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Colin the Copywriter

@colinthecopywriter.bsky.social
175 followers 343 following 282 posts

Author of debut SF novel, Exo, available NOW | A quarter of a century writing UK publishing jacket copy | 5,000+ blurbs | Talking the cover stories that persuade readers to buy | A few mine, mostly others' | Also find me here colinthecopywriter.com

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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
(2/2) This is not SF business-as-usual. There's no vast conspiracy, no end of the world, no race against time. Just women talking, & the suggestion of something hopeful if we dare to reach for it. There is nothing more wise or urgent that SF can offer the reader. Here's the promise: a better world.
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
(1/2) What is the purpose of stories? Recent 2026 @clarkeaward.bsky.social winner @catamaroon.bsky.social & Arcadia Books When There Are Wolves Again pitches story as hope. Everything about this quiet but insistent blurb dares us to imagine a better future . . .
When There Are Wolves Again by EJ Swift and wolf imageBlurb: Decades from now, two women sit beside a campfire and reflect on their life stories. For fifty years, they have fought to restore Britain's depleted natural landscape, and to give voice to those who cannot speak for themselves. Both dream of a time when there are wolves again. A novel of hope, tragedy, despair and triumph, When There Are Wolves Again offers a vision of the future that is only just out of reach.
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 30/03/2026
(2/) Next, we get a paragraph of set up, followed by a paragraph of inciting incident: now everything is about to change. We end with a pitch to the literary reader that ends in a bloody twist. If you have multiple cravings, this blurb says, it will satisfy them all . . .
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 30/03/2026
Blurbs in the wild (1/2): How do we pitch horror stories to a literary crowd? One way is to hold back the horror until they're hooked in. The blurb for @lucyrosecreates.bsky.social The Lamb begins by keeping the reader's options open – folk tale, horror story, love story, enchantment. Take your pick
Lucy Rose's The LambBlurb: A FOLK TALE. A HORROR STORY. A LOVE STORY. AN ENCHANTMENT.  Margot and Mama have lived by the forest since Margot can remember. When Margot isn't at school, they spend quiet days together in their cottage, waiting for strangers to knock on their door. Strays, Mama calls them. Mama loves the strays. She feeds them wine, keeps them warm. Then she satisfies her burning appetite by picking apart their bodies.  But Mama's want is stronger than her hunger sometimes, and when a white-toothed stray named Eden turns up in the heart of a snowstorm, little Margot must confront the shifting dynamics of her family, untangle her own desires and make a bid for freedom.  With this tender coming-of-age tale, debut novelist Lucy Rose explores how women swallow their anger, desire and animal instincts - and wrings the relationship between mother and daughter until blood drips from it.
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
A 'cremulator' is involved, apparently. The Terminator film series is not a patch on The Cremulator film series in my head: 'You'll be dust.' www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
Scotland becomes first UK country to allow water cremations
The process - called alkaline hydrolysis - will offer families a third option instead of burial or traditional cremation.
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
Of course they can't, they were trained on internet conversations . . . www.newscientist.com/article/2516...
newscientist.com
AIs can’t stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations
Leading AIs from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google opted to use nuclear weapons in simulated war games in 95 per cent of cases
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
Wainscot spaces. www.thisiscolossal.com/2026/02/mich...
thisiscolossal.com
Itty-Bitty Signs and Portals by Michael Pederson Reimagine Everyday Urban Details
Pederson's playful miniatures scale the stems of weeds, reimagine gaps in walls, and interpret urban happenstances.
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 06/02/2026
Deformed animals. www.thisiscolossal.com/2026/02/brun...
thisiscolossal.com
Bruno Pontiroli Tests the Boundaries of Familiarity in His Uncanny Wildlife Paintings
Bruno Pontiroli's absurd paintings explore the sometimes grotesque tension between the familiar and the uncanny.
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 06/02/2026
(2/2) Best of all are the final lines, archly advising you to buy & read the book – or contact Dirk himself; plus an endorsement from none other than Adams himself. This is knowing, self-referential & delighted with its own absurdity – you will immediately either hate it or fall in love with it.
