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Cherae

@clclarkwrites.com

3.7K followers 385 following 929 posts

SFF’s buffest lesbian. BFA & Ignyte & Locus Winner. Nebula & Hugo & BFA Finalist. TOURAINE'S ARMS & TOURAINE’S LEGS & TOURAINE'S @$$ & AMBESSA'S ARMS (Orbit ‘21,‘23,'25). français, العربيّة. they/she/sir/Hey, soldier. linktr.ee/clclark

Posts Replies Media

Cherae @clclarkwrites.com · 15h

Thanks for pulling me into this world soooo many years ago! 😁

Cherae @clclarkwrites.com · 18h

look look look!!!!! i’m in an actual play!!!!!!!! and i’ve come a long long way from the very first charity stream and first ttrpg session i ever had with @mikerunderwood.bsky.social, which was, ironically enough, Court of Blades, another Forged in the Dark game. join us in the city of whispers. 😈

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Melissa Caruso @melissacaruso.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Discoverability for new SFF books seems way down these days, especially outside of bestsellers and certain subgenres. I'm noticing this as both a reader and a writer. Great stuff is in danger of sinking without a trace. Please post about new/recent books you love or are excited for!!! I'll start:

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Raquel 🌈✨ @aistear.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

So many of us enjoying T. Kingfisher right now! Happy dance :) I'm reading her The Raven and the Reindeer (audiobook) and Fortune's Wake by @clclarkwrites.com at the moment!

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Reactor Magazine @reactorsff.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Did you know we're sharing an extended preview of The Thrice-Bound Fool by Christopher Buehlman?? INCLUDING Buehlman's iconic audiobook narration??? You can catch chapters 1-6 now!

Christopher Buehlman's The Thrice-Bound Fool — Chapters 4-6 - Reactor

The next chapter in the epic fantasy adventure series that began with The Blacktongue Thief

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Julie S. Lalonde @julieslalonde.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The literacy crisis is not just referring to people's ability to literally read and write. It's also people's inability to read for context. I've been a public educator for over 20 years and I have never, ever seen it this bad.

Cherae @clclarkwrites.com · 26/09/2026

raver is an intelligent reader, an excellent editor, and most importantly, good people. i would stake my name upon hers! so, if you need a reference: hire her!

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kathryn raver 🦉 @kathrynraver.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Hi publishing folks! Having finally wrapped up my masters’ thesis (thank goodness), I am officially back on the job hunt. I’m hoping some of you might be able to help me out 👇🏼

Cherae @clclarkwrites.com · 26/09/2026

mostly, now that i’m working on the past!storyline, i’m working on what i started very first in the first draft, which means i had the least idea of what was going on. which means battles are more nebulous—who are we fighting? why? to what advantage? whose butt-hurt feelings are driving us? etc.

Cherae @clclarkwrites.com · 26/09/2026

partner is out of town, so i’m giving myself the full concentrated day of a “writing retreat” (plus laundry, i know, not retreat-like but running shorts don’t wash themselves) and i am spending it building geopolitics i do this to myself. theoretically, i am having fun.

Cherae @clclarkwrites.com · 25/09/2026

i have been taking a little bit of a break to do other work that needed to be done (finishing edits on next year’s tordotcom novella 👀) but i compiled the entire section as a novel to read on my kindle and it’s not bad! this read makes lagging spots very apparent, so i am listening and learning. 😌

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Christopher Buehlman @buehlmeister.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Truly haunting and macabre cover art for the Italian edition of Between Two Fires, Tra Due Fuochi, published by the excellent team at Mercurio. 🖤🖤🖤

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British Fantasy Society @britfantasysoc.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

One week today! If you're thinking of coming, please get your ticket early. Bookshops have minimum numbers, so we really need your early support. Thanks. tinyurl.com/fpbfswhisp

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Kelly Robson @kellyrobson.com · 23/09/2026

Behold this beauty! The Book of the Dead, edited by Jonathan Strahan and illustrated by Galen Dara, out October 6. Includes my story "Time is a Liquid." @jonathanstrahan.bsky.social @harpervoyagerus.bsky.social www.harpercollins.com/products/the...

Two copies of a hardcover book like on a teal and black cloth. The covers say THE BOOK OF THE DEAD edited by Jonathan Strahan and illustrated by Galen Dara. The cover has an image of a spooky ghost-like figure with trailing hair and smoke in front of a full moon. It has a skull face and roses in its hair. Perhaps it is a ghost bride. The silhouette of a headstone is in the background.

Cherae @clclarkwrites.com · 22/09/2026

woo!! thanks for reading!

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Daniel M Ford @soundingline.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I just read Fortune's Wake by @clclarkwrites.com in one day. Just started Shadow of a Dead God by @patricksamphire.bsky.social and I'm pretty sure I'm gonna love it.

Cherae @clclarkwrites.com · 22/09/2026

hahahahaa i have definitely not read that nope

Cherae @clclarkwrites.com · 22/09/2026

😶🫢 oh my. ….happy birthday? lolol

Cherae @clclarkwrites.com · 22/09/2026

🙏

Cherae @clclarkwrites.com · 18/09/2026

it’s there! 😜 first one in the grid, don’t worry.

