Latest in my Scottish SFF blog series: Naomi Mitchison's Travel Light (1952) and When the Bough Breaks (1924).
#ScottishSFF #sf #sff #naomimitchison
Well isn't this lovely? The Toronto Star included The Gates of Polished Horn in its roundup of new science fiction -- Alex Good's review is insightful and worth a read!
(Though I will add, there's a few lighthearted stories in my collection too!)
Now enjoying the final (at this point) book of Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries, System Collapse. About a ⅓ of the way into this 7th title of the series, & it’s obvious something has happened that isn’t fully clear yet, something big. