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Gary Swafford

@garelitlover.bsky.social
192 followers 43 following 447 posts

My first love is my cat, Olympia, then literature, music, and cinema. In that order. I champion the arts I love and their creators. I'm the author of the short story collection, The Infernal, and Other Tales of Suspense, on Amazon. Liberal. He/Him.

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joycecaroloates.bsky.social @joycecaroloates.bsky.social · 6h
really? these ferals began as infrequent visitors, then they came more frequently, recently they are just camping out near my kitchen door. "but wait, aren't you natural mousers? don't you prize your 'freedom to be yourself--a carnivore'? why are you begging for store-bought kitty food?"
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Bluesky Fanatic @blueskyfanatic.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
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joycecaroloates.bsky.social @joycecaroloates.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
But who will livestream the execution ? Fox News?
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WilliamHaugh @williamhaugh.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
static.klipy.com
Starving Alien Creature Close-Up
ALT: Starving Alien Creature Close-Up
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Jennifer Shin - WTAF @jennifershin.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
My oldest daughter, who is also an attorney, has said these things to me as well. When your life is built around the law, all of these blatant criminal acts must be even more frustrating.
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joycecaroloates.bsky.social @joycecaroloates.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
highly recommend, debut mystery ~~
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joycecaroloates.bsky.social @joycecaroloates.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
the average rental for a private plane is $30,000 coast to coast; would guess that this isn't quite so expensive. Great Danes are truly massive & would guess that this handsome fellow was sedated for the flight.
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Andrew Rihn @andrewrihn.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Ding Ding Ding! Announcing Round Four of #HittingTheBooks Excited to be reading Lucas Schaefer’s 2025 novel THE SLIP. Post about it. Take pictures. Make videos. Comment, like, share. Open to anyone and everyone.
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joycecaroloates.bsky.social @joycecaroloates.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
How Blackly Lovely: Noir in New Jersey joycecaroloates.substack.com/p/how-blackl...
joycecaroloates.substack.com
How Blackly Lovely: Noir in New Jersey
An Introduction
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derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Neiman Marcus closed its downtown Dallas flagship on Wednesday. The store played a notable role in the history of desegregation in Dallas. Previously, Black shoppers across the US could enter department stores, but they weren't allowed to try on clothes without adhering to certain conditions. 🧵
A notice about the Neiman Marcus store opening in downtown Dallas.An old photo of the Dallas flagship.
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joycecaroloates.bsky.social @joycecaroloates.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Lilith in hiding. can you find Lilith?
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pmamtraveller.bsky.social @pmamtraveller.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Wheatfield, Ed Perkins.
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AgentJoeMcJoe 🇺🇸 @joemcjoe11.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Pat Bagley absolutely nailed the nasty, ugly and fat, Commie and Xi's meeting at the White House.
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Andrew Rihn @andrewrihn.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Presale for my throwback boxing novel Aboard the Old Buoy is available now through Cornerstone Press. A beach read for weirdos. Vintage pulp style — blood, broken bones, and beautiful women. Link below
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joycecaroloates.bsky.social @joycecaroloates.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
evidently it is "animal cruelty" that is indicated; "bestiality" is a sort of distraction. since MAGAs only are now hired by the FBI, possibly some of these applicants have cruelty to animals records. that is the explanation.
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Gary Swafford @garelitlover.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Lost Child, @joycecaroloates.bsky.social latest story in the New Yorker. Reading now.
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joycecaroloates.bsky.social @joycecaroloates.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
The Mutants joycecaroloates.substack.com/p/the-mutant...
joycecaroloates.substack.com
The Mutants
A 9/11 short story
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Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @mayor.nyc.gov · 11/09/2026
25 years ago, terrorists killed nearly 3,000 people, including 2,753 New Yorkers. As we remember that terrible day, let us also remember the first responders, office workers and strangers who ran toward danger to help each other.
