iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Erika Tracy @erikatracy.bsky.social · 19h

#WIPSnips #WritingCommunity "rice" I think I may have shared this before. Oh well.

On a gathering trip a week later, she learned one way. As they ventured along a creek that fed the river, she spied Elf women working at the bank, doing something she could not make out. With a quick intake of breath and a gesture, she stopped Lunna and Hogarth. Watching, they could see the Elves ankle-deep in the water gently stripping pests and weeds from the patch of grassy plants along the land’s edge. “I think that might be rice,” she whispered, but even her whisper was too loud. Like deer, the Elves’ heads snapped up before they fled and vanished. Jarek hurried forward, Hogarth hissing at her to stop and then rushing to catch up, his sword drawn. Lunna followed, anxious at being left alone with a baby on her back.
“I need to look at it,” Jarek told him. “I think it might be what’s growing in our fields, planted by the flood. If it’s some kind of rice, we could eat it.”
He gave her a sour look. “That might almost be worth charging into the middle of an Elf ambush for.”

Erika Tracy @erikatracy.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

#WIPSnips #WritingCommunity "wall" Cozy household chitchat about the settlers' new home and the Elves who suggest they should be elsewhere.

“Do you know very much about them?” Jarek asked.
“A bit. More all the time. There are one or two who have learned a little of our speech, and I can guess a little of theirs from what I know of Northlands Elvish, and sometimes they have words with me.”
“Really? What do they say?”
“Nothing of great importance. The river ice is thin at the bend, or the herds have been tending north, or that there is foul weather moving in, as though those things are unusual at all. That we should go home. I pointed out that Captain Jumez sailed away months ago and will not come back until spring.”
“And we cannot go home regardless.” Jarek shivered, not from cold. Lunna glanced to her, a reassuring look. She had been the friend Jarek had run to on that awful day a year ago when the soldiers had come. For Jarek, there was no returning home, for there was no home but this one and no family but this one. If the Elves came to push them into the sea, she would fight like a man, like a butcher, like someone with nothing to lose.
“We will not go home. We have made our walls and planted our crops, and this is ours.” Hogarth tipped his chin up, an arrogant look, but Jarek felt better seeing it. He would not make her go back to the place where her family had been slaughtered.

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Amee Vanderpool @girlsreallyrule.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Donald Trump just called Dr. Annie Andrews "Trannie Andrews" on Truth Social in an attempt to help her opponent raise money. Join me in flooding Dr. Andrews website with tons of small donations right now so that this backfires on Trump spectacularly. 💙 drannieandrews.com

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Erika Tracy @erikatracy.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I feel like I'm positively cheating here, because I have three dog-headed Kobolds and as-yet unintroduced dragon-headed ones. But Leafwhirl has the good sense and experience, so he's at the top. He's going to have a little difficulty with Rustle on the bottom and Scurry in the middle...

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Dunnie_Scribe @sakyratbetareader.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Beta reading question authors should always ask: "Where did you get bored?" Not "Did you like it?" What question do you wish readers would answer honestly? #Bluesky #Writersky #WritingCommunity #BetaReader #WritingTips

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Erika Tracy @erikatracy.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

#WIPSnips #WritingCommunity "guard" Just a little snippie tonight, rather late, from when the settlers are finally off the ship in pleasant summer weather. The palisade is built from cliff to river on the east and west ends of their intended town, so they feel fairly safe.

Jarek unrolled her blanket beside Lunna, whose mother lay to her other side and her father beyond that. Hogarth walked by them all to lie nearer the eastern gate in the palisade, for it was his job to lead those who kept them all safe. Still, he spared a grin and wink at the girls, his eyes flashing golden in the low light. Lunna grinned back. Jarek thought he moved as though his shoulders and back were sore, and she would hardly be surprised if they were. He worked hard. Often she worked beside him, and she was sore. He wasn’t the sort to admit it or let it inconvenience him, and so she made up her mind to do the same. She could not stand guard, but she could work a little harder, she thought.

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Zed Prospero @zprospero.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Please try to remember, the 1st of #Octember! We'll be hosting a ridiculous, nonsensical prompt game for October for drunken party game bullshit questions, and including various insane interludes of our skeletal host, Satchel Cumberland. #WriteSky #WritingCommunity

#Octember

A month long series of non-sensical
promps abou your characters and stories!

