iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Went to the woods in search of an old castle ruin (did not find it), but saw some Bronze Age petroglyphs instead!

A river winding between trees and reeds. Blue patches of sky between fluffy clouds; a forest on the far side of the river. No sign of castle ruins, though they ought to be around here somewhere. May not be much left!

The river view in the other direction (west-ish, I think). Sunlight glimmers in the tree-framed dark water.

Sun crosses or wheel crosses carved into a flat rock, coloured in with red paint.

More petroglyphs, chariots and sun crosses in the main, carved into a flat rock in a forest in southern Sweden. Autumn leaves are scattered about.

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

A Murderer on the Moon is out today! On claustrophobic Phobos, Detective Grace Telluride has to tangle with a dead body in a refugee camp, warfare in chemical swamps, dangerous gravity hijinks, and much, much more! www.amazon.com/dp/B0HBKHQYQM mybook.to/amotm

As moons went, Phobos wasn't much to look at. Small, lumpy, about as attractive as an unpeeled potato, it possessed neither the mystique nor the graceful phases of Luna. Twice a day it crossed the Martian sky, quickly making its way from west to east without fuss or fanfare. It cast no light to speak of, set no mood, and while mankind had once looked up at the sky and dreamed of walking on Luna, Grace couldn't imagine anyone had ever dreamt of Phobos.
She certainly hadn't, although when she got the call at 3:40 in the morning – There's been a murder on the moon – she had briefly wondered two things. The first: Which moon? The second: Am I still asleep? Bumping her knee on the bedside table in her haste to get dressed had confirmed that, nope, not a dream; Chief Thebes really was yelling at her to get a move on because the shuttle to Phobos was leaving in thirty.
Shuttle. The word sounded too casual, too easy, as though travelling through the vacuum of space was like hopping on the Kirkclair Central Line, and maybe it was that easy for people who commuted off-world regularly, but Grace had only ever been on a shuttle a few times before, and she'd feel more comfortable about the prospect if everyone else treated it like the big deal it was. Instead, she was stuck with a pilot who cracked jokes over the comms – and a windowless seat.
In one of the psychology classes she'd taken back at the academy, the professor had talked about space and windows, specifically how windows were inevitably a structural weakness, yet even Primaterre warships had them. Containment affected the human psyche negatively. To see the sky, the horizon, the stars, was as vital to the mind as breathing to the body, and to be able to trust one's own eyes mattered even more. Hackable, disruptable viewscreens didn't cut it; only real windows would do.
Grace realised just how true that was when the pilot announced they'd be landing in five. To have travelled through space, from one celestial body to a…

One of the amazing maps from the book, illustrated by mr.OH!

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

A Murderer on the Moon is out on August 11th! Preorders are live now: mybook.to/amotm AMotM is set during Lonely Castles, so my recommended reading order is: Iron Truth -> Lonely Castles -> A Killer in Kirkclair -> A Murderer on the Moon... ...or bravely jump right into this new Primaterre Tale!

A mock-up of A Murderer on the Moon in various formats. Cover art by the fantastic mr.OH!, who has done all my covers since Iron Truth, as well as all interior illustrations and maps. He worked hard on this one - it has TWO maps!

The back cover for A Murderer on the Moon, featuring Detective Grace Telluride. The blurb reads: Phobos. God of fear. Moon of Mars. Crucible of purity.

The Primaterre. Dogmatic, xenophobic, governed by paranoia, yet thousands flock to its borders seeking respite, asylum, new lives.
Phobos is the proving ground, the path to citizenship a brutal gauntlet of the mind. Few are found worthy.
The refugee camp is a hotbed of frustration, grudges and bad blood. When the first successful applicant in years is murdered, Camp Asaph teeters on the brink of calamity as enemies old and new clash.

Detectives Telluride and Bloom must untangle a plot with as many moving parts as Phobos itself, and apprehend A MURDERER ON THE MOON.

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

A Murderer on the Moon, the second Detective Grace Telluride mystery and the fourth Primaterre Tale, is now available for preorder on Amazon! Read all about it on my Patreon: www.patreon.com/tholin/posts... Or check out the preorder here: www.amazon.com/dp/B0HBKHQYQM

A mock-up of A Murderer on the Moon in paperback and ebook formats, against a Primaterre sun backdrop. Illustrations by mr.OH!, who's done all my book covers and interiors since Iron Truth!

