Sign in

Polly Schattel

@pollyschattel.bsky.social
3.3K followers 1.8K following 3.4K posts

Writer • Filmmaker • Partner • Parent • 🏳️‍⚧️ • THE OCCULTISTS • SHADOWDAYS • 8:59:29 • CRATER GIRL • Books, woods, guitars, critters & coffee • Trans rights = Human rights • AVL • I follow writers • Fix your hearts or die pollyschattel.com

PostsRepliesMedia
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 20h
These little assholes. Stink bugs. Twice a year, we get nailed by seasonal swarms of them—trying to get in the house or out of the house. They don’t bite, but are super annoying and big. And we live in the woods, so there’s tons of them. We pulled 20 or so from our bedroom curtains last week.
150
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 22h
Solid.
How to be Transgender
Women
A title, one very common name, and one very niche name. The more random, the better.
A New Name
Non-Binary
An inanimate object. The more everyday it is, the better.
Examples
Toaster
Men
Anything from the top 10 names. The more popular, the better.
Fred
Countess Emma
Amaryllis
130
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
When I briefly met Harlan Ellison a million years ago, he was signing books in a university bookstore. I asked him what he was going to do that night. “Sit in my hotel room and stare at the wall,” he said.
"Wasting time" might be one of the strangest accusations we've ever invented. Apparently you can waste 2:00 p.m. by sitting under a tree doing nothing. The afternoon was going to pass either way. The Earth was going to rotate either way. But because you didn't convert those hours into money, errands or improvement, we decided the time itself was wasted. As if simply being alive isn't enough to justify an afternoon.
311551
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Oh good. I have complete faith in these tech overlords to do what’s right for American society and the planet as a whole. I mean, they’ve given me zero reason to doubt them. At this weird intersection of delusional billionaires, Republican greed, and epoch-ending technology, I feel very confident.
Palantir's latest Al move reveals a much bigger ambition
Palantir sees opportunity in a divided Al market
Sep 28, 2026 9:03 AM EDT
By Faizan Farooque
Edited by Robert Davey
Follow +
To CLA
John Lamparski / Getty Images
040
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Stanley Kubrick and his longtime driver, Emilio D’Allessandro. They became great friends, and Emilio’s book STANLEY AND ME shows a different side to the director. Emilio liked cars and wasn’t much of a film buff, and never even saw Stanley’s movies until much later. They were just pals.
030
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I like book’s. What about you? What are some of you’re favorite book’s?
250
Reposted by Polly Schattel
Andrew K. Clark ✨ @theandrewkclark.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Thanks to the folks over at Nerd Daily for publishing an excerpt of Hollow Folk today. Read part of chapter 1, then place your order if you haven’t 👀 thenerddaily.com/hollow-folk-...
thenerddaily.com
Read An Excerpt From 'Hollow Folk' by Andrew K. Clark | The Nerd Daily
Set deep in the mountains of Western North Carolina during the sweltering summer of 1993, Hollow Folk is a lyrical, atmospheric horror romance by Southern Appalachian author Andrew K. Clark.
072
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
One of the most interesting voices in horror. And he’s young! Keep an eye on this dude.
163
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Asheville’s next mayor, y’all!
130
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Maybe it’s, you know, not a phase? 🤷🏼‍♀️ Let kids be kids. You don’t own them. They own themselves. A parents’ job is to help usher a young human soul into a happy adulthood as effectively as possible. Not to change them, not to fix them. You are a steward, helping someone to find their rightful place.
040
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Bunch o’ damn turkeys! #animalsky #avl
080
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Wait. Gummo’s not important?
GUMMO
Algorithm Distorting How Important Man Thinks
'Gummo Is To Rest Of World
@the ONION
130
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
This is good advice. It’s not Trump. It goes deeper than Trump.
040
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Living with a dietitian wife is not only like, “Holy crap, you’re not eating that!” but also like, “Holy crap, look at all the protein in your urine! Your creatinine levels are probably insane!” And then sashaying out of the bathroom while I have nightmares about little creatinines coming to get me.
190
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
My kid's in Arizona, and my wife and I are enjoying his Mexican food journey with vicarious relish. He said this place was super cheap, super authentic, and super meaty. Which would be a problem for us, granted. But we can still gaze at it in quiet, covetous wonder.
A table full of cheap but delicious tex-mex mexican food.
0150
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Ah yes, like the evil clown Pennywise but with less panache, Jill Stein reappears every few years, doing her damage in cycles.
If you had high hopes for Democratic Party reform, you may want to reset your expectations.
PS. Stop drinking the cool aid.
391
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Working on my Strat today. I like tinkering around with my guitars. In another lifetime, I could have been a luthier. I just like looking at them. But Leo Fender nailed it. I mostly play Tele’s, but the Strat is truly a perfect guitar. The most expressive musical instrument ever invented.
