iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY @stephanloy.bsky.social · 10h

#WIPSnips The word is 'pulse.' From 'Nightwatch.' During interrogation of the White One, our neurodivergent Dr. Rodriguez shoves a tablet under the alien's nose. #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #WritingPrompts #AmWriting

A barely noticeable twitch of the White One's hood. What did the doc…? Garrett lifted away from the wall and stepped closer to see the tablet screen.
A world map. Lines crisscrossing the image, intersecting in tiny dots. Some of those dots pulsed red, or yellow. "What's that?" he asked.
"A network of theoretical access points between the Nightmareverse and 54 Zanthwood by 3," the doc said. "Factored and prioritized according to Bleed permeability."
"What?"
"We need a more precise designation for the Nightmareverse."
"They're ley lines," Eglemann translated. "They're tears in spacetime between our universe and the bad place. We've been watching them for about a year. She thinks they've existed for centuries."
"Theoretical," Rodriquez said, tilting her head marginally at her engineer.
"It's all bullshit, Sinfonee. You can't track this stuff. We don't have the physics."

1151

STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY @stephanloy.bsky.social · 19h

Two phrases stand out here. -- progress is and -- the point is doing it.

000

Reposted by STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY

ebisback.bsky.social @ebisback.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Truth 💥

247127263526

STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY @stephanloy.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

I love smelling fresh as an Irish Spring; this male musk thing is for the birds.

000

STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY @stephanloy.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

I've used many word processors to get away from Word and always come back. It's the standard for a reason. Sure, it's bloatware, but it's only bloatware if you spend a bunch of time staring at the aspects of it you'll never use anyway.

110

STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY @stephanloy.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Put them in the WRONG order and you make someone laugh WHILE you order tacos.

030

STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY @stephanloy.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

The operative phrase there is 'till I find a wonky plot.' If you decide where your story is going before you start it, you'll trace lush scenery straight to the climax. You don't have to plot out, or map, or outline, just know the ending before the beginning goes down. Set out an arrow.

030

STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY @stephanloy.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

#WIPSnips The word is 'cousin.' From 'Nightwatch.' The White One describes its home universe. #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #WritingPrompts #AmWriting

Our nonsensical home spread to horizons both pressingly close and far beyond reach. The black land of onyx, the rocks covering its tumbled hills, sharp as razors and as jagged as saw blades. Over the dismal land, the black sky glowered, its weird, cartoon-like stars shedding no light, its suns no heat, and the great, impossibly defined spheres of its planets denied the majesty of their extra-celestial cousins.
A universe of dreams, of dreams from other universes. Potential to the limit of what thought can cleanly grasp.
We were flawed ideas, easily over-written, accidents on a Mobius loop. For whatever can be dreamed can be forgotten, or doubted, or debased.

0151

STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY @stephanloy.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Why don't they just have the AIs write the books they publish. Then they won't have to pay human artists even the piddling advances they currently offer.

010

STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY @stephanloy.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

We cuddled up this afternoon and watched The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. The good one, with Rex Harrison.

000

STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY @stephanloy.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

That's exactly right! They don't tell you that, do they?🙂

000

STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY @stephanloy.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

#WIPSnips The word is 'fuzzy.' From 'Nightwatch.' Hostetter, a 19th century cowboy in the modern world, camps with his crew in the Great Australian Desert. #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #WritingPrompts #AmWriting

They waited for the pot to gurgle. Tully returned to the truck for aluminum camp mugs, spoons, and packets of sugar and dry creamer. He also brought a battery-operated lantern and plopped it down in the middle of the group, right beside the hot plate. The sky drifted toward black and the stars appeared one after the other, like divas gracing a stage. The diva of divas was the Milky Way, which Hostetter hadn't seen in years. Too much light pollution, a point against the modern world. The river of stars angled across the black like a thick painter's stroke of fuzzy grays and blues, its constituent stars marked as millions of diamonds in white, blue, and red. So haunting and vast, that eternity above. How could it be threatened by one angry beast beyond nature's bounds?

0161

STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY @stephanloy.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

That's pretty much the anguished truth of making art.

