My writer newsletter got sent out today. Because it's my birthday month...you can check it out here without even being a subscriber!
This month, I've included links to a couple of book giveaways.
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68 posts29 participants3 posts today
Well, &udm=14 used to turn of AI overviews in #Google search. No longer. Apparently the devs disabled the switch. Do with this information as you please, but keep in mind that #BoostingIsSharing.
so...i decided to go with Medium to publish my stories.
the first third of the first book of the Hereafter trilogy is here:
https://medium.com/@roblosricos_41780/part-1-7f466af6b965
if anyone bothers to read it, please give me feedback.
i kinda think the story-telling is way too self-indulgent.
#writinglifestyle #writerscoffeeclub #wordweavers #ScribesAndMakers
#writers #WritersOfMastodon
Medium · Part 1 — - Robert Thaxton - Medium
Continued thread
#ScribesAndMakers Apr 15. How's your creativity this month? Anything you would like help with?
Could you write the last few scenes of my book, please? Anyone? I'll p-- No, I can't promise that. And I'd completely rewrite it all anyway. So. Huh.
Nah, I'm good.
Continued thread
#WordWeavers Apr 15: How much attention do you give to the rhythm of your words?
If they're not rhythmic, I can't leave them be. There has to be a cadence, a flow. The have to strike my ear in a pleasant way.
I don't think I'm capable of writing naturalistic dialogue, not really.
Continued thread
#WritersCoffeeClub Apr 15 World Art Day! What visual artist is most present in your work?
Probably Lucasfilm, to be honest. The book I'm working on is an elaborate critique of Star Wars. :)
Continued thread
#PennedPossibilities 643 How does your SC respond to the quiet? Do they take comfort in silence, or seek to fill the void with noise?
One of them loves the quiet; one of them can't stand it. They're very good friends.
#WritersCoffeeClub 15/4 World Art Day! Which visual artist is most present in your work?
Answer on three levels:
1: External.
Me. All the covers are designed by me and based on my own photographs.
2: Influences.
The anonymous cartographers, over 234 years, of the Ordnance Survey.
3: Internal (within the story world).
That’s Torvyn, Jerya’s daughter, although you’ve seen very little of her as yet.
#books #writing #writersofmastodon
#PennedPossibilities 643 — How does your SC respond to the quiet? Do they take comfort in silence, or seek to fill the void with noise?
Bolt, from the Reluctance Series during the Interstellar era, was blackmailed (framed for a murder) by the mob into being a messenger for a decade. She has wings. She had to be silent, sometimes a detective. It's not like she hung around mobsters, or wanted to be pulled in deeper. Nor could she confide in anyone, lest they get targeted by association. Worse, she never got paid much.
Eventually, she found a camera that fell off the back of a wagon. She got into street photography. One time, when she happened to be where news happened (too often in her profession), she had taken a few photos when a reporter's camera got slammed into a wall.
He asked if she'd sell him photos. Turned out she's pretty good.
She often gets her photos into her world's version of The New Yorker and The New York Times and is also a part time stringer. As you can guess, she wanders the cold dank unfriendly streets when she can be free (makes it harder to be given "assignments"), and dispels the dangerous depressing quiet that might otherwise seep in.
Her love affair with B&W street photography does not wane when she is freed from the mob, pardoned, and begins train to become a praetorian. Sure her subjects are different, and her wandering happens between trainings and bodyguard duties, but she has the knack of using a rangefinder without being noticed (think Leica).
Edit: This actually gave me detective noir story idea...
[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]
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#mystery #thriller #romance #sf #sff #sciencefiction
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#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory
#WordWeavers 2504.14 — Who is your kindest character and how do they show it?
Of my recent works, Wintereyes from Inklings (now on composition hiatus) is likely my kindest. She lives in my Townships and Wands universe, which is full of various magicks. I've a few sample stories posted in my pinned samples post. Her magic is… well, it's rather peculiar.
She's is a very naïve girl when it comes to humans, and as a result is suddenly shy (like her author). She wants to be helpful and she likes to listen, and not be seen (like her author). She's quite kind; her demeanor. She wants to be friends, but raised on a farm at the edge of the Fell Forest, her opportunities for friends were… well, rather peculiar.
But not limited!
She befriends wolves, is adopted by them, and lives with the pack, running with them, hunting with them, and healing them. This did not make her cruel, even when she also befriends prey animals, too. Her ethics are… interesting.
