Grenadian-born, Virgin Island raised, Ohio settled, SF/F author. I also teach creative writing as a prof. Views my own. More at http://www.tobiasbuckell.com
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That doesn’t mean o can recommend either to accept it. I am conflicted but from past reading the money it would take make them hurt more or get a cut of royalties for us is essentially nil without political support. Repeat this number with all six companies, and hit Google and Facebook for more?
i am not a lawyer, I’ll be watching what they think (like Courtney Milan) but as with many settlements that was my understanding.
The settlement language stops them from using titles in this way going forward fyi
Fucking amen
Took a sick day due to stress or lack of sleep causing my heart defect to kick into tachycardia for the day. Nothing like waking up with a resting 130 bpm to start the day a spikes up into the 150s when i stood up or walked around. Exhausting. Doing better now.
Update on the Must Read Magazines contract situation from somebody on the front lines. tl;dr it's bad. open.substack.com/pub/pacornel...
My story is free to read today!!! "Last Meal Aboard the Awassa" is short and... well, bittersweet. This science vessel IS doomed, after all. www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/last...
It ever was thus
oh hey it's pre-order sale time again at @barnesandnoble.com which makes it a great time to pre-order WE WILL RISE AGAIN, an anthology of speculative fiction, essays, interviews about activism, protest, and collective action, edited by @drkarenlord.bsky.social @annaleen.bsky.social & yours truly
Hey, the Unbound for Gaza fundraiser is here, starting September 25th. www.32auctions.com/unboundforga... The auction raises money for charities operating in Gaza. There are a LOT of super-cool items, many of which would be AMAZING holiday gifts for book nerds.
I’m in awe of your penmanship
our
And we are all running on low reserves, so you can feel 'normal' because you're sailing over a foot of water, not thirty, and it doesn't take much to hit the sharp coral waiting underneath for hour hulls
Take care of yourselves. It's extra out there right now.
Got some kick in the face level news yesterday. I'm fine, family is fine, not related to my career or job. But, it dropped me yesterday, and today I woke up and... it was still there. At work, but, it'll be a 'going through the paces from plans created weeks ago' type of thing. This world.
Could definitely use some help this month. We are trying to scrounge up an extra 1100euro for immigration fees and have less than 100 in bank for food for Sept. So if you enjoy fantasy novels with found family and nerdy references, maybe my Patreon is of interest? www.patreon.com/anniebellet
Good! So glad. Fuck cancer.
Oh shit. Hope you get relief soon :(
I love sleeper trains so much
For people supporting the old Patreon, there's a new exclusive reprint of a short story that first appeared in the Mothersound anthology up for you all to read: tobiasbuckell.com/the-groves-l... This story was one of the first two stories I wrote after getting Long Covid. It is close to my heart.
I've moved a lot of submissions tracking out of Excel and into Obsidian, but now I'm tailoring it, as Obsidian is so powerful for. Now creating some buttons and forms for updating pub data. Already helped me see some blind spots.
Been napping on the couch a bunch due to how intense last week was on me. I'm beat. But I have spent some time working on updating my dashboard in Obsidian for tracking my writing career as the complexity of it all is getting a bit beyond me. 150+ stories, their reprints, translations, etc
It just doesn't agree with his shit takes, and that gives him the big sads
Oops, I broke the threading: tobiasbuckell.com/ideating-how... The density is big, USA is 100 ppl per sq mile, France/Spain with HS rail is 200 ppl per sq. The main pop centers of the US are over 200 ppl sq mile. I think there's more that could be done with HS rail!
The North East Corridor is insanely profitable, was in 2012 at least with quarter billion in profit, and the ones that are *almost* there with a some slight redesign or investment are: Chicago-St.Louis Washington-Newport News Carolinian
True. But even in the US most population clusters around megapolis structures, so it's not just that. I spent some time modeling profit and loss on spreadsheets back in 2012: tobiasbuckell.com/ideating-how... Amtrak struggles b/c congress chooses the routes. They run loss routes by design. Baked in
I can’t wait to read this:
I’ve been asked many times if I would ever write a follow up to my novella, “Buffalo Soldier.” Well, I finally did. It’s called “Soul Rebel” and it is coming out in the next issue of THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION (edited by the legendary Sheree Renee Thomas)!
I just started it this weekend. First episode covers more story than some whole movies. And the wistful, looking back, slow reveal is delightful. I’m so rewatching this.
was traveling (for that workshop I mentioned) and got behind in posting @globalvoices.org articles - I hope at this point at least some of you are checking the website directly signing up for the newsletter and so on - anyway here are some of the slightly late gems:
fingers crossed for you
It… felt like I’d stepped over a line in the sand into some new era of life, though, lol
There was a birthday recently where I made the decision to always grab a handrail if present bc I did not bounce back well from a slide down the stairs and realized “oh, yeah, it probably won’t kill me but a spill could fuck my week up”
Happy birthday?
