Funnily enough, I DID have this one staged for "white" but forgot! Now I have to do a different one if you do white 🤣
Writer in multiple genres (pen name of Kristine Page), eclectic pagan polytheist, Bowie fan, Aikidoka, cooking and baking, recently took up guitar, she/her
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Funnily enough, I DID have this one staged for "white" but forgot! Now I have to do a different one if you do white 🤣
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Page 16 is pretty early, so all we have are some quick first impressions of our couple. Bayle assesses the unreadable Nora…
Nothing special, just some scenery from Nora’s village.
Nora- She refuses a drink from a cute guy at the pub. It sets up her conflict over romance and her determination to remain single. Bayle- He's preparing tea, reacting to an inconvenience, and whistling happily. Shows you his enjoyment of his role and his optimism.
For you, Charlie, they have little horny growths on the tops of their heads and a spiral look to their black and yellow markings, instead of just straight stripes.
Lol, nah, they're just kinda gross and can get stinky if you dont clean it up. But Bayle grew up in space and has very little contact with wildlife. He's kind of afraid of bugs. He kinda thinks of planets the way we think of Australia.😅
@kiraofthewind.com 😅
I gotta use up my vacation time, and Chicago is relatively cheaper and closer for a fun few days than anywhere else I can think of. (I'm in Milwaukee.) Also, Im craving good dim sum. 😭 I don't know what to do and only have a week left to plan! 😭😭😭😭 I gotta get out of towwwwwwn!
Sadly less exciting than they sound. A breed of wasps brought to Avalon to tackle orchard pests and they kinda got out of control, massing in huge mating swarms. They are generally harmless to humans, but their little dead carcasses kinda get everywhere in early summer and are a mess to clean up.
So irritated. I've been planning a touristy trip to Chicago for the 18th and now Im... WTF will the political situation be there by then? Would tourism a good or bad idea? Will I be able to find parking? Will I be wandering around in a civil war or just overpriced litter pickup? Or nothing?
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#WritingLifeMonthly Thats why Im still querying. I have no head for contracts.
#Septemberthrills Nora, struggling to make jokes- B- Trees... communicate? N- Yeah. This one's talking to me right now. It's saying get me out of this tiny pot before Im strangled. Or B- It just needs time to find its feet. N- It's a business, not a newborn calf.
#SeptemberWorldbuilders We don't do much about summer in my WIP... Strawberries ripen.🤷♀️ Unicorn-bugs swarm.🤷♀️
#SFFChat Positive? I got a short-stpry acceptance this week! My 3rd one ever and the first one that's longer than flash! Its my favorite short-story length piece I've ever done and I've been looking for a home for it for yeeeears!
#SciFiSeptember We don't really see the spaceships ubiquitous to the 5glxy world in this WIP, but two important ships are mentioned: The Grit Monster is the mining ship Bayle mostly grew up on, belonging to his parents. The Angel's Envy is the freighter his sister is doing her internship on.
#FantasyIndiesSeptember Oh man, I had to worldbuild a whole education system for my 5gxy world! How does it affect my chars? Nora was tutored by an expensive teacher, a gift from her father. She hated it. Went to a trad school after. Bayle went to an intense military school as a late student.
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Dear hivemind: Not my region, so any suggestions would be appreciated. What should I read on the violence (especially violence against civilians) during the partition of India. I know next to nothing, so mostly looking on where to start. Thanks!
Nora- By looking to the people she loves and admires. How have they managed? And are they OK? How can she help? Bayle- He's more optimistic, but in a funk, he might turn to his friends or look into historical events and figures for inspiration.
The Hermitage is inspired by actual antique manor-houses and my fascination with how buildings change as time goes by. Avalon is, essentially, Planet Michigan. 🤣 You've got the apple/cherry growing regions and excellent fly-fishing, and then the UP tundra region, plus that one crowded city. 🤷♀️😆🤫
#Septopolis The 5 Galaxies Commonwealth is heavily inspired by Nathan Lowell's Golden Age of the Solar Clipper universe.😅 I've worked hard to make it more than just fic-with-the-serial-numbers-filed-off. It is its own world influenced by my own niche interests... 🧵
even as a gay man, i feel incredibly bisexual about this photo of Anne Hathaway in Twelfth Night
The 5 Galaxies Commonwealth is the only known civilization in the universe, so there's no international relations at all! It's made up of a coalition of companies, unions, and advocacy groups that generally work well(ish) together. There are social and very granular political issues in the plot.
Tin Machine – Baby Universal Tin Machine II (1991) Video of the Day
#QueerPrompts Meanwhile, Bayle is quicker to act. He is more of a hands-on learner. He'll get a few details and run with it.