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

About fifty percent through my final read-through of AMotM and taking a break to see what it looks like on my Primaterre shelf. Yes, it's another big one!

The Primaterre/Primaterre Tales series in paperback on a bookshelf. Iron Truth, Lonely Castles, Chaos Terrain, Summer Empress, Queen of the Corpsepickers, A Killer in Kirkclair, Brighwork and the upcoming A Murderer on the Moon!

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

The final read-through begins. A Murderer on the Moon will be ready for publication soon, and I am super excited! I really love this book (I hope you will, too! :)

Me, holding the paperback proof copy of my WIP, A Murderer on the Moon.

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

Happy birthday, Joy Somerset! More on my Patreon: www.patreon.com/tholin

A photo of a page in Iron Truth, listing the details of SOMERSET, Joy Catherine, including her date of birth (1543/05/11).

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

Went to see some dinosaurs, then came home to find my proof copy of A Murderer on the Moon in the mailbox. Very happy to get to work on the final edits (it's actually so much fun)!

A photo of an animatronic brachiosaurus.

A photo of the proof copy of A Murderer on the Moon. The text reads S.A. Tholin, A Murderer on the Moon, A Telluride Mystery. The cover features a Primaterre sun combined with the symbol for Phobos against a grey backdrop, a river of yellow liquid, and some mysterious growth-like tendrils.

There is also a bonus black cat in the photo, sitting behind the book with a sort of exasperated look on his face (he wants Dreamies, he has had Dreamies, do not feel sorry for him).

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

A sneak peek at the back cover and blurb for A Murderer on the Moon! Detective Grace Telluride returns to solve a murder on Phobos. For the full cover reveal, check out my Patreon: www.patreon.com/tholin

Phobos. God of fear, moon of Mars, crucible of purity. The Primaterre. Dogmatic, xenophobic, governed by paranoia, yet thousands flock to its borders seeking respite, asylum and new lives.

Phobos is the proving ground, the path to citizenship a brutal gauntlet of the mind. Few are found worthy.

The refugee camp is a hotbed of frustration, grudges and bad blood. When the first successful applicant in years is murdered, Camp Asaph teeters on the brink of calamity as enemies old and new clash.

Detectives Telluride and Bloom must entangle a plot with as many moving parts as Phobos itself, and apprehend a murderer on the moon.

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

Lonely Castles is 0.99 in the amazing Narratess sale! On Amazon UK/US, you can also pick up Iron Truth for 0.99 this weekend. If you like SFF with intense action, love and loyalty above all, and defiance against overwhelming odds... it's a good weekend to start the Primaterre series! :)

Alarms blared through the corridors. Breaches to the east and the west. The lab's main entrance still held, but one turret hung limp and useless, black smoke rising from its fried power cell. The other turret, controlled by Lucklaw, fired relentlessly. Rounds smacked into the concrete residential block and powered through plate glass, but the RebEarthers had slipped out of range, returning fire from a safe distance. Sooner or later, the turret would join its twin in electronic death.
Kiruna and Daneborg haunted the upper stories of the building, observing six RebEarthers climb the fire escape. The first one died before the second made it to the last rung, but Daneborg made his death a silent one, dragging the man away by the combat knife shoved into his jaw. Kiruna stayed back, allowing the other RebEarthers to enter and discover the trail of blood. She let them start tracking it, and as the tension grew enough for the men to start snapping at each other, she made her move. Two more down, and the remaining three ran blindly down the dark corridors. Daneborg quietly waited for them to call in their predicament, and then he and Kiruna flanked and ended the chase. Elegant, and brutal enough that Cassimer estimated that it'd take RebEarth at least ten minutes before they tried that entry point again. Ghosts, the last one had gurgled over his comms, ghosts on the fifth floor.

(The sort of thing you might expect from Lonely Castles!)