The Faire was way larger than I expected. I was expecting a dozen stores, some fake walls, and some activities. It was acres of shops and my feet hurt. Amazing hand crafted stuff everywhere I turned. If you’re in Ohio this is hella fun. renfestival.com
Spent the day running the kids and some of their friends to the Dayton area Ren Faire. Home and exhausted. But it was fun. My first. have some nice beard oils from: www.modernvikingllc.com
Congrats, man!
I’ve been enjoying it its madness
Damn, the first episode of Frieren on Netflix is 24 minutes and, like Pixar’s Up, packs more story into a few minutes than some whole movies. Students suggested I try it. And after a grueling week it’s hitting the veg out on the couch vibe I need
Quick Tip: Did you know you can hide posts by keywords? Under Settings → Moderation → Muted Words & Tags, set keywords you never want to see. Perfect for avoiding spoilers! 🙈
And also talked about the story a little bit, as it's close to my heart, another of my Long Covid short stories
I just posted "Some reviews for my short story “In the Halls of the Makeshift King.”" up at the website: https://tobiasbuckell.com/some-reviews-for-my-short-story-in-the-halls-of-the-makeshift-king/
Back in 1946, the KKK was trying to make a major comeback after World War II. Enter Superman — the Man of Steel exposed their secrets and took them down in his radio show. I asked Rick Bowers, author of Superman vs the Ku Klux Klan, what we can learn from this today buttondown.com/charliejane/...
There are tons of graphic novels, academic papers, film and TV scripts, & prose novels/nonfiction on the LibGen list Anthropic used. As settlement approaches, make it easy for the class action lawyers to contact you! Here’s how Part 1: is your work in Libgen? www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...
Calling all Black visual artists! Submissions are OPEN for our 2026 covers! Artists should submit portfolios or work samples which illustrate an understanding of composition, and feature fantastical elements and/or can be categorized as fantasy, science-fiction, horror, & their related subgenres./+
Praise from @mauricebroaddus.bsky.social: "Jason Sanford ain't playing with y'all anymore. We Who Hunt Alexanders lives at the intersection of cyberpunk and horror. Edginess and timeliness; blood and desperation; love and terror all woven like a rogue literary DNA strand." 1/2
I hope they sue them into the smoking ground for this. Horrific. Tweaking everything for maximum engagement, and AI for sycophancy, is destroying us
I used to know someone in Hungary who talked other people into suicide (there was a police case, but it was dropped and the person experienced no consequences). His entire verbiage was very similar to this. Please be cautious about reading even the excerpts, potentially very upsetting.
Not too far off.
I’ve been having fun doing some amazing veggie pan bakes lately based on all sorts of whatever veg we have about.
Spent a half hour sitting on the deck watching clouds. Ohio was serving up a rare blue sky/fluffy white cloud scenario. Have lots to do, but it was a nice moment of calm before I have to crack on with the day.
I regret going with Audible to produce my ebooks. The $$ was better at the time but the royalties are gamed, my books are never in library catalogues, and they f*** my listeners whenever they enshittify. Get out of Audible as much as you can. Use audiobooks.com or Chirp or some other tool.
Really important story about how the digital sphere, which holds such promise for expanding democracy, is co-opted and narrowed by anti-democracy actors.
It's about ethical dilemmas and bad answers to complicated problems. Also climate mitigation and serial killers. (That's @morningtransport.bsky.social if you want to give them a follow.)
My short story "Soft Edges" is reprinted this morning for subscribers at Sunday Morning Transport. www.sundaymorningtransport.com/p/soft-edges
Just a little bump to help the wonderful @rsagarcia.bsky.social help cover cancer treatment expenses: www.gofundme.com/f/help-r-s-a...
Awesome! We should chat when you read it!
Right? Wells is more radical than most realize.
It's such a cool tool. Of course! You know it's all mutual admiration society between us and all that :) Whenever someone I think is cool says they picked up something from me I'm all awww shucks
That one guy in that one thing...
It's ugly, and it keeps popping up. Nothing like hearing an uneasy panel crowd when you criticize SF language around 'colonize' a planet and settling and the stars our destiny, b/c destiny is a loaded thing. But the anger because a lot of self identification with SF concepts that have roots in ugh
There's this book called "Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction" that I've been giving away a lot of late, it helped me with the history of why this is so deeply embedded in this genre. Conflation of space and westward expansion is a big taproot. And it's very 'air we breath' to some.
2 weeks to go! This story bundle is flying high! #africanSF #novels #novellas @storybundle.bsky.social, @meerkatpress.bsky.social, @atthisarts.com, @stephenembleton.bsky.social, @nuzo.bsky.social, @tobiasbuckell.bsky.social , @xanwriter.bsky.social, @transitlounge.bsky.social storybundle.com/scifi
it really does
the cut away on that makes it so much worse than if you'd illustrated it in the same way that Douglas Adams said if you built a brick wall around a soccer game everyone would think it was a way more amazing game than it was like I imagine way worse things than I think you would illustrated. Love it
Ah, the man whose ideology is responsible for many of the beatings I got as a kid due to his fascist interpretation of the Bible has passed (J*mes D*bson). I wish I were religious so I could believe he actually was being burned for all eternity. I'll settle for hoping it was a miserable death.