😅 #QueerPrompts
Nora does not fly by the seat of her pants. She doesn't adapt well to change. She's gotta know all the details. And she will out-detail you like a lawyer...
I become a plantser once I hit about the middle of a piece. Though my latest project, HermitageWIP, I decided to try proper planning. Im still not 100% convinced, but it did make SOME things easier, and the ending came out more or less as planned.
Ooooh! Yall are making me feel shy! I've got more fi in my sci-fi than sci! 😅
Part of the theme in my story is people trying to put down roots. Nora's whole arc is about her fighting to stay in her hometown. And Bayle is determined to establish himself at the Hermitage after years of bouncing around the 5 Galaxies, directionless and practically homeless.
The world needs climate fiction! So we're hosting #CliFiPit, 9/18 on Bsky. Authors can pitch Cli-Fi in any genre from solarpunk, horror, or romance to fantasy, mystery, dystopian, utopian, etc. #authors #editors and #publishers can find more info at solarpunkmagazine.com/cli-fi-pit. Please share!
... to organize all his hard drives.) The Stables 🤣 Really just the old loading dock, but Elroy Berton, 3rd Duke of Southwater, named it The Stables after the outbuildings of his beloved manor, and hung the iron gate from the original property around the entrance. It is defunct now and boarded up.
... you'll find the remnants of historic data centers. Dr. Eiflman is a scholar of twenty-first-century microblogs. He studies what remains of the records of LiveJournal, Twitter, ICQ, MySpace, Tumblr, Facebook, Bluesky, etc. (This isn't delved into at all in the story other than Nora having...
The Library- most of the books are rare! It's one of the largest collections of hard-copy paper books anywhere in the commonwealth! Yes, there are also a fair share of cartridges and old drives. The Archives (attached but not really officially IN the library) is where...
This one’s a little different. Cli-Fi! #CliFiPit
I have no map! Heres a list of some of the rooms in my space-station/manor-house: Berton Parlor Powder Room Dining Room Breakfast Room Library Study Duchess Parlor Constitution Room Enid Suite The Refuge The Stables The Carriage House The Hydroponics Garden Engineering (I could go on! There's 80!)
Lol, (🤫 So does Nora, not that she'll admit it 😅🥵) (You dont see them till the gloves come off and the sleeves get rolled up.😉)
Tiny joys... the way this pair of earrings clack and rattle when I shake my head is a sensory delight.
#SFFChat Day 1- Same cozy sci-fi romance as last month! Day 2- Bayle has transformed from a slouching miner's son and gone through a series or jobs that taught him to stand up straight and be a good host/personal attendant/butler. (But he still wears the tattoos of his youth proudly.)
Yey!❤️❤️❤️
Lol. Considering that if I try to market my own book, there's a 100% chance that I will woefully mishandled the whole thing, it seems worth the risk 🤣😅
I've loved Nathan Lowell's Golden Age of the Solar Clipper series since I stumbled onto it, and I'd call it cozy sci-fi. Not sure I'd put it on the same shelf as Hitchhiker's guide, but it definitely falls under the "cozy" and "sci-fi" labels most of the time.
Reskeeting a toxic opinion is like smelling a fart and forcing everyone else to smell it Please don't make me smell farts, y'all
Whoooo boy! 😍🥰 I tend to end up with these almost every time I write a relationship. Romantic or platonic or kinda both, doesn't matter. Im a sucker for an odd couple, a sucker for a stoic/cynic, and a sucker for a himbo. That's not always the combo, but it happens a lot. Never seen it go wrong.
Thats kinda what I was thinking! My folks are running on and off planets all the time. There had to be a better way than constant rocketships! Solution: Space-Chunnel 🤣🤷♀️
Semi-regular reminder to women: NEVER enter into a dream-exchange with a man. If you are talking about supporting his dreams and, when he achieves them, he'll support yours, STOP! No matter HOW GOOD HIS INTENTIONS, once he gets a taste of your free support, your dreams WILL die. GET YOURS FIRST!
Saaaaame! I have dreamed of smuggling copies into Target and hiding them on the shelves🤣
Like I said, marketing knowledge is in the negative for me. 🤷♀️ My best guess for how to sell my book if I go indie looks a little like this-
On Bluesky, the only way to increase engagement is to engage.
#SeptemberThrills It felt like the station was spinning faster and faster, gravity increasing till he would be crushed and smeared into the velvet carpet. It seems as good a fate as any. Let the Lady of the House toss him out an airlock if it pleased her. He didn't care. 💔
Meanwhile, this is how I discovered I dont use the words "purple" or "violet" in HermitageWIP! Even Lavender doesn't reference the color, just the flower and its fragrance! The Apple Blossom Festival. Most towns use apple blossoms on the dance floor. Brasshill blooms early and uses other flowers.