A 1970’s era Stratocaster
050
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Argiope aurantia. The garden spider. Big, dramatic beautiful webs. Almost always a female. And yep, there’s the crushed and disarrayed corpse of her boyfriend. These girls don’t play. But they’re completely harmless to humans. They’re our friends, but you don’t want to run into her face first.
A beautiful garden spider in her web.
140
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
You can be whatever the fuck you want
Booksky writers Trans is beautiful lgbt
0222
Reposted by Polly Schattel
Weird Fiction Quarterly @weirdfictionquarterly.com · 24/09/2026
"Liminal Spaces & Beings" is NOW out. Get our latest release before that amorphous being growling behind you beats you to it. #LiminalSpaces #WeirdFictionQuarterly #FlashFiction #WeirdFiction #Shapeshifters
weirdfictionquarterly.com
NOCLIP through our new Liminal Spaces & Beings issue
Our new issue on liminal spaces and beings has escaped containment and is now available for anyone to order and read.
0169
Reposted by Polly Schattel
Ron Sexsmith @ronsexsmith.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
In honour of Bruce Springsteen's birthday I thought I'd post a few faves from my Rawnboy Channel Here's "Badlands" RS youtu.be/kpY9hsRGFjk?...
youtu.be
RON SINGS "BADLANDS" BY BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
YouTube video by Rawnboy
0395
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I’m so glad Sen. Tuber-Man brought this up. For too long the furries have been in charge of our skies! How can they bring our American travelers in safely with those big paws and those eyeholes they can’t even see out of! Biden should have never personally hired those radical furry terrorists!
TOMMY TUBERVILLE WARNS THAT "MANY" PILOTS, FLIGHT ATTENDANTS AND AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS ARE FURRIES: "Lord help us. It's terrifying when you think about this."
Tuberville claimed on the Senate floor that airline workers being part of the furry community poses a danger to passengers, saying a pilot "could have a deranged fetish of dressing up like an animal."
030
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
080
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I want to be like this guy. I want to straighten my fez and pull a Luger from my lapel and back everyone against the wall while I tell them my devious plans. I want to quit the room in a swirl of hookah smoke, rush downstairs and into the street, hop in the taxi, and take off into the crowded night.
An Iranian with a gun, 1920’s.
260
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Remember these days? Good, sane times.
Robert De Niro, Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama talk at the Kennedy Center Honors, back in 2011(?).
070
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
I'm writing a dark fantasy about a crazed evil despot right now, and honestly, even in the realm of fantasy it doesn't compare to Donald Trump in real life. He's 100 percent doing the things evil despots do, including destroying their own countries from within. We live in extraordinary times.
0100
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Iris contemplates her place in the universe. Or at least her place in the trails beneath the power lines. #rescue #doglife #pittielove
3100
Reposted by Polly Schattel
Jayaprakash has a mastertape @jayaprakash777.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
If you're going to fail at mundane things like having a career, getting fit, integrating your personality, why not spice things up and also fail at something magnificent like trying to make great art?
2265
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Librarians are cool AF and they know it.
Black male librarians exist!! The best decision I ever made in my life was getting my Masters in Library Science. I just opened up a brand new library here in Wilmington Delaware! We are LEADERS OF THE NEW COOL!
1100
Reposted by Polly Schattel
David Whitman @davidwhitman.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
The press is banned. Gas and diesel prices are through the roof. Grocery store prices continue to climb. Many Americans can barely survive. But, at least the pedo Orange Shitgibbon and his cronies have these two fucking idiots front and center to make things great…
041
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Trans woman goes into a redneck shoe store. I might as well have a “I groom babies and worship Lucifer” t-shirt on. Boone’s not too sure about the whole thing.
060
Reposted by Polly Schattel
populuxe 🍃 @populuxe.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
the years of rice & salt (2002)
0103
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Haha. We ain’t going nowhere. We are resilient, strong, defiant. You can’t legislate authenticity out of existence. Strike one of us down and nine eggy twinks spring up in her place.
Trump's catchphrase
'transgender for everybody' becomes an LGBTQ rallying cry
LGBTQ activists have a long tradition of taking slights and slurs - like the word "queer" - and using them as a form of protest and celebration.
081
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Went to see Jay Farrar and Son Volt last night. Fantastic stuff. Farrar isn’t quite the nuclear charisma bomb his old bandmate Jeff Tweedy is, but the songs and the *sound* of them is all there. And he’s held firmly to his muse all these years, which is a real accomplishment. A brilliant artist.
