I spent a few happy moments wandering around the mall bookstore —I might have parted with some cash! Although I consume many eBooks and audiobooks, nothing beats the experience of reading from a tangible book.
I spent a few happy moments wandering around the mall bookstore —I might have parted with some cash! Although I consume many eBooks and audiobooks, nothing beats the experience of reading from a tangible book.
#Reading Erdrich's latest tale from northern Dakota. It's an immersive read with interesting characters coping with loves and losses and day to day struggles. It is a commentary on the ties that bind including our histories, the land and even the denialism of its exploiters. Her short often one page chapters, punchy colourful prose, and deeply human perspective make it a lovely read. But everything Erdrich writes is a good read IMHO.
#ScribesAndMakers 2503.13 — Shameless Self-Promotion Day. Let's boost away.
Here's the newly minted cover art† for Mars Need Women. Check it out!
It's a web-novel, described in the blurb below. I have been posting it in a single free-to-read Mastodon thread. Here is the story link: https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/114088945266387178
“A hopeful deeply-dystopian feminist SF story, with thinly veiled jabs at our current world's bad actors making for a bad future. Please note the past tense in the title: Mars Needed Women. The story's women are going to work to bring down the system, at least that part that's oppressing them, in a massive unscheduled disassembly.”
So far I've posted 12 chapters of 31, which I will do more or less daily through the end of this month. The first installment is an inside jacket blurb. The main story starts with a clang in the second installment. Chapter 11 may leave you in tears. #RSMarsNeededWomen
More in the #altText
=-=-=-=
† I designed and created the cover, wrote the blurbs, and did the titles. The images are courtesy of ESA and NASA. The spine is a strip of a Mariner 7 image. This is becoming a hobby of mine, and I am open to requests.
[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]
#gender #fiction #writer #author #coverArt #art #artwork
#sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory
#ScribesAndMakers 03/13—Shameless Self-Promotion Day!
I'm a proud #indie #author in SciFi and Kidlit.
My book “Lunar Seed" will be in the Lunar Library on #Astrobotic's #Moon mission.
Find all my books and about me:
https://useyourwords.me/
I love sharing some of my author friends with y'all. Check out Kathy L. Brown
Fantasy, Horror, Paranormal
Kathy L. Brown lives in St. Louis, Missouri, USA and writes speculative fiction with a historical twist. Her hometown and its history inspire her fiction. When she’s not thinking about how haunted everything is, she enjoys hiking, crafts, and cooking for her family...
https://www.limfic.com/mbm-book-author/kathy-l-brown/
#AuthorSpotlight #Bookstodon @bookstodon #author
Ah, technology...Do I care that the AI overview of my ridiculously spicy, erotic romance Flicka's LOVERS pictures Mary O'Hara's sweet, G-rated book My Friend Flicka? NAH! #AI #noAI #Books #Bookstodon #google #writer #Writers #WritersCoffeeClub #Publishing #Authors #author
The Ebook for She Hunts Demons is now free in most stores*: https://books2read.com/SheHuntsDemons
The half-demon girl who calls herself the Hunter never really considered why she wanted all demons dead, but when she’s presented with the one responsible for killing her parents, she loses all rationality, going on the warpath.
* With the exception of Amazon, who won't set the price lower than $0.99.
THE SLOG.
When you're not inspired—you're just stubborn.
I wrote something on what no one told me about writing a book. But really, it’s about anything worth doing.
https://kristie-de-garis.ghost.io/the-slog-what-no-one-told-me-about-writing-a-book/
My new Stripe is connected to my Comradery again so consider donating! I do a *lot* of community based accessibility and other stuff behind the scenes and then some. https://comradery.co/weirdwriter #Author #Patreon #MutualAid #Disability
@adriabailton For my #Writephant #selfpromo, I'm going to link to my WIP web novel. I've described it as a hopeful deeply-dystopian feminist SF story, with thinly veiled jabs at our current world's bad actors making for a bad future. Please note the past tense in the title: Mars Needed Women. The story's characters are going to work to bring down the system, at least that part that's oppressing them, in a massive unscheduled disassembly. I've so far published nine chapters. The tenth of 31 is half-written and should go out tonight.
The first installment reads like a jacket blurb, but we get into the main character (May Ri) and her life in subsequent chapters.
I've imagined the cover art, but not had time to draw it. It would be the black ink outline of a horizontal arm with red finger nails on a white background. On the forearm there would be a triskelion tattoo, the outline of which would contain a cutout of a full color image of Mars. This corresponds to the tattoo all the colonists have.
First installment: https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/114088945266387178
Latest installment: https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/114140417097319679)
Now it's time for self-promo! Feel free to post whatever fits in the character count.
