iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Guys, I’m speechless. Gonna be sharing this award with my 8-year-old since this poem was inspired by their question “why do we never see fireflies in the winter?” Huge thanks to the Ignyte organizers, all the voters/readers, and to @thedeadlands.com for giving this one a wonderful home!

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Thomas Ha @thomasha.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

i should clarify, when i write people doing bad things, it's because i am bad. they are me. more importantly, when you read about those bad things, they also become you. that's how story works. in fact, you are going to think about murder before this skeet ends. how's that feel, sicko.

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Elis Montgomery @elismontgomery.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

[ᵛᶦᵈᵉᵒ ᵍᵃᵐᵉ ʷᵃˡᵏᵗʰʳᵒᵘᵍʰ ʷᶦᵏᶦ ʰᵒʳʳᵒʳ] Press X to enter the Unmarked Castle Press [ʳᵉᵈᵃᶜᵗᵉᵈ, ⁿᵒᵗ ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ] to make it out alive

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Daniel Ausema @danielausema.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I've been quiet about this one until I had some definite news, but this book is available now!! It's a book that's both taken a long time to come to fruition and a whirlwind of a rush at the same time. Published by Island of Wak-Wak, the same as my poetry chapbook from two years ago.

cover art, text reads "Daniel Ausema, The Fall of the City of Bells"; images from the public domain shows monks pulling the ropes on a line of bells in an old building

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Daniel Ausema @danielausema.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

If you missed my announcement last week, be sure to check back the past couple of posts to get more info about the novella-in-verse The Fall of the City of Bells. And now I wanted to share a bit more about the background of the collection as well as a peek at the poems:

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Merc Fenn Wolfmoor @mercwolfmoor.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

I LOVE THIS SO MUCH

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Deborah L. Davitt, Author @deborahldavitt.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

A writing friend has created possibly the creepiest creepypasta I've ever read, in the form of a video game walkthrough. Please do go read!

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Elis Montgomery @elismontgomery.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

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Elis Montgomery @elismontgomery.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

𝘏𝘦𝘳 𝘥𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘵𝘦, 𝘤𝘶𝘳𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘩𝘦𝘳: 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘦𝘬𝘣𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘴, 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘢𝘳𝘣𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘴, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘭𝘰𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘭𝘦𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘬𝘭𝘦. 𝘏𝘦𝘳 𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘷𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘦. New flash story out in Wyldblood!

Black and white photo of a young woman's face, obscured by her hair. Photo by Alexander Krivitskiy on Pexels.

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Angela Liu @angelaliu.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Love seeing speculative poetry gaining more and more writers and readers. Can't wait to see more reviewers too!

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L. D. Colter - Author @ldcolter.com · 03/09/2026

Tomorrow! 8 min readings. Book giveaways! Find a new favorite SFF author at the FREE Zoom event. Register in advance at www.eventbrite.com/e/first-frid... #SWSWQR #sff #fantasy @emmiechristie33.bsky.social @slashnburnett.bsky.social @nillunasser.bsky.social @karenlucia.bsky.social Alex Grehy

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🐍 Abigail Kemske 🐍 @abigailkemske.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

My latest #fantasy flash “Venom is Poison is Strength is Venom” is now free to read at Flame Tree! 🐍 I’m very proud of this story. Head on over to their newsletter archive to check it out: www.flametreepress.com/newsletters/...

Venom is Poison is Strength is Venom by Abigail Kemske
"You get your first serpent on your sixteenth birthday when you first attract the eye of men."
Now free to read at:
FLAME TREE PRESS FICTION WITHOUT FRONTIERS

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Mari Ness, writer of things @mariness.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

....the ongoing delights of being both a Hugo finalist and a wheelchair user. "The backstage is for walking participants," said directly to my face, as a wheelchair user.

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Brandon O’Brien @therisingtithes.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

It’s the day after, and the sound of erupting cheers for Elis Montgomery winning Best Poem still fills me with joy. May this be the energy next year. May this be the energy after 2029. May speculative poetry remain a beacon star in the constellation of our genre, forever and always.

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Amanda Helms - Preorder THE UPPER TENTACLE @amandaghelms.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

✨✨✨COVER REVEAL✨✨✨ I'm delighted with my cover design and art by Caroline Teagle Johnson, who nailed the retro, campy vibes I requested for my debut, THE UPPER TENTACLE! TUT publishes 02 09 27 from Union Square &. Co, but preorders are available now! www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/amand...