010

STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY @stephanloy.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Gumby's a Manthing and Pokey's the winged steed of a Valkerie. Or maybe Kid Colt's horse.🙂

110

STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY @stephanloy.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

#WIPSnips The word is 'raid.' From 'Stormbreak.' Mac is in Mexico. The novel pokes at both him and itself. #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #WritingPrompts #AmWriting

Reading hadn't been a thing for Mac. The occasional magazine, or maybe he'd pick up something Marcia kept around the house, but he tended toward television when he had idle time. Of course, the television in Valladolid – also its few small movie houses – were shockingly negligent where English-language material was concerned. Mac had taken to raiding Amazon for trashy action stories.
So he found a bench beneath a sheltering tree, folded open the dog-eared book, re-inserted the pages that tried their best to fall out, and leaned over, elbows on knees, to lose himself for a while in the exploits of forgettable characters.

1182

STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY @stephanloy.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

#WIPSnips The word is 'lizard.' From 'Stormbreak.' Mac, on the flight line, looking for Xena. #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #WritingPrompts #AmWriting

Noticing a speck in the distance, Mac drew his sunglasses from his breast pocket and fixed them onto his nose. Squinting, he thought he made out Xena's tall, slim frame, was sure when he caught her ponytail snapping in the wind. What was she up to out there past the flight line? Nothing to keep her company but runway markers, grass, and lizards.
Well, he'd find out, he decided, and launched into long, steady strides to eat up the open ground between the flight center and the distant figure. By the time he drew up beside Xena, his back had grown slick from sweat.
She stood there in the grass, her back to the flight line and its single building, her arms crossed over her breasts and her face dull from … what … listening? Watching? Listening to what, Mac couldn't say. Nothing to hear but muffled airfield noise behind and the whisper of waving grass ahead.

0150

STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY @stephanloy.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

#WIPSnips The word is 'comparison.' From 'Nightwatch.' Hostetter, a cowboy from the 19th century, tries to use a cell phone. #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #WritingPrompts #AmWriting

He took his phone from the inside pocket of his jacket (the jacket lay bunched against the floor of the gun station because it was too damn hot to wear it) and clicked the picture – the icon, they called it, though it had nothing to do with the Holy Family. Anyway, he clicked the icon that would let him text his girl. The modern world wasn't all cantankerous devolution. Its smart machines were plumb nice. Better than the railroad telegraph office, for sure.
Dearest Sinfonee, he poked out with one finger, I miss you something powerful. He misspelled nearly every word, even "I," thanks to the truck's jostling, but the magic spelling checker helped him, more or less.

>>Mr short ain't no good company. I don't think he cares to be. The man don't like his job much. But I reckon I do since I could be back with you real quick. It wou<<

Then a rectangle blocked his finger to tell him he didn't have cell service.
Lord Jesus Christ! He put the phone in his shirt pocket and took back every good comparison to the inconvenient, slow, balky railroad telegraph service. At least they never CLAIMED to be easy.

0161

STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY @stephanloy.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Thanks for bringing this to mind. I'll work my new covers soon and get this on them, each and every one.

010

STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY @stephanloy.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

That's cool. Can anybody steal that idea, or do you have to be a card-carrying member?

110

STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY @stephanloy.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

You might want to be sitting down when you hear this. Are you sitting down? Often, the library lets you take out SEVERAL books at once!

050

STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY @stephanloy.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Looks like a black square to me. Am I missing something?

010

STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY @stephanloy.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Starting off the spooky season official: just finished watching The Thing from Another World.

Movie poster for 'The Thing from another world,' a Howard Hawks production starring James Arness as the monster. Your usual screaming woman and anxious looking men along the edges. Arness dominating the image in sickly green with sickly green lightning cracking off in his background.

000

STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY @stephanloy.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Nope. If you draw or write what other people tell you to draw or write, you'll soon become bored and disillusioned with drawing and writing. Draw what you need to draw. Write what you need to write. Whether that's stuff you need to work on or stuff you want to work on.

000

STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY @stephanloy.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

The all-new cereal box! Thinner, lighter, and smaller than ever before!

010

Reposted by STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY

DD Ward ..."Interim Pirate Queen" @ddwardiswriting.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

www.patreon.com/ddwardiswrit...

