A thing that I have learned that has changed my life: microwaving a clove of garlic for 5 seconds means that skin basically falls off.
Simon Spanton
@simonguy.bsky.social
"I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself." Wandering. Wondering. Freelance SFFH editor. Commissioning for The Broken Binding. Living in Edinburgh. Views my own and independent of my employers. Photos my own unless otherwise etc.
Writing is the process. That's where it is, that's where it happens. The end result isn't it. The end result is not what hits the reader.
Just one of the many, many reasons to follow Jeff Noon and to read his novels:
Jeff Noon@jeffnoon.bsky.social · last mo.Moving outwards from Ground Zero, we encounter: 1) Black Earth 2) Zone of Whispers 3) Ghost Birds 4) Kingdom Ruled by Insects 5) Fog People 6) Normality 7) Ultra Normality 8) Town of No Hair 9) Gift Shop
"Once I heard the deep voice of 'Dad', who sounded as if he was talking through a greasy bowler hat. In the night I was awake and floating. As I went up, the blankets fell to the floor. I could feel nothing below me—and nothing above until came near the ceiling and it was hard to breathe there."
Don't listen to these too often but always have fun when I do. In a sort of domestic horror movie soundtrack kind of way.
"The stork they rode flew high and fast over swift-unfolding brown and gray November landscapes, but still perhaps Somehow within other borders, for Lilac naked on her back felt neither warm nor cold."
Very much like the look of this.
Angela Cleland / Cleland Smith@angelacleland.co.uk · 14h ago🎵 Happy birthday to me Happy birthday to me Black Doe is OUT TODAY Go and buy it, pleeeeease! 🎵 Grab it on kindle now, or order from your favourite bookshop in person or online. #newbook #kindlebooks #historicalfantasy #scottishbooks 🩵 📚 blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/pro... amzn.eu/d/0a0NApjt
Sketches/finals for Jeff Noon and Steve Beard’s Gogmagog and Ludluda. Design by the brilliant Alice Coleman
A long while ago, I wrote a pretty good piece on O Brother, Where Are Thou?, lies, & Oz. It was rejected on the explicit grounds that Real Classicists had no interest in engaging with "low-brow shallow comedy". Anyhow, at this moment of #Odyssey reception, here it is. medium.com/@anisestrong...
All Coens Are Liars: O Brother, Where art Thou? and Homer’s Odyssey
All Coens are Liars:
medium.com
For some stories, the first time you read them sticks in your memory like a splinter of glass. For me, Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is one, and Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains” is another. And the second one all happens today… short-stories.co/@raybradbury...
There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury
The voice-clock sang, breakfast was ejected, but no doors slammed. The garage chimed and lifted its door to reveal the waiting car. The house sat alone in a city of rubble and…
short-stories.co
A. E. Bennett@aebennettwrites.bsky.social · yesterdayHappy "There Will Come Soft Rains" Day to all who celebrate!
"Last came Anarchy: he rode On a white horse, splashed with blood; He was pale to the lips, Like Death in the Apocalypse. And he wore a kingly crown; And in his grasp a sceptre shone; On his brow this mark I saw— 'I AM GOD, AND KING, AND LAW!'" Happy birthday, Percy.
"The sun, still rising far north with summer, had sprung clear of the hills and shone full into his eyes as he turned a little to face it, in a golden dazzle that touched as though in greeting the Mark of the Horse Lord on his forehead."
1 like = 1 completely dull mundane fact about me.
Dr Malice@atarbuck.bsky.social · 2d ago1 like = 1 completely dull mundane fact about me
It's only Monday but I declare this the Post of the Week.
Andy Diggle@andydiggle.bsky.social · 2d agoAh yes, the epic tale of Odysseus, from whom we get the word "odyssey" - and Telemachus, from whom we get the word "telemarketing."
"There's a loud hum and a strong smell like burnt-out writing; the air shimmers in the purple rain under the lights. CLEVER DAUGHTER and its reflection aren't there any more. Nothing to see. Only the silence cruising like a shark. That's flicker drive." @russellhoban.bsky.social
"This is the story that Y and I used to tell, used to tell in the quiet of the night, in the hours of the quiet of the night, and the moonlight would come, moving forward, moving close; used to whisper to each other in the night..."
I was lucky enough to read an early version of this - it's fantastic. If you like Scott Lynch...
Ian Green@ianthegreen.bsky.social · 3d agoTHE DEEP AND THE DROWNED is out this week. "Outstandingly swashbuckling, outrageously gripping and out-of-this-world brilliant" Monsters, pirates, empire, and magic. Order now, have fun, spread the word if you know people who like cool things 🏴☠️ geni.us/TDATDcovrev
"Call it what you like. It's the unknown land, the beginning of the labyrinth. The place of mystery. The realm guarded not against Man but against Man's curiousity. The inaccessible place. The unknowable, forgotten past." Happy birthday Robert Holdstock. Wonderful writer and individual.
Just the most recent of many, many reasons to follow Rose.
Rose Ruane@regretteruane.bsky.social · 3d agoGave an absolutely, heart-rending, house-down, rain of bouquets, bravura karaoke performance of Say Hello, Wave Goodbye to an audience of precisely one small, old, disgusted cat
Yeah baby! Waging my suburban guerilla war against the straight-edge-hedge orthodoxy.