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

From Queen of the Corpsepickers - the first page, in fact! #WIPSnips

MIST

Before the planet had gone to hell, someone had put up an archway over the short road between the colony and its six-landing-pad sorry excuse for a spaceport. No doubt the rusting, broken letters on the arch had once spelled out something stupid like WELCOME, which Mist was sure had been a lie even back then. Places like this never welcomed anybody whose granddaddies hadn't worked the mines.

Or maybe the arch had just stated the name of the colony. She supposed it must've had a name. Everything did, from particles to rocks to slum rat babbies. Sometimes the names rang true straight away, and sometimes they had to be changed because the original namer had been a dumb fuck who'd completely misjudged the nature of the thing. Other times, the thing renamed itself.

This planet had. Humans descended on it like a god-damned infestation, their hab-hovels a rash on its terrain, and they'd fucked with the very core of its being. More gravity, they'd said. More oxygen, more atmosphere, more plants – way less volcanic activity, thanks very much – and for a few years, the humans had their way. But this planet's spirit was a tricky old bastard, and as much as it was still an enemy of the Mother Spirit, Mist could respect that. It had let the humans believe that it was a good, well-behaved rock. It had let them breathe and build and mine, and then it had screwed them over but good.

"They say a thousand people died right here," she said to Waters. "Wanted to get to the spaceport, didn't they, like the core spirit couldn't sense that. They say the ground quaked before it opened up to swallow the colonists whole, but I reckon that it was just the spirit screaming its true name for all to hear."

The cover for Queen of the Corpsepickers. It's red with hypnotic black circles and a crowned black phoenix snatching the second 'e' out of Queen.

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

After years of Amazon exclusivity, Iron Truth (in paperback) is now available to order from retailers like Waterstones, B&N, AdLibris, bol, Bookshop, and many, many more. You can even ask your library to order it! My other books will be available later this year, as soon as I can make it happen. :)

The Primaterre and Primaterre Tales paperbacks, laid out on a wooden floor. The titles are: Iron Truth, Lonely Castles, Chaos Terrain, Summer Empress, Queen of the Corpsepickers, A Killer in Kirkclair, and Brightwork.

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

Working on something new... about halfway through the first draft!

Grace pressed send on the message it had taken her forty-five minutes to compose and immediately lost all confidence. What was she thinking? Major Joy Somerset – the Earthborn – wasn't likely to respond to an information request regarding some old cold case. In fact, she wasn't likely ever to receive the message. A Tower administrator would filter any messages sent to her and pass relevant ones on, and as a rule, Tower never found anything Grace had to say relevant.

Even if, against all odds, Major Somerset read the request, she would hit delete so fast–

A reply appeared on her HUD.

"Dear Detective Telluride,

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

My upcoming novel will have not one, but two maps. I just got to see this sketch of one of them and it looks so good already!

A quick sketch of a Primaterre forward operating base and its surroundings. There's a marsh, jungle, an abandoned power station, and plenty of ruins.

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 26/12/2025

It's time for the r/Fantasy Charity MegaSale! megasale.yrliu.com Iron Truth is .99 worldwide, along with 600+ other books. I grabbed Oksy, Come Home by @fantasticphil.bsky.social - and highly recommend the books by @akmbeach.bsky.social, @helynalc.bsky.social, and @stevewestenra.bsky.social!

A promo graphic for the 2025 Holiday Megasale. More than 300 authors, over 650 books free or .99. To benefit the Mary Cariola Center.

A black cat on an orange rug, and a paperback of Iron Truth. Shamelessly using my cat to promo my book. That works, right? :)

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

Today is the first day in nearly two years that I've not worked on this novel - it's finally finished! ...well, okay, there's one more edit pass to go once I have a proof copy, but for now the next Grace Telluride book is in the hands of my cover artist/typesetter. It's pretty big!

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 22/11/2025

Moon Murder Draft 2 progress update: about halfway there. I'm having a lot of fun with it! My characters... maybe not so much, haha* *and things are about to get worse. Brace for the Moment of Clarity!

A screenshot from Word. The text reads: "The universe is folding in on itself, Grace. Everything is coming undone." It's page 520/982, 265,724 words in total (yes it's a big book)

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 05/10/2025

#SFFChat Day 4 - Snippet: Haunting. A snippet from Summer Empress. A villainess makes her spooky entrance!