Oh, about befriending. Befriending is her sacrificing part of herself to become more like her new friend. For example, her most recent mess started when she befriended a wyvern (bat-dragon) because it had a cold and was burning up the forest sneezing. She wanted to find out how to treat its cold! How did she become more like the creature? Besides learning how to converse with it, when she concentrates on its language, she can breathe fire. (It's like a glottal stop.)
But she'd never hurt anybody with it!
The Warlord of the closest Township (actually a woman) takes a serious interest in Wintereyes, and her story begins.
See image: This is how I imagine the wyvern. A face only a mother, or Wintereyes, could love.
https://de.pinterest.com/pin/342344009165649564/
[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]
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#mystery #erotic #romance #fantasy
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#RSdiscussion
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PinterestWyvern by PaulReinwand on DeviantArt | Creature design, Creature drawings, Weird creaturesNov 28, 2024 - If it's warm blooded is it a wyvern? Exploring different approaches to dragons and ended up w/ this. I think that rat/croc tail is my fave part. Edit: C... Wyvern
#ScribesAndMakers 2504.14 — Would you enjoy living in a creative village/house/shared accommodation? Or do you already?
The question did not ask if I had enjoyed living in a creative space (past tense).
I did.
I attended the Clarion Writers Workshop (Clarion West). It's for Speculative, SF, Fantasy, and (I think) Horror Genre writing. It's for professionals or professional wannabes. You have to submit work to qualify.
It was literally (pun intended) the best six weeks of my life as an author.
Don't get me wrong, selling is fabulous, but the feeling lasts only a moment (like sex). The sense of community and actually living the life of an author while attending the workshop cannot be beat.
We lived together (except for a few locals) in the dorms of a college in downtown Seattle, cooked together, used the showers together, had our own floor to ourselves. We spent many hours in the common areas gabbing and blue-skying. Mostly, however, we wrote.
Then read what others wrote.
Then critiqued. Learned how to do that well, learned how to anticipate certain critiques from specific authors and to fix our stuff (assuming we thought we need to), learned how to have a hard shell by accepting criticism that helped us, and rejecting what didn't. Largely, we also helped each other through our fears.
Week days we had a guest lecturer who was a professional writer or editor. One day a week, we attended readings, usually at Powell's, by a local writer, though once at an author's place (I think that was for Octavia Butler).
The feeling of community and support was amazing. One time I wrote a 15,000 word novella in 15 hours for critique the next day. That was my max output per hour or per day ever.
I never felt burnt out. Those six weeks seemed to compact six months of life into a short span. When I returned home, I barely recognized my surroundings or old life. Ask my spouse!
Highly Recommended
PS: After reading other responses I want to qualify that I am cripplingly shy, introverted, and write fiction that doesn't go much with my persona. Nobody knew my gender despite an enormous email thread until I arrived, and I got the nickname Ambiguous Spice (and Oblivious Spice) for a reason. I warmed quickly because these were people like me. Kinda weird, some introverted, some extroverted. All in love with words and stories. I warmed up quickly.
[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]
#BoostingIsSharing and #CommentingIsCool
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#RSdiscussion #Clarion #ClarionWest #critique #critiquegroupsforwriters #actuallyAutistic
Self-promo time! Drop links to your creations, including writing, art and other media! What do you want to share with the #Writephant crowd? #writing
Mars Need Women is a hopeful yet deeply dystopian feminist SF web-novel (free-to-read on Mastodon) that leans heavily into Women's rights issues. It is a woman-centric adventure story of overcoming adversity while being female, with all the warts and frustrations, not as a man in disguise.
Our wannabe engineer heroine May Ri escapes a disheartening life, faced with becoming little more than a housewife because she lacks "blessings," to help colonize Mars—if you can call being shanghaied escaping and being contracted to have children a benefit. (She does choose the gorgeous supportive guy to "work with," though, so that's a positive.) As she learns to make uniquely useful martian machines, she keeps putting herself at the center of a global martian dust storm as martian power shifts from being male-dominated to a predominately female 1st generation of martians. May Ri together with her five daughters, shape a world (Mars) the way unfettered women might imagine it.
When the men of Earth take affront—of course they do—they learn that women don't fight like men, especially when their children's lives are threatened, and their wellbeing is at stake. #RSMarsNeededWomen
Thread: https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/114088945266387178.
I am expiring the thread on April 18th. If you start reading it now, add a comment or send a private mention and I'll delay expiration.
#BoostingIsSharing and read more in #AltText
A3. How about critique groups? Are you a member of a critique group? #Writephant
I have a crippling type of shyness. Until I get to know people (which I can do when the spouse or a friend mediates for me, it changes of course), I don't interact well. I also have a difficulty with criticism, even when it is kind… I kind of lock up. It may take me weeks to read it. Probably has to do with overstimulation as I am #actuallyautistic.
