothing. But please keep your nothing to yourself... Clutch your own wire mother, and keep your self-disgust away from my magazine and my students.” —J. Robert Lennon

EPOCH@epochliterary.com · 3w ago

73.2 is at the printer, and 74.1 opens for submissions in two weeks! Please note we have a new AI policy that you can read on our submission page (TL;DR: we don't want AI-generated text), and a blog post from our editor on the subject, linked below.

I wasn’t expecting to be in Flagstaff this week but I’m thankful to be here for a few days and so glad to have gotten in some absolutely gorgeous runs.