This is deliberately unplanned nonsense. Expect drunk party game questions about things like how your characters would take on Godzilla, what a monster would employ them for, what fae creatures would find them hot... Etc.

Hosted by
@zprospero.bsky.social & a talking skull

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Orcspiration @orcspiration.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

IT IS GLORY TO BATHE IN THE BLOOD OF YOUR ENEMIES BUT TO ALSO BATHE IN THE SHOWER.

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Erika Tracy @erikatracy.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

#WIPSnips #WritingCommunity "well" The "it" in question is a moose. Hogarth has just had a brush with death himself. POV: an Elf scout who often follows him, or another hunter, to make sure nobody goes anywhere they shouldn't.

It had not moved, though it still snorted and thrashed weakly. The hunter halted, watching it with justified caution, leaving himself clear space to dodge. It saw him and tried to threaten him, but it was dying. Its head followed his motion as he circled to the side away from the river, then drew a second arrow. At such close range, a shot to the throat was not a great risk, and severed the major blood vessels of the neck cleanly. It was well done. The great beast no longer suffered.
But now what? Rahvixonar had followed from curiosity – what had the hunter planned to do with a kill that weighed easily five times what he did? The hunter pulled his arrows, using his knife to free them, checked them for damage, and washed them in the river before returning them to his quiver, just as an Elf might. Just as Rahvixonar had many times himself. He had never sought for himself a handful of the blood of his kill, though, and drunk it fresh from the throat. Peculiar. Disgusting.
The hunter took a coil of rope from his belt, made one end fast to a tree, and looped the other end around the moose’s neck. Then he pushed, and said something sibilant, and pushed again. Gradually he wrestled the enormous body to the river, then in, without falling in himself. The body floated south and east on the current, brought up short at the end of the rope. The hunter nodded, He then performed some magic trick that undid the rope at the tree and began to walk downstream, braced against the tug of the current. In a few miles he would be back to his people, likely tired, likely not nearly as tired as he would have been from trying to drag or carry a heavy animal taller at the shoulder than he.

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DD Ward ..."Interim Pirate Queen" @ddwardiswriting.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

So the Survey is over! We are doing a Character Arc Workshop for October! #OctArcWork • 14 Workshop Sessions • 14 Writing Prompts • 4 Sets of Optional Character Work

A woman in a leotard jumps with dust in front of text

So, I wanna do a prompt game in October. So what should the topic be?

Theme 20%
Imagery 20%
Character Arcs 50%
Setting Logistics 10%

Syllabus
Introduction: What is a Character Arc?
Basic Construction: The 5 Elements
In Depth: The Truth
In Depth: The Lie
In Depth: The Want
In Depth: The Need
In Depth: The Ghost Wound
Basic Construction: The 5 Arcs
In Depth: The Positive Change Arc
In Depth: The Flat Arc
In Depth: The Disillusionment Arc
In Depth: The Fall Arc
In Depth: The Corruption Arc
Summary: Generating Catharsis

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DD Ward ..."Interim Pirate Queen" @ddwardiswriting.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

A transition needs to be a result of the scene ending disaster. Its cause, should be clear. It needs to make the things better for the antagonist & worse for the protagonist. It needs to move things closer to the climax, & cut off the best avenues for victory. www.patreon.com/posts/170107...

patreon.com

September Scene Structure Workshop. Day 13. | D.D. Ward is Writing

Transition: The “Therefore” Moment I’m going to start by referring you to ‘Every Frame a Painting,’ which is a fantastic YouTube video essay

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Taniel @taniel.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Tens of thousands of voter registrations have gone unprocessed in Texas. Affecting large areas deeply. If you’re in Texas, check your registration is up to date and accurate ASAP. www.texastribune.org/2026/09/22/t...

texastribune.org

DPS voter registration applications weren’t sent to counties

Counties will start receiving a surge of applications less than two weeks before the Oct. 5 registration deadline, adding work at one of the busiest points in the election calendar.

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Erika Tracy @erikatracy.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Turns out I shouldn't drink tea so late in the day. I'm awake. I'm not usefully awake, but I am very very awake.

