iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

It's almost apartments now.

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

What on (and just above, mostly to the left) blue blazes? Shroomses.

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

and I love you and I'm tired of you Anyone else wishing their beloved novel would just shut up already? #amwriting #speculativefiction #wip

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

In “Like Paralda”—available now in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 52—an ambitious musician explores the utility of envy and how artistic autonomy means mutation: becoming something the system can no longer commodify. #anticapitalist #speculativefiction #WeirdFiction

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

Congratulations! I have a story in this issue too. I'm looking forward to reading yours!

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

"A Concise Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Terms". A must-have for writing a novel about a basilica built on terrible secrets! Okay, maybe not a must-have, but fun & useful. Great estate sale find. Certainly not the original owner’s intended use…😈 #SpeculativeFiction #WritingResearch #ReligiousHorror

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

Hell yeah. Just have to get this wip novel out of the way and I can work on submitting more short stories. Shouldn't take more than another decade or two...

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

Thank you, Sophie, that is so kind! It is indeed my first publication in over a decade. I couldn't be more thrilled to have a story in LCRW--sort of surreal. I'm looking forward to reading your story!

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

I’m proud to announce that my short story “Like Paralda” has been published in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet no. 52. I’m honored to be included among so many remarkable LCRW contributors. Available July 7, 2026. Link in bio.

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

There's certainly real wisdom there--outlines are an incredible tool. A friendly challenge: this assumes your outline translates perfectly to the page. I love what Klinkenborg has to say on outlines in "Several Short Sentences About Writing": "It's a map of the places you may end up not going."

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

The distance between a reality with real gods and one in which we’ve invented them is fascinatingly small. We seem to be achieving dystopia just fine without mail-order magic. Images from Allan Johnson’s “Magic by Return of Post” in The Public Domain Review. #OccultHistory #SpeculativeFiction

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

This is exactly the sort of history I love to explore in my writing. What if pulp occultism was real and ubiquitous? So far, all the answers I’ve cobbled together point toward something as bleak and beautiful as our own world, if weirder and worse.

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

Fought a gang of pill bugs for a key under the moldering hemp doormat and he was in.

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

Thank you for writing it! I was thrilled to discover it at the Clash Books booth at AWP.

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

"So for example if hypothetically you were to go into a cave or a mine, you’re doing geology or industrial engineering or mining engineering, but the one thing you’re not studying is the hole itself. How do you study a hole as a hole?’" #WeirdFiction #HorrorFiction #BookReview

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

"You don’t see a hole there...You don’t see the hole, you see the...omission, or deterioration, in the material that the cavity is...is in, is bored into.

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

"‘Everything that exists...’ [...] ‘...comes out of a hole.’ [...] ‘Holes retrieve...and retain...what appears to be lost.’ [...] ‘When you study a cavity [...] you’re studying the material the cavity is in, that holds—that’s holding, the cavity.

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

BLACK BRANE by @michaelcisco.bsky.social Reading this book is clinging to the edge of a hole. Finishing is falling in. It swallows whole horror and philosophy and string theory and the occult. Entangle yourself in this novel.

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

MONSTRILIO by Gerardo Sámano Córdova A mother grows something to love from her son's lung - a monster, a person, a monster. Strange, dark, hopeful, heartbreaking. A story of loving on purpose. Find a cozy spot to hang from your arm tail, unhinge your novel-jaw, and devour this book.

Cover design by Alex Merto @alexmerto [Image 1 & 2] & Miette Kringen [Image 3]

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

Haunted Chest of Drawers Marcelin (Ed.): "La Vie Parisienne" (1863)

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

And a special shout out to @weirdlitmag.bsky.social and @thenulla.bsky.social —meeting you were highlights of the conference.

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

Attended @awpwriter.org in Baltimore. What a treat. I spent the first two days talking about how charming it was, only to find out it's called Charm City! I friggin love you, Bmore, can't wait to come back.

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

Did I find the spirit of Christmas already? It's an unopened, 100% juice, apple Capri Sun left on the desk of an empty English building classroom during finals week, so I'm not totally sure. I'll keep searching.

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

This is the year I discover the spirit of Christmas. After that, I'm not sure. I guess, learn and incorporate its true name into a pentacle written on virgin parchment, summon it, bind it within a magic circle of salt, then bend it to my mortal will? We'll see if there's time.

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 01/11/2025

Exactly what I need, just a few months before I need it. Thank you very much!

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

"I simply want ice cream and to be alive until I am dead." - "The House Call" from Near Flesh, by Katherine Dunn. #writingcommunity

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

The obsession many writers pour into living alongside their characters, I pour into language. And out of that language, or perhaps these languages, characters emerge. Images and worlds, too. Theme, voice, pace, subtext. For me, every facet of good writing is language cunningly, carefully, wrought.

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

I've always felt a gap between myself & writers who experience their characters as alive, in the room with them. It just isn't how my mine work. This is not to diminish the importance of fully realized characters or the value of their living presence for many writers. It's a reminder of alterities.

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

"I regard writing not as investigation of character, but as an exercise in the use of language, and with this I am obsessed." - Evelyn Waugh This quote gifted me the fulfilling experience of reading something I already knew, but couldn't yet voice. #writingcommunity

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 18/04/2025

Move over annelids, handelids are the new it-worm!

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

Carolina anole(?) enjoying a warm right triangle.

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 14/04/2025

Sound on! A magical and chilling experience at Congaree National Park. Arboretum: Bassoons in the Congaree National Park put on by @sc.edu

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 30/12/2024

I think what I want is to live without knowing or feeling it. Antisocieties, by michaelcisco.bsky.social

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 28/12/2024

"So, how was your life? What did you do?" - my toddler

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 11/02/2024

Now that he had recognized himself as a dead man it became important to stay alive as long as possible. 1984, by George Orwell

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 01/02/2024

"My girl always wakes up with a smile!" and Margaret would smile the best way she could, to fulfill her mother's prophecy. POOR DEER by Claire Oshetsky

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 01/02/2024

The girl woke up feeling entirely at ease. She knew from habit that her mother would soon come into her room to open the curtains and let the morning in. Her mother would look at her with tender love, and say:

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 22/01/2024

I call it "relief", though it was only the relief that a snap brings to a strain or the burst of a thunderstorm to a day of suffocation. THE TURN OF THE SCREW, by Henry James

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 22/01/2024

Would exasperation, however, if relief had longer been postponed, finally have betrayed me? It little matters, for relief arrived.

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Matthew Bean @mbean.bsky.social · 12/01/2024

But this discovery was so great and overwhelming that all the steps by which I had been progressively led to it were obliterated, and I beheld only the result. FRANKENSTEIN, by Mary Shelley Bookthreads

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