iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dr Meg Caddy @megcaddy.bsky.social · 07/07/2025

Deep in Pendle Witch country for research. Days are long and beautiful. Pages and pages of notes, hundreds of photos. Pestering everyone in Lancashire for information. I can hardly believe I get to do this.

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Adam P Knave @adampknave.com · 03/07/2025

REMEMBER: All the "Don't use em-dashes" "don't use rule of three" advice because it makes your writing "look like AI" is because they stole actual writers work, and their "predict the next thing" stuff just simulates what WE FUCKING DO. Keep writing well. Use every style and trick you have. Fuck AI.

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Dr Meg Caddy @megcaddy.bsky.social · 03/07/2025

Oh no, the novel I'm writing got scary and now I can't sleep. What a normal, sensible career I have.

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Dr Meg Caddy @megcaddy.bsky.social · 29/06/2025

Spent the day buried in the archives at the wonderful Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Boscastle, Cornwall. So incredibly blessed to be able to do this sort of research.

Meg stands in front of the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic

A "concealed object" (a poppet, previously hidden inside a house)

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Dr Meg Caddy @megcaddy.bsky.social · 18/06/2025

Yesterday I had to make the difficult decision to let my boy Captain cross the bar. He was my first cat - a menace who feared neither God nor man - and I loved him very much. He slipped away very peacefully, and did not suffer.

Picture of a fluffy grey cat asleep on a green couch.

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Indie Book Spotlight @bookspotlight.bsky.social · 14/06/2025

i'd rather ask ursula from the little mermaid for a favour and life advice than ask chatgpt anything

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Eric Smith @ericsmithrocks.bsky.social · 09/06/2025

Me: Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? My Editor: Please I’m just asking for a few small changes.

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Ellie Marney @elliemarney.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

Instead of using AI, I wrote a book simply by imagining things through the power of my entirely organic brain and writing them down, so now I guess I have to go edit it.

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Dr Meg Caddy @megcaddy.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

It's like UQP somehow knew I'd be caught in a downpour today, because look what was waiting for me when I got home! So excited to be working with this wonderful team to bring Flash into the world next year.

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Meg Elison @megelison.bsky.social · 01/06/2025

Alright, it's not his best work but Stephen King's newest, "Never Flinch," ends with a list of people who have been murdered for defending reproductive justice and I will never, ever quit this man. Constant reader, to the very last.

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Lee Knox Ostertag @leeknoxostertag.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

kind of obsessed with 2025 pride merch...I'm calling it cowardcore.

abercrombie and fitch 'pride mid rise jorts' which are literally just jorts with a rainbow tag inside the pant.

abercrombie & fitch 'pride long sleeved striped button up shirt' that is...a green and white striped shirt. hello am I going crazy.

beige terrycloth shorts from target. nothing about them indicates pride except that they are listed as such on the website.

levi's 'pride icon' skirt which is literally just a short dark denim skirt. nothing to indicate 'pride' except that there is one image of a male model wearing it which technically you could do with any item of clothing but go off I guess

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Diane Duane @diane.dianeduane.com · 28/05/2025

These feckers have already made off with my last almost-five-decades' worth of creative output to try to "teach" their hopped-up answering machine how to fake writing. If anyone ever *breathed* the suggestion to me that I should willingly use that soi-disant "tool"...it would not go well for them.

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Dr Meg Caddy @megcaddy.bsky.social · 28/05/2025

Migraine be dammed, I now have a full itinerary for my research trip in June/July. Highlights include talks at a school in the UK, visiting a museum of witchcraft, ghost-hunting on a very haunted hill, and visiting the national archives to see arrest records for my witches.

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Dr Meg Caddy @megcaddy.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

Yesterday I did a workshop for teenagers, and a participant asked me about my stance on using AI in creative writing. Here are my main points:

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Bev Twomey @bevtwomey.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

The Cover is Here! What the Sea Brings is swimming to bookshops, August 12th, 2025 from @snowywingspublishing.com Artwork by @scarvenartist.bsky.social and Typography by Miblart Available for Pre-orders NOW! books2read.com/whattheseabrings

The cover for What the Sea Brings by Beverly Twomey. It features a young girl with braids wearing a white novice robe sitting on a rock and looking pensively towards the pastel horizon. In the background a small mermaid tail is seen in the water.

