This chick already looks like it’s seen too much 💭🦤😂 #birds #humor
Novelist+comms. London, bi, Quaker, parent. Spooky? THE CROOKED MEDIUM's GUIDE TO MURDER out 1st Sept. "A pleasure from start to finish" Also Our Child of the Stars/Our Child of Two Worlds. https://stephencox.co.uk/ https://linktr.ee/stephencoxauthor
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This chick already looks like it’s seen too much 💭🦤😂 #birds #humor
Good morning. The Crooked Medium's Guide to Murder is 9th on #Kindle preorder for #LGBT #crime. The very essence of "go queer, do crimes, then solve crimes." 99p. The eight year long, loving but grumpy, relationship between Mrs Ashton and Braddie is the soul of the book. #WomenSleuths #booksky
But a good grounding in creative writing is so much to do with establishing a base level of emotional safety, keeping things playful, staying curious, then layering techniques & styles & literary traditions on top of that *in service* of that: here are some neat tricks you can bring to your craft
Chatbots don't interpret or have intuition. They come up with plausible answers based on statistics referring to millions of other texts.
I hope the polling showing "even if Starmer pretends to be Farage, Reform voters hate him and don't trust him" is etched in letters of fire inside Number Ten.
Looks at the dot com bubble. Looks at the mortgage bond crisis. Looks at the Tulip Bulb Frenzy and the South Sea Bubble.
The correct amount of weight to put on ChatGPT is definitely zero.
Beta penetrates better than alpha, fact.
Remember when Liz Truss went round local radio expecting an easy ride and got annihilated youtu.be/_q0rlT-5oxE?...
If you read the article, the author has decided to support human art she is willing to make her art available free to humans. I could dance around whether doing so allows her work to be scraped, when it probably already is. But that's her intention
They are backed by some of the worse people in the world, people who despise humanity, have no empathy, and want to destroy the concept of truth or honour. And they reflect their makers perfectly.
afraid of, doesn't trust... food for thought
Wow, this is really impressive. Calling a racist a racist.
There's a spate of people clearly addressing the tropes of their genre and it jerks me out of the whole thing. Though I have written a story where someone realises they're in a high school story and they're not sure they are a teenager in real life...
Labour, what are your values? U-turns on civil liberties, migration, LGBT rights? Harsh attacks on the sick, the poor, the unemployed, a vice-like grip on the party, swallowing big business hype everywhere you look, accepting the framing of every issue presented by the press, hiring vile people?
Coming over here, taking up the low wage jobs as grasping employers take advantage of the cheap labour, ruining the health service, getting in everywhere when they're just not wanted, mangling the Engish language ... When is the government going to do something about the invasion of generative AI?
Please. DM fine if keeping it limited.
oh do share if you can.
Question to Zach Polanski at the leadership announcement: "Q: How can you take on Nigel Farage when your policy on immigration is so different?" Everything wrong with British politics and media summed up so succinctly in a single absolutely unhinged question.
@gaystheword.bsky.social They don't take indie books because they have SO MANY titles already, but they showed you can refuse an author and be absolutely lovely and respectful about it, and they're a national treasure, so go support them.
Pleased to announce that I am in a second bookshop, The Quaker Centre/Cafe at Friends House. (Over the road from Euston Station Lnd. One of the more interesting places to wait if your train is borked.) I couldn't get it into Gay's The Word but they're lovely. bookshop.quaker.org.uk/the-crooked-...
We have signed this joint letter to MPs across the UK calling for robust Parliamentary scrutiny of the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC) forthcoming Code of Practice on Services, Public Functions and Associations. docs.google.com/document/d/1...
To stand against a monster is not to lose one's mind.
ChatGPT persuaded me to open source my SciFi novel Aftter 6 years, Utopia Five gets a CC release annecurrie.blogspot.com/2025/08/the-... Have I lost my mind?
Oh dear. I post a lot.
Sounds minor but isn't. I am writing a new short story, set before the events of The Crooked Medium's Guide to Murder. Have written nothing fiction and edited little since deciding to self-publish. #indieauthor #TheCrookedMedium #Victorian #FirstWorldProblem #historical #books #booksky
So, does anyone here have contact details for people to write to that isn't a generic 'contact us about this program'?
Going to have a look, but also think five hundred people outside Broadcasting House would be a good idea.