The creature Haakon had called his moon goddess descended into the oubliette on steps of whirling glass. Veils covered her masked face, the silks shifting over pearlescent metal. She looked like a dead thing, some poet's sweetheart risen from her grave to haunt opium dreams.

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 16/09/2025

First draft finished! Murder, mystery, mayhem - and one rather important Moment - in an asylum seeker camp on Phobos. Now onto the edits...

A printed out page with so many notes, just... SO MANY NOTES, haha.

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

Captain Flora Lark and the cataphract Sigrid Rokland, exploring an underwater cave system on a planet far more alien than they expected.

At the edge of a bridge that had no railings, for it had been designed for the coiling of sinewy bodies, Lark stared down into the source of the pale light. Her mind recoiled, but her feet stepped forward, because the abyss called to her, sang with the voice of water and pulled with the force of something greater still.
Rokland pulled her back from the edge. In the vastness of the city, even the cataphract appeared small. Behind them lay the tunnel, and how comforting those oppressive walls suddenly seemed; how lovely it would be to walk on a red carpet and hear their footfall bounce off old and crumbling, but so very normal, concrete. Ahead, the bridge cut an inky line through the twilight band between the cave dark and the light rising from the deep. The noise, the light, the terror – this was nothing like the cave where a young Lark had once lay dying, but she felt like that girl again. Her hand found Rokland's, their fingers interlacing tightly, and together they approached the edge again. It did not matter how small they were; forward was the only way.

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 07/09/2025

A snippet from my WIP (which is 99% complete! Yay!). Still a first draft in pretty rough shape, but as a little teaser, here's a snippet in which our characters are having a bad time in the Big Wet. #WIPSnips

The fog turned from white to a diffuse orange, lit by enemy encampments along the shore. They skirted them as quietly as they could in their stolen boat, until they were as close to the towermen as it could take them. Back at Exning, the Galateans had drones in the air, spitting missiles like Catherine wheel fireworks. Jackson was grateful for the distraction. Better to focus on the action back there than the mud sucking at his greaves and the splashing, sighing, croaking, bubbling noises of the Big Wet.
The ground turned solid under their feet. The fog released its grasp on them, fading to a wispy mist. A dilapidated industrial area to the west, flatlands to the east, the mountain-peak skyline of the city at the horizon, and everywhere the lights of enemies glowed bright. Flashlights, searchlights, headlights, drone lights; the rumble of engines, the footfall of boots, the barking of dogs; there was nowhere to hide, not even for the towermen who came running across the industrial area, their prismatic armour's camouflage flashing off and on. They dragged two crates and one of their own – Haukes, minus one leg – across cracked concrete and collapsed chain-link fences, and hot on their heels a dozen infantry fighting vehicles came bursting through factory walls, a wolf pack of Galatean soldiers loping alongside them.
Jackson and Zimmi laid down covering fire, and Jackson had forgotten that sometimes it could be glorious like this, APF-redirected enemy fire bending around him as though he could will himself invincible, his own bullets finding their targets every time as his awareness flowed through the air with them, battling hostile countermeasures.
Then he heard the buzzing. Mosquitoes, he thought, but the buzzing grew louder, and with it a strange feeling.

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 07/09/2025

#SciFiSeptember Day 7: At a glance, I think people sometimes assume Iron Truth is all grimdark scifi and military action. It is, but it's also... this, haha. :)

$Given the choice of an elevator shaft and a perfectly good ladder; the cold, dark, fall-to-your-deathy option wasn't the one Joy would've picked. The flare looked distant enough to be a star and the drop long enough that she'd have time to think about her landing if she fell. She'd thought of it plenty already, a horror-reel of fracturing bone and rupturing skin playing in her mind. "I'm just saying," she complained to Hopewell, "Cato's one silver lining was the lack of heights. Oh sure, it's got tunnels and spiders and more lunatics than you could swing a cat at, but at least I rarely had to worry about plummeting to my death." "Cheer up," said Hopewell and tightened the straps of a harness around her waist. "One way or another, it'll all be over soon."$

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

My two year old draws some pretty sweet little guys

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

Only between Cascades - massive space stations that fold ships&comms between solar systems. If the Cascade is well-maintained, it's safe, but many are left to rot for budget reasons... Fold failure isn't pretty. Ships & crews come out mangled, not alive, not dead, captured in a moment for eternity.