On a faded background of a green tentacle on a pink backdrop, the cover for THE UPPER TENTACLE shines in all its pink, green, and red glory! A green tentacle coils upward, and a silhouette of a woman dangles one-handed from its tip. Title THE UPPER TENTACLE, in red, interweaves with the upper portion of the tentacle, and the author's name, also in red, is at the bottom. "February 9, 2027" is above the cover, and "Preorders available" is below it.

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VL-ADventitious. @adventitiouswords.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

I have doth made un starter park with thyne fauvourite Adventitious writers, and I dost though not understand olde tyme Englishe. Please follow them anyway (yes, thou). go.bsky.app/P6ETCHR

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Holly Lyn Walrath @hollylynwalrath.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

I am overjoyed that the Poetry Hugo Award has once again PASSED. It will need to be re-ratified in 2029 to be officially officially permanent. Complicated rules aside, thank you to everyone who voted or supported this goal. Us poets truly love y'all! To read more about this see poetryhugo.com

poetryhugo.com

Speculative Poetry Initiative

What Works Are Available for Nomination in the 2026 Awards?

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Jordan Kurella @jordankurella.com · 12/07/2026

holy gosh!!!! The Death of Mountains won the @sjacksonawards.bsky.social for Best Novella!!!! thanks so much to the judges, to @lethepress.bsky.social for making this book a reality, and @ceciliatan.com for being there in person to read my speech!! all told, Death of Mountains did a very good job

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VL-ADventitious. @adventitiouswords.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

Check ch-check ch-check, ch-check it out.

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Sasha Kielman (she/her/hers) 🦋 is Querying 🙏🕯️📿 @sashakielman.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

I am delighted to share that my flash story "Legacy" was published today by The Fairtales! It is free to read at the link below! (Art commissioned from BalsanA). www.thefairtales.com/legacy #WriteSky

A commissioned art piece for "Legacy" by Sasha Kielman by BalsanA. A young man with wavy dark hair opens the lid of a trunk with sparkly light shining on them. A table with a quill and paper is to the left.

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Deborah L. Davitt, Author @deborahldavitt.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

A gentle, sweet, and dark flash fiction by @elismontgomery.bsky.social ! Check it out today!

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Elis Montgomery @elismontgomery.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

Follow Nightraiser into the bone place, where a single floating candle flickers in the shadows. What fills the dark spaces left by devotion? New dark fantasy flash, free in Adventitious! 💀🐴🕯️✨ www.adventitious.net/stories/holl...

Image of “The Piebald Horse," an oil painting by Paulus Potter, with a brown-speckled white horse standing in a field against a cloudy sky, looking back just slightly to the viewer. Above the horse is added text from “Hollows After Bones” by Elis Montgomery: “Nightraiser paws a hoof into the harrowed earth. Every grave here is laid bare like the land’s been peeled back in great layers.”

Image of a watercolour illustration by Raffaele Mainella for Nos Invisibles (1907). A dark figure stands over an open, flower-strewn casket with their hands raised to a lighter sky of dancing, white-clad figures. A dead man lies inside the casket beside a tall candle, its smoke trailing into the distance. Over the sky is added text from “Hollows After Bones” by Elis Montgomery: “Neither he nor the rider had prepared for death; it had come for them suddenly, as certain as wildfire.”

Image of “The Race Track (Death on a Pale Horse)” (c. 1896–1908), an oil painting by Albert Pinkham Ryder. Depicts a skeletal, scythe-wielding figure riding a galloping horse through the dark countryside. Over the sky is added text from “Hollows After Bones” by Elis Montgomery: “Horses did not have to pay their way through, but perhaps that was the way of humans.”

Image of “La calavera de Don Quijote (The Skeleton of Don Quixote)” (c. 1910-1913), a print of a relief etching with engraving by José Guadalupe Posada. A hat-wearing and lance-wielding skeleton rides a skeletal horse through a crowd of smaller, fleeing skeletons. Added text reads, “Hollows After Bones” by Elis Montgomery,” and “Free to Read | Adventitious.”

