iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm)

Emily C. Hughes @emilyhughes.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

two things: first, I *love* this essay from @eqreader.bsky.social. second, it is the considered and official opinion of @darkertimes.bsky.social that Andy Serkis can get fucked

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 24/05/2025

I'm here all weekend! (I have got to get better at this promotions thing.)

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

I keep forgetting to check this app. *waves* What's going on?

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 24/03/2025

It's so strange, as a Black person, to go to events about our culture in non-Black spaces. I'm at this thing about Wu-Tang Clan and when the speaker(also Black) brought up the 36 Chambers not ONE person hollered "Wu-TANG!". I'm not sure if I'd be more offended if they had. 😂

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

I will never enjoy those posts that are like "hi, I'm (xyz ethnicity), can I do this (Black cultural thing)?" OMG go make a friend.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

I'm not a "putting this in the universe" kind of person but I would really love to write a limited streaming series about Bill Pickett sometime in the next 5 years.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

It tickles me that the village in Kimberly Lemming's Mead Mishaps series is called Boohail. They be hailing the hell out of some boos, for sure.

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Reposted by Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm)

Rebecca Caine @rebeccacaine.bsky.social · 28/02/2025

Hero.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

SO MANY REJECTIONS LATELY. SO MANY FOLLOWUP SUBMISSIONS. And yet I continue to write. If this behavior were transported to any other part of my life, it would probably be considered a kink.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

"America likes its angry Black women best when we are poor and husband-less and mourning. I’m simply angry and Black. I apologize if that is not enough." Nicole Chulick WROTE this. Thank you for the words. www.midnightandindigo.com/police-offic...

midnightandindigo.com

There is a Police Officer in My Foyer | Nicole Chulick

This essay by Black woman writer Nicole Chulick is an apology, a lament, a plea for understanding as she grasps hold of the anger that always slips from her fingers. Exploring, in a whisper, the compu...

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

I don't know how I stumbled on this essay, but I love it. "My dad hated work before hating work was cool. His first job in the United States was as a clerk at the San Jose Department of Motor Vehicles on Alma Street. It was 1975 and the position paid $6 an hour."

apogeejournal.org

Work Search Requirements – Apogee Journal

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Reposted by Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm)

David Hogg @davidhogg.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

Here’s what we did today

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

Leontyne Price is still living, and today is her 97th birthday. If you don't know the name, pause your day and look her up now.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

In 2002-ish, I started writing interconnected short stories about different ways of resistance in a future America that had become a fearful wasteland of company towns controlled by religious fascists.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

I just found out that Joseph Heller wrote a sequel to Catch-22. It's called Closing Time, and it's still in print. It's also set in the 90s, while Catch-22 takes place in WWII. Not really in the mood to read war satire right now but will keep an eye out for it.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

If I had a dollar for every time in the past 6 months I read a really good story in Lightspeed that explored the idea of being a temporary, uncomfortable vessel for the gods... I'd have two dollars, but it's cool that it's happened twice. The stories in question...

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

I've been telling other Americans for years that a country's government is not a business. Now we have a bad businessman running the US. I'd be frustrated if all my years of being Black and smart and qualified hadn't prepared me to deal with perpetual top down incompetence and fallout consequences.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

Re:US politics at present-- I have cycled past horror, disbelief, rage, grief and an attempt at practical hope and am now at "Look I have too much shit to *do* for it to be a dystopia right now."

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Reposted by Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm)

Kelsey Atherton @atherton.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

GEORGE LUCAS IN 1999: a trade embargo is going to spark the galactic reckoning and collapse ME IN 2025: ah, okay

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

I have been trying to get through Emilia Perez for like 36 hours and while it's not *bad* exactly, it feels like something that should be seen in a cramped basement room at the Edinburgh festival, not on a Netflix screen.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

@5calls.org is a GREAT app if you want a guide for contacting your local US legislators.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

1st--post in forums and personally annoy every British person you know trying to find a very old children's story *you* read as a kid. 2nd-- just frickin' Google "old kids story about conkers" and find out it's by Enid Blyton, it's very well known, and the internet isn't dead after all. *sheesh*