Comms specialist Aubrey Lucklaw experiencing what it's like to execute folds from inside the core chamber of a Cascade. It's pretty spooky in there!

The text reads: "When the ships fold, it's like the entire universe is flattened - distance, time, all gone - and I'm thinking that those things exist for a reason. That they are shields, protecting us from what's out there. Keeping us safe until we..." He paused. "I don't know how to explain it, but when the ships fold, I can glimpse on the horizon a glittering thing. A promise. Something I can reach one day if I try hard enough. If I do my best."
"It's just the fold sickness, kid. Best trip in the galaxy, I hear. Enjoy it while you can; supposedly the mind builds up a tolerance real quick."

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

#SciFiSeptember Day 3: The Phrixus! The core of the ship is one giant coilgun, designed to fire a single projectile into an ocean planet that the ship will then slide onto, transforming into an underwater city... ...the idea came to its captain in a fever dream, so yeah, it's pretty weird! (1/2)

An illustration of the Phrixus, deployed as an underwater city called Thalassocracy. There are three city domes - Archon, Okeanos and Xenia.

A schematic of hab-dome Xenia, showing apartments, submarine pens, and offices.

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

Well now you're just being rude, Word

A screenshot of Word's spelling and grammar checker suggesting the sentence "Bloom wasn't petty." be changed to "Bloom wasn't pretty."

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 24/08/2025

The Narratess Sale is here! Get Iron Truth for 0.99! What's Iron Truth about? See the excerpt below for a taste, then get books by @akmbeach.bsky.social, @stevewestenra.bsky.social, @timhardieauthor.bsky.social, @tessahastjarjanto.com, @cjdaleywrites.bsky.social + hundreds more at indiebook.sale!

A promotional image. The text reads INDIE BOOK SALE indiebooksale.com FANTASY, SCI FI & HORROR August 23 - 25. The backdrop is made up of several book cover thumbnails.

They abandoned the RebEarth vehicle fifteen kilometres from the Ever Onward. In the bone-white mist of twilight, they trekked through a fulgurite forest so fresh that steam rose from the opalescent crust. The soldiers' heavy footsteps shook viscous droplets of molten glass from branches. Spider corpses hung suspended inside knotted trunks, curled or caught mid-skitter.
The air was so charged with electricity that it was like breathing static. The storm had passed, but Cato's weather was so capricious there were no guarantees it wouldn't return. Soon it would be dark, and Joy knew well what this part of the planet was like after nightfall. The hissing of sand disturbed by hundreds of skittering spiders; the winds, howling through the mountains as though the jagged peaks had cut them deep. Cato was wilder here than near the farm and Nexus, desolate and untouched.

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

Really happy to take part in this year's Epic Sale of Beloved SFF with Iron Truth, and even happier for the chance to recommend the wonderful Lady Vago's Malediction by A.K.M. Beach! Tons of great books on sale, right now, right here: talesfromthecircle.com/epicsale2025...

Book cover thumbnails overlaid with the text EPIC SALE OF BELOVED SFF 2025. AUG 7TH-11TH. OVER 100 RECOMMENDED BOOKS ON SALE. FREE OR $0.99. Front and centre is the cover for Iron Truth, by S.A. Tholin, featuring a sun ray adorned stylised symbol for Earth.

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 30/06/2025

Offering a tiny distraction from the bleak with a photo of my new living room bookcase. TETK is looking real good up there next to the Stephen Kings!

A white bookcase displaying The Erstwhile Tyler Kyle and The Dark Tower series.

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

Went to Wanås sculpture park today to check out Puruma by Atang Tshikare. I loved it so much - what a magnificent beast!

A photo of Puruma, a golden-yellow, twin-tailed lion with a closed flower bud for a head. It is twice the size of a real lion, perched on an island of branches in a forest pond.