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VL-ADventitious. @adventitiouswords.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

Gorgeous. Dark. Sweet. Meet Nightraiser, the skeletal horse resisting the incandescent call of the afterlife to search for his rider. Hollows After Bones by Hugo finalist @elismontgomery.bsky.social. Read it if you like 🐎 very good boys 🕯️ poetic dark fantasy www.adventitious.net/stories/holl...

adventitious.net

Hollows After Bones by Elis Montgomery

An undead horse searches for his rider as a floating candle tries to steer him to the other side. Short story by Elis Montgomery.

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VL-ADventitious. @adventitiouswords.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Worlds you'll be transported to in Issue 3: The Fae-ruled Sea Beyond Jakarta streets A loved one's bedside The shadow realm A Seurat painting A fairy tale bread line A finicky teleporter A hostile planet's dance studio The bar between life/death The cliffs of memory Chess.exe www.adventitious.net

adventitious.net

Adventitious | A Speculative Short Fiction Magazine - Adventitious.

Adventitious is a speculative short fiction magazine publishing boundary-defying stories, novellas, and unclassifiable work.

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Elis Montgomery @elismontgomery.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

Adventitious Issue Three is available now! Includes my legendary horse story, "Hollows After Bones" 🖤💀🐴

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Catherine Tavares @cjtavares.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

Last day of #WisCon and my last live panel: Liminal Spaces in Spec Fic modded by Wendy Van Camp and featuring @elismontgomery.bsky.social @nicole-glover.com and Kalin M. Nenov. I am now a huge fan of liminal stories! My tabs situation just exploded as I saved all the link recs from the panel!

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V. Astor Solomon @howsweetthewords.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

Throwing this up for (at least in my time zone) the late night people. Thank you all for giving it a poke!

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FIYAH Literary Magazine @fiyahlitmag.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

FIYAH is going on hiatus. More here:

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Merc Fenn Wolfmoor @mercwolfmoor.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

With the #RECORDED campaign launching in just under two weeks (!!) I wanna talk a little more about weird/found media formats I love! 👀📽️ follow on BackerKit (I'd love to get to 30 followers on that!) ➡️ tiny.cc/recordedantho submission guidelines ➡️ mercfennwolfmoor.carrd.co#recordedantho 🧵(1/)

tiny.cc

Get Ready for [RECORDED] — An Anthology of Found Media Fiction!

From Merc Fenn Wolfmoor - Get Ready for [RECORDED] — An Anthology of Found Media Fiction!

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VL-ADventitious. @adventitiouswords.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

For the morning crowd: FOR SALE: A HISTORICAL GEM PRICED TO MOVE! A Rare Ambulatory Freehold Opportunity! (Price Upon Qualification) Viewings By Happenstance Only www.patreon.com/posts/storie...

patreon.com

The Stories and Authors of Issue Three | Adventitious

The Stories and Authors of Issue Three by Adventitious on Patreon. Join Adventitious's community for exclusive content and updates.

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WisCon on Bluesky @wiscon.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

Substitute panelist or moderator sign ups now open! Help a few of our most popular panels to have enough people on them to run, plus hang out with cool WisCon people! This blog post shows exactly what we need: wiscon.net/2026/05/07/2... Then, email panels@wiscon.net to sign up!

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Elis Montgomery @elismontgomery.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

ICYMI and you need a bad time to start the week - "Homing" gavagai.com/posts/5164 (your Monday may look better in comparison! 🤗)

gavagai.com

gavagai

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Elis Montgomery @elismontgomery.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

Thrilled to have a story upcoming in @adventitiouswords.bsky.social’s third issue! (Look at all those shiny titles 😻) “Hollows After Bones” is my legendary horse story about a good boy in a no-good place 💀🐴🕯️✨

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VL-ADventitious. @adventitiouswords.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

Thanks to you, this community is growing, which means getting more fantastic stories to more fantastic people. As you continue to devour Issues One and Two, here's the full TOC for Issue Three. WHAT COULD THEIR CRYPTIC TITLES MEAN. By the Wings of an Albatross by @abigailkemske.bsky.social 🧵

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Elis Montgomery @elismontgomery.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

Awed and charmed that Hex Supply Customer Support Log is now a @sfpoetry.bsky.social Rhysling Finalist!! Such wonderful poems on this list - ancient frogs for everyone!! 🐸🪄 🥳 Find this piece in @strangehorizons.bsky.social here:

strangehorizons.com

Hex Supply Customer Support Log

please do your job and check the thing / I want my frog antiques

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SF & F Poetry Assn @sfpoetry.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

Announcing the 2026 Rhysling Award Finalists! The Rhysling juries have made their decisions, and the 2026 Rhysling Award finalists have been chosen. Find the 50 Short Poem and 25 Long Poem finalists threaded below! /

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FIYAH Literary Magazine @fiyahlitmag.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

Last day for those subs! Polish them up and get them in--don't self reject!

