iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I think you might be disappointed. First drafts (and undeveloped ideas) aren't final drafts.

A circular cross-stitch (example taken from twomaybabies on flickr). The words "Don't rush me!" sit above a smiling bear in a bathtub.

The reverse side of a circular cross-stitch (example taken from twomaybabies on flickr). The same artwork as the bear, seen from behind, is a horrendous mess of threads that make no coherent image.

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Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

My short story collection, spirals? is #1 on Amazon for three separate categories!

A screenshot of the #1 categories listed: British Literature Anthologies, Absurdist Fiction (Kindle Store) and Fiction Anthologies

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Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Someone hated their free copy of Principals so much they went out of their way to one-star it on both GoodReads and Amazon. What could inspire such vindictiveness? I don't know, read it to judge for yourself!

The cover of Principals shows the title and two Asian women wearing bandanas over their mouths, overlaid on a foggy, dystopian city skyline.

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Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

null recently got two more 5-star ratings. That's pretty gratifying! Thank you to people who leave ratings and reviews. www.goodreads.com/book/show/23...

Screencap of "Community ratings" showing 6 five-star, 4 four-star and 1 three-star ratings for null.

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Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

spirals? is now out - I woke up to find five star reviews for it on both Amazon and Goodreads, and even a new five star review for null. What a lovely start to the day. (Here's the link for spirals? www.amazon.com/dp/B0H7L2RTLJ)

The cover of spirals?, some gold spirals on a black background with the subheading "Collected short writings of Dienw Neb". The title "spirals" is stylised with a question mark, as though the word itself is question.

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Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

I have no real idea what's prompted it but a good dozen copies of null have sold so far this month. I can only assume through word of mouth. Thank you to whoever's out there talking about it! www.amazon.com/dp/B0FKB3D9MP

Image shows a square-cropped cover of the book, null Pro Edition.

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Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

spirals?, my collected short fictions and other weird brainfirings, is now available for pre-order. Or if you just want the epub, that's free - message me through my website or email or something if you'd like a copy. Not over bluesky. www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0H7L2RTLJ

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Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

Wales has a regrettable lack of Sichuan restaurants and we are driven through necessity to make our own hotpot.

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Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Work on 'Dim Gods' has reached a natural stopping point so I'm back to editing short stories for my planned collection: 'spirals?' Here's a preview of the cover.

A book cover. In the top left, the uncapitalised heading is 'spirals', with a question mark. A subheading in the bottom right says, 'Collected short writings of Dienw Neb'. The visuals of the cover are a black background superimposed with a number of gold circles, regularly offset to give an illusion of spirals.

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Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

null sold its 100th copy this month (101st, if we're counting the copy @cherylmorgan.bsky.social bought). That's pretty cool. I'm going to celebrate by eating this Palak Paneer I was going to eat anyway.

Sales figures breaking down how many copies of which edition and format have been sold. They're not interesting to you.

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Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

Waiting for a Llandeilo bus. Rain has been dripping through the bustop fixtures so long as to rust paint off the bolts and, falling, erode the tarmac beneath.

A close-up of wet tarmac, the tar visibly worn away by impact of water.

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Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

null's Amazon page (with its three whole ratings) is showing "Customers who bought this item also bought..." books by @scalzi.com and @qntm.org so that's a small honour*. Almost like sharing a shelf.

A screenshot of "Customers who bought this item also bought..." featuring John Scalzo and qntm.

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Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

Another month, another milestone down. Stories for the void. Most things that happen, happen in obscurity.

A thick stack of printed paper stapled together in bunches. The text on the pages is sporadically marked with notes in red pen.

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Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

I have to look it up every time because I always misspell it as guillemot and I know I'm wrong.

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Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

On the final read-throughs and personal edits of Dim Gods. Printing it out took most of the day as I ran out of black ink, then of blue ink, then of paper and had to make a run to the shop for more.

A thick stack of printer paper stapled together in smaller chunks.

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Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

x.com/ZiaYusufUK/s... This is certainly... something.

Zia Yusuf tweets: Today we announce a new policy:
︀︀
︀︀In order to deport all illegal migrants in Britain, Reform will need to detain tens of thousands at a time.
︀︀
︀︀Migrants will not be able to leave these detention centres, and each will be held there a couple of weeks before being deported.
︀︀
︀︀So here’s our promise:
︀︀
︀︀A Reform government will not put any migrant detention facilities in any constituency with a Reform MP.
︀︀
︀︀Nor will we put them where Reform controls the council.
︀︀
︀︀And of the remaining areas, we will prioritise Green controlled parliamentary constituencies and Green controlled councils to locate the detention centres.
︀︀
︀︀Put simply, if you vote in a Reform council or Reform MP, we guarantee you won’t have a detention centre near you.
︀︀
︀︀If you vote Green, there’s a good chance you will.
︀︀
︀︀This is an important exercise in democratic consent, not just for our mass deportation policy,…

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Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

A minor delay working on these edits.

A cat sitting in the sun right in the middle of my goddamn work desk.

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Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

All DG beta readers have checked in... Amazing people that they are. Time to get back to it. I'm still very excited about this project.

Five text file icons. Totally pointless image.

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Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

Working on the decorative frontispiece for Dim Gods, I may be regretting some of my choices in life.

A partially-inked stippling image of many small mammal skulls.

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Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

It is Spring and I am sowing oaks.

A seedling tray of 15 sprouting acorns is striated by beams of light from the window.

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Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

Draught 3 of Dim Gods complete at 93,000 words, now for the edit.