Nora's worst on-page insult was her ex- "You know you're a hard woman to love." She responded by quietly packing her bags and leaving him when he was at work. Bayle's worst insult on page was that he was irresponsible, a party animal. He was more surprised than hurt by it and defended his actions.
Shoot 😅 I wasn't even thinking about off-world transport! Yeah, we've got a lot of intergalactic freighters and a few passanger cruises. The fanciest luxury passanger liners supply gravity for most of the trip! Most other ships are zero-g.
#ScifiSeptember The most interesting transportation method in my current WIP is the space elevator between St. Gilbert and the Avalonian orbital. Otherwise we've got buses and PT from the cities to the villages. Roads aren't very wide in villages, so most folks have a little all-terrain cart.
#SeptemberWorldbuilders The Apple Blossom Festival is Bayle's first glimpse of Avalon, and is the first major turning point in the story. Life on Avalon is centered around food production, with apples being one of its most renowned exports, so those trees get a lot of love.
Those who know me know how much this image has triggered me. If I ever encountered it IRL, I would climb to the top of the freezers and scream till someone made it go away. Then I'd find the nearest liquor store and drink myself into oblivion, forgetting anything else I was supposed to do that day.
#WritingLifeMonthly Benefit 1-I wouldn't have to pay for anything Benefit 2-Someone who knows what they're doing would be in charge of marketing (Cuz I have less than 0 marketing skills on my own. Negative marketing skills. My rizz is so low, Id have to pay people to look at anything Im selling.)
#Septopolis Big pic? The 5GC Universe was originally dreamed up for an epic alien invasion space-opera horrormance. But now I don't want to destroy it, cuz its a cozy playground for me. Small pic? The Hermitage was built to preserve a grand house as a kind of escape pod from a dying Earth.
David Bowie – Station To Station (Christiane F edit, 1980) Station To Station (1976) Video of the Day
#WIPSnips Just a little domestic scene from early in the book showing part of our butler MC’s morning routine…
In my lore it's a bit nuanced and since miners can be on the poorer side, yeah, that can be a problem. But in the story, we only see some minor assumptions from planet-born against space-born in general. They're assumed to be less reliable in some ways.
Nora's hometown of Brasshill is a major setting and drives her half of the plot. Bayle grew up in Valhalla's Kitchen, an outer region of space. His upbringing on mining ships out there is a core (and proud) part of his identity. It also frames some biases against him.
The butler finds an antique that has special meaning for him…
Im a pantser mostly, so I never know where its going when I start. Yeah, it often surprises me. The first draft of the fantasy ended at chapter 35. I added a good 18 chapters after that in the next draft 😅🤣. Whole new ending! My current WIP has an HEA, which I planned for. It went about to plan.
🥰 Who says you gotta have clean lines and minimalism in your sci-fi spaces!? Let's get filigree'd and baroque about it! 😍
A sea turtle surfacing by a MASSIVE school of rays near Clearwater, Florida a couple days ago. Another post into the BluSky void. Maybe 2 or 3 people will see this one and my time won't have been wasted. I'll keep trying a little longer. #nature #animals #amazing #wildlife #awesome #ocean
Wtf is up with Septembers? Last year, I got my first story acceptance in September, and now I've got my 3rd! A story I've loved and sought a home for for years! Omg omg omg!!!!!!!
Im really not sure where any future works will go, so I dont know what needs fleshing out in particular. Castro Station plays a meaningful role in all the pieces I have planned so far, so it could use some sprucing up. I have no favorites really (though I ❤️ the Hermitage). Maybe I'll be inspired?
#SciFiSeptember HermitageWIP takes place in the 5 Galaxies Commonwealth. Lots of areas and planets are mentioned in this one, but we only visit one planet (really only one village, with brief visits to a city) and two space stations. I hope to visit more in that universe in other works.
#SeptemberWorldbuilders HermitageWIP spans about 20 months overall, main story takes about 12 months. We see the planet of Avalon in the dead of winter, the first flush of spring, the start of summer, the midst of autumn, and again in winter. There is no seasonality on the Hermitge aside from food.
#WritingLifeMonthly Hoping to finish a solid first edit of the HermitageWIP so I can put it down and let it stew during the autumn.
#WIPSnips Nora sees the otherwise cheerful, calm butler, Bayle, at a bad moment.
#FantasyIndiesSeptember Multigenre writer here. Current brain-rot is a romance in a cozy sci-fi setting. The butler catches feelings for his employer’s secretary.🥰
📖 #FantasyIndiesSeptember 📖 All genres welcome! You can use the prompts for WIPs or published books. Feel free to ask the hosts questions! Love, Faeries at Fantasy Indies @lvrussell.bsky.social @chesneyinfalt.bsky.social
#QueerPrompts It’s me again! Multigenre writer! Current dabble is a cozy sci-fi romance set in an antique space-station/manor-house.