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

me | my books back row: military SF/horror front row: tales of pirate valkyries, a Martian cold case detective, and space submariners links to books and blurbs: satholin.com/books

Sofie (S.A. Tholin) is posing with her SPSFC raygun trophy in front of several bookcases of graphic novels, and a framed poster of the cover of Summer Empress.

The Primaterre/Primaterre Tales series in paperback format, posed in front of the SPSFC trophy and a Summer Empress poster. The books are Iron Truth, Lonely Castles, Chaos Terrain, Summer Empress, and in the Primaterre Tales series, Queen of the Corpsepickers, A Killer in Kirkclair, and Brightwork.

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 25/05/2025

Very excited to discover one of my books has a page on doesthedogdie.com! Feels like an achievement! (There are three dogs in my books: the military canines Runner Bean and Butcher, and Lionel, an overexcitable border collie - and despite plenty of horror and mayhem, they all make it out alive :)

Black bulkhead concertinaed in waves, blown inwards by internal chain explosions travelling through the station's ducts. Gravity failed, and suddenly everything was falling, tumbling, as vents spat spherical orbs of fire. The flames floated like little suns in the thrashing corridor. One burnt the cuirass of a towerman and ate through his hands as he tried to stop it.
The final escape pod rose into the air as the hull peeled away. An external emergency force field shimmered blue, keeping the oxygen in, but it flickered and sparked.
Hopewell made it there first, kicking her way up the walls to slam her fist against the manual release. The pod's airlock hissed open, and she climbed inside, holding out a hand to Rearcross. The three remaining towermen followed, and then Athens and Lucklaw, but Aurillac was nowhere to be seen, and somewhere, Runner Bean was barking.

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

A snippet from my current WIP (first draft, still very rough!), in which Detective Protector Bloom goes slightly rogue on a foreign planet which may or may not be the home of eldritch horrors. #WIPSnips #WriteSky

Finbarr's Frozen Fish was nothing but a metallic shell, with walls that sang with cold and a ceiling from which a forest of icicles grew around hundreds of high-tensile wires. A natural fissure in the ground had been expanded into a meticulous rectangle that took up most of the floor space, leaving narrow metal-tiled ledges on all four sides. The sound of the ocean below was like a reverberation in the air, a white noise that trembled in Bloom's teeth and skin and bones. He welcomed it in, the dread and the awe, the sheer power of nature that was not of Earth but shared Earth's might, and listened to its rhythm, so that his ears would more easily pick out what did not belong. The faint buzzing of the lightstrip above the door was an annoying gnat-like intrusion; the creak of metal hinted at construction inside the fissure, and there, was that a footstep? Furtive, alerted.
"These places are usually lit up brighter than a pleasure avenue," Perzik murmured behind him. "Lights down in the water, too, beaming up, so bright looking at the ceiling will blind you as surely as staring into twin suns. For health and safety reasons, they say, and I suppose not wanting to get eaten by alien sea monsters does fall under that umbrella."
"There's no evidence there were ever any sea monsters here."
"And nobody wants to become the evidence that oops, turns out there are."

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

In other news, I am about 90% finished with the first draft of the second Telluride novel (see the sneak peek snippet below :) and I also started a fun Joy side project... (...it's supposed to be a short story, but then again, so was Iron Truth, so we'll see where it takes me!)

The ground was thin in the eastern sector of Paloma Zenith, and the unseen ocean underneath rose high enough to lap at its underside. Ancient seismic activity had left crinkles and fissures in the rock. A chill escaped those fissures, as bitter as a Kirkclair winter gale, and a smell of salt and sulphur and ambergris.
Perzik pressed a corner of his cloak to his face. "Smells like something died down there; something as large as a city block. That's what they hope for, you know, the prospectors of Paloma Nadir."
"More fossils?" Bloom sidled between the corrugated walls of two warehouses. The predator was about five hundred meters ahead and fifty to the west, just about to step out of view of a security camera to which Bloom had connected his visual.
"A body. They're shit-scared of finding something living, or something living finding them. Something dead, though, something huge and old and fully preserved by the cold water, that's the gold they hope to strike."