@adriabailton #writephant A4: At times poorly. I'm easily distracted. My stories want to write themselves in the middle of the night when I need to sleep. I find myself writing on my iPad while the spouse drives, using a computer on the treadmill, or thumb typing stuff whenever I can squeeze in time and have a functioning brain cell left, and even when I don't! Choosing to write a web novel in 31 days, serializing like a crazy Charles Dickens (something I'd done once before and vowed never again, but here I am), it only exacerbates the situation. Really, I need to get the next chapter done, now....
Q4. How do you manage your writing time?
@adriabailton
#writephant A3: Likely not answering in the sense asked, I am currently writing the Mars story in a very non-linear manner. Some events toward the end of the story precede those in the beginning. Because I'm working with a set of 31 daily prompts that give me ideas for the chapter I am writing, I would like to stick to the order of the list. That's not entirely happening. I hope I don't give the readers jet lag.
One battle scene may benefit from the jet lag bit as the characters' day night cycle won't correspond to what they encounter as they fly between domes spaced in different Martian hemispheres.
Q3. Do you ever manipulate time in the stories you write?
@adriabailton #writephant A2: I'm writing a story taking place on Mars right now. If it comes up, they are only going to have one global time zone with alphabetical hours. Since most people live inside domes, daylight hours are not a problem!
As for other stories, over decades, I've a few stories that likely mentioned it in passing.
Q2. Have you ever written DST (Daylight Saving Time) or jet lag for a character in a story?
@adriabailton #writephant A1: I've been experiencing sleep disruption, and losing an hour hasn't helped at all. New stories aways wake me in the middle of the night! Sometimes I have perpetual jet lag. At least I have an extra hour when I wake up late morning!
Q1. In the US, Daylight Saving Time started yesterday where we “lost” an hour and sprang forward. If you live somewhere that participates in Daylight Saving Time, or if you lose time due to flying, how does it affect you? Do you get jet lag?
If you'll be in Portland, Oregon, next week, I'll be reading at Bold Coffee, along with two other authors! (It's a Friday, and they have beer and wine too, for extra weekend vibes.)
2503.15 — Freely (Ch/March 9) #Writever #Mars #SpaceOpera, Fictional #journalism
Dispatches from Mars: 16 Psyche Disaster a Software Lock Problem?
When critical mechanical parts on the Robinson Crusoe's NTPU (Nuclear Thermal Propulsion Unit) broke, a crew of 73 that included machinists, metallurgists, mining specialists, three maker specialists, and one mechanical engineer should have been able to fix it.
Not having achieved circular orbit yet, the men of the fourth Martian mission to the massive asteroid had five days to prevent an intercept on the ambitious orbital plan that would prove too trusting of equipment thirty years in service. The intrepid self-reliant men, later tarred as stupid and arrogant by the Green Tractors Corporation, felt they didn't need to contact the Earth for assistance. Following safety regulations and allowing a proper cooldown period, they proceeded with disassembly and isolation of a part for which GTC has never provided schematics, and allegedly didn't even provide the emergency repairability cache required by most national laws. That search despite high radioactivity for the presumably misplaced cache ate up six hours of the crew's time. When their maker machines refused to make the scanned parts, or parts that could be refined in time by lathe work or manual labor to necessary tolerances, the ship's engineer reported it through approved channels.
The lunar deep space network promptly experienced an outage.
Let's unpack what looks like a conspiracy and a subsequent cover-up...
...Because corporations still design without repairability in mind for "cost" reasons, and even make it impossible to fix bugs in logic, or add enhancement that could have served as a lifesaving workaround in the Robinson Crusoe's case, disaster can and will happen. Not being able to freely use and repair equipment that the now bankrupt EM Mars Colonizations Corporation purchased, is a travesty of ethics. For a corporation that resides in a deeply Decath nation, it's a moral failure.
And, for what? Profit from costly maintenance and repair services only available in Earth Space? Are the 7,983 Martians, now less 73, not human? Does is their ability to only pay upon achieving profitability in a future decade strip them of their humanity? Why isn't there at least one tech available for Mars Space?
As you know from other coverage, the Robinson Crusoe went down in Panthia crater, hitting 100 meters below the rim ridge. In the end, despite applying boosts from both their landing vehicles and jury-rigged satellite boosters, all their sims had to tell them an hour before that it was hopeless. Worse, even with the cobbled-together low-bandwidth network the Martians got up, none of the all male crew got to send their families a proper goodbye.
All 73 sailors went down with their ship. They leave behind 73 wives on Mars, together with their 125 first generation (Nisei) Martian children, 24 boys and 101 girls, none over 17 Earth years of age.
[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]
Image credit: By NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU - https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/how-nasa-s-psyche-mission-will-explore-an-unexplored-world, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=117564734
#gender #fiction #writer #author #sf #sff #sciencefiction #softwarelock
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion #RSstory #microfiction #flashfiction #tootfic #smallstory
Finally, this is my academic editing and proofreading gig:
http://www.fiverr.com/s/dDb19w0
I bring the same sort of care to thesis and journal article editing, and I've got experience in information science, education, psychology, molecular biology, organismal biology.