Photo of a mechanical pencil resting on sketchbook with some vague doodles and an ink drawing of a vole holding a safety lamp.

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Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

They are adorable and I will buy all their wares, even the extended warranty.

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Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

I wanted to get more scenes written today but the cat says we should sleep on it.

A POV photo of a text document open on a distant laptop balanced on knees. The keyboard is inaccessible due to a large sleeping ginger cat in the foreground.

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Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

The pain of being an indie writer when you get predictions right but nobody's read them. This was written in ~2016

Photo of a printed page from a book, it reads "null_ No. I don’t think Jane was an alien. Well, maybe. That’s not what I’m trying to say. I can’t claim her not to be intelligent on the basis of failing a Turing Test any more than someone unfamiliar with computers can reasonably claim any sort of recognisable language output as being a sign of intelligence. It might print out “Hello world!” but that isn’t proof of conscious intelligence. They just don’t know any better. Jane isn’t a robot, she’s just foreign. She’d say the same about me. Although she’d probably phrase it quite differently."

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Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

Presumably this also explains the etymology of 'sea urchin'.

A photo of live sea urchins - they are covered in outward pointing spines

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Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

@lookitup.baby that is an AI generated manipulation of this frame.

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Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 04/01/2026

I do recommend it as a way to help focus on writing.

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Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 26/12/2025

The blackwork puts me in mind of Mervyn Peake's illustrations.

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Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 25/11/2025

Some character/developmental sketches for Dim Gods, my current novel-in-progress. The images on your screen are mostly larger than the originals, drawn with pencil and dip ink pen.

Image shows a selection of poorly-drawn field voles wearing long peasant dresses.

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Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 22/11/2025

Goldstone Books in Carmarthen has copies of both null (Pro edition) and Principals on their shelves, which is pretty cool.

I'm sure you can extrapolate from context what this image shows. The 'Local authors' shelves of a bookshop. null is facing out, which is nice to see.

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Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

In trying to illustrate a cute-but-distinct vole side profile for Dim Gods, I seem to be inadvertently replicating The Grabbler.

Pencil sketches of cute vole side-profiles

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Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

Starting some rough, experimental sketches for Dim Gods. This is a fun project. Also, both Principals and null will be on sale for 99c over the weekend.

Lost in a square of white space, a simple drawing of an anthropomorphic vole wearing something like a medieval peasant's dress runs from left to right.

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Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

I didn't read the rest of your thread but I've made it better/worse.

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Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 23/10/2025

A new review for Principals (www.goodreads.com/book/show/23...). Three stars will always be a little disappointing but the reviewer makes fair points, pro and con.

A screenshot of a four paragraph, three star review. Text content follows: Principals follows Agati and Jun-Fi, best friends who find themselves plucked from their home in a war torn, post-apocalyptic city full of poverty and tossed into the world of training to become idols. Sounds glamorous, right? I mean just days of Singing, dancing, obeying orders, starving and receiving beatings whenever they are not perfect. Not so glamorous. Outside their walls, a revolution is stirring. What could go wrong?

The secondary plot line in this story is Johan, an incredibly self-centered song writer who has been very privileged and as such could not imagine the government or the police treating anyone unfairly, let alone him. He is a law-abiding citizen, after all. He is summoned to another city to receive an award and in spite of warnings from his daughter and ex wife, he decides to go anyway. His plans aren’t the only thing that starts to unravel as his beliefs and his very life are threatened again and again.

I think this is a debut novel for this author or perhaps one of only a couple and overall, it was well done. I enjoyed the writing and the concepts. The story felt very real too given the state of the world at the moment. She kind of lost me in the last third of the story a bit though. It started to feel disjointed as the story ramped up and maybe that was the author’s intent but it was frustrating to me as a reader. I felt the ending was too abrupt and left many questions unanswered. Things also didn’t really tie together like I had hoped they would. I think standard chapter breaks would have helped me out immensely too. The best parts in my opinion were the short bursts of perspective from operatives in the resistance, I would have liked more of those to give the reader a bigger picture perspective on this world throughout.

Overall a very creative idea that just needed a bit more finessing in the last 75 pages for me to feel like it worked well.

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Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 12/10/2025

First physical back-up for this project.

A pile of A4 sheets of paper with the text mosaic-censored to be illegible.

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Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

A nice new review for my previous novel, Principals (amzn.to/4oT40SG) oddly it's behind a login wall on NetGallery but I can share it here. The reviewer makes some valid criticisms.

Principals is a striking dystopian novel set in Ibban, a Korea-like country where poverty is brutal and survival is precarious. The story follows Jűn-Fi and Agati, two girls pulled into a government-run idol school that promises glamour but quickly reveals itself as little more than exploitation. It’s a smart and original twist on the genre: using the entertainment industry—modeled after K-pop—as a tool of oppression, while also critiquing the very real conditions faced by idols today.

The novel shines most once the girls arrive at the school. The tension is relentless, the world-building immersive, and the stakes heartbreakingly high. It’s grim but never gratuitous, and the characters are easy to root for.

I did find a few elements less effective. The chapter introductions, while reminiscent of Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, were overly long and slowed the pace. The subplot involving Johan, a European songwriter, felt distracting and underdeveloped compared to the compelling arc of the girls.

Despite these drawbacks, Principals is a powerful, unsettling, and deeply engaging read. I’d recommend it to fans of dystopian fiction who appreciate social critique woven into an emotionally gripping story.

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Dienw Neb @bareroot.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

A couple of chapters away from finishing the second draft of Dim Gods and I'm so excited to start the third ([s]the[/s] a fun bit!) I can hardly concentrate on the task at hand.