iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Marshall Ryan Maresca @mrmaresca.com · 13h

LAND OF THE GIANTS, in which a standard suborbital flight (as, you know, we had in 1983) goes through a dimensional barrier and crashes on a planet where everything is twelve times bigger, and the crew and passengers struggle to survive.

Still frame from the credits of LAND OF THE GIANTS, with the title looming large, as if cut from stone, with a giant figure in shadow.

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Premee Mohamed @premeemohamed.com · 24/09/2026

ALSO is it that time of year again?? Is the air getting crisp?? Are ghosts beginning to whisper from the dark corner behind the bookshelf?? ("Actually we're roasting" OK I can't help where you live, ignore the above) Time to read THE APPLE-TREE THRONE! www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/...

kobo.com

The Apple-Tree Throne ebook by Premee Mohamed - Rakuten Kobo

Read "The Apple-Tree Throne" by Premee Mohamed available from Rakuten Kobo. It is the turn of the century in an England that never was. Bright new aqua-plants are generating electricity for the st...

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Melissa Caruso @melissacaruso.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Discoverability for new SFF books seems way down these days, especially outside of bestsellers and certain subgenres. I'm noticing this as both a reader and a writer. Great stuff is in danger of sinking without a trace. Please post about new/recent books you love or are excited for!!! I'll start:

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Marshall Ryan Maresca @mrmaresca.com · 29/09/2026

I got one of those AI-written "do you want to be featured in our reading group?" scam emails, but this one was amusing because it was nominally about my standalone dieselpunk novel, but it's clear the AI mixed up the details with the Maradaine series so the whole thing is extra messy AI slop.

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Marshall Ryan Maresca @mrmaresca.com · 28/09/2026

I have jumped on the grenade and listened to the song. It's honestly a whiny song (with a whinier video) in which the Tennessee singer goes to Lubbock with her man (who grew up there) and realizes he's gonna leave her for his ex who's still there. He's gonna "choose Texas". Don't recommend.

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Usman T. Malik @usmantm.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Writer friends: What are the best way to promote your newly launched book from a traditional publisher at various cons? A DARK AND NARROW HOUSE comes out on April 6, 2027. I'd like to hit as many cons as I can. +

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Marshall Ryan Maresca @mrmaresca.com · 27/09/2026

The podcast gets a number of "have me/this author on your show" pitches that are clearly AI written, and, man, there's no faster way to get yourself sent to the Oubliette Of Never Being On The Show than that.

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Marshall Ryan Maresca @mrmaresca.com · 27/09/2026

"If I can give up my health insurance, you can watch a different TV show." Hell yes.

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Marshall Ryan Maresca @mrmaresca.com · 26/09/2026

Here's me reading the first chapter from what I've been calling my "generational trauma fantasy" that I've been writing with @liveinspanish.bsky.social (psst, that's my wife), and folks seemed to like it, so, hey, we might have something here.

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Marshall Ryan Maresca @mrmaresca.com · 26/09/2026

I once got rejected at an interview because “it’s clear you have a lot of ambition and we’d need to replace you in six months.”

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Marshall Ryan Maresca @mrmaresca.com · 26/09/2026

And yet the one I was in tried SO HARD to push us all to science and tech.

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Marshall Ryan Maresca @mrmaresca.com · 25/09/2026

BUY MARINA'S BOOKS OR I AM TURNING THIS CAR AROUND RIGHT NOW

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Marshall Ryan Maresca @mrmaresca.com · 25/09/2026

I was trying to find something else in the bowels of the internet, and discovered that a message board I frequented in the early 2010s still exists, even if no one has really posted there in nearly a decade. But it remains there, a digital ghost town filled with ancient pop-culture opinions.

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Marshall Ryan Maresca @mrmaresca.com · 25/09/2026

I mean, the number of folks who seemed to vote for Trump because Biden didn't clean up Trump's first mess fast enough...

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Marshall Ryan Maresca @mrmaresca.com · 25/09/2026

Insisting that we do it at The Diner where they always go to find Real Americans to talk to.

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Marshall Ryan Maresca @mrmaresca.com · 24/09/2026

Some further advice: In these emails, be specific. What the event is, where it is, when it is, a link to your webpage. Nothing makes one of these emails seem fake more than "We're inviting you to this event!" with ABSOLUTELY ZERO DATES OR OTHER KEY INFO.