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 23/01/2025

So I've made a decision. Every time I see something scary, I make myself take positive action. Whitehouse.gov is propaganda? Sign a petition. ICE raids? Donate to ACLU. News of anti-trans, homophobic bigotry? Beef up mutual aid fund, send to folk. (DM if you want to know how to donate.)

whitehouse.gov

The White House

President Biden and Vice President Harris promised to move quickly to deliver results for working families. That’s what they’ve done.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 23/01/2025

So...just looked at whitehouse.gov All educational, historical and informational content has been removed. All that's there is Trump-Vance propaganda. The links to contact the White House have been removed as well as links to internships, White House Fellow applications, and former presidents.

whitehouse.gov

The White House

President Donald J. Trump and Vice President JD Vance are committed to lowering costs for all Americans, securing our borders, unleashing American energy dominance, restoring peace through strength, a...

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 23/01/2025

I'm on the Stoker preliminary ballot. Holy schnikeys. Thank you, annoying teenaged boy's voice in my head that wouldn't leave.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 21/01/2025

I chastise myself for heing a slow writer but wherever I reorganize my drives and see just how much evolution everything I've published has gone through--forms, titles, etc.--I'm actually not doing too badly.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 21/01/2025

Nooo! Noooooooooo! I thought we all knew not to do this anymore!?! I thought...*sob*...we knew...

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

3 and a bit years after moving from Korea to the US, I realize that I miss the language and decided to finally start reading the book a friend recommended on a bookstore crawl the week I left. It's Almond, by Sohn Won-Pyung. So far...

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 16/01/2025

Somebody last week was complaining that books are getting too long and I pooh-pooh'ed it, but I also just cracked open a book marketed as a novella that is 140 pages long. Isn't that a novel?

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 16/01/2025

Last year I struggled to read and write as I normally do(i.e. constantly, effortlessly, nerdily). Towards mid-December, I started to wonder if there was something wrong. It's Jan 15th, 2025, and I have read FIVE books and written a few thousand words. The bish is back, y'all.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

Ayo I needed some good news today! Let me get my subscription!

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 13/01/2025

There's this presient vs predictive debate going on around Octavia Butler and the CA fires but no mention of how Butler's depiction of fire in Altadena was also personal. These pages are from Ibi Zoboi's middle-grade biography of Butler, titled Star Child..

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

Fellow fiction writers -- you ever come up with a concept and think "oh, that's dope, but also I am SICK." Honestly freaked myself out a little bit right now.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

I have just started a book that reads the way a Sleep Token album sounds. Only not as uplifting. (It's Agustina Bazterrica's The Unworthy.)

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 05/01/2025

Conversations about suddenly 'discovering' a group of people are hot are so weird to me. Do you not have eyes? Is your libido racist? Weirdos.

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Reposted by Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm)

Chelsea M. Cameron (she/they) @chel-c-cam.bsky.social · 02/01/2025

Haven’t seen people talking about it here, but the reading tracker app Fable has been using GenAI with some mixed results.

My 2024
Reading
stats on Fable
Reader summary
Diversity Devotee: Your bookshelf is a vibrant kaleidoscope of voices and experiences, making me wonder if you're ever in the mood for a straight, cis white man's perspective!

My 2024
Reading
stats on Fable
Reader summary
Soulful Explorer: Your journey dives deep into the heart of Black narratives and transformative tales, leaving mainstream stories gasping for air.
Don't forget to surface for the occasional white author, okay?

Your reader summary
Romantic Daredevil:
Your squad of daring romcoms has now set the bar for my cringe-meter. Yet your fearless love-seeking sends sparks flying.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 02/01/2025

Two days into 2025 and the most prominently displayed title in this airport bookstore is a paperback reprint of Gone With The Wind. *sigh* I guess.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 24/12/2024

Happy Christmas Eve, fellow readers. Reading a collection of classic Black American Christmas writings. One mentions a chinquapins in a market. Had no idea what that was, so now I'm telling you. Chinquapins are a variety of wild chestnut native to North America that look like this:

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