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

If you liked Iron Truth but thought it didn't have enough submarines, or if SF/horror in an abyssal alien ocean is your cup of tea, BRIGHTWORK is part of the Narratess Indie Book Sale this weekend, along with hundreds of other great books!

Promo image for Brightwork. The text reads: The X-Files meets The Abyss - in space! BRIGHTWORK, a standalone novel in the Primaterre universe.

Promo image for the Indie Booksale. Fantasy, Sci Fi and Horror, April 5-7. The image features purple skulls, a planet and a dragon, along with book cover thumbnails of dozens of participating books.

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

Brightwork will be in the Narratess Indie Sale this weekend (thanks @endalia.bsky.social !) - and so will Lady Vago's Malediction and The Wings of Ashtaroth, two books that I absolutely adore! Unique, voicey, immersive, they are brilliant book gems. 💛 Highly recommend checking them out!

An Indie Book Sale promo image for Lady Vago's Malediction by A.K.M. Beach. The text reads: In this gothic fantasy horror, a baroness-turned-banshee relives her rise and fall by communing with the ruins of the castle she haunts.

Promo image for The Wings of Ashtaroth by Steve Hugh Westenra. The text reads: A desperate mother enlists a demon to curse the priest responsible for her son's death, & unwittingly dooms the family she sought to protect. Game of Thrones x ancient world.

Promo image for the Indie Book Sale. Fantasy, Sci Fi & Horror, April 5 - 7. The image is a purple dragon, skulls and ringed planet against a blue backdrop, surrounded by dozens of book cover thumbnails.

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

No skating in my current WIP, but Queen of the Corpsepickers has a little bit of everything in it - including interplanetary pond hockey leagues! #WIPSnips

"Pond hockey," she said. "It's played outdoors, right?"
"On any ice-covered pond, lake or ocean. Civilised worlds or uncolonised – I've played on moons, Susannah Soon. I've skated across ice embedded with diamonds and through snow every colour of the rainbow. I was the first to ever score a goal on Tuonela's planetoid twin. There's a plaque with my name on it."
"It sounds beautiful."
"It is."
"This is how you skate, yeah?" She bent her knees into a deliberately terrible hockey stance. "And you hold the stick like this?"
With a condescending sigh, he closed the cabinet he was searching. "Like this," he said, and she had to admit, for a middle-aged guy who hadn't played in decades, he looked like he was ready to smash some teeth in. But he definitely leaned harder on his right leg than on his left, and when he straightened his left knee, he groaned.
"Tell me," she said. "What's it like to play?"
"The sky is a sea of stars and camera drones. Sprayed lines of chemiluminescent artificial snow delineate the field of play, shining so brightly that the light reflects on the underbellies of the bleacher ships. Crowds gather on the open-top decks, and you can hear their roar over the ship engines, can hear them chanting your name over the polar winds. The ice is deep-scanned before the game, and you've analysed the thickness, charted the currents sweeping below. You know which areas to avoid – but still, nature is unpredictable, and once the game starts, you hardly care anyway, so focused on winning that you'll chase that puck over leaf-thin black ice. Sometimes you lose team mates – not often, the rescue divers are very good, but it does happen, and somehow it just makes you want to go back out there. For them, you'll tell yourself, but really, it's for you. I once said to Zotic, it's funny how my life used to be about staying out of the water, but these days it's all about deep diving. You never wanted the ice, he said; it was always the deep that drew you."

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

Finally completed my collection of author copies! I love how we've been getting more adventurous with the back covers.

Paperbacks of Iron Truth, Lonely Castles, Chaos Terrain, Summer Empress, A Killer in Kirkclair and Brightwork. The covers feature variations of the Primaterre sun (the symbol for Earth, adorned with sun rays), except Queen of the Corpsepickers, which has a phoenix instead of the sun.

The back covers of the Primaterre/Primaterre Tales novels. Iron Truth: a design of blue triangles. Lonely Castles: red blood spatter. Chaos Terrain: green blocks. Summer Empress: an orange triangle, ornate black and white vines. Queen of the Corpsepickers: a stylised portrait of a woman, surrounded by black circles. A Killer in Kirkclair: a woman against the blood-spattered backdrop of a wireframe city, all in a tourmaline gradient. Brightwork: the face of a female diver, framed by stylised coral, seaweed and tentacles.