Artist is Kelsi Johnson @scarvenartist and Design is by MiblArt

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Dr Meg Caddy @megcaddy.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

It is (finally finally finally) official!

Matt Smith saying "Trust me, I'm The Doctor"

Photo of doctor of philosophy qualification

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Dr Meg Caddy @megcaddy.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

I cannot tell you how hard I smashed the preorder button. My computer may never recover.

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Dr Meg Caddy @megcaddy.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

My stack so far this year. I'm a little behind but I'll catch up!

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Dr Meg Caddy @megcaddy.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

It's gunslinging and asexual and nonbinary and crimes and Western Australia and everything 17 year old me thought they'd never see in a book. Get ready! www.booksandpublishing.com.au/articles/202...

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Miriam Posner @miriamposner.com · 22/03/2025

This made me cheer. It gets directly at a problem I’ve often noticed: people don’t fundamentally understand what a historian *does*.

Ethical: There is a particular paradox that makes Al essentially useless as a tool for studying history. The entire point of what we do as historians is to look for untold stories...elements of the history of mankind that are novel and unexpected. There is a fundamental epistemological disjuncture between what PhD-holding historians do and what ChatGPT and its ilk do: the former meticulously, purposefully, and rigorously comb through a mountain of human-curated documents looking
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for revealing details that diverge from the baseline, offer indications of cultural shift, or elements humanity embedded in seemingly mundane activities; the latter processes terabytes of machine-harvested data in order to predict what will be the most likely next token in a string, and when these tokens are words they may or may not result in a grammatically coherent sentence.

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the hype @thehyyyype.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

"if we can't train AI on copyrighted works, then it'll never get to the point where we can make tons of money off of it" ok? how is that anyone else's problem? If I can't rob a bank, then I won't have $20 million tomorrow. Should I be allowed to rob a bank then?

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Mara Wilson @marawilson.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

I think most of who have worked in writing or entertainment know that piracy is a fact of life, and has been for a long time now. But there’s a difference between a broke student downloading a PDF of your book, and a multibillion dollar company stealing your work for its own bullshit purposes.

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Dax, sapphic fantasy author @daxaeterna.ink · 21/03/2025

Finally found it. The average book thief makes between 60k and 99K USD. The average author makes around 10k. Most pirates are stealing from people worse off than themselves. But they cosplay as poor or use poor people as a shield to justify their class warfare. torrentfreak.com/wealthy-olde...

torrentfreak.com

eBook Pirates Are Relatively Old and Wealthy, Study Finds * TorrentFreak

A new study has found that people who illegally download eBooks are older and wealthier than most people's perception of the average pirate. Commissioned by anti-piracy company Digimarc, the study sug...

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Chelsea M. Cameron (she/they) @chel-c-cam.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

If artists aren’t workers or laborers, then it’s easy to yell at them that it’s YOUR right to steal what they create.

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Chelsea M. Cameron (she/they) @chel-c-cam.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

This fight over “should authors get paid for their work” debate boils down to this: many, MANY people do not see art as labor. If art isn’t labor, then you don’t have to change your political views to justify piracy. Easy peasy!

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Dr Meg Caddy @megcaddy.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

It's been a long road, but I just signed a contract with UQP for the publication of my YA historical fiction, A Flash in the Dust!

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Dr Meg Caddy @megcaddy.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

Last year was an agony of waiting on various things, kind of a holding year? And so 2025 has been a flurry of chickens and so much news. A long-winded way to say, something exciting hit my inbox today and I can't wait to share it!

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Dr Meg Caddy @megcaddy.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

Forgot to post this! The Daylight Gate is one of my least favourite books forever. Negative stars. Why was William Shakespeare in it.

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Dr Meg Caddy @megcaddy.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

Yesterday afternoon I learned from my wonderful supervisor that my PhD has passed with minor revisions. That means I have a list of small textual/structural changes to make in the next 3 months before submitting it back to the thesis chair for final approval.

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Dr Meg Caddy @megcaddy.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

Yesterday my 2.5 year old started saying "Stick it to the man" and today he started saying "Thank you, sweetheart". Don't talk to me about Terrible Twos, this is bliss.