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 06/02/2026
Blurbs in the wild (1/2): @panmacmillan.bsky.social know how to have fun with a funny book. First, we have two increasingly ridiculous lists – the first asking a question and the second list (deliberately over-deploying the word mysterious) answering in an unilluminating but also intriguing way.
Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective AgencyBlurb and quotes: What do a dead cat, a computer whiz-kid, an Electric Monk who believes the world is pink, quantum mechanics, a Chronologist over two hundred years old, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (poet), and pizza have in common?  Apparently not much; until Dirk Gently, self-styled private investigator, sets out to prove the fundamental interconnectedness of all things by solving a mysterious murder, assisting a mysterious professor, unravelling a mysterious mystery, and eating a lot of pizza – not to mention saving the entire human race from extinction along the way (at no extra charge).  To find out more, read this book (better still, buy it then read it) – or contact Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.  'A thumping good detective-ghost-horror-who dunnit-time travel-romantic-musical-comedy-epic' - Douglas Adams
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 06/02/2026
'Edwardian Hunt Breakfast' - what else? www.thisiscolossal.com/2026/02/leon...
thisiscolossal.com
A Major Survey in Paris Chronicles Leonora Carrington's Esoteric Surrealism
The Musée du Luxembourg chronicles British-Mexican artist Leonora Carrington's remarkable, eight-decade career.
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 21/01/2026
(2/2) Key to the power of these lists are the verbs and adjectives: shadowy, purged, eerie, stalk, capture, sweeps, 'cure.' The blurb has already taken us into the world of the novel.
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 21/01/2026
Blurbs in the wild: (1/2) @faberbooks.bsky.social reissue of Kay Dick's unsettling THEY has a blurb that is having great fun with its title. Making the perfectly ordinary word THEY sound increasingly sinister & ominous, the blurb, through a series of lists describes how THEY change the world ...
Kay Dick's TheyBlurb: This is Britain: but not as we know it. THEY begin with a dead dog, shadowy footsteps, confiscated books. Soon the National Gallery is purged; eerie towers survey the coast; mobs stalk the countryside destroying artworks - and those who resist. THEY capture dissidents - writers, painters, musicians, even the unmarried and childless - in military sweeps, 'curing' these subversives of individual identity. Survivors gather together as cultural refugees, preserving their crafts, creating, loving and remembering. But THEY make it easier to forget ...
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 16/01/2026
Man with book talks about writing book. jerseyeveningpost.com/features/202...
jerseyeveningpost.com
'There is a certain amount of necessary self-delusion in anyone committing to writing a novel’ - Jersey Evening Post
Two decades in the making, Exo is the debut novel of Colin Brush, who spent his childhood and teenage years in Jersey. A highly original sci-fi murder-mystery set in the distant future, the novel was ...
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
(4/4) . . .invoking a past world that already feels vaguely dreamlike and half-forgotten for those that never experienced it firsthand, but also tying the stories together into a whole. This is how you pitch a short story collection: you make it feel more than the sum of its many parts.
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
(3/4) Paragraph two tells you what you’re going to get. Five sentences give us five stories in five alternate countries . . . Tales adjacent to who we are and what we know. This is the promise of fantasy. A brief paragraph three argues why you should read it . . .
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
(2/4) Paragraph one introduces our author, offers up her credentials (awards and novels) and suggests both contemporary and antecedent writers of note whose work Goss’s own convincingly stands alongside.
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
(1/4) @theodoragoss.bsky.social and @tachyonpub.bsky.social brilliant Letters from an Imaginary Country does what is says on the tin. These remarkable short stories take you places you didn’t know existed. The book’s blurb is a three parter:
Theodora Goss's Letters from an Imaginary Country plus magnetic alphabet lettersBlurb: Roam through the captivating stories of World Fantasy and Mythopoeic Award winner Theodora Goss (the Athena Club trilogy). This themed collection of imaginary places, with three new stories, recalls Susanna Clarke’s alternate Europe and the surreal metafictions of Jorge Luis Borges.  The infamous girl monsters of nineteenth-century fiction gather in London and form their own club. In the imaginary country of Thüle, characters from folklore band together to fight a dictator. An intrepid girl reporter finds the hidden land of Oz―and joins its invasion of our world. The author writes the autobiography of her alternative life and a science fiction love letter to Budapest. The White Witch conquers England with snow and silence.  Deeply influenced by the author’s Hungarian childhood during the regime of the Soviet Union, each of these intricate stories engages with storytelling and identity, including Goss's own.