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 15/03/2025

This weekend I'll be reading Cheer the Sick by @verityholloway.bsky.social ! I've been coveting this book for ages, really happy to finally have got my hands on a copy! 📚💙 #booksky

A copy of the book Cheer the Sick by Verity Holloway, placed on a bookshelf filled with graphic novels.

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

Quote with your cover, first page and link! 📚💙 Cutthroat deep space skulduggery, starring the infiltrator, saboteur and all-round terrible person Vanessa 'Mist' Northrup on her quest to single-handedly hijack a spaceship. My book link: www.amazon.com/gp/product/B...

Book cover for Queen of the Corpsepickers by S.A. Tholin. A black phoenix against a backdrop of black circles and two red triangles. The phoenix is wearing a crown, and is clutching the second E in QUEEN in its talons.

MIST
Before the planet had gone to hell, somebody had put up an archway along the short road between the colony and its six-landing-pad sorry excuse for a spaceport. No doubt the rusting, broken letters on the arch had spelled out something stupid like WELCOME, which Mist was sure would've been a lie even back then. Places like this never welcomed anybody whose granddaddies hadn't worked the mines.
Or maybe the arch had just stated the name of the colony. She supposed it must've had a name. Everything did, from particles to rocks to slum rat babies. Sometimes the names came out right straight away, and sometimes they had to be changed because the original namer had been a dumb fuck who'd completely misjudged the nature of the thing. Other times, the thing renamed itself.
This planet had. Humans had descended on it like a god-damned infestation, their hab-hovels a rash on its terrain, and they'd tried to fuck with the very core of its being. More gravity, they'd said. More oxygen, more atmosphere, more plants – way less volcanic activity, thanks very much – and for a few years, the humans had got their way. But this planet's spirit was a tricky old bastard, and as much as it was an enemy of the Mother Spirit, Mist could respect that. It had let the humans believe that it was a good, well-behaved rock. It had let them breathe and build and mine, and then it had fucked them over but good.
"They say a thousand people died right here," she said to Waters. "Wanted to get to the spaceport, didn't they, like the core spirit couldn't sense that. They say the ground quaked before it opened up to swallow the colonists whole, but I reckon that was the spirit screaming its true name for all to hear."

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

The Erstwhile Tyler Kyle is one of my all-time favourites for the sheer amount of WTFs and OMGs that it delivers (per page!!) - so imagine my fangirl moment when this parcel arrived in the post! Thanks so much @stevewestenra.bsky.social ! I love it, and can't wait to read your next book!

A parcel wrapped in paper with a skeleton print, against a orange backdrop.

A conspiracy board postcard, including the cover of The Erstwhile Tyler Kyle, a news article and post-its related to the story. One says WHO IS THE STALKER, another says IS BIGFOOT INVOLVED?

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

The longboxes look so cute with their fairy lights that I almost forget what a pain it was to make an international move with tens of thousands of comics... Our library was on the third floor in the old house - not making that mistake again!

Several shelves of comic longboxes, decorated with fairy lights. The shelves are painted green. There are stacks of books and comics on a table, including a stack of Strontium Dog collections.

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 26/12/2024

The Wraithmarked MegaSale is on, with 600+ amazing deals, including some of my absolute favourites - the Banshee's Curse Duology by @akmbeach.bsky.social and The Erstwhile Tyler Kyle by @stevewestenra.bsky.social - and you can pick up Iron Truth for free! Links below!

A promotional graphic for the 2024 Holiday MegaSale to benefit the Mary Cariola Center, advertising more than 300 authors and over 600 books free or $/£0.99

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 26/10/2024

me | my books back row: military SF/horror front row: tales of pirate valkyries, a Martian cold case detective, and a crew of space submariners links to books and blurbs: satholin.wordpress.com/books/

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 20/10/2024

Hey, I'm Sofie, I write science fiction, and to give you an idea of what my kind of sci-fi is like, here's my browser's research tab. Multi-stage amplifiers! Deep-sea fish! Katabatic winds! Blue-ice areas, underwater habitats, armour-piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabots and much, much more.

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