HWA- “we had no idea what this person represented whose editorial/advertisement we sent to all our members in today’s newsletter. Please admire our vigilance as we throw her under the bus. You see, we here at the HWA run a very tight ship.”
Michael Tichy
@emptywrites.bsky.social
“Writing is a marathon you’re allowed to get drunk during” - Kurosawa Author of ambivalent realism and other variations of sadness. Wound of the West out now from Castaigne Publishing. https://castaignepublishing.bigcartel.com/product/wound-of-the-west
“There’s no ethical consumption under capitalism” wasn’t meant to be a warm blanket to wrap themselves in that these grifters always treat it as.
I wonder sometimes what it must feel like to be deeply embedded in the HWA. Because from the outside, it generally appears as though the real mission statement of the organization is about sheltering mediocrity, and I’d assume at times an awareness of that must insist itself, however unbidden.
In case you missed it, here's the PW announcement! We're already finalizing the ARC & cover. I am excited. I am ready to make you suffer.
Undertow Publications 🇨🇦@undertow.bsky.social · 3d agoThe latest @locusmag.bsky.social — which you should subscribe to — has interesting book deal news, including forthcoming titles from @elliottgish.bsky.social @zinrock.bsky.social and @horrorsong.blog
I think more novels should have Greek tragedy type choirs telling the mc how badly they’re fucking things up so I’m going to be the change I want to see in the world. Anyway, this edit is going swimmingly, thanks for asking.
The first 10 minutes of the latest episode of the burning man doc lays bare what a meaningless exercise in self indulgence it is. Arresting climate protesters while billionaires make snacks for people for 7 days so they can spend the rest of the year ignoring the horrors that sustain their wealth
New from 404 Media: Google Earth has introduced an AI feature that lets anyone fabricate completely bullshit satellite images. In our own tests, we added a “bomb blast and crater” to an area of Los Angeles. This is a misinformation time bomb, will 100% be abused www.404media.co/google-earth...
Musk was humiliated in his interview with The Economist editor Zanny Minton Beddoes. She called him out on his bullshit, pointed out his lies and ignorance and extreme prejudice. We need more interviews like that. This is the response of the world’s thinnest-skinned man.
VOIDCON 4 ENTITY ANNOUNCEMENT… YOU WILL FIND JOE KOCH AT VOIDCON.
My next novel will be ready to sub in August. Straight up lit fic this time. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest with some Lord of the Flies set in an RFK wellness camp. Dystopia abounds. I feel like I’m starting over in terms of finding where to place something like this but it’s a good problem to have
I generally hate writing advice but the 3 most useful things for me have all come from posts by @lairdbarron.bsky.social 1. Writers block doesn’t exist. 2. Writing rituals are just premade excuses not to write. 3. Don’t seek feedback broadly. 1-2 betas whose opinions you trust are more than enough
1. The new Trump / Kratsios plan for US science appears explicitly designed to destroy US universities. Diverting money to tech donors is probably just a bonus. Gift link.
Trump’s Plan for Science: More Money for A.I., Less for Universities (Gift Article)
Michael Kratsios, President Trump’s science adviser, proposed overhauling how the government funds research. Democrats said Mr. Trump’s actions had weakened science.
nytimes.com
If you have time this weekend, please check out the doc (~30 min.) my team & I released this week on Musk’s push into Greater Memphis with xAI and its noisy, methane gas burning turbines, data centers, broken promises & impacts on majority Black communities next door. www.cnbc.com/2026/07/16/e...
Elon Musk's Memphis AI empire is the epicenter of the data center backlash
Data center-related policy proposals, protests and litigation are underway across the country citing Colossus and Memphis as a cautionary tale.
cnbc.com
This was the weekend to start editing novel 3, which I have not looked at since starting # 4 in Feb. It’s actually in so much better shape than I thought. Here’s hoping to have a submittable revision of my rfk wellness camp horror book by later this summer. Definitely my most personal work to date.
It's officially launch day for SMOKE SEASON! The greatest tranarchists vs. evil government scientists story (with drugs and cats) ever told! You want this book: wordhorde.com/books/smoke-...
Smoke Season
From Shirley Jackson Award winner and author of A Hawk in the Woods, Carrie-Edmund Laben comes Smoke Season, a novel in the tradition of Arthur Machen. Look for Smoke Season coming this Summer to i…
wordhorde.com
AQI in central Ohio is nearly triple the highest it’s ever been. Welcome to the future that was absolutely avoidable
The skies are a uniform off white and it smells like burning tires. Reminding me of my vampire novel on sub, where global warming has effectively made the vampires into daywalkers.
So i think in terms of action on the default mode network, psychedelics can do more to overcome implicit beliefs than explicit ones. So, good for depression, not good for fixing the bigotry at the core of someone’s identity. And that kind of validation is where the danger lies in psychedelics.
Mallory Moore@sexabolition.blog · 4w agoThe far right's obsession with promoting psychedelics is such a strange thing. Psychedelics have an effect of pushing hard into circular thoughts on desire and emotion, but they also have a fairly widespread element for non psychopaths of feeling connected to other humans, pacifyingly empathetic.
About 5k away from completing novel 4 which means I basically have three unsold novels now. One polished and two about to enter the editing process. I’m going to be pitching like buckets of water off a sinking ship at Printers Row in September. Taking a jackhammer to the ceiling. Whatever it takes.
I have never heard so little noise in my ivicinity on July 4. My dogs didn’t freak out last night. As unpopular as this government is, I think the media apparatus, and especially social media, is vastly underrepresenting just how unpopular. 250th birthday of the country and not a candle on the cake.
The Wingspan of Severed Hands is a feminist take on the King in Yellow mythos and an exploration of identity-formation following the metaphor of lepidoptera development. There's also a sentient weapon grown in a lab. weirdpunkbooks.square.site/product/the-...
The Wingspan of Severed Hands - Joe Koch | Weirdpunk Books
Updated version for 2023!Three Women, One BattleA world gone mad. Cities abandoned. Dreams invade waking minds. An invisible threat lures those who oppose its otherworldly violence to become acolytes ...
weirdpunkbooks.square.site
"Perhaps the scariest aspect...is the way in which it begins...to unmoor you—from time and history, from plot structure and genre, and from your own senses and feelings about your body; a nauseous literary approximation of vicarious gender dysphoria." heavyfeatherreview.org/2024/06/21/i...
Fiction Review: Dave Fitzgerald Reads Joe Koch’s Story Collection Invaginies
Over the past few years, as I’ve delved further into indie and experimental literature and been exposed to the dazzling array of queer writers thriving therein, I’ve discovered something of a bad h…
heavyfeatherreview.org