Other sites mentioned in HermitageWIP, but not actually visited, include: Planets Excalibur, Pelinor, and Guinevere Stations Xadong, Kingsbridge, and the debtors prison Galaxies of Ambergris and VanGogh Valhalla’s Kitchen (outer region)
Squeeeeeeee! #Septopolis! My WIP is set in the 5 Galaxies Commonwealth. I’ll be yapping about anywhere there, (but worlds from other books may occasionally appear). I hope to write other works in 5GC, but current active sites: The Hermitage (space-station/manor-house) Avalon (planet) Castro Station
I always struggle with the idea of favorites. I really love so many settings I've created. My current WIP has a pretty fun, unique setting, but if I had to pick one part of the Hermitage I love, it would be- 🤔 The rear lobbies. Basically parts of the servant passages that can become escape pods.
#SeptemberWorldbuilders Screw it, I'm gonna start posting my responses in the evening the day before so if anyone wants to reply by QRPing me, they can DAY 1 The Good Thyme Inn books take place over many years, and all seasons. I have many scenes where the season is highly relevant!🥰
Much like "crab", industrial music is constantly re-evolving from first principles basically anywhere where there's a bunch of metal and plastic laying about
I've been looking for perry (pear cider) for ages, finally found some today amd treated myself with dinner. Now Im going to do risky drunk editing. Luckily, it's a Bayle chapter and that boy can do no wrong. Sits: FUCK! It's a Nora chapter! This bitch-ass-ho! *deletes whole chapter* #HermitageWIP
Neither. The equinox will never be the first week of September. It is still summer in the US on Labor day, every year.
It’s already the end of August! This has been a busy month. I’ve read a lot of good books, and as for writing, I made it to 77k in my WIP! Getting toward the end. All are welcome to join the prompts for September! #fantasyindiesaugust hosts: @lvrussell.bsky.social and I @fantasyindies.bsky.social
I didn’t talk about Leviathan from the fantasy at all here, but he’s the only other antag I feel ready to reveal without spoilers in most of my books. Here we see him in his true form-
Thats literally what Bumble does. Theres the dating side (which I was on) and the “BFF” side for finding friends (which we were not on). It was one of those “Sir, this is a Wendy’s” moments.
This reminds me how one time I got called out on Bumble for looking for romance. He accused me of sounding like I “had an agenda” while he was there to “make friends.” Dude… it’s a DATING APP! If you want to make friends, BumbleBFF is literally RIGHT THERE! My agenda, in a dating app, is dating!
#QueerWriters When the scales had fallen from her eyes, watching him canoodle with whoever she was in the swanky cocktail bar, there had been a thin river of relief flowing through the middle of the ocean of devastation and betrayal.
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Announcing Sci-fi September! 30 days, 30 prompts. Each day you answer the question about your created universe, whether it's a book, game, or just in your head. Read other people's responses on the #SciFiSeptember tag and start good conversations. Starts tomorrow! 📚🪐
“Sapphic books don’t sell,” I keep hearing lately. “Bet!” I say. But I need your help to prove them wrong. So please, preorder VILE LADY VILLAINS if you can. And if you can’t, please share this post and yell about all the sapphic books you’re excited about. Here’s some of mine:
I’m so glad you got there in your 30s. Many women don’t get there till their 40s! 🥰
I rarely invest much in antagonists. My characters more often struggle with themselves or their world, circumstances, or even multiple antags. Also, many times antags are hidden (like in my mystery) and we don’t see them till the end. So mostly the hero will be more interesting in my stories.
Nora unexpectedly catches the butler cooking and oops… he’s hot? (And we haven’t even gotten to the tattoos yet 🤣🥵)
🌈 Hi #QueerWriters! #QueerPrompts is your chance to talk about your WIP/story/book, meet other queer authors, and have fun! 🏳️🌈 📚 While focussed on queer fiction, any writers are welcome to use these prompts! Include the tag #QueerPrompts and join at any time and on any days you want. 📖
#AugustWorldbuilders Oof… Im no good for ships and space stations. I’d have to pick a planet. Avalon is very nice, but a little quaint and out of the way. It might be the best choice for me, unless I create a world with a lot more beaches and bigger cities.
#SFFChat Bayle goes to the country dances planet-side with Nora for a fun night out…
#FantasyIndesAugust #AugustThrills Finished second attempt at the rough draft to HermitageWIP! Updated it to shoehorn necessary elements into it, analyzed the overall outline and how it plays to set up a proper first editing run. Real progress!
