iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Sheldon Costa @sheldoncosta.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Recently landed on a new writing rule. Every good story must include at least one Cool Old Lady. Thank you for coming to my craft talk.

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Sheldon Costa @sheldoncosta.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Hit a huge milestone* in the new novel this week. *Talked about hagfish and brine pools

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Reposted by Sheldon Costa

izzy @isobel.top · 11/08/2026

logging into bluesky

chrono trigger screenshot:

Welcome to the Millennial Fair!
Have fun!

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Sheldon Costa @sheldoncosta.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Finally read The Narrator earlier this year and it was such a wild ride.

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Sheldon Costa @sheldoncosta.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Heard u like stories about wounded men going on quests to escape their grief, only to find themselves confronted by the inevitable decline of their rapacious civilization bookshop.org/p/books/the-...

bookshop.org

The Great Work

An alchemist and his teenage nephew pursue a legendary river monster across the nineteenth-century Pacific Northwest in a desperate quest to conquer death, blending literary fantasy, folklore, and sup...

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Sheldon Costa @sheldoncosta.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Best cultural oracle in the bizz

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Reposted by Sheldon Costa

Goldstein (still not a pseudonym) @goldstein.latinsky.app · 12/07/2026

Here is Graham gloating about "killing all the right people." Just in case you see anyone try to do the whole "we should have decency for the dead" nonsense.

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Sheldon Costa @sheldoncosta.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Hell yeah!!! Congrats!! So deserved.

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Sheldon Costa @sheldoncosta.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Thank you! I consider myself a strong advocate for Not Explaining Anything

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Sheldon Costa @sheldoncosta.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

God I am so excited to read this

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Sheldon Costa @sheldoncosta.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the Labubus herself

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Sheldon Costa @sheldoncosta.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

Inability of people in power to read the room reaching stratospheric levels

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Sheldon Costa @sheldoncosta.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

Totally. Plenty of bad writing to be found across genres. Just so dispiriting to see people responding to AI infiltration with "make writing less interesting."

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Sheldon Costa @sheldoncosta.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

And to admit it so brazenly! So profoundly disappointing.

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Sheldon Costa @sheldoncosta.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

Like, this is just...not "literary" prose? It is very clearly what people who don't read literary fiction THINK literary prose sounds like. Which is certainly embarrassing for the judges, but hardly indicative of some widespread problem in literary writing.

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Sheldon Costa @sheldoncosta.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Had me at future-set medieval world (my current obsession) LET’S GO

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Sheldon Costa @sheldoncosta.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

This is amazing news! Was literally trying to track this down just the other day.

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Sheldon Costa @sheldoncosta.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

Now I'm imagining how nice it would be to have some cowled attendant hovering over my shoulder every time I sat down to write, hissing whenever I use the wrong age for one of my characters.

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Sheldon Costa @sheldoncosta.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

Anyways the movie was fun! Great performances and I love laughing at fascists. But weird to see so many smart people treating genuine narrative critiques as some version of "why won't this movie spoonfeed me my particular brand of politics."

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Sheldon Costa @sheldoncosta.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

Like, terrorism by leftists is such a non-entity in American life that making it the central focus of your film robs the narrative of what might have been some genuine commentary on why radical movements fail and how our descendents pay the price for it.

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Sheldon Costa @sheldoncosta.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

Actually think this was one of the movie's greatest weaknesses. Trying to imagine a group like this operating in a (presumably?) post-9/11 America so thoroughly strains credulity that it makes the whole movie kind of feel like a farce.

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Sheldon Costa @sheldoncosta.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

Lot of people seem to think it's stodgy to ask a film that drapes itself in the aesthetics of radical politics to have something meaningful to say about those politics beyond "the children are the future"??