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Rosemary Mosco @rosemarymosco.com · 22/09/2026

Happy mushroom season!

A comic titled "Types of mushrooms" with 12 mushroom species. A wrinkly-looking morel is labeled "creepy but tasty". A brownish deadly galerina is labeled "boring but deadly". A witch's butter on a branch is labeled "jiggles if you poke it". A large puffball is labeled "egg". A creepy red-dripping bleeding tooth fungus is labeled "deeply disconcerting". A fly agaric with a green treefrog sitting under it is labeled "frog umbrella". A black chanterelle is labeled "chalice for forbidden elixers". Three straight-stemmed entolomas are labeled "haha, nipples". A bright purple viscid violet cort is labeled "purple is nice". A birch polypore sticking out of a birch trunk is labeled "tree nose". A complex yellow-tpped coral fungus is labeled "cursed citadel where dwells a fairy queen". A Ravenel's stinkhorn is pixellated at the top for your safety, and labeled "NSFW".

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DD Ward ..."Interim Pirate Queen" @ddwardiswriting.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

A writer can use arc words here to reference things quickly for readers. In Captive of the Crimson Countess, the phrase: “We’ve all done things we regret,” occurs four times. Each occurrence is is calculated. www.patreon.com/posts/169909...

patreon.com

September Scene Structure Workshop. Day 11. | D.D. Ward is Writing

In Depth: Reflection and Temptation I want to digress for moment. Author James Scott Bell has a concept he talks about, the mirror moment, w

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Erika Tracy @erikatracy.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Oh, fun. I have a couple of characters where "I've got an idea" and a smile is a reassuring thing. And I have a couple more who, if they say that, need to have their good ideas *way over there.*

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Erika Tracy @erikatracy.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

#WIPSnips #WritingCommunity "stream" We're deep in the woods with a lot of streams about. Book 2 -- I'm enjoying getting to know Thorn the half-Elf. No, I don't know what an Elf nest looks like. He hasn't told me and seems to think it should be obvious. TEENAGERS. HONESTLY.

He slithered down from the nest without waking his aunt and uncle, relieved his bladder at the large tree currently designated for that, and trotted lightly to the creek and into the water. Here it was broad and shallow, cold on his feet. He splashed along quietly, watching his footing, alert to shifts of stone underfoot, hints of sharp edges, and the wedge of ripples that meant he had offended a white-mouth snake. There were not so many of those as there had been; it seemed the ****** ate them as readily as they ate anything else. As he made his way toward the seashore, little runnels joined the main stream, and its bends wore more deeply into the soil. By the standards of Elves, he was growing fast. There was no measure for anyone like him, for there had never been such a one as him, but he noticed that the water that had been up to his neck and frighteningly fast when he started these runs now only reached his waist. At the deepest such spot, wet only to the uppermost floating rib, he gave a quick look about him and simply sat. The water flowed about him, tickling a little. Leaning back, he let the water wash his brown hair, once more with the small unhappiness that he had not inherited the shining black iridescence of his Elven forebears. Once more he sat upright and shook away both water and regret. He was who he was, and he looked the way he looked.

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Erika Tracy @erikatracy.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I'm really generous about what words go into a sex scene IF they fit the character. Miss Penelope Gudgins is just going to think about the whole business very differently from Naughty Scarlett down at the pub, who will hold forth about vegetables being good for you so she needs herself a serving of

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STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY @stephanloy.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

#WIPSnips The word is 'stream.' In Stormbreak, more Julio, Stormbreak's Observer-ground for Meso-America. Also, a talented meteorologist. Mac asks him to translate the news on the TV in this Mexican bar. #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #WritingPrompts

