This seems pretty dark for a kid's shirt. A meteor crashing into Earth?

I hid my library copy of In a Dark, Dark Room (with the famous green ribbon story, reimagined by Carmen Maria Machado) out of fear the babysitter would mistakenly think it was for bedtime and read it to my three year old.

SAVE THE DATE and spend the summer with the MWC in Portland at one of our Summer Residencies! Applications for 2027 Summer Residencies open on November 4th. Each residency includes a $1200 dollar stipend, Lyft credit, and more! Learn more here: mccormackwritingcenter.org/residencies/

The terror of not being originally from Louisiana and Google lensing all the creepy crawlies my child finds in the yard

This week a white nationalist tried to assassinate a member of Congress and you probably didn’t even hear about it—and a reminder that being an elementary school student in the US is more deadly than being an ICE officer: www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/three-shoo...

Three Shootings in America

A week of our entirely-ordinary *extraordinary* violence

doomsdayscenario.co

I miss Trader Joe's Polenta Provençale with Spinach so much that I think I might tear up a bit if they ever brought it back

i had doubts about my current story draft -- what if I was just plodding along, moving furniture, making scenes without my own emotional buy in? -- but then I reread it and well, well, well, yet again I find myself encountering my childhood demons in a shiny new fictional package

Elon Musk is single-handedly funding the Ken Paxton campaign:

I explained Bunnicula to my kid, and how bunny + Dracula makes the name, and so we talked about playing with words, and I found myself saying, Be careful! If you love playing with words too much you may find yourself in an underpaid profession!

BREAKING: Multiple people were injured, including children, and the suspect is dead after an active shooter situation at an elementary school in Bend, Oregon, according to police.

Multiple people injured and shooter is killed in active shooter scene at Oregon elementary school, police say | CNN

Multiple people were injured, including children, and a shooter is dead after an active shooter situation at an elementary school in Bend, Oregon, according to police.

cnn.com

back in the days of Twitter I tweeted about my fear of getting legionnaires' disease from a hotel hot tub and then Neko Case responded "my people!" and followed me and that was the height of social media for me

why yes, husband, I did help our small child paint a ceramic skull this afternoon

already looking forward to #AWP in Chicago! anyone looking for panelists or readers, I'll be there ⚡️🦇

Be there or be square, my creepy friends! 🦇⚡️ @smokelong.bsky.social

Troubling Tales: How to Coax Forth Any Story's Sinister Side - SmokeLong Quarterly

Join author K.C Mead-Brewer for a 90-minute workshop all about accentuating and celebrating the horror elements in your stories, no matter the genre. Be prepared for an evening with plenty of teeth in...

smokelong.com

feeling glum after losing an hour of writing time to figuring out why the e-sign function on my university form was malfunctioning

BREAKING: " Videos collected by local investigators make it “pretty obvious” that an ICE officer intentionally ran over Miguel Parra Hernandez during an immigration stop Saturday, which could lead to assault charges, the district attorney said Tuesday."

Texas DA says ICE intentionally hit immigrant with a car and may have withheld evidence

Harris County DA Sean Teare told NBC News his office has collected multiple videos for its own investigation but isn’t getting cooperation from the federal government. ICE denied their agent intentio...

nbcnews.com

I read a sweet little story about a girl who decides to take a bumpy little pumpkin home, and my kid was so excited when she hugged that pumpkin. Then the anthropomorphized local wildlife helped her carve it into a Jack O Lantern and my kid began sobbing, wailing, "Why would they DO that?"

It's my birthday week. No publication rejections, please!

"HBO has greenlit a revival of “Girls,” Lena Dunham‘s beloved and controversial mid-aughts dramedy." I'm sorry, mid-what? “Girls” ran on HBO from 2012 to 2017.

Andy Khouri@andykhouri.bsky.social · last wk.

AND JUST LIKE THAT… variety.com/2026/tv/news...

Save the Date! March 18th! Six flash/flash-adjacent journals, five hours, karaoke. AWP Chicago! A Chicago charitable org. to be chosen. Fun.

"magical presence and howling absence can exist alongside each other" - from Laura van den Berg in her American Short Fiction class on endings

Five days left on the Lightspeed & Nightmare kickstarter, and they still need $10k to meet their funding goal! Love short fiction? Go pick up a subscription and help spread the word! www.kickstarter.com/projects/lig...

LIGHTSPEED & NIGHTMARE: Award-Winning SF, Fantasy, & Horror

We've published nearly 10 million words of science fiction, fantasy, and horror short fiction. Help us write the next chapter.

kickstarter.com

Yet again my small child is pretending to be our dead dog

I went to the kitchen to grab rubbing alcohol for my injection and my child immediately ran over to flip my open box of $20,000 on-body-injector of Skyrizi over... 😭 It seems okay. But man. Never a dull moment.

I'm thrilled to announce that my short story collection, Of Snakes and Stones has been acquired by Blair @blairpub.bsky.social.

This will be great! Sign up for a workshop with @kcmeadbrewer.com !

SmokeLong Quarterly@smokelong.bsky.social · 2w ago

If you're participating in Promptember or you're in SmokeLong Fitness, this webinar/workshop with K.C. Mead-Brewer is on us! But even if you're not participating, you can still come! www.smokelong.com/product/trou...

I feel like we don’t talk about millennials in particular, hitting our 40s - in earlier generations many of us would be reaching the peak of our careers, but because of disaster after disaster, locust after locust eating our industries, many of us are on our 3rd or 4th fresh start.

using that rebecca makkai trick of putting a character's events in their own google calendar rebeccamakkai.substack.com/p/write-your...

Write Your Novel in a Calendar

the one weird trick doctors absolutely don’t care if you know

rebeccamakkai.substack.com

remember how we’d Halloween-ify our Twitter handles, back when there was joy and groceries