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Stephanie D’Abruzzo @stephaniedabruzzo.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
My husband is reading producer Walter Mirisch’s autobiography and shared this tidbit with me: When they were prepping to shoot MOBY DICK, director John Huston had an idea for how to portray the whale: A shark in a whale suit. I repeat: A shark. In a whale suit. I CANNOT STOP THINKING ABOUT THIS.
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Andrew Rihn @andrewrihn.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
… and a texture, and you feel it on every page, in every syllable. I respect that fidelity to vision so much, even if I’m sometimes frustrated by it. It’s not ‘reality’ per se, it’s aesthetic. Like a Wes Anderson movie, but kinda the opposite.
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Andrew Rihn @andrewrihn.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
… some kind of joy or love that wasn’t wildly self-destructive or fatalistic or clearly doomed. Still, there is so much beauty in Gardner’s prose — the sentences, the syntax, even yes the unrelenting and unyielding wash of his decaying Stockton. The book is a landscape …
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Andrew Rihn @andrewrihn.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Ch 22, 23, & 24 — The end of the book. Except FAT CITY is way too recursive and lyrical to really “end,” so the last we hear of Tully is told in rumors and half-truths, and the last of Ernie is actually his returning to Stockton. Ruben’s last lines here tender and poignant …
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joycecaroloates.bsky.social @joycecaroloates.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
but like a gigantic yacht refusing to help a small boat in trouble at sea --same tribe.
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Luca Migo @victinibcn.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Surrounded by women, lawmakers, and advocate champions, Gov. Maura Healey signed landmark legislation ensuring full abortion access in MA. Women have the fundamental right to choose for their own bodies. Healthcare is a human right, period!
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joycecaroloates.bsky.social @joycecaroloates.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
events.bl.uk/events/ameri...
events.bl.uk
American Writers’ Week | British Library
Join us for the British Library's American Writers’ Week (28 September – 2 November), presented in association with Festival America, Vincennes, France. Pa
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joycecaroloates.bsky.social @joycecaroloates.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
now you want sympathy from us, the very persons you'd scorned, & hoped would be harmed? yes, there is plenty of sympathy--for those who deserve it. so yes, plenty of sympathy for the servicemen who didn't vote for T***p & are trapped in his ugly policies in their daily lives. tragic.
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joycecaroloates.bsky.social @joycecaroloates.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
many (of us) would never dream of voting for any candidate whether Democratic or Republican, female or male, who campaigned on a platform of "retribution"--that is the tell. those who voted for the wrathful, vindictive, petty "retributive" president are now feeling the consequences of that vote--
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Blue Virginia @bluevirginia.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
"I just cannot believe that no journalist stood up to demand that the President stop this outrageous attack on their colleague. What are you doing? What is wrong with you?" - @sifill.bsky.social bluevirginia.us/2026/07/satu...
Sherilyn Ifill: "I just cannot believe that no journalist stood up to demand that the President stop this outrageous attack on their colleague. What are you doing? What is wrong with you?"
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Richard Morris @ahistoryinart.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
In 'The Echo.' (1891) a young girl shouts into the Finnish midsummer night, and you feel her joy and wonder at discovering her voice ricocheting all around her. It's one of Ellen Thesleff's finest paintings yet her work wasn't shown at the Helsinki Ateneum until a century later.
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Gary Swafford @garelitlover.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Cronkite should not have retired. He could have easily stayed in the anchor chair another 15 years.
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FunnyVia @funnyvia.com · 18/07/2026
"Hig will sit on my steps and howl until I open the door and acknowledge him. Also Hig is not my dog." 😂 😂
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M Meerkat @kackbro.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
THIS 👇 HERE TOO.......
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joycecaroloates.bsky.social @joycecaroloates.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
so true! or, putting her face on everything including the sides of buildings in DC., coins, dollar bills & passports; devastating the east wing of the White House without permission, planning an arch of triumph to celebrate herself, not to mention amassing literally billions of dollars in office...