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 12/01/2026
Rivers and pools of light. www.thisiscolossal.com/2026/01/denn...
thisiscolossal.com
Dennis Lehtonen's Aerial Views of Remote Greenland Villages Illuminate an Evolving Land
Dennis Lehtonen uses a drone in an ongoing project focused on documenting all the inhabited places in Greenland.
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 12/01/2026
This houses has holes. www.thisiscolossal.com/2026/01/%E7%...
thisiscolossal.com
Step Into a Uniquely Cavernous House Installation by Japanese Art Collective 目
"Space II" sits in a neighborhood of a city renowned for its natural hot springs, known as onsen, which attract visitors to local resorts.
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
(2/2) Here’s the tale. Here are the themes. Here’s why the author knows what she’s talking about. Take it, or leave it. The book, like the employers our heroine Teresa has to deal with, couldn’t give a shit about what the reader wants. This is what’s on offer. My advice? Take it. It’s what we need.
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
(1/2) Plotless, dreamlike, meandering, Joanne McNeil’s and @fsgbooks.bsky.social Wrong Way is the mid-21st-century work novel par excellence. The blurb on the back, like the book it describes, is a long no-nonsense straightforward explanation of what you’re going to get. No hard sell. No hooks...
Joanne McNeil's Wrong Way and Princess Peach toy carBlurb: For years, Teresa has passed from one job to the next, settling into long stretches of time, struggling to build her career in any field or unstick herself from an endless cycle of labor. The dreaded move from one gig to another is starting to feel unbearable. When a recruiter connects her with a contract position at AllOver, it appears to check all her prerequisites for a “good” job. It’s a fintech corporation with progressive hiring policies and a social justice-minded mission statement. Their new service for premium members: a functional fleet of driverless cars. The future of transportation. As her new-hire orientation reveals, the distance between AllOver’s claims and its actions is wide, but the lure of financial stability and a flexible schedule is enough to keep Teresa driving forward.  Joanne McNeil, who often reports on how the human experience intersects with labor and technology brings blazing compassion and criticism to Wrong Way, examining the treacherous gaps between the working and middle classes wrought by the age of AI. Within these divides, McNeil turns the unsaid into the unignorable, and captures the existential perils imposed by a nonstop, full-service gig economy.
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Reposted by Colin the Copywriter
Zeno Agency @zenoagency.bsky.social · 01/01/2026
UK paperback edition of EXO by @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social is out today! zenoagency.com/news/exo-uk-... Published by @diversionbooks.bsky.social.
Cover for Colin Brush's EXO - a figure runs towards what looks like a thick fog/smoke cloud. The title, in large text, runs down the centre of the image, author's name along the bottom.
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 19/12/2025
Big flames. Little people. www.thisiscolossal.com/2025/12/alex...
thisiscolossal.com
Alexis Rockman Traces the Unsettling Evolution of a Climate in Crisis
In 'Feedback Loop' at Jack Shainman Gallery, Alexis Rockman presents an inescapable cycle of climate disaster.
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 15/12/2025
(3/3) . . . what you're reading isn't what quite you're reading. It suggests that if you like having your expectations played with then this might just be for you.
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 15/12/2025
(2/3): . . . dying world, burn, hellbent, warring factions, taunt, battlefield boast, deaths, war, war, wars. But between these words another story is being told: a letter, unlikely correspondence, romantic – and the final word – 'right?' – questioning the entire proposition. The blurb says . . .
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 15/12/2025
Blurbs in the wild (1/3): A war story is a love story. And the quietly subversive blurb sneaks up on you. In @amalelmohtar.com and @maxgladstone.bsky.social Quercus-published This is How You Lose the Time War, the blurb ought to be bleak, filled with the language of anger and violence: . . .