That said, I knew some things are important for one's career. I took the Clarion Writer's Workshop. Baptism by Fire, right? For six weeks, I was a member of a very dedicated critique group, and we learned how to do it right, to be constructive, how to address the work without putting down the writer, etc. We were professionals and we became friends. Best six weeks of my writing life.
Afterwards, I ran a few critique workshops at SF conventions. (Believe it or not, I was a tech support lead for a while. It's wondrous what you can do if you have permission to be forward and chatty. It's masking, however.)
As for casual groups… You know, shy. Can't figure out how to find one and interface with one.
There's also the gender issue. I don't reveal it, so how do I interact physically. At Clarion, I was called Ambiguous Spice.
Replied in thread
@Priyajsridhar
I'm Elektra Hammond. Find me at untilmidnight.com
See me talk about SF/F, writing, comics, TV, and Supernatural at Con-Tinual (the Con that Never Ends) on Facebook and Youtube.
My next convention will be Balticon on Memorial Day weekend, where Permutations, an anthology based on Jack Chalker's Well World will launch.
Re: Mars Needed Women Free-to-read version posted on Mastodon. I will expire the posts on this thread on Friday the 18th. If you are currently reading the story, either finish before that date or PM me. I'll delay if asked. Thanks a bunch!
Eldritch CaféRS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist (@sfwrtr@eldritch.cafe)Attached: 1 image
> 2503.01 — Women #Writever #Mars #SpaceOpera
## Mars needed women.
(Blurb)
May Ri bought into the hype and the spiel, not realizing it was the last gasp of a long dead oligarch's dream. When the money dried up, nobody would finance the supply missions. Who cared about the ten thousand up there when you could outrage the millions down here with something less expensive? Earthers returned to their petty games of slavery—that wasn't called as such—and empire that ate nations.
On Mars, colonists were pushed to their limits: The terraforming mission, the domes, the spinlauncher and Deimosbase, the raising the first and second generation martians. Men died disproportionately. In the end, a few strongmen attempted to corner the growing "female resource" to their benefit and to the benefit their sons, working to crush the whisper of the half-forgotten promise of democracy that had followed May Ri to the planet of war.
She and her daughters led the way, fighting. Together with "sisters" and with "aunts," they redefined *which* gender would be considered a "resource."
They found that the blood of the ever-absent fathers spilled on the rusty regolith of Mars blended in nicely.
Earthers were outraged. #RSMarsNeededWomen 01
[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]
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#RSdiscussion
#RSstory
#microfiction #flashfiction #tootfic #smallstory
Replied in thread
@Priyajsridhar
Am I a member of other writing organizations?
I'm a member of SFWA (decoder ring and all), and I've on and off been a volunteer.
I was a member of Broad Universe (I think my membership lapsed) and I intend to re-up. BU has some crossover with SFWA, but they also have convention sales tables, and do group readings, which I enjoy participating in.
#PennedPossibilities 0.044 — What is the most altruistic thing your MC has ever done?
May Ri is neither altruistic nor is she transactional. For a woman who is always fighting against the paternalistic rules placed upon her, she pretty much does what she is told (but not always!). Her choice of friends and her prior decisions shaped her actions, which greatly helped the initial generations of native martians. She's great at engineering design and is especially talented at reverse engineering tech if given plenty of electronic and optical scopes, and other tools.What she did for Mars will be noted as foundational as much as it was politically ancillary, except for the last thing. She often volunteered in the crèche domes taking care of 3-6 year olds, but she liked that. Having been oppressed and mistrusted as a girl, she let her five daughters make their own choices, which is arguably how they grew up to be a force in their own right. She mentored and apprenticed hundreds of young martian women (and a few boys) in engineering and design.
[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSMarsNeededWomen
So how deeply does this person sleep?
When I woke, I looked at my iPhone on its recharging stand. I quickly took a screenshot. Look at the time marker.
This makes a blaring noise when it occurs.
Very?
#BoostingIsSharing and more in #AltText
Continued thread
#PennedPossibilities 642: How old are some of your characters?
In my current project, my protagonists are tweens/teens, and my antagonists are adults, with a few exceptions. It's a real "adults treating kids like shit" kind of story. I think teens will love it, if it ever gets out into the world.
Continued thread
#WritersCoffeeClub Apr 14: International Moment of Laughter Day! What’s the funniest thing you’ve ever written? Read?
One of mine:
"Fuck you, Zeus, she thought. But you know, quietly. Zeus could be listening."