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Marshall Ryan Maresca @mrmaresca.com · 24/09/2026

Repost with an image of your favorite James Bond (wrong answers only):

Promotional still of THE Richard Grieco in a hot car with Gabrielle Anwar, where he casually holds a gun next to his cheek with absolutely horrific trigger discipline. It's from IF LOOKS COULD KILL, the best damn Bond satire you never saw.
Him having terrible trigger discipline is in character, mind you, because: the boy is an idiot.

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Marshall Ryan Maresca @mrmaresca.com · 24/09/2026

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Marshall Ryan Maresca @mrmaresca.com · 24/09/2026

I love that there are a whole series of Star Trek books centered around these guys dealing with Time Travel shenanigans. Especially since one of them thinks Kirk is a menace to time, and in one book he’s forced to team up with Kirk to save the universe from time unraveling.

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Marshall Ryan Maresca @mrmaresca.com · 23/09/2026

One of the many, many, many things about America where if you look into "how did this become a thing?", the answer is "racism".

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A. Lee Martinez @aleemartinez.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

This isn’t me accusing anyone of stealing my ideas. Ideas are everywhere. Just sucks wafching things I wrote fall into oblivion because of how the world works. I also wrote Unbearable, out now. So if you want to buy it, it’ll really help pick up my mood. But that’s up to you

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Natania Barron ~ Fantasy Author @natania.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I LOVE TALKING ABOUT BUILDING CITIES.

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Marshall Ryan Maresca @mrmaresca.com · 21/09/2026

At the grocery store, where I noticed parking spaces screwed up by someone having parked in an extra jerkish way, and that it had two notes put on the windshield noting how jerkish it was. Came out to find the jerk car being towed away, so karma is good sometimes.

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Marshall Ryan Maresca @mrmaresca.com · 21/09/2026

This is some big We Do Not Discuss The Orangutan energy here.

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Marshall Ryan Maresca @mrmaresca.com · 21/09/2026

Look, I am 99% sure that my wife is, in fact, real, and not the ghost of a movie star from the 1930s, but you can see why I might have my doubts.

My wife, in sepia-toned black&white, looking glam as all get out.

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Marshall Ryan Maresca @mrmaresca.com · 20/09/2026

Fine people of all persuasions: today is @cassmorriswrites.com‘s birthday, and the best way to celebrate that is by buying her books. Go do that!

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Chris Panatier @scribeofhades.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

I’ve been so so fortunate to have so many great writers and booksellers blurb WORRY BOX. It releases Tuesday and I just want to share some of them here! Here’s a monster thread of praise for WORRY BOX! It releases Tuesday! Go get it! bookshop.org/p/books/worr...

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Marshall Ryan Maresca @mrmaresca.com · 20/09/2026

Fine people of all persuasions: today is @cassmorriswrites.com‘s birthday, and the best way to celebrate that is by buying her books. Go do that!

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Marshall Ryan Maresca @mrmaresca.com · 19/09/2026

FAAAAAAAAAKE CAROLINE (bah bah bah) Bad times never seemed so bad!

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Cass Morris @cassmorriswrites.com · 18/09/2026

With the Aven Cycle, I knew I wanted a Roman-flavored world and was making myself nuts trying to make a map that didn’t look like the Mediterranean, and then I went “Wait….” 😂

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Worldbuilding for Masochists @worldbuildcast.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

N here: I'd say it's about how you want to angle your energy. There are some easier things about alternate history in that you have actual history to go from, but then that can also get sticky (I tend to get lost a bit). If human history has no bearing on the plot, I go secondary build.

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Worldbuilding for Masochists @worldbuildcast.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

N here: totally depends for me. Sometimes it's like a stand-in town. Other times it's just a little district--or even a room! I'd say, wherever you start, make it solid and open up for discovery later.

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Marshall Ryan Maresca @mrmaresca.com · 18/09/2026

We're doing an bit of an AUA, so ask!

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Cass Morris @cassmorriswrites.com · 18/09/2026

Ask us anything!