14628

STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY @stephanloy.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

#WIPSnips The word is 'rice.' A snip from "B-29," a short novella I'm working toward releasing this next week for spooky season. Bear with the uncouth language. The POV is a US bomber crewman during WWII over Japan. #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #WritingPrompts

Then the rest of it struggled in through the blister frame, a man, no, a giant, dressed in a Jap pilot uniform, a red scarf flapping from its neck. The uniform was torn, like the thing had died when its plane exploded, and through the tatters and burned-away sections I saw rib bones, blood, and red, hanging guts. And the face of the thing, like a skull's face, with hollow eye sockets surrounding staring, hate-filled, lidless eyeballs clicking back and forth, zeroing in on us. Tight skin over the face, blood-red and mummified, like rice paper stretched to the ripping point over sharp cheekbones. A lipless mouth gaped, yellow teeth chattering, the jaws outsized, big enough to swallow a man's head in one bite. Stringy hair fluttered in the wind, singed, some of it weirdly still burning.
Clacking teeth, eyes piercing and needful, and the huge, horrible body forcing itself into the plane, caught up in my gunner's sight and chair.
The wind howled like a forlorn soul.

1120

STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY @stephanloy.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Why do the bots think I love all things Tesla just because I drive one? Have they no idea that I'm ditching the nazi car and heading to a Rivian this next fall at the latest? And the nazi part is the only real reason, so it's the company, not the car.

010

STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY @stephanloy.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Dude! Sell her the books. Go buy more.

000

STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY @stephanloy.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I am getting followed by absolutely crap nonhuman accounts, just one after the other.

010

STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY @stephanloy.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

A delay getting cheap sweetener because of the guy brandishing a gun at Walmart and the police with assault rifles going thru trash cans looking for anything he might have left behind.

000

STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY @stephanloy.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I like Meijer gas stations because they have Meijer donuts, half price after 6pm! And that's the only reason I go there since I drive an electric car.

000

STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY @stephanloy.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

In scary news, because it's October and all, the Supreme Court is back in session.

000

STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY @stephanloy.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

#WIPSnips The word is 'wall.' From 'Stormbreak,' Yesterday was fire; today is drowning rain. Mac aboard Flatbed, Stormbreak's ocean launch platform. #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #WritingPrompts #AmWriting

$Gritting his teeth, his eyes down to squints, he pushed his way out of the chamber and grunted to pull the hatch closed behind him. It only took seconds – practice was both tiresome and a blessing – but by the time Mac dogged the hatch the storm had soaked him to the bone and his muscles ached from exertion. Water hammered the walls of the ship as if God's own power washer were directed against the harbor. Salt water leapt from the sea while fresh rain avalanched out of the sky. Thunder bellowed fractions of seconds behind million-candlepower strobes of lightning. The flashes made Mac see spots. The roars rattled against his guts. And this wasn't even the hurricane, just a sideswipe from the thing eating the Yucatan.$

0182

STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY @stephanloy.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

It sounds flippant, but it's just honest. You just write the story you want to write, the story you're excited about. Then whatever happens happens.

140

STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY @stephanloy.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I reckon it's more lack of opportunity. If you don't have a work that requires that concept, then you don't have that word. You DO have a lot of others. 'Course, there're synonyms, like agreement, or maybe deal, etc.

110

STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY @stephanloy.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I love the idea of a prescriptive time traveler named "Recklessly."

010

STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY @stephanloy.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

#WIPSnips The word is 'contract.' From 'Stormbreak,' I am hereby contracted for TWO contracts. A massive wildfire in Big Bend National Park threatens the woodlands of two nations. #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #WritingPrompts #AmWriting

For five days the Big Bend fire raged. It poured across the scrub and mesquite, the parched land proving to be perfect tinder. The inferno charged up to wide cut lines where all fuel had been removed and the ground had been soaked with retardant. But it refused to be daunted by such meager devices of man, sending red embers like a galaxy of stars over such barriers and beyond. There they alighted on fresh fuel behind the fire crews, torching up in seconds and forcing retreat or death by immolation. In this way, America watched one of its great national parks shrivel and blaze into an ever-expanding pyre.
Stormbreak could do nothing, for America was not a client.
Bin Saeed lobbied the Texas governor for permission to aid in the emergency. He had a base right there in the state, for pity's sake, and could marshal three times the already available manpower and five times the resources within hours. All it took was a contract. A contract Texas, for all its pride, couldn't afford on its own.
He and the governor flew to Washington to campaign for Stormbreak's assistance and the funds to attain it. But the president was both a proud man and a stupid one, asserting that the United States of America could manage its own crises. Even though his administration had eliminated FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Even though he had slashed the budgets of firefighting units in the Departments of both Interior and Forestry, where most of those assets resided outside of state resources. In the meantime, Big Bend National Park burned.

1130