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Happy Wednesday! 🎉

My recent blog post is live. In it, I talk about something that’s been on my mind for a while: publishing exclusively on Amazon.

I had a long thread about this last week. Many folks engaged, which was great. This blog post organizes my own thoughts on the matter, and adds some additional insights.

I know this will be controversial, especially here. Please keep any discussion respectful. 🙏

sarahjhoodlet.com/blog/amazon-

Sarah J. Hoodlet · Amazon ExclusivityMany indie authors publish exclusively on Amazon for a number of valid reasons, but in a time when aversion toward the big tech company is at its highest, not everyone agrees.

Chapter 20 of Starwitch is available to read on both #RoyalRoad and #Wattpad.

After briefly giving Denholm and Krauss the slip, the Blackwell sister board and launch Starwitch, but that's not the end of the battle and Denholm is beyond enraged, using telekinesis to launch Krauss into the air...

wattpad.com/story/386378071-st
royalroad.com/fiction/102509/t

WattpadStarwitchHome, safety, and a place to belong - they seem so easy to find, at least for everyone but Amelia Blackwell and her sis...

My map commissions are open!

Prices start at 100€ for black and white Medium-sized maps and are hand-drawn, take abour 2-4 weeks to complete from start to finish, and you get good karma from supporting a disabled artist!

Plase share, and help me reach those who may be in need of a new map for their story, thank you! <3

#map#fantasymap#art

Comic Crusaders Podcast #535 - J.D. Barker
In today’s episode, we welcome New York Times and international bestselling author J.D. Barker, the mastermind behind some of the most gripping thrillers, horror stories, and crime novels of our time!

rumble.com/v6me840-comic-crusa

📖 Topics Covered in This Episode:
✅ J.D.’s journey...
comiccrusaders.com/podcast/com
#actor #Al Mega #author #j.d. barker #podcast #writer

#PennedPossibilities 591 — How do you handle research?

Not really into research. Keeps me from writing.

I know a lot of things, so when I get an idea I search around the Internet to verify the details (such as how military ranks work). I tend to avoid hard science topics as a result, which is limiting for a SF writer. Many times I use inexact language or create background character experts that don't explain things in detail. This is called lampshading. For example, do you expect your mechanic to explain why the oxygen sensor works in your car, or why it caused that weird symptom from a technical or physics POV? Do you expect a non-engineering character to care more about how the FTL of the ship works, or whether that the dang thing is fixed? As far as world building goes for the things I do know, or what I can control (like how the magic works in my fantasy stories), I write lots of detailed notes. Where these intersect with what I'm not sure of does cause issues, however. I'm positing a singularity bomb, and today I read an article about having a black hole pass through your body. I might have to find out how explosive an atom-sized black hole is again as the article called into question what I thought I knew about primordial black holes.

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing and #CommentingIsCool

#gender #fiction #writer #author
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion

Have you written and published a non-fiction book? Don't miss out on reaching dozens of new audiences in new languages in 2025 - try our amazing GlobalAuthor Max package!

We'll add an index to your book, add alt text to images, translate it into dozens of languages, and even create an online course from it!

Check it out today, it's a great deal and something authors could only have dreamed of in the past.

Link: leanpub.com/global_author/buy

#ScribesAndMakers 2025.18. Do you have multiple creative outlets? Are they distractions, or do they work synergistically?

Writing, cooking, fine art photography. I do need to eat, so cooking tasty food can't really be a distraction, though I suspect making yosenabe tonight will take a couple of hours. But then I get to take photos of it, and the process of making it! I could say that the photography doesn't intersect the writing much. I do have a few pictures of my writing desk, especially when traveling, but also on my treadmill and pedal bike. But then, I realized that the skill I've developed at post processing RAW images has let me create covers and title them, so there is a relation, if only tenuous. For the record, food and mealtimes are a part of most of my stories, a la Tarantino.

If anything, the writing is a distraction for the other pursuits as it always takes priority.

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing and #CommentingIsCool

#gender #fiction #writer #author #photographer #chef
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion

Continued thread

#EngenderedQ Writing Author Daily Challenge FINAL Questions Week 15 (93-102, suggested February 18-28)

This indeed is the last set of prompts. It's been a great ride and I feel I learned something from all of you. I don't rule out that a random set of prompts might show up every so often, but I think I've touched on all the topics I could think of. If you have just stumbled upon this game, go ahead and answer the prompts in any order that gets your creativity revved up. This is the last page of the threaded post that includes ALL of them. This hashtag is here to help you reimagine your literary worlds while giving you a totally different perspective of gender in our own.