OK, I need some help. I write to my MP a lot but the BBC is the next port of call to discuss the amplification of racism in public life. I think writing repeatedly to the BBC, contacting them to complain about an editorial policy that basically regards brown people are dangerous should be
Cuddly Old Lady Millionaires Played By National Treasures Stabby-Stabby Society
Barbed Wire Crumpets, Book One of the Dumpling Café Massacre Society, sold for 26 million pounds after a nine-way bidding war, streaming rights retroactively purchased by Apple TV+ under a non-linear temporal clause so the show has already existed for ten years
I've looked at the guide to doing this and it's like Sanskrit.
Drop an old person you're going to turn into in the future... This is me. This is what I turned into.
Any science feature writers? We pay £350-450, send your pitches today or tomorrow!
I have dipped into the Popular With Friends feed but that doesn't help that much. I wonder if someone more skilled knows how to create a My Mates feed, which I would love to do.
People aren't motivated to do something which means crappier outputs
This link didn't work for me
Supporting local authors has never been more important Bowes Park author Stephen Cox on his new book and the threat to creative industries from AI enfielddispatch.co.uk/?p=21755
The Sofa Two on c. 50% of streaming output. We have a 20 minute rule, and a two episode rule.
Also, it utterly floored the critics who said it would either be unfunny or whitewash Stalin. It contains one scene which on its own damns Stalinism to hell.
There will be no serious condemnation from the GCs. The GCs are, by and large, very happy to work with fascists.
"Firebrand" grew on me, because it did the same thing with Henry VIII and in particular how Catherine Parr managed him. (He left her as regent so the succession was not as chaotic.)
It was astonishingly good and they turned it into gibbering monkeys in a cage
The latest #Queer #Mystery Coming Attractions up this week kingsriverlife.com/08/30/queer-... @mattlmoore.bsky.social @queercrimefic.bsky.social @stephencoxauthor.bsky.social @johncopenhaver.bsky.social @rubyscott.bsky.social @adrianandover.com @cathypegau.bsky.social #books #LGBTQIA #cozymystery 💙📚
well on the one hand it's bad for democracy and social cohesion that Keir Starmer is trying to appeal to the racists by pretending to be one of them, but on the other hand it's not actually working and the racists still don't want to vote for him
"A book I've been looking for all my life. Queer found family all wrapped up in a supernatural murder mystery. Absolute perfection.” The Crooked Medium's Guide to Murder - Out worldwide! #womensleuths #mystery #sapphic #spooky #books #booksky #LGBT+ #Victorian stephencox.co.uk/books/upcomi...
Not quite "every job in your village went when the mine closed". But a disruption for sure. And in the end, he took a careful aim at his foot and announced, "But the one thing I will never do is sell the Gainsborough." Privilege is having a financial buffer.
Time to share my fave story of privilege. Lloyds Names got a lot of money from personally underwriting insurance. When some of this went wrong, many names lost everything. A piece tried to humanise this by some chap who'd had to pull his kids from school, his wife had to work, they'd moved. 1/2
I do think the phrase "correctile" dysfunction is very good.
Mansplaining in Icelandic is hrútskýring. This is a play on útskýring, which means explanation, while hrútur is a ram 🐑
In a decent country, Starmer or the King would have visited an asylum hostel by now.
The Labour playbook is basically do the authoritarian fascism but shaking your head the whole time to show you dont agree with it
I wrote a poem called Orbit Means Orbit. I mean, if we're flying the country to the asteroids, we'd have no external interferance.
Cited nine times in 30 pages?
Thanks so much!
Every museum everywhere. 👇
It certainly shows the strength of feeling that 100,000 people peacefully marched through London cheered by onlookers, campaigning against the lawful seeking of asylum. Oh, no, that was marching for trans rights, a demonstration which most press ignored.
ELon knows nothing about anything. The total turnout from 30 anti-immigrant protests will be about 3 o 4000 - drunken yobs mostly. Left protests are sober and usually less violent. Most are under 100, a handful get as big as 3-400. Often counter-protests are larger./
Obsessed with images of a giant promotional statue of King Kong that accidentally caught fire
I know!
My favourite month.
Details and buying links stephencox.co.uk/books/upcomi...
"A book I've been looking for all my life. Queer found family all wrapped up in a supernatural murder mystery. Absolute perfection.” The Crooked Medium's Guide to Murder - Out worldwide! #womensleuths #mystery #sapphic #spooky #books #booksky #LGBT+ #Victorian stephencox.co.uk/books/upcomi...
Trying to remember a quote I saw once – someone once said that up until a certain point (around the late 1940s/early 50s?) it was actually possible to read every significant piece of science fiction published in a given year. Anyone remember where this came from?
Famously based on assumptions about what happened in pre-industrial societies when, you know what, there's evidence it wasn't what they think
Saw great discussion of when a gentleman of some leisure and thorough mind could be broadly across scientific advance. Probably late C.17th?