I usually have far more class prep done at this stage of the year. Fortunately I've done several of the classes I'm teaching before, so I have a lot to reuse, just, organizing seems to be taking an extra pound of flesh these days. For some reason.
I last posted about this with everyone at Worldcon, so I'd appreciate a boost if you're willing as the world is noisy and full of horror, but the African SF Novels and Novellas Bundle - curated by Eugen Bacon, is still going strong at StoryBundle, and includes 2 of my novels! storybundle.com/scifi
I just posted "Caribbean Futurism and Beyond Conversations with Writers of Folklore, Fantasy, Science, and Speculative Fiction" up at the website: https://tobiasbuckell.com/caribbean-futurism-and-beyond-conversations-with-writers-of-folklore-fantasy-science-and-speculative-fiction/
Visually stunning. And yeah, we had to all sit around and talk about that for an hour after, b/c, yeah
Right! Thank you. Yes.
Yeah
I'm not from St. Lucia, but have strong connections to most of the anglophone islands
At a time when the US is moving backwards, seeing my home islands moving forwards is giving me hope
I'm glad it's not just me, because I was like "I'm not demanding the show moralize, but I at least need to know it doesn't condone even if the character is morally compromised" kinda feeling. And it was the scene with the pick-me synthetic with child's mind that really made me go 'there's my issue'
So far I've been watching for Timothy Olyphant's acting choices.
This, as well as the fact that I'm nervous about the whole children in adult bodies with that one Silicon Valley Bro, the last episode really creeped me out but I couldn't tell if the writers wanted me creeped out, or if they were buying into the setup. Just made me feel wrong.
But as you say, such great performances. Great writing. Great filming and locations. Loved every moment.
At least two actors surprised me by being Scottish. I’d only ever seen them in other accents.
That was so good
Hey, there's 40 eur in our bank account til payday next week and the cats are almost out of food, so uh... buy my books? Or fancy being a Patron? www.patreon.com/anniebellet
Wow. Eco-worthy 14kw battery backup for a home is now $2,500. Just three summers ago I priced out a 10kw home back up system for $10k. www.eco-worthy.com/products/51-... The home battery uptake is gonna be wild
I'll be testing it out this quarter for sure
I'll be testing it out this quarter for sure
I did! crossing fingers.
They have almost everything I've ever published via 3 of my 5 collections, and they had all my novels.
If you haven't read Arctic Rising or Hurricane Fever, this is a great moment to snag them for a DRM-free, affordable experience!
"In April, we gave you a titillating ensemble of Afrocentric short story collections and anthologies, and they were quite the hit! Now here's a collectors' trove of thought-provoking speculative novels and novellas by multi-award-winning Afrodescendant peoples..." -Eugen Bacon storybundle.com/scifi
Okay readers, there's a new book bundle that has some of my novels if you're interested. Arctic Rising and Hurricane Fever are in a StoryBundle that lets you pay what you want: storybundle.com/scifi I'm grateful to Eugen Bacon for reaching out to me to be a part of this great bundle.
Kagi is becoming a notable web search that people find their way to my website by, and I was just starting to wonder about what I'm going to do to replace Duck Duck Go, which is a great privacy search engine, but it uses Bing and has been underwhelming
I just posted "Creating a custom Obsidian writing environment: a video guide" up at the website for Patreon supporters, showing in video how to theme Obsidian and what plugins to use to get a custom writing app: https://tobiasbuckell.com/creating-a-custom-obsidian-writing-environment-a-video-guide/
Obsidian can be overwhelming, I always tell people to start small. But it's so configurable, I'm over the moon with it
The hardest part was setting up an AppleScript wrapper to auto-launch the python script b/c I first tried a LaunchD script, but it got into trouble with Apple iCloud and nuked permissions in my entire Obsidian vault, so I had to roll everything back an hour and get a backup vault. Scary!
Moving away from a dedicated writing app to looking instead for a writing IDE with Obsidian really shifted how I looked at my writing environ
Keep cooking!
In terms of rationality, I should be working on my 50k SF novel, I'd be done by now. But In Empire's Ashes just, I can't get the book out of my head, and I've come to learn the only way of exorcising it is to wrap up the draft and give it to the world.
Some of the larger earlier chapters may get trimmed down once I know more what can be lost and keep the tension going, so the estimated final word count may be a little high, my instinct from doing this 15 times is that the book will be 200k. Been working on In Empire's Ashes for years now.
Seeing this quantifies what I was feeling, that I am just about done with the first 1/3 of the book, have some hard work on the middle 1/3, but there's a ton to work with on the last 1/3, so once I get through this valley, the book should feel faster in progress
sweet!
🌒︎🔹 