But Julio had been listening even if he hadn't been translating to that moment. "Okay. He say there's a fire. Brush and grass. About 3,000 hectares. It not in the Big Bend Park, but a little outside. They hoping the park not threatened."
"Oh. Well, that's good."
"But it is threatened."
"Whoa. Wait. They said that? Who said that? The Americans, the Mexicans, that guy on the TV?"
"I say that. It's kind of obvious."
"Like that storm was kind of obvious? Who was it, Pedros and Imelia?"
"Petros and Idalia, and they both happened, yes? Just not the way you thought. Anyway, this fire. No rain to speak of since November. Missed its whole wet season. Red warning for fire since January. Much tinder there, dry grass and brush. Then there's the Jetstream so far south. And a dry low pushing north. Worst for fire, spread fast."
"You don't have to tell me. I've seen brush fires outrun a man. Outrun a truck, sometimes."
"They not careful on your side of the border, and that fire get away from them, it run right into Chihuahua, maybe Coahuilla."
"The Rio Grande's a stop."
Julio screwed up his face and waved that away. "The Rio Grande won't stop un niño Pequeño. A, a little baby walking… Whatchoo callit?"
"Toddler?"
"Oh! Si! One of them things. River level been down many months. Fire go right over it." He pantomimed an arc over his empty beer then, noticing it was indeed empty, called the bartender.

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Erika Tracy @erikatracy.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

#WIPSnips #WritingCommunity "call" After a spate of tempers and bad news, peace of a sort returns, and the talk shifts to happier subjects. Speakers are Captain Jumez, Jarek, and Hogarth.

“There has been much death and loss in Battleport as well. It was bad when you lot left, and it is only worse. The Stone Folk have run out of enemies and begin to destroy each other with mad accusations and madder violence.” He paused. “Brandy? I think I’ve still some left in my flask. Your governor keeps good wine, somehow, so I drank that instead.”
“We lucked onto wild grapes last fall, and stored some as raisins and some as wine.” Jarek held out her hand, had a swig from the flask, gasped at the unfamiliar burn, and passed it to Hogarth. He had a longer pull and handed it back to Jumez, who had some himself. He then frowned at the flask.
“I could trade that wine. Damn good.”
“But people would ask where it came from, and I’m not sure we want that just yet,” Hogarth said, ever the soldier.
‘There’s a port city of civilized Elves well south of you, and while I can’t call them friendly – Elves are Elves – they will trade for a good vintage. Politically they won’t give one damn about you or your religion. I’ll mention that to the governor in the morning if I remember.”
“We’d have to make enough of it to be able to spare a noticeable amount. It’s something to think about.”

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Kingfisher & Wombat @tkingfisher.com · 16/09/2026

It’s D&D night and so much has gone on that I despair of recording it all for posterity. The big boss had Vicious Mockery on tap. I have insulted the party at inordinate length.

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Erika Tracy @erikatracy.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Is this a hypothetical? My characters are always mutinying! But the most likely one to pitch a fit and demand a spinoff is probably Gara. She isn't much for social constraints; authorial ones probably won't suit her either. It's all right; this world has lots of room for adventures beyond 3 WIPs.

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Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @mayor.nyc.gov · 13/09/2026

We are opening 51 safe overnight locations for New Yorkers, especially those living in basement apartments or low-lying areas who need a safe place to stay. Locations are listed at on.nyc.gov/SafeLocations and are also available by calling 311. Service animals and pets are welcome.

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Erika Tracy @erikatracy.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

#WIPSnips #WritingCommunity "exhaust" Another day, another disaster. Governor Genneg feels he cannot take even the funeral's worth of time to grieve without planning. I think I shared this part for a different word, but it's been a while if so.

What was next? The grapes, the apples, and then the tubers. The grain, and cautious testing to see how much poison would have to be cooked out of the Elf rice, as they had come to call it. He hoped the wheat, barley, and rice did not all mature at the same time, and the workers could progress from one to the next. Otherwise, some part of the harvest would probably be lost to exhaustion and poorly-timed rain. They would need to salt some meat ahead of winter. At least salt they had in plenty. The women would be back in the fields, and there would be few to guard them. Would he be more use himself with sword or with sickle?

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Erika Tracy @erikatracy.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

#AwesomeCharacters #WritingCommunity "I can handle this." "I haven't done anything wrong." "This is the consequence of my own foolishness, so I deserve it."

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Erika Tracy @erikatracy.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

#WIPSnips #WritingCommunity "teeth" Third year of the settlement. Hogarth has an Elf to ask absolutely everything at last. Fun with conlang: Elvish is a verb-first language, while the People speak a subject-first one. A later native Elvish speaker gets it right as long as he's not too puzzled.