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Marshall Ryan Maresca @mrmaresca.com · 18/09/2026

20 y/o Marshall would hopefully look at the books, the Hugo nominations and my wife and be deeply impressed. Also, to 20 y/o me: That production of Twelfth Night you decided to make happen on a crazy whim is about to launch a legacy at Penn State that is going strong today, 33 years later.

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Marshall Ryan Maresca @mrmaresca.com · 18/09/2026

Entering something on Venmo: Me: For Spanish tuition Venmo: Did you mean for SPANKING? Listen, y'all, I don't judge, but you should know better than to actually tell Venmo that.

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Marshall Ryan Maresca @mrmaresca.com · 17/09/2026

There's something wild about seeing people sitting in a coffee shop with food and drinks that are just from another restaurant entirely. Like, come on, folks, that's not cool.

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Cass Morris @cassmorriswrites.com · 17/09/2026

#WIPSnips Sept 17: Another little bit of ephemera!

...The Requini practice of backdating their records to include time before the Cataclysm makes it difficult to determine when, in fact, power centralized in Kamioch. Certainly it appears that attempts were made, in those first decades, to establish governmental centers in the port city of Ptolegais and the southern stronghold of Anacleia, both further from the ancient heart of Talsyra and thus from the epicenter of the crisis. Since it soon became official policy, however, for Requin to frame itself as Talsyra's natural inheritor, very nearly a continuity of the ancient republic though with a decided less egalitarian structure, a coordinated effort was made to obscure inconvenient temporal details.

---From A History of the Ogeval Waters and Its Peoples, composed by Amarice Guiscard in the Scholastaia of Linetra, e.vea 625 in the Coriolese calendar

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Marshall Ryan Maresca @mrmaresca.com · 17/09/2026

What scene makes you emotional no matter how many times you've seen it? "P-51! CADILLAC OF THE SKY!"

youtube.com

Empire of the Sun - Cadillac of the Sky

YouTube video by Александр Аврамов

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Marissa Lingen @marissalingen.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

IT'S TODAY!!! My fantasy novella, A DUBIOUS CLAMOR, is out today! From here on out, if you suddenly have the urge to read about harpies, opinionated weapons, and a bunch of misfits fighting the fash, you can just DO THAT! Order direct or from bookstores: hornedlarkpress.com/product/a-du...

Happy author Marissa Lingen, a long-haired white woman, holds up a copy of her book, A DUBIOUS CLAMOR

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I'm a Fan! @imafan-of-fans.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

“The clan is my blood, and the Pillar is its master." Green Bones pledge their clan loyalty with their jade, while Lantern Men show affiliation with paper and wood. We can't afford jade (yet), but we gotcha covered for the paper and wood! @fondalee.bsky.social

Picture of Fonda Lee. Text: Author Spotlight: Fonda Lee, The Green Bone Saga. Fonda Lee is the award-winning, NYT-bestselling author of a dozen works of fantasy and science fiction, including the Green Bone Saga, the Breathmarked duology, and most recently, the science fiction novel, The Last Contract of Isako. (She’s also one of the founding members of the I’m a Fan team!)

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Marshall Ryan Maresca @mrmaresca.com · 15/09/2026

I remain terrible about documenting my con experiences. I have this photo of my (shockingly completely full) reading only thanks to @mjkuhnbooks.bsky.social

In which I am apparently chairman of the board at my reading. A small room but it was FULL, which is a new one for me after over a dozen years on this grind. Thank you, MJ!

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Marshall Ryan Maresca @mrmaresca.com · 15/09/2026

As I said on a panel at @armadillocon.bsky.social this weekend: Worldbuilding isn't just world maps and rules of magic and lineages of wars and kings. The fictionalized history of a small town in upstate NY is worldbuilding, a family tree is worldbuilding, every ounce of fiction is worldbuilding.

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Cass Morris @cassmorriswrites.com · 15/09/2026

This is really and truly what we're all about over on @worldbuildcast.bsky.social -- "Choose, don't presume" doesn't mean you *can't* have a medieval-ish setting or that you have to literally create an entire universe from the atoms up or that you have to flesh out every single detail possible.

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Worldbuilding for Masochists @worldbuildcast.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

If you're wondering why you did this to yourself... there IS a whole podcast for you.

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