Son Volt in Asheville, NC.
050
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
The Addams Family was great TV.
This is Addams Family. Really.
270
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Two cool vegetarian recipes from the maestro himself—a very interesting beer cheese dip, and also a baba ganoush dip oddly mislabeled “taheeni” (which really refers to sesame seed butter, oddly not present in the dish). Pro tip: if you char the eggplant on the open flame, it takes on a smoky edge.
Vincent Price 
CHEESE DIP
MAKES 3 CUPS
1 Into container of an electric blender put: 8 ounces softened cream cheese and 2 cup beer. Cover and blend on high speed for 20 seconds.
2 Add: ¼ cup beer, 8
ounces aged
TAHEENI (Lebanese Cocktail Dip)
MAKES ABOUT 1 ½ CUPS
1 Into container of an electric blender put: 1 cup cooked, mashed eggplant, 3 tablespoons lemon juice, 3 tablespoons olive oil, 1 large clove garlic, and 1 teaspoon salt. Cover and blend on high speed for 1 minute, or until creamy,
427
cheddar cheese, diced, and 1 clove gar-lic. Cover and blend for 20 seconds, or until smooth, stopping to stir down if
necessary. Empty into bowl and chill.
stopping to stir down if necessary.
2 Pour into serving bowl and sprinkle surface with: 1 tablespoon sesame seeds and 2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley.
3 Chill and serve with raw vegetables, leaves of romaine lettuce, or crackers.
070
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
I’ve had this clock radio since I was in high school. That’s [a very long time]. We never listen to it, and it doesn’t even show the right hour or minutes. But my wife insists on plugging it in and keeping it going. It takes up a central place in our kitchen. I don’t mind.
1100
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Hilarious. Even radical anti-trans groups are saying, “Uh, guys, the anti-trans ads ain’t working so well anymore.”
050
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
That’s what I’m talking about. 8:59:29 is one of my very favorite things I’ve ever written. Very dark but very fun. Hayley Heninger of “Palimpsest” does a fantastic job of narrating. It’s short and sharp. Available on Audible and (soon) Spotify.
Polly Schattel has a new release
8:59:20
BY PoLLY sthiT TEL AROOTED IT IDY HERNGER
8:59:29
BY Polly Schattel
VOICED BY Hayley Heninger
When a disgruntled adjunct faculty teacher decides to get revenge on the head of her department, she begins a dark (and darkly comic) journey into the cracks between modern society and the secret depravity that lies underneath.
050
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Highly acclaimed cop show, 2004: “Miller, you’d better watch yourself. Shenanigans like that are why downtown sent you here in the first place.” Highly acclaimed cop show, 2026: “Muller, you’d better watch it. Shenanigans like that are why the captain sent you here in the first place.”
020
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Proud of this guy. In AVL, we’ve watched him go from talented scribe to Boss man in just a few years. Dude is killing it.
131
Reposted by Polly Schattel
M. T. Anderson @mt-anderson.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
2142
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I’ve loved Kate Bush for forever.
Kate Bush. Definitely Kate Bush.
150
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
I LOVED this book. One of the most imaginative, most *fun* books I’ve read in a decade.
050
Reposted by Polly Schattel
John Claude Smith @jcsmith0919.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
The Liminal Spaces & Beings issue of Weird Fiction Quarterly will be published shortly. The TOC is stellar! Includes my tale, "To Be Or Not...", which deals with a liminal space...or is it a liminal being? Hmmm... weirdfictionquarterly.com/coming-soon-...
weirdfictionquarterly.com
Coming Soon: Liminal Spaces & Beings
We found the "Liminal Spaces & Beings" manuscript and are publishing it before it disappears between dimensions again!
0113
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Iris in the Pisgah Forest, North Carolina, Appalachia, United States, Planet Earth.
#pittie #pitbull #dogsky #rescue #avl #pisgah
4150
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
I've been asked to guest on a cool podcast about Bruce Springsteen going album by album. Life goals met. (Also, Ed Sheeran could take a lesson or two from Bruce. You get more real fans by speaking up and holding true to yourself than you do by sliming your way out of having any opinions at all.)
070
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
What you believe? Just say it. Who you are? Just be it. Nothing clarifies like living your truth. The trans crowd knows how easy it would have been to be silent, to not say the thing, to not live the thing. But our hearts made us stand up and be counted. #saythething #freepalestine
071
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
The Princess of Brown Road. Iris was a half-feral pitbull mix, wild and terrified, when we came across her. Now she’s a sweet and contented ladybug who couldn’t be a better friend, watchdog and cuddler. One of our best dogs ever. #pittielove #lovewins
060
Polly Schattel @pollyschattel.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Marketing, baby!
"This is the weird lit that most BookTok "weird girl lit" promises but does not deliver" 

"Five stars. A thrilling odyssey with an unforgettable protagonist. Crater Girl is a delight."

"Genuinely fresh ... incredibly gratifying ... "

Actual genius reviewers.

#booksky #lgbt #trans #translit
073