They went to the lowest riverside fields, where a few stray golden heads of barley and green heads of wheat popped up from where grains had fallen the year before, surrounded by clumps of the tough grass that wore down their sheep’s teeth and the purple-blushing rice that required far too much cooking and liked the soggy soil. There had not been quite enough sharp-eyed wielders of a hoe to entrust with removing the grass in the spring. “We saw your women gathering this grain and thought it could be eaten. What do you use it for?”
Walnut bent to examine a barely-started seed head, sniffed, worked free a single grain, and tasted it. He spat it out. “On special days, eat it do we. But grows with feet in river. On this dry ground grows grain, grows in it hate.”
“Hate? How does a plant grow hate?” Hogarth wondered how he was going to get Walnut to speak normally instead of sticking the important parts of a sentence at the end.
“Hate. Makes sick, makes dead.”
“Oh. Poison, we say.”
“Poison.” Walnut tried out the word. “Not hate. Something else.”

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Erika Tracy @erikatracy.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

It's been a productive weekend for writing and thinking, a somewhat less productive one for housework and exercise, and damn-all for drawing the Kobold I had wanted to draw. At least I have a good model picture or two collected up for the dog head and the fur colors. (This may go nowhere.)

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PJC Cahill @pjccahill.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Please buy my books! 💙📚🌈🤖🐺👹 I think you'll like them, and my YA is written to be enjoyable for adults, too! Demon King Daughter 1+2, modern slice-of-life with demons! NICEF is a space opera with mechs! Cry Wolf is a werewolf lesbian romance! Buy: pjccahill.carrd.co #booksky 📢📚 #sapphic

Promotional image - art by Luigiix - 4 book covers - top right Demon King Daughter book 1, top left Demon King Daughter book 2, bottom right Cry Wolf, bottom left N.I.C.E.F.

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Micah @rincewind.run · 07/09/2026

Discworld QOTD, from Men at Arms

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars.
Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.

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Erika Tracy @erikatracy.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

This shot turned out oddly -- the subject is centered but looks much farther away than she was!

A walk-bike path with yellow divider in foreground and winding off to the right, with a grassy verge midground and a clump of trees in the background. Under the nearest tree is a whitetail doe looking at the photographer and the unseen German shepherd.

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Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

HOLY SHIT DUDES fucking with the environment is now not just a sin (which Francis also said), it is classed as a direct fuck-you to God and a central tenet of the reasoning is the need to care for "our common home," i.e. you are morally obligated to think about the other people who also live here

americamagazine.org

Vatican theological commission defines ‘sin against creation and the Creator’ in new document

The more than 29,000 word text calls for ecological conversion due to “sin against creation and the Creator.”

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evil lesbian john williams 🦔 @micropolyphonia.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

it is band camp fri day. okay. here is mine. maybe you will like some music and buy it. maybe not. i have a lot in the "inoffensive atmospheric" variety. if every follower bought one album for $10 my life would Greatly Improve. "there are worse ways to spend your money" - charlotte

charlottet.bandcamp.com

Charlotte Trapasso

Music for movies, TV, games... but mostly just for its own sake. I hope it will bring something worthwhile to your life. Some other stuff here: https://www.youtube.com/@charlotte_t_ea

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Erika Tracy @erikatracy.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

#WIPSnips #WritingCommunity "collapse" Cold, worn out, and half-starved, Hogarth returns home with a pig he's shot. An Elf just threw walnuts at him, so he's a little less starved than he might be but not at all happy about it.

He almost didn’t notice the level ground at the top of the hill, and descending the other side made the pig on its rope slide into his heels. It was sometimes a steep enough slope to let the pig go first, pulling him along after, and he did that. He lost his footing and sat hard, and the pig’s weight gradually towed him further downhill until he realized it was taking him off course. Then he struggled up once more and corrected, shuffling down through the snow, tugging his burden back to the real path. The sun came out from behind the clouds and turned everything painfully bright, and he stopped with his eyes shut tightly, mittened hands over his face until the glow faded once more. It was a bad time of day to be in this open spot. There was probably an Elf laughing at him from the trees at the top of the hill.