#freelance #author #HireAnEditor
Welcome to my weekly Author Spotlight. I’ve asked a bunch of my author friends to answer a set of interview questions, and to share their latest work.
Today: As a bestselling author, Wren Valentino writes in multiple genres, primarily romance, thriller, young adult, and horror. Wren is the author of twenty novels including Accidents Never Happen ...
https://www.jscottcoatsworth.com/author-spotlight-wren-valentino/
2503.19 (March 8) — Mental Load #Writever #Mars #SpaceOpera
[To prevent front-loading huge plot points, I'm writing prompts out of order.—R.S.]
On the occasions when first-wave male colonists, or too many husbands, took up residence in the connected domes usually reserved for women, May Ri worked (hid) in the crèche. Her cheek still burned with the memory of a slap-down two Mars years ago; her subconscious still feared retaliation for the revenge she'd exacted on the Director. Her "vacation" didn't mean she was excused from her design review, which was also a final engineering exam.
Her book plate bounced on her chest on a lanyard. She'd steal any unwary moment that presented itself. "Steal," being the keyword.
Marisela was 1½ Mars. May Ri's eldest nisei was keenly aware when her mother was Dome-Ma. The little one not only tagged around her mother—a little fist in the belt of her mother's hip huggers, nearly pulling down what May Ri would have called underwear, and had on arrival on Mars—but the savvy girl marshaled the other nisei toddlers (7 girls and 1 boy) such that they—and their shroom-blocks, communal red ride-on tunnel digger, flex sheets colored with charcoal and said charcoals, and pastel pony dolls (a new yet ancient girl-toy craze)—seemingly mag-levved around the room, always within May Ri's reach.
Good and bad points to that. Not being able to steal a moment. Bad. Being able to grab and catch an errant frog hopper. Good. With Mars-gravity-tuned tendons, squatting Nisei did hop like frogs.
Fahad, the boy, knocked over his sipper bottle, causing the lid to pop off. May Ri sighed and let go of her book plate. She stood as the boy started sniffing as a girl pointed. "He spilled!"
Carla, one Mars year older than May Ri, gave her a sympathetic smile. The tiny woman in the corral cared for May Ri's recently weened Manette; also her own crawling daughter, and four infants. May Ri was glad to avoid communal wet nurse duties. Not as glad while mopping up the spill, then judging fidgeters for rapid response loo visits or inspecting bottoms in case she missed an indicator. She did like sneak-hugging the two squabbling youngsters on the floor, getting squeals, and having Marisela join hugging her shoulders.
"What if the axles were shorter," she said to herself, a brainwave hitting. As little ones piled on, the best she could do was repeat "Axles" to remember her idea. Tapping her ear, calling it in, would disrupt the workstations as well as the crèche, and she wasn't sure yet it was a good idea—
"I have such a cute daughter!"
"Randy?"
"She really wants to help Mama, doesn't she?" Her husband finished, swinging their squealing daughter through the air. Too soon she quieted, making him set her down. Their little nisei, with toasty skin like her father and dark hair like her mother, swiftly hid in the crowd of children. "What's your schedule?"
Randolf visited, as did all the men, on honeymoons. May Ri doubted Marisela really knew her father as more than a recurring scary stranger. In an Earther sense, he was one to May Ri, too. She mentally scheduled that talk between the three of them.
"Can you help me?" May Ri asked.
"I don't know how to take care of kids."
"You say that a lot," she said, handing off a pony toy, three hands grabbing for it, to which she said, "Play nice," at them, then at him, "You do fine when we're alone."
It was hard to get a sitter when all other women were enjoying their husbands being local and real time. Him managing the girls well meant fun time later. They had lots of fun.
"Do I?" he asked, stepping away from the toy melée. "I've got what I'm good at. You've got yours. Never received the instruction manual for Marisela."
A joke?
The one thing she'd learned running the crèche, other than the extreme sport of multitasking, was anger had its place; here wasn't it.
"I'll send you the book," she joked back darkly, standing. She held out her hand. His eyes went to her chest, larger now than when they met. It had been three months. When he took her hand, she directed him closer as she would a little boy. Instead of kissing, she applied downward pressure. "Sit!"
He sat. Unlike many men, he was good natured even when contradicted. She liked that.
Little hands and little hugs mobbed him; he got peppered with giggling requests to play. She added, "Learning by doing works."
Carla snorted. When May Ri looked, she got an A-ok gesture.
Marisela belatedly realized her status change. Two parents, not one! Plowing through her competition for affection, she squealed, "Daddy!"
May Ri got time to make the axle revision before the next kid-tastrophe. #RSMarsNeededWomen 08
[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]
#gender #fiction #writer #author #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion #RSstory #microfiction #flashfiction #tootfic #smallstory