100

Cherae @clclarkwrites.com · 18/09/2026

you and me both, lol. harder to carry a blade through the streets, i suppose.

Cherae @clclarkwrites.com · 18/09/2026

bonus: smiling arms on stairs

c. l. clark sitting on sitting on stairs but smiling into the distance

Cherae @clclarkwrites.com · 18/09/2026

exciting times! new author photos! and thanks to the good folks over on insta, i’ve more or less narrowed it down to these for the regular rotation. all thanks goes to the wonderful photog, chris kammerud, and london for being pretty that day.

“something something daddy.” c. l. clark looking over their shoulder in a white t-shirt.

“arms in nature.” c. l. clark with crossed arms in a white tshirt in front of trees.

“urban arms.” c. l. clark sitting on stairs on a train bridge.

“hipster sideeye” c. l. clark sideeyeing the viewer.

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Anton Hur @antonhur.com · 16/09/2026

Got to very edit the remaining 200 manuscript pages of a novel I translated in seven hours (or more). Thought it might be fun to livesky how a book is edited while I do it. A thread!

Cherae @clclarkwrites.com · 17/09/2026

LAST CHAPTER FINISHED OMGGGGG AHHHHHHH sailing in for a sweet cool sexy ~86k so many thoughts but mostly…relief. and i can’t wait to start working on the past!storyline. so many plans!!!

Cherae @clclarkwrites.com · 17/09/2026

as the old cookie prophecy hath foretold. 😌

Cherae @clclarkwrites.com · 17/09/2026

second to last chapter of the present day storyline. brought to you by the “last agni kai” song.

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pipi🏳️‍⚧️ @pickedaxe.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

writing is about showing off your particular brand of mental illness in a fun and often erotic way

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Omar Kooheji 🍉 @ohmz.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Life is a bit of a roller coaster for us right now, lots going on which is raising our stress levels, one shining light on the horizon is that my wife’s book is coming out in a month, and I’m really excited that other people are going to get to experience it.

The Void Dragon

'Truly enchanting' Trudi Canavan on The Outcast Mage 'Both classic and utterly original, this is heartfelt fantasy from a wonderful new voice' Tasha Suri ...

Cherae @clclarkwrites.com · 17/09/2026

speaking of short stories!

Cherae @clclarkwrites.com · 17/09/2026

🙏 DaVaun!

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FIYAH Literary Magazine @fiyahlitmag.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

More goodness from the Forged in FIYAH anthology, today we get a glimpse of @clclarkwrites.com! Another sampling of the beautiful contributions Black authors have made to speculative fiction, and we are FEASTING through this entire collection. Share with a friend who needs more magic in their TBR 🔥

Cherae @clclarkwrites.com · 15/09/2026

yeahhhh. it’s particularly brutal because i’m rewriting this entire section from scratch, so i’ll probably have even more to compress later…but i’m excited to see how the second half trims down since that narrative line is already pretty sound.

Cherae @clclarkwrites.com · 15/09/2026

83,821, give or take. almost there. things are slowing down (my head, my capacity) as i try to get all of this right. this end of the present day is also the end of the book (naturally) so i’m trying to make sure all the pieces are in the right place this draft.

a spreadsheet with word counts per chapter in the first half of warmongers

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Mike Underwood @mikerunderwood.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

We're live! *vibrating with excitement*

Cherae @clclarkwrites.com · 15/09/2026

and if you want to see me talk messy relationships with the @storyenginedeck.bsky.social crew, you can!

How to write page-turning romance relationships with CL Clark - Story Engine Workshop Series

YouTube video by The Story Engine Deck

Cherae @clclarkwrites.com · 15/09/2026

i am soooo exciiiiited i have been waiting for these with great eagerness 😈

Cherae @clclarkwrites.com · 15/09/2026

and for some of you who are new here, you can check out my shorts here. one day, i’d like to publish a collection. one thing that’s kinda funny since i lived both lives is that, in the litfic world, you’re expected to break ground with a collection then novel. it seems the opposite in genre? 🤷‍♂️

clclarkwrites.com

Short fiction, nonfiction, and narrations by C. L. Clark.

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Marissa Lingen @marissalingen.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

IT'S TODAY!!! My fantasy novella, A DUBIOUS CLAMOR, is out today! From here on out, if you suddenly have the urge to read about harpies, opinionated weapons, and a bunch of misfits fighting the fash, you can just DO THAT! Order direct or from bookstores: hornedlarkpress.com/product/a-du...

Happy author Marissa Lingen, a long-haired white woman, holds up a copy of her book, A DUBIOUS CLAMOR

Cherae @clclarkwrites.com · 14/09/2026

which you can still preorder now!

us.macmillan.com

Forged in FIYAH

Showcasing the masterful prose of some of today's most accomplished writers, Forged in FIYAH is a celebration of Black speculative fiction unlike anything se...

Cherae @clclarkwrites.com · 14/09/2026

really miss being a contributing member of #TeamShortStories but i promise one day i will be back in the meantime, i do have a short story coming out this!! month!! in the upcoming @fiyahlitmag.bsky.social anthology!