Amal-el-Mohtar and Max Gladstone's This is How You Lose the Time WarBlurb: Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading. Red and Blue, two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions, strike up an unlikely correspondence. But what started as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more: something epic and romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.  The discovery of their bond will mean their deaths. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war. That's how war works. Right?
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 08/12/2025
www.thisiscolossal.com/2025/12/choi...
thisiscolossal.com
With 125 Volunteers, Choi + Shine Crochet the 12 Animals of the Chinese Zodiac
Suspended above reflective surface mimicking a dark body of water, Choi + Shine's "Distance" comprises large-scale crocheted sculptures.
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 08/12/2025
(2/2) . . . who you disagree with to the point of death. Here, it's not what the protagonist wants, but what's in the way of them getting it.
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 08/12/2025
Blurbs in the wild: (1/2) @rfkuang.bsky.social Katabasis' blurb is all problems & stakes. The first paragraph gives the set up: to be a best magician. All else is obstacles in our hero's way: a dead facilitator, a visit to Hell, the rival whose help you need but . . .
Katabasis by RF KuangBlurb: Grad student Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become the brightest mind in the field of analytic magick.  But the only person who can make her dream come true is dead and – inconveniently – in Hell. And Alice, along with her biggest rival Peter Murdoch, is going after him.  But Hell is not as the philosophers claim, its rules are upside-down, and if she’s going to get out of there alive, she and Peter will have to work together.  That’s if they can agree on anything.  Will they triumph, or kill each other trying?
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 06/12/2025
Lovely early Christmas present for Exo, being part of @libraryjournal.bsky.social selection of the Best SF Books of 2025. @zenoagency.bsky.social @awfulagent.bsky.social
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 01/12/2025
Read an excerpt of Exo over at Frumious Consortium . . . www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/11/18/e...
thefrumiousconsortium.net
Exo by Colin Brush (EXCERPT)
Hello, dear readers! Today, we have a thrilling excerpt for you from a debut novel that expertly melds a future Earth devastated by climate change with a compelling murder mystery, featuring an oct…
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 01/12/2025
Thanks to The Indie View for the interview about Exo . . . www.theindieview.com/2025/11/18/i...
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 01/12/2025
Thanks, Deborah. Lovely interview.
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Reposted by Colin the Copywriter
Deborah Kalb @deborahkalb.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
Q&A with Colin Brush about his new novel, EXO. tinyurl.com/5n8784hr
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
The colour out of space . . . www.thisiscolossal.com/2025/11/tomi...
thisiscolossal.com
Tomislav Topić Meticulously Layers Hundreds of Panels into Prismatic Mesh Installations
One of Topić's most recent interventions, 'Echoverse,' consists of 57 different colors on 451 panels that stretches nearly 100 feet long.
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
The skies are full . . . www.thisiscolossal.com/2025/11/davi...
thisiscolossal.com
Pastoral Landscapes Brim with Patterns in Luminous Paintings by David Brian Smith
Glowing sunrise gradients and myriad vibrant patterns are just a couple of elements comprising David Brian Smith’s otherworldly landscapes.
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
Little end of the worlds . . . www.thisiscolossal.com/2025/11/simo...
thisiscolossal.com
Simon Laveuve's Scaled-Down Tableaux Reveal Post-Apocalyptic Lifestyles
Artist Simon Laveuve is known for his meticulously sculpted miniatures rendered in 1/24 and 1/35 scale.
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
www.thisiscolossal.com/2025/11/tbil...
thisiscolossal.com
Tbilisi Mural Fest's Dynamic Murals Brighten the Sides of Buildings Throughout the City
Since 2019, Tbilisi Mural Fest has been transforming Georgia's capital city into a giant public art gallery.