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Nathan Hall (WIP A Fort in Winter) @nathanhallwrites.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Soooooo for REASONS I'm not in a position to go into at the moment, it would be utterly fantastic if I just got loaded up with editing work in the near future. We can probably reach some sort of arrangement on payment.

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Premee Mohamed @premeemohamed.com · 03/09/2026

Also REMINDER YOU CAN STILL PRE-ORDER WICKHILLS AND YOU SHOULD because it is a crossover between... between uh... well, fantasy of course, and espionage, and... and fountain pens? Wait, that's not a genre. And URBAN PLANNING and WASTEWATER MANAGEMENT. And HOSTILE ARCHITECTURE.

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Erika Tracy @erikatracy.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Apparently a bunch of chatbots are down. I only know this because it's posted here. The DuckDuckGo search engine is working fine, and now I know how much a bull moose weighs (neighborhood of a thousand pounds). ChatGPT would probably have tried to give me the weight of Teddy Roosevelt or something.

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Michael E. Mann @michaelemann.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Is our children learning?

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Erika Tracy @erikatracy.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

#WIPSnips #WritingCommunity "garden" Now there's a word that's in every single chapter of my story! Several times each! The colonists have just killed a bear in a territorial dispute and Jarek, the butcher's daughter, did the skinning and such.

At the feast, those who wished to move into the tunnels signed their names to a scroll and were counted, and those who wished to build houses and dwell outdoors among the gardens signed a different scroll. Jarek and Lunna signed the second. Then the dividing began, and the arguments, for Lunna and several of the other unmarried women thought each colonist should have a patch of land, while most of the married women and all of the men thought only each head of a household and unmarried male over fifteen should gain land instead. Jarek remained uncertain. She had no prospects of a head of household at the moment, but she was not sure she could manage to build a whole house and prepare a whole garden by herself before winter, or at all. Despite a great deal of passion, the young women lost their fight, and the families, married men, and single men were each allotted a portion. The young women were told to stay with their parents. Jarek, unmarried and orphaned, found herself appointed to Lunna’s family. Grizzled Genneg gave her an avuncular smile as he made the suggestion. She tried to keep the nervousness from her face as she smiled back. She supposed it was better than being married off to any of the young men who now looked at her as though she might stretch their hides beside the bear’s.

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Patrick Wyman @patrickwyman.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

It doesn't really sink in how insane the Roman Empire was until you write a sentence like "We have the skeleton of a man in York who was bitten by a lion."

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Chad Loder @chadloder.dev · 28/08/2026

Texas has suspended over 1.2 million voter registrations. Many valid voters in Texas have found their voter registrations were somehow canceled when they checked. Check your registration here and fix it immediately - Texas doesn't always honor provisional ballots cast on election day.

goelect.txelections.civixapps.com

IvisMvpUi

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Erika Tracy @erikatracy.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

#WIPSnips #WritingCommunity "snuggle" This follows a discussion of Hogarth sometimes speaking with the local Elves on his hunting trips. Their advice: Go away. Go home. There are many good reasons not to.

Yet the land itself seemed determined to force them all away. The snow was deeper than ever, and soon short thaws built crusts of ice that kept the sheep from grazing and cut their legs. Several injured beasts had to be shorn and slaughtered, and the rest were kept in and fed the precious hay. At least there was wool once more, thought Jarek, as she carded and spun their household share. She made it into leggings for Hogarth, for he was the one outdoors and working to feed them. There was just enough left for a pair of socks for Barek, who had outgrown his previous ones. Lunna’s fingers were more deft for such work. The small ones she put onto Parul’s hands to try to keep her that little bit warmer. Still the infant fretted and pressed close to any warm body. Often, that was her big brother, who liked to snuggle to her warmth as she did to his, and so the two of them could share blankets. Lunna hoped they would stay close as they grew. Jarek hoped they grew. Hogarth smiled fondly at them and did not share his thoughts.

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Erika Tracy @erikatracy.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

I have a story submitted at a nice little journal that pays pretty well. I submitted it two months ago today. They publish quarterly, and the quarter I submitted for is not due out for another two months or so. I probably don't *need* to be checking every single email that makes my phone bip.

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