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the Mountain Goats @themountaingoats.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

the point of freeing yourself from the prison of ego is not getting there you’re not gonna do that. never gonna happen. the point is cultivating a practice of routinely asking “wait, I am too into my own shit here?” in every aspect of your dealings at least once or twice a day. anyhow good morning

Cherae @clclarkwrites.com · 14/09/2026

It’s their fault my modest collection has become a hoard, and I love the way the dice are themed to fit characters. It inspires the stories I tell at the table and in my pages. Check out the interview and then check out their dice in stock—they’re having a new drop soon. 😇

Cherae @clclarkwrites.com · 14/09/2026

The second #artistXauthor interview is live! With this new project, I feature one of my (and soon to be YOUR) favorite artists every month and ask them ten questions about their process, their path, and queer art. This month, we’re featuring the rad dice makers @soulforgedice.bsky.social!

clclarkwrites.com

Artist Interview #2: Soulforge Dice

10 questions for the dice maker about TTRPGs, queer gunslingers, and collaboration

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jesperish @jesperish.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

Minas Morgul

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Jes the human @jesthehuman.itch.io · 11/09/2026

Barbarians & Backshots

Cherae @clclarkwrites.com · 10/09/2026

version of these chapters from the first draft, and so i don’t wonder at my editor asking if they could be shorter. now i know what the important story is.

Cherae @clclarkwrites.com · 10/09/2026

hhhhhhm we are almost at 80k as we close out the day’s work and not quite done with the present!storyline. doesn’t quite bode well for other people’s desired word count targets but we’ll see what happens after a good line edit lol at the same time, it’s going to be much more streamlined than the

Cherae @clclarkwrites.com · 10/09/2026

Happy hunting! 😈

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daryl "crimetime after primetime" b 🏳️‍⚧️ @hypercubexl.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

GDT's reddit AMA spitting fire www.reddit.com/r/movies/com...

reddit comment:

Hello! Did you intend the ending of Pan’s labyrinth to be real or in Ofelia’s mind?

Guillermo Del Toro's reply:

My interpretation, and it's exclusively mine, is that it's real.

Because there's two things. One is what people call “The Shining Question.” The Shining Question is, Who opens the door for Jack to get out of the fridge? And Ofelia is in an attic with a guard outside her door, and she draws the door with the magic chalk, and she shows up in the labyrinth. So, the only way she could have gone into the labyrinth is the magic chalk. And the flower is real at the end. The flower that blooms in the dead tree. And the reason I think it’s real is because—and this is why I'm in favor of the human factor in art—I think that art does transform the world. You know?

Think about it for a second. One of the goals, with all this movement, is to make you believe that art is vulgar. That art is nothing special, and anybody can do art. That is like me telling you that I'm faster at running than Usain Bolt but I “run” in my motorcycle. Well, that's not the same. That’s not the same at all.

Art is important, and they want you to believe it isn't. It's part of the idea of control. The goal is not to have artificial intelligence. The goal is to foster natural stupidity. The goal is to foster you not looking for answers, and to trust yourself entirely to an engine. Look at the way we are dipping our toes into these things. We are starting to ask the machine, Is this true? For now, there's a correlation between reality and what the answers of the machine are. For now. But soon, we won't even investigate further. We will be told it's true. And if the machine is in the hands of somebody who should not be trusted, then your reality has been completely and utterly fucked. Because your intelligence ends at the question. You don't seek the answer. It's given to you.

Q: You recently mentioned that AI creates 'semi-compelling screensavers' and that you'd 'rather die' than use it. As a filmmaker who relies heavily on practical effects and creature design, what do you think is the biggest thing lost when a computer generates an image instead of a human hand?

GDT:

The three quarters of the process that gave you the chance to think of the idea that people don't think about without that process. Meaning, AI can get you to the middle really fast, but there's a dialectic with the process that gets you to that top 10%. I'll give you an example with the Pale Man.

We sculpted it as an old man, with a face. And then I said, Let's take out the face. This happened because I saw a photo of a manta ray and the poster for Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm. That combination, which happened at two different times during a week or a month, are not permutations that are chemically part of an equation. They are alchemy. And then I said, Take out the face, and then I said, Let's put the eyes on the hands. This triangulation happens because I spent a month or two months living with the idea of this creature. And it's not linear.

AI is like a super-fast engine that makes semi-sentient permutations of things that are already done. Creation is things that have never been done. Coming to exist.

And the second thing is the loss of the apprenticeship that one has as an artist. You're never a master; you're always an apprentice. This is a kinship I have with, for example, Chris Nolan. When he showed me The Odyssey, there’s a scene when Matt Damon is floating in the stormy ocean and I asked him—because we were talking about practical effects, and how great it is and that we both always use a maquette or a model—and I asked him, How did you do it? He said, “We put him in a storm in the ocean.”

And you're gonna find that 30% of a great image occurs accidentally. You know, either a drop of water hits the lens, or the camera shakes. I remember when in 1993, '94, Jim…