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Straith 🍉 @straith.ca · 29/04/2026

POV: you're a knight stuck in a time loop & yr fave thing is going to Hautdesert every summer so you can hang with the local lady and her unfortunately hot husband but this year she's...flirting with you?? & so is her husband??? HOW? it's a time loop!! WHY ARE THINGS CHANGING!! #Q #A #F #questpit

EVERY YEAR THE SUMMER: an agent's guide. Text is set against a mixed-media backdrop featuring a largely black-and-white landscape, with one cutout section showing a bright green bit of the landscape with a hunched figure looking despondent.

EVERY YEAR THE SUMMER is a 103k standalone adult weird fantasy. It's A24's THE GREEN KNIGHT meets GROUNDHOG DAY but with an MFM throuple romance. Text is set against a mixed-media backdrop featuring a largely black-and-white landscape, with one cutout section showing a bright green bit of the landscape with a hunched figure looking despondent.

Comps: THE EVERLASTING, by Alix E. Harrow, for folklore-inspired time loop romance featuring memory. THE SPEAR CUTS THROUGH WATER, by Simon Jimenez, for being queer, lyrical and dreamlike. THE BRIGHT SWORD, by Lev Grossman, for Arthuriana not retold, but reimagined. Text is accompanied by various sketches and images of knights and figures: one drowning in petal-scattered water, one holding aloft a sword with their face blurred out, one lying dead with flowers growing from their chest.

"I will not behead you again, beloved."

At Midwinter, one knight beheads another for an audience of jeering immortal courtiers. At Midsummer, he rides into the hinterland to be beheaded by the same man he killed—then returns to life to tread the cycle anew, lest his own body punish him for straying. The only one who remembers the loop, Sir Gavin knows that being a good knight—and a good man—means surrendering to the brutal beheading ritual again and again. It is only by this ritual that the seasons keep turning.

One cycle, the usual Midwinter blizzard becomes a flood, killing the children of Camelot while Gavin is lost in his own apathy. The seasons, he realizes, are collapsing. Gavin, as a good man ought, blames this on some failure of his to uphold his knightly morals, a blame that only escalates when he learns that the world's instability has spread to Hautdesert, where resides the married couple for whom he harbours a secret passion.

There's no time to get swept up in the lord and lady's delicious new kissing games, nor to trade literal and figurative jabs with the beguiling Green Knight. If Gavin cannot soon find a way to repair the seasons while continuing to complete the loop's knightly quests in sequence, the kingdom will drown in the pitiless sea, and with it his beloveds—and it will have been his fault alone.

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Stephen Kotowych 🇨🇦 @ourmankoto.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

Not for nothing, but if we can get $100 more in pledges today we'll officially break last year's record funding with 48hrs to go in this year's campaign... Just sayin'.

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alix e. harrow @alixeharrow.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

when we mourn le guin, we mourn one of our greatest writers & thinkers. but we also mourn one of our all-time greatest haters

All you do is take all the sex out, and use little short words, and little dumb ideas, and don't be too scary, and be sure there's a happy ending. Right? Nothing to it. Write down. Right on.

If you do all that, you might even write Jonathan Livingston Seagull and make twenty billion dollars and have every adult in America reading your book.

But you won't have every kid in America reading your book. They will look at it, and they will see straight through it, with their clear, cold, beady little eyes, and they will put it down, and they will go away. Kids will devour vast amounts of garbage (and it is good for them) but they are not like adults: they have not yet learned to eat plastic.

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Elis Montgomery @elismontgomery.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

Post something you’re proud of. “After Ever, Happily” in @heartlines-spec.com About why our stories may need a different ending, and how that can be just as beautiful as the HEA we know💕

heartlines-spec.com

After Ever, Happily

After Ever, Happily by Elis Montgomery

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