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Defector @defector.com · 15/07/2026
New monkey! New monkey! There's a new monkey! defector.com/new-monkey-n...
defector.com
New Monkey! New Monkey! There’s A New Monkey! | Defector
Many new species have been announced this week. There are new mites from Saudi Arabia and a new weevil from Japan. There are new midges from China and new spiders from Brazil and China. There is a…
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Andrew Rihn @andrewrihn.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Description: Steve Costigan Jr., a boxer from Texas, sails from New Orleans to San Francisco in 1955 aboard the Old Buoy. Costigan’s many scrapes and setbacks fuel Andrew Rihn’s campy yet sincere pulp stories, inspired by the work of Robert E. Howard. www.uwsp.edu/school-of-hu...
uwsp.edu
TITLES
The Legacy Series in Short Fiction The Larry Watson First Novel Prize The Linda Nemec Foster First Book Award for Poetry The Portage Poetry Series The Back Home Series in Creative Nonfiction The…
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Andrew Rihn @andrewrihn.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
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Andrew Rihn @andrewrihn.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
There’s some beautiful writing in these chapters. Note all the verbs Gardner layers in this paragraph between the rounds of Munger’s fight. And this description of Tully’s paralyzing fear of a “crisis beyond his capacity” lands pretty strikingly.
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Andrew Rihn @andrewrihn.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Leonard Gardner’s Fat City, Ch 7 & 8 feature an optimistic car ride to a fight in Monterey, and a desolate right back after defeat. Ch 9 follows Tully into the California onion fields, with similarly optimistic/desolate bus rides there and back. #HittingTheBooks
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Andrew Rihn @andrewrihn.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Observing Hemingway’s birthday by revisiting this piece I wrote earlier in the year
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Patsy “Resistance Kitty” Evans Ph.D. @drharmony.net · 13/07/2026
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joycecaroloates.bsky.social @joycecaroloates.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
forgot to say: the reading is tonight, Monday July 13, 8 PM Skidmore College. (beautiful campus in the heart of beautiful Saratoga Springs NY)
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Andrew Rihn @andrewrihn.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
The first three chapters move swiftly, just 22 pages in total. The presents saturated with adjectives and vivid descriptions of a decayed Stockton. Look at this description of the gym that opens CH 2 — see how it mirrors the description of “the company of men” who occupy the gym.
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Andrew Rihn @andrewrihn.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
FAT CITY by Leonard Gardner introduces us to Billy Tully, an ex-fighter without much going for him. He meets Ernie Munger — just 18, naturally athletic, with a lot of potential. Tully connects Munger with Ruben Luna, a manager who also sees that potential. #HittingTheBooks
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Andrew Rihn @andrewrihn.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
My essay The Boxing Match: Sketches, Shadows, Spectacles is available online from The Cleveland Review of Books clereviewofbooks.com/vol-4-point-1/
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Andrew Rihn @andrewrihn.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Ding Ding Ding! Announcing Round Three of #HittingTheBooks Excited to be reading Leonard Gardner’s 1969 novel FAT CITY Post about it. Take pictures. Make videos. Comment, like, share. Open to anyone and everyone.
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Andrew Rihn @andrewrihn.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
Last year I wrote about this fight, which pitted two all time greats against each other. No footage is known to exist, so I relied on round-by-round newspaper reports. They’re such interesting reads, and I’ve compiled them into a free online pamphlet. Link below. 🔗
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@ThomasGrantBruso @thomasgrantbruso.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
@joycecaroloates.bsky.social's latest collection of stories, "Frenzy," is finally here. Breathtaking, haunting cover. I have been waiting (patiently) for this book. Thank you, Joyce. #writingcommunity #writerslift #writers #readers #booktok
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joycecaroloates.bsky.social @joycecaroloates.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
(so strange to reread parts of "Young Lonigan" after decades of scarcely thinking of this novel & entire passages, exchanges of dialogue leapt into my mind as if memorized; an eerie experience confirming our knowledge that our brains contain an infinity of information which is no longer conscious.
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Civic Sundays Los Angeles @civicsundays.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Today, over I-5 in L.A.
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joycecaroloates.bsky.social @joycecaroloates.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
well--"Young Mungo" is also violent & gritty, in parts. a mixture of moods, subtle shadings.
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