I've seen the sentiment expressed in various forms. 'significant' is doing a lot of work here - every story in every pulp by anyone? But the people of the post-war generation from their writings seem to have felt across it. (It being English language) I don't even pretend I aspire to be across it
You can't have a slur against AI, but you can against the people who believe in AI personhood, and that one is "botlickers"
From @rozkaveney.bsky.social on FB, Important stuff..,
Me neither. I've never had mysterious ads about stuff I only talk about appear.
Same IP address? But I never see ads on FB that could be my wife's browsing etc
Morning womble! I'm reading the crooked medium's guide to murder by @stephencoxauthor.bsky.social It's deliciously twisty, with women who won't be told, a young bride in peril, and the delicate art of a con.
Reform support ending the right of one spouse not to incriminate the other. This would apply to white tax evaders too...
I only came in half way through... so sometime better watch from the start.
Is science fiction dead or dying? Some wise words from Ursula K Le Guin to the TLS a decade ago:
Knowing the difference between a purview, a bailiwick, a wheelhouse and a forte isn't my thing i'm good at.
I once had to argue with a Cambridge educated biologist that yes, we should vax boys against rubella to protect unborn babies whose mothers they come into contact with.
SF "The differences from our consensus reality are seen through a scientific paradigm, which does not have to mean exactly current scientific thinking." what I call the metaphysics There are also "content" and "vibe" issues.
Whooping cough, a mass killer of babies, needs everyone vaccinated because young babies are too young to benefit from the vaccine. (See also, why boys should be vaccinated for rubella and girls for mumps, even though they are not the at risk demographic)
Happy 'greatest correction ever' day to all who celebrate
We know what would do a great deal although not immediately cheap- better housing, equal opportunities at work, high health spending on primary care and working with those communities...
Thanks Thomas
No time like the present. Another review of a hot-off-the-press speculative book. @stephencoxauthor.bsky.social 's latest, and his self-publishing debut. #fantasy #review #selfpub thomaswrightson.co.uk/2025/08/31/r...
I support trans rights because a) it's right b) attacks on trans rights will damage cis women c) I'm bi and non-monogamous cos we next and d) I can see who's pulling the strings and they're not feminists or democrats.
bsky.app/profile/step...
weird takes past, weird takes present, and weird takes still to come
Diana, not my wife, who is neither secular nor a saint
We don't know if del Toro has read the book. We do know del Toro's fave films as a kid were Shape of Water and Frankenstein. The people who said I ripped off American scifi for Our Child of the Stars could never agree which American scifi it was.
I remember the Guardian going around and interviewing people who thought it was national hysteria. My partner rang the BBC because she thought the very first obit (sad failure) failed to mention her actual courageous work with landmines and HIV. 24 hours later she was effectively a secular saint
People are talking about the anniversary of the death of Princess Diana. The thing I remember is learning how different the country I live in is to what I thought it was. Diana was not quite hated, but certainly not respected, a target for misogyny and derision. Until she died...
I have finished the lost ground-breaking classic Mrs Caliban by Laura Ingalls, in which a depressed 80s housewife finds comfort in the arms of a green river creature. Short, elusive, not so much melding genres as evading them. Friends rave, I think... ⭐⭐⭐"not a waste of your time"
The issue as to whether del Toro ripped off The Shape of Water from it. The common themes largely come from the Creature in the Black Lagoon, which both authors cite as a key influence. Del Toro says the idea the beauty and the beast would get together came to him aged six.
Wonderfully weird and non western
I have finished the lost ground-breaking classic Mrs Caliban by Laura Ingalls, in which a depressed 80s housewife finds comfort in the arms of a green river creature. Short, elusive, not so much melding genres as evading them. Friends rave, I think... ⭐⭐⭐"not a waste of your time"
what if the UK had a major political party that appealed to people who didn't love pogroms
Which undermines the turn into luxury flats argument a bit too.
Hear me out - a remake of Lord of the Rings but these two take the Ring to Mordor
stephencox.co.uk/six-classics... (subscribe to my newsletter and you would have already seen it
Publication day tomorrow! A post on six classics of varying genres which shaped The Crooked Medium's Guide to Murder. Holmes was my gateway drug but in some ways Mrs Ashton is an anti-Holmes being social, loquacious, in a complicated relationship... #booksky #TheCrookedMedium #spooky #paranormal
SF is that section of the fantastic which explains difference from mundane now by a scientific paradigm. Not, a rigorous adherence to current scientific thinking.