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 21/11/2025
Thanks to @athenascalzi.com & @scalzi.com for the chance to talk about a Big Idea involving my novel Exo over at Whatever. It's all about writing adaptability and exploring different paths through the story woods. Because there's more than one way to tell a story. whatever.scalzi.com/2025/11/20/t...
whatever.scalzi.com
The Big Idea: Colin Brush
When writing a novel, a lot of people think of the process as sort of rigid. You have a specific story to tell and it needs to be an unchanging vision all the way through. Author Colin Brush, howev…
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 20/11/2025
Thanks to @andrewliptak.com for putting my novel Exo on his list of new titles to consider checking out this month. Lots of great titles on that list that you should definitely *LOOK INTO MY EYES* FORGET THEY EVER EXISTED, BUY ONLY EXO . . . transfer-orbit.ghost.io/sci-fi-fanta...
transfer-orbit.ghost.io
11 new SF/F books to check out this November
Hidden secrets, uninhabitable planets, secret worlds, and quite a bit more to check out
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 18/11/2025
But if you're in the UK/Europe and want a physical copy, you'll need to wait until January . . .
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Reposted by Colin the Copywriter
JABberwocky Literary Agency @awfulagent.bsky.social · 17/11/2025
"Colin Brush is a name to watch in the realm of speculative fiction" 💥 EXO by @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social publishes tomorrow!
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 18/11/2025
It's been a long journey, but thanks to @jberlyne.bsky.social @awfulagent.bsky.social @tonimargarita.bsky.social & Shannon Donnelly and all at @diversionbooks.bsky.social (not to mention @bookforward.bsky.social & @michelvrana.com ) for bringing Exo out into the world in style.
Happy Publication day, Exo. May you find the readers you deserve. Plus packshots of the novel Exo and as it appears on an e-reader and a phone.
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 18/11/2025
'What was it Dad said not to do?' wondered Icarus. www.thisiscolossal.com/2025/11/andr...
thisiscolossal.com
A Skydiver Appears to Fall from the Sun in a Stunning Image
After six momentous leaps, Gabriel C. Brown and Andrew McCarthy completed their mission to capture this striking image.
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 17/11/2025
Thanks @bookstr.bsky.social for the featured review and commentary on my novel, Exo, out tomorrow . . . bookstr.com/article/cons... @diversionbooks.bsky.social @awfulagent.bsky.social @zenoagency.bsky.social
bookstr.com
Conspiracies and Murder Abound in This Twisty New Sci-Fi Mystery
An octogenarian sleuth, an enigmatic child, and a lethal scheme that imperils them both. Meet your new favorite sci-fi mystery!
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 15/11/2025
www.thisiscolossal.com/2025/11/argh...
thisiscolossal.com
Radiant Sculptures by Arghavan Khosravi Meditate on Subconscious Terrain
Iranian artist Arghavan Khosravi makes an inward turn in her new body of sculptural paintings that radiate light.
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 15/11/2025
Mario, eat your heart out . . . www.thisiscolossal.com/2018/06/rain...
thisiscolossal.com
Vivid Rainbow Roads Trace Illuminated Pathways Across Forests and Beaches
Daniel Mercadante has a slate of unique films under his belt, made in partnership with his wife Katina, as The Mercadantes, including Ball and Breathe. More recently, Daniel has been exploring the sti...
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
Thanks to @booktrib.bsky.social for the chance to talk about five books dealing with change in the world & how we live with that change, each of which changed how I wrote my own novel, Exo. booktrib.com/2025/11/12/f... @tadethompson.bsky.social @sannewman.bsky.social @catamaroon.bsky.social
A hand holding the Earth with the title 'Books to Hold Close As the World Turns', featuring 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson, The Country of Ice Cream Star by Sandra Newman, Skyward Inn by Aliya Whiteley, Rosewater by Tade Thompson and The Coral Bones by EJ Swift
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Colin the Copywriter @colinthecopywriter.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
Thanks to @writersdigest.bsky.social for letting me explore the differences between my publishing copywriter day job & writing my first novel, #Exo. Spoiler: it's not just word count. www.writersdigest.com/shifting-fro... @diversionbooks.bsky.social @zenoagency.bsky.social @awfulagent.bsky.social
writersdigest.com
Shifting From Publishing Copywriter to Published Novelist
Author Colin Brush shares how he went from writing reductive copy for novels to expanding copy into a novel.
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