Follow: #EngenderedWriting
Weekly Prompts? Search: #EngenderedWritingQ
Google Docs Link: docs.google.com/document/d/10R
Please boost so your writer followers know about the challenge.

  • (Feb 18) 93 — Since this is the last set of prompts, what of value did you take away from following the #engenderedWriting challenge game? Do you feel you learned something? Did it change what you write about? @NaraMoore
  • 94 — If your character presents as male, regardless of the sex assigned them at birth, your character wakes finding themselves physically weak. If presenting as female, they wake physically strong. What effect does this have on the character, or possibly the plot. How does their reaction differ from question 90.
  • 95 — Humans are suddenly predictably fertile once a year for a week. (The change happens in the story or just before the story.) How does this change gender roles? Society?
  • 96 — If humans always had had a fertile season would our modernity be different or would it be the same old time religion and patriarchy?
  • 97 — Long ago our ancestors fought off the patriarchal invaders and obliterated their barbaric idea for their women kin. How would a modern society work if inheritance and family flowed only through women, and was both traditional and legally recognized?
  • 98 — Is marriage inevitable? Is it an exclusive symptom of patriarchy? Do any of your stories touch on the subject?
  • 99 — If humans were exclusively matrilineal, would marriage evolve in your stories?
  • 100 — Your MC has an object they adore that is NOT associated with their gender or gender role. Whether it gets suddenly revealed, or if they routinely flaunt it, it suddenly causes them huge trouble. How do they cope? CW if appropriate.
  • 101 — One of your characters has an opportunity for power (your definition) if they take on the opposite gender role. How do they react? What do they do?
  • 102 — Men stop being aggressive (your definition). Does society fall apart? Does the population decrease? Could you write a story from that male POV?
  • (Feb 28) 103 — Men cease to have interest in sex (your definition) overnight or over no more than a span of a year. Does society fall apart? Does the population decrease? Could you write a story from the male POV, or would from the female POV be more interesting?

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S @sfwrtr]

#BoostingIsSharing

#game #challenge about #gender #fiction #mystery #thriller #romance #fantasy #sf #sff #sciencefiction #writing for #writer #writers #author #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #hashtagGame #hashtagGames

Google DocsEngendered Writing ChallengeEngendered Writing Author Daily Challenge Starting November 1, 2024 - Running Through February 28, 2025 Was released weekly. This is the full list of prompts. Follow: #EngenderedWriting Search for prompts: #EngenderedWritingQ Google Docs Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10RK_eD_1Q-P7VK...

And now, a moment.

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”

- Mark Twain

#WordWeavers 2502.18 — How is familial love thought of in your world? What is the ideal and the reality?

This question begs for a long ethnology paper, because there are ideals and then there is reality. The reader will enter the world thinking one thing and leave understanding another. Love and family have a gazillion conflicting meanings, so for love let's go with emotional bonds. For family it's the following relationships only.

  • Vertical: Multigenerational between mothers and children.
  • Horizontal: Between siblings.
  • Diagonal: Between an uncle (sometimes an aunt) and nieces and nephews.

If you detected something missing, you're correct. Since an uncle usually raises his sister's children, that bond is typically strongest, followed by sibling bonds, finally maternal.

In the current WIP, one MC (a responsible boy) has an uncle who flaked out on him and disappeared, an always angry workaholic mother, and sisters that detest him because at the age of 10, thanks to the flaky uncle and uncaring mother, the MC ends up raising his sisters. (Is this a Cinder-fella trope?)

The female MC's mother is a refugee and has no family, and is absent working to support them. This MC is a latch key kid who's most often raised by the books she reads, and sometimes by non-related "uncles" who associate with her mother.

Way too much to unpack here, true.

Keep in mind that Western culture's concept of the nuclear family collided with the age of single parenthood and blended families, and we deal with it. They do, too. Fortunately, the two MC's find each other. That, of course, is neither vertical, horizontal, nor diagonal. It's both familial in how they view it, and romantic in how they treat it. In their culture, that's a disaster—but not to them.

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing and #CommentingIsCool

#gender #fiction #writer #author
#mystery #thriller #romance #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory

Howdy, friends!

This is a reminder that my ebooks will be removed from KU by mid March. The earliest is A Bitter Drink, which will leave KU on February 27th.

If you want to grab them & start reading for free with KU, now's the time! 🥰

azaleaforrest.wordpress.com/20

A background of books on giant shelves with the text AZALEA FORREST GOES WIDE. A Forrest Writes azaleaforrest.wordpress.com
A Forrest Writes · Going WideHey everyone! I’ve finally made the decision to go wide with my ebooks. This means I will no longer be participating in Kindle Unlimited. KU was very stop and go since I started publishing, a…