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Sheldon Costa @sheldoncosta.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

Actually think Richard Brody articulated the "politically muddled" elements of OBAA in his (positive) review pretty well:

For all the extraordinary richness of the sensory and dramatic texture of “One Battle After Another,” there’s no submerged iceberg of experience or knowledge below its majestic peak. Regardless of any ethical or historical import to the prominence of political debate and analysis in such movies as “La Chinoise” and “Zabriskie Point,” what matters is their documentary connection with experience. Both films were made contemporaneously with political action of the sorts they dramatize, and both films make documentary-like contact with real-life activists. They show the practical labor of revolution, whereas Anderson’s film emphasizes its emotional labor. In so doing, he makes a movie that’s both brilliant and hollow, an old-fashioned movie about the world of today (and maybe tomorrow), a vision of hopeful possibilities that remains unmoored from realities. Yet his film, even in its omissions, brims with strategic ingenuity and daring, cinematic and political—to fight other films’ empty fantasies with substantial ones, to battle other advocates’ pernicious myths with virtuous ones.

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Reposted by Sheldon Costa

Vajra Chandrasekera @vajra.me · 14/03/2026

Altman's "intelligence as a metered service" captures the AI moment well—it's an attempt at the formal subsumption of ever-finer microrealms of human labour embedded within capitalist production. You already have an underpaid email job but what if you also had to pay the machine to write your emails

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Sheldon Costa @sheldoncosta.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

Once I heard the people behind Dragon Quest Builders 2 were involved I knew this game would be dangerous.

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Reposted by Sheldon Costa

Bob @definitelyjustbob.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

Hey, if you're feeling like life has passed you by and you're too old to start something new, remember that John Brown was 55 before he killed his first pro-slavery settler in the Kansas Territory. It's never too late to follow your dreams.

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Sheldon Costa @sheldoncosta.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

Sitting down to write, the thing I supposedly love and have dedicated my life to:

A mottled, pale E.T laying face down in a river, presumably on the edge of death

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Sheldon Costa @sheldoncosta.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

Thank you!! I'm so glad you're enjoying it. 😊

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Reposted by Sheldon Costa

Solaris Books @solarisbooks.bsky.social · 25/12/2025

We asked @shaykauwe.bsky.social for her best book of '25, the book she'd love for Xmas & her anticipated read of '26. Read the full article: geni.us/SolarisBks2025 to find out why she picked @sgj.bsky.social @kealakendall.bsky.social & @sheldoncosta.bsky.social! geni.us/killingspell

The author and their books:
Shay Kauwe author of THE KILLING SPELL

The book they'd love for Christmas
THE GREAT WORK

Their favourite reads of 2025
THE BUFFALO HUNTER HUNTER by Stephen Graham Jones

Their anticipated read of 2026
THAT WHICH FEEDS US.

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Sheldon Costa @sheldoncosta.bsky.social · 17/01/2026

Wow adding this to my list immediately

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Sheldon Costa @sheldoncosta.bsky.social · 13/12/2025

(I've been trying to write for an hour.)

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Sheldon Costa @sheldoncosta.bsky.social · 13/12/2025

"We weren't meant to live like this." No. Every day I sit down and absorb my computer's beatific glow and immeditately know I am exactly where I need to be. My little brain wallows in infinite dopamine like a pig in its beloved mud. I am at peace.

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Sheldon Costa @sheldoncosta.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

Always been a huge fan of your emphasis on enjoying the process of writing rather than the outcomes of publishing (not that I've always been able to do that myself) so that's tremendously flattering to hear!

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Reposted by Sheldon Costa

Matt Bell @mdbell79.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

I loved this @sheldoncosta.bsky.social essay on "failure", and am excited for his novel The Great Work. "I felt an odd sort of ambivalence about whether the book would be published. Obviously I was nervous, but a rejection in my inbox no longer sent me spiraling. I’d done all I could, after all."

lithub.com

One Man’s Trash: Reflections on a Failed Novel

I started trash bashing three weeks after it became clear to me that my first novel was not going to sell. I’d tried to be honest with myself, from the moment the manuscript went out on submission,…

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Sheldon Costa @sheldoncosta.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

Thank you Matt!! I'm so happy to hear this resonated with you.

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Sheldon Costa @sheldoncosta.bsky.social · 12/11/2025

Thank you! So glad you enjoyed it.

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