Being omnivores complicates efforts at space travel, but not nearly as much as an obligate carnivore would face.

The busy season at my job consists of rendering or exporting vfx heavy 4K video roughly every fifteen minutes for fourteen hours a day for the last ten consecutive days, and while my computer is beefy, nothing was designed to withstand that workload. So we’re also hard-restarting every few hours~

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993-1999): USS Defiant, art by Jim Martin

Sometimes I can convince myself to do hard things because then “I’ll be able to use it in my writing later” which is like, what actors think about heartbreak according to my best sources. At the endodontist absorbing small details that I can regurgitate later like I’m an expert #WriteSky #Authors

I’m hearing more and more whispers that fiction writers really ought to have a healthy social media audience to help grease the wheels. Not what I was hearing even 4 years ago from agents and editors. Some truth to that? #WriteSky #WritingCommunity

Knowing that the plastic dinosaurs we played with as kids consisted, to whatever actual extent, of real dinosaurs.

Let me tell you, the best readers you can hope for are other writers. They’re prodigious, thoughtful, well-versed, and they won’t let you get away with crap. #WriteSky #Authors 💙📚

Today’s writing research search terms 👀: •Albedo, 0.39 •What does NVMe stand for •Evolution of storage devices •System clocks •Cosmic rays alpha particles •7mi/s in Km/hr •Bit flips (SEU) A very normal chapter~ #WriteSky #amWriting 🚀✍️

Not my usual post I know, but I have to leverage this modest audience to help my friend. We’ve stayed at their house, traveled together, she’s trapped in Canada now. It’s surreal, no telling if she can get her visa reinstated. She’s an incredible scientist and good person, this is unthinkable

JP Spalding - SciFi 🪐🚀 Writer@jpspalding.com · last wk.

Hey so, our good friend and fellow birdwatcher was detained at the border for more than 8hrs, her visa was revoked and barred from reentering the US. She’s lived here for more than a decade and is finishing her graduate degree. If you can, donate to help cover legal fees 🙏

Hey so, our good friend and fellow birdwatcher was detained at the border for more than 8hrs, her visa was revoked and barred from reentering the US. She’s lived here for more than a decade and is finishing her graduate degree. If you can, donate to help cover legal fees 🙏

Donate to Assistance for our graduate student, organized by creagh breuner

Folks, I have had to remove identifying information because the US government can u… creagh breuner needs your support for Assistance for our graduate student

gofund.me

Ran across an odd grammatical circumstance the likes of @bcdreyer.social would appreciate: working on a query letter and I wrote ‘sci-fi–thriller—complete at 65k words’ Yes, you’re eyes do not deceive you, that’s a dash, en dash, and emdash all in a row. Disgusting, I know. #GrammarCrimes #Query 🚀✍️

When a novel has a long navel gazing section where the MC “can’t believe this is real” I always roll my eyes. We know. Extraordinary circumstances. Your life has been flip-turned upside down. Can we get back to the story? I get its important emotional context, but it’s so… tropey? 💙📚 #amReading

Had all the fun of drafting a new manuscript, but now I’m up to my eyeballs in edits on two other manuscripts. Things are moving along nicely, but damn if it doesn’t take much longer to do the editing than the original writing does~

Scarlet Mitchell ⚒️ The Gerzean Blade out NOW!😍@scarletvmitchell.bsky.social · last wk.

Thursday #WritingQ What's Next? Ok, You've got your current WIP. You've got your side-project. You've got your recently shelved WIPs... But what's next on your plate? What's coming off the shelf and for what stage? What new thing will you be drafting after now? #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompt

Tell me why I spent all afternoon debating a major fix in a chapter, wondering about the downstream consequences, handwriting approaches, justifications… only to end up tweaking a few sentences in the end—and it works. Perfectly. Almost nothing to change. I keep learning this lesson~ #WriteSky ✍️

Help! I’m addicted to my characters escaping through air ducts. I keep backing them into corners and like, without the humble air vent they’d be dead 💀 #scifi #amEditing #WritingCommunity

Hey I was on a podcast (vlogcast?) chatting about everyone’s favorite crawler with @professorpixel88.bsky.social & @b00tz2big.bsky.social A fun discussion cause I’m on book 5 (at the time) but my cohost’s just finished book 1. #DCC #Podcast #DungeonCrawlerCarl #BookSky #BookTok

Dungeon Crawler Carl Book Brothers Episode 17

YouTube video by Book Brothers

youtu.be

I landed in DC last night and woke this morning feeling awful, like I had the flu. And I always get my covid flu shot, but usually first of September when I’m in DC. Didn’t even make it that far ~

A funky lil’ satire flash fiction about the chicken mascot of your favorite fast food. What does it mean to betray your species, yourself? 🐓 #flashFiction #shortStory #amWriting #Satire #Substack

The Traitor

Look upon the chicken man, plastered to the side of the refrigerated truck, in his cute little suit and his bowler hat and his beady black dead empty eyes as he transports his slaughtered kin to the f...

jpspalding.substack.com

So I read a novel published in 1950 and I had THOUGHTS. For all the poorly-aged issues golden-age sci-fi suffers, there’s still something it can teach us, and I would argue an essential tool we’ve lost jpspalding.substack.com/p/economy-of... #WritingCraft #amWriting #WriteSky #WritingCommunity ✍️

Economy of Story: Lessons from the Golden Age of Science Fiction

Sci-Fi literature has forgotten the power and value of the montage.

jpspalding.substack.com

Why are so many new writers allergic to paragraph breaks? -musings from a harried critique partner #amEditing #WriteSky

ALSO I would argue that Heinlein’s Farmer in the Sky 🧑‍🌾 is a solarpunk novel. It’s got all the hallmarks, back to the land antimaterialist sentiment, cozy stakes, an emphasis on community and social conduct. How many other hidden solarpunk titles are waiting to be rediscovered? #SolarPunk #SciFi 🪐📚

JP Spalding - SciFi 🪐🚀 Writer@jpspalding.com · 2w ago

How come these paperbacks from the 1950’s have no acknowledgments, no citations, no thanks to my partner and agent? Is that a recent development? Or were they saving pages? The book feels baked without them. #amReading

How come these paperbacks from the 1950’s have no acknowledgments, no citations, no thanks to my partner and agent? Is that a recent development? Or were they saving pages? The book feels baked without them. #amReading

Spent an hour at the cafe brainstorming some new endings for the manuscript I’m editing. Making a satisfying conclusion while setting up the stakes for the sequel is a headache #amWriting #WriteSky

diving into the timeline

Sometimes in critique, I’ll leave the note “trust the reader!!!” That’s it. And if readers don’t ‘get it’ the first time, there’s a scene more likely to build curiosity than lose readers. Make them work for it, dammit!

JP Spalding - SciFi 🪐🚀 Writer@jpspalding.com · 3w ago

I beat the drumbeat “trust the reader” all the time, and then I read The Works Of Vermin, a story that 100% trusts the reader (and a spectacularly weird novel) I went back into my current draft and cut 1000 words in one sitting, being honest with myself about really trusting the reader~ #amEditing

I beat the drumbeat “trust the reader” all the time, and then I read The Works Of Vermin, a story that 100% trusts the reader (and a spectacularly weird novel) I went back into my current draft and cut 1000 words in one sitting, being honest with myself about really trusting the reader~ #amEditing

Hey look at that’ I’m on a podcast taking the brave position of “the book was better” full episode coming soon!

The Never Seen It Podcast@neverseenitpodcast.bsky.social · 3w ago

Did The Movie Improve Rocky’s World From The Book? w/ @jpspalding.com youtube.com/shorts/OMaZJ...

While I pat myself on the back for my sparse use of “suddenly, just, only, sigh, look” etc, I have discovered my new favorite crutch word is “felt” with almost 50 examples in this manuscript I’m editing. Cool cool cool. #amEditing #WriteSky

Fuck, you got me. Count me for team stellarator. You’ve convinced me. I’ve been a USSR Tokomak stan for a long time ☭, but the era of the American born stellarator is upon us. Good old American plasma physics 🫡🦅🥧🍺🇺🇸 (ignore that it’s Germany) Go watch this video! #Physics #ITER #Stellarator

It's Happening - Europe is Building an Impossible Fusion Reactor

YouTube video by Dr Ben Miles

youtube.com

Another lil’ musing on Substack. This one about ancestors, great filters, nuclear reactors and the Fermi paradox ~ #amWriting #WriteSky #WritingPrompts

Jordan Spalding (@jpspalding)

Last Universal Common Ancestor, First Of Her Lineage In the beginning there is a vast nothing. Entropy roams the wastes freely, smiting ordered things so they unravel. It guards the high gate like Ce...

substack.com