Hard to believe it's only two weeks until MERCUTIO comes out in Canada. A 13th century novel about the imagined origins of Shakespeare's Mercutio. This is the time to pre-order if you'd like it when it releases (PB, HC or ebook all on the same day in Canada) or request from your library. Thanks 💜

Mercutio

Coming soon from HarperVoyager UK. May 7, 2026: UK hardcover edition and ebook. Worldwide audiobook. August 18, 2026: Canada paperback, hardcover and ebook. June 2027: US paperback edition (this will ...

kateheartfield.com

Another heatwave impending. Ugh.

Slept (waking every two hours as per), but have figured out how to handle the colour correction. It means putting the older, unflattened files through Krista > Gimp > PS to get them to PS in the first place, and then correcting layer by layer.

Also, wild wind and rain all night. What with the Norway maples having been tipped the black spot and shedding a lot of diseased leaves accordingly, it looks like a hurricane's been through.

Insomnia, grand insomnia. Worrying about this !@$% art. Now attempting to alter the original file so it'll display more like it ought after conversation to a useable file type, while mentally swearing never to use Krita again. Also just mentally swearing. Not entirely mentally.

Time to quit for the evening. The file still has problems and has lost a lot of detail. Going to try moving it over with all the layers as an ora file and then tinkering with the layers till it looks right on the big calibrated monitor, in PS.

So, !@#$%^ Krita won't export the piece I've been working on since May as a psd file; I see others on Reddit complaining of the same error message and no one offers a solution. It claims there are layers with incompatible profiles but the whole thing is flattened.

The Redstone Rescue is a fantasy novel set in a republic that cares for and protects its citizens, surrounded by avaricious kingdoms. Is is my response to our genre's obsession with kings and chosen ones. Not a story of revolution, one that asks how a better world can be preserved.

The Redstone Rescue

### A light-hearted utopian fantasy detective story “They say the crown lies heavy on the head of the king, but in Sataminva our crown lies on a perfectly counterbalanced plate in a display case in th...

turnanother.page

Today's Classic Cover is Harpist in the Wind by Patricia A. McKillip! This edition of book three in the Riddle Master trilogy was illustrated by Michael Mariano.

Spent yesterday working in the garden; picked blackcurrants and raspberries, pulled all the cow vetch from the front bee-meadow strip along the road now that it's gone to seed. Oof. Four big bags of it, sent away to the commercial garbage company composting because mine won't kill the seeds.

Have a #painting while I sort food. "Aasleagh Falls" came out of a day I travelled around Killary Harbour. On the River Erriff, before it joins the harbour, the falls are in Mayo but only stone's throw from Leenane in Galway. I was on my bicycle, throwing stones to check. #SpeirGorm #ArtYear

If you're looking for sapphic sword and sorcery with deep worldbuilding and adventurous godlings - and bears - check out @kvjohansen.bsky.social 's luminous Breath and Bone. (Link to our website, but it's available everywhere.) www.candlemarkandgleam.com/shop/breath-...

Breath and Bone

A long-retired swordswoman, saviour of godlings and killer of emperors, takes to the road again with her shapeshifting companion and the ghost of her brother…

candlemarkandgleam.com

I will shout from the rooftops that AI can't create art. It just can't. It can make content, but content isn't art. And we’re in an age where we’re told we’re making content and not art - and I think part of the pushback is reminding everyone what ART is and saying you're MAKING ART & NOT CONTENT.

This! 👇 The way the UK is destroying one of its (few) major assets is absolutely bonkers! Brexit and neoliberalism are wreaking havoc!

Glen O'Hara@gsoh31.bsky.social · 3d ago

Between the 1970s and 1990s the UK state made a strategic bet to expand Higher Ed. They poured in untold billions of your money. Now it's been handed over to private creditors to burn in a furnace. Then they just laugh at you: at all the taxes you've ever paid or will ever pay. True story. (2/2)

Can't do the song and dance routine, so just a reminder, I write very good books that you may enjoy reading, and have been doing so for a very long time. Gods, journeys, wanderers,wizards, warriors, people on the edges, forests, deserts, mountains, dragons, shapeshifters, storytelles ... www.kvj.ca

Looks like another grey, muggy, mosquito day.

No work will be done in Hookland today. It's the Puck Fairs. Epic bouts of storytelling, drinking, love-making and other funs of the fair. #Lughnasadh

Where bracken forms a monoculture, I mark baby trees like this oak with a fence post or rock, then every so often cut any emerging ferns within a small radius, allowing the tree to reach the light and mature. It's working with nature to release a whole new rainforest ecosystem.

Orchids revived, the corpse ambulant and a poetic ruined abbey. These are the news stories I want to read.

Important PSA for editors and writers alike regarding external HDD and an AI red flag that is not a red flag at all.

E.M. Faulds / Beth or Taxes / Not em faulds@emfaulds.com · 5d ago

Oh cool, this was a fun thing to learn. Apparently if you store your docs in an external hdd, Windows helpfully puts the attribute "Archive Indexed" in its properties. Which it abbreviates, naturally, to "AI". PSA: this is not a "ChatGPT wrote this file" indication!!

August Sunrise, Georgian Bay Charles Comfort 1972

1/7 In his latest video, Danish military analyst @anderspucknielsen.dk delivers a stark message about European defense: Europe does not need an army built to instantly defeat Russia, but one structured to survive the opening shock of a high-intensity, attritional war

secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/...

Books vs AI

US tech companies are secretly destroying millions of rare books to feed their AI models. But world leaders could stop this: sign to protect our collective heritage.

secure.avaaz.org

Chasing the Sun Katharine Burns 2024

Supper was very late as we cleared out more of m-i-l's books for sorting. Made a Mediterranean fish stew with fennel, smoked haddock, navy beans, orange zest, & whatnot. It was very good. Now it is very late & I need to get up & do work before the off-farm-job. Someday I will have time for music.

I was just thinking about how "you need to become an influencer to sell books" is ruining everything

Delilah S. Dawson@delilahsdawson.bsky.social · 5d ago

I hate how what I need to do is write books, and yet I keep thinking, "Maybe if I wore increasingly weird glasses and sat in front of my taxidermy with a bubble pipe and did unhinged houseplant reviews I could go viral and sell some books." Doing the work doesn't feel like enough, some days.

THIS. People educated enough in the specific subject to pull the data together don’t need LLMs; people without the knowledge to weed data from the bullshit are at the mercy of the LLM. They’re obsequious Dunning-Kruger machines. Designed to flatter midwits and the technologically obsolete.

Ophie Dokie 🌻@ophiedokie.bsky.social · 5d ago

So, ok, a thing about telling yr audience "i use AI for my info gathering/research but then I look over it and fix any errors" is that you unfortunately told me youve outsourced your knowledge base on this subject to the machine, and therefore I have no reason to believe you CAN catch those errors

Believe it or not we have addressed this! Here you go: single gar = gar multiple gars, same species = garrison multiple gars, different species = garmada

Frank Hogan@charleyphogg.bsky.social · 5d ago

A group of Gar can not be called a school it’s not tough enough

A dark day for human rights.

Again: the greatest threats to national security, global order, civil society, human rights, & human well being are ultra-high net worth individuals. They are the ultimate insider threats!

Sophie Labelle @assignedmale.bsky.social · 5d ago

A dark day for human rights.