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Dr Meg Caddy @megcaddy.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

Today is a great day to donate to the Indigenous Literacy Foundation, to read First Nations books, and to amplify Indigenous voices. We could do better than we have. We could be better than we are. #changethedate

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Dr Meg Caddy @megcaddy.bsky.social · 23/01/2025

My MC lived in the 1600s and no one is 100% sure *where* she lived - but there is a farm built over one of the possible sites, and I have just booked a room there for a week in July. All the rooms are named after her family members. Guys I'm gonna get so haunted.

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Bev Twomey @bevtwomey.bsky.social · 21/01/2025

I was reminded of the dedication I wrote for The Necromancer’s Apprentice today. “For those who hold onto hope in the midst of unbearable darkness. May you always remain gentle and kind.”

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Celeste Ng @pronounced-ing.bsky.social · 20/01/2025

Spent the morning shoveling snow with my kid. We talked about how--because the world is increasingly stupid, unkind, and selfish--we need to work hard at being curious, kind, and helpful to others. Even if we're just starting with shoveling the walk for our community.

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Abra / Jessica Conwell, Carmella Creeper's Gender Doula🏳️‍⚧️ 🇲🇽🌼 @pairofclaws.bsky.social · 20/01/2025

To my nonbinary, agender, genderqueer, and otherwise off the binary friends & siblings: You are loved, you are valued, you are important to our community, you've been here longer than the tyrants, and you will still be here when their bones are dust and the names of their false gods are forgotten.

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Claire Zagorski, PhD, MSc, EMT-P @clairezagorski.bsky.social · 20/01/2025

Do not Do not Do NOT Announce or even hint on your social media that you’re doing illegal or potentially illegal things. Even if for excellent reasons. You will be a target and make the people you aid targets.

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Dr Meg Caddy @megcaddy.bsky.social · 19/01/2025

The stack grows! Next is The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters.

Stack of books - Sense and Sensibility, Hamnet, A Darker Shade of Magic, The Marriage Portrait

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Dr Meg Caddy @megcaddy.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

For the last four years almost every read has been building towards the PhD: Australian, historical, YA, or some combo of the three. But now? Now! I can read whatever I want. Three so far this year (the Schwab is a repeat). Let's see how the pile grows.

A pile of three novels: Sense and Sensibility (Austen), Hamnet (O'Farrell), and A Darker Shade of Magic (Schwab).

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Bev Twomey @bevtwomey.bsky.social · 30/12/2024

Dear readers, let me take you gently by the hand and say: Not everything in fantasy needs a deep explanation. It’s good to enjoy those things! But a huge part of the genre is the cultivation of wonder and imagination. To promote further pondering and leave a thread of escape when you need it.

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Micah @rincewind.run · 25/12/2024

Discworld QOTD, from Hogfather

All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

"They're not the same at all!"

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"

MY POINT EXACTLY.

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Dr Meg Caddy @megcaddy.bsky.social · 21/12/2024

Christmas has come early, with the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries in the starring role as Santa! They have awarded me a grant so I can travel next year to research my next book, a witchy historical fantasy. Can't wait to get thoroughly Haunted in the name of research.

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Ellie Marney @elliemarney.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

"Our business only works with theft" boohoo then shut down you flogs

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Evan Williams @evanwritescars.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

What is the charge?! Eating a meal???? A succulent McDonald’s meal?!?!

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Dr Meg Caddy @megcaddy.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

After a week of being up at 5am, my kid slept until 6.45 this morning. I'm a new person. I can see colours again. There is birdsong.

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Dr Meg Caddy @megcaddy.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

I have had too many emotions today. Maybe all of them? I need to sleep but what I want to do is drive out to the ocean and fling myself into it a couple of times to clear my head.

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Dr Meg Caddy @megcaddy.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

This afternoon I got home from work, blasted LOTR, screwed my courage to the sticking place, and submitted my PhD. I hardly know what I'll do with myself now. (Yes I do, it's write another book - and another - and another)

media.tenor.com

a close up of a man 's face with the words `` it 's done '' written on the bottom .

Alt: a close up of Frodo's face with the words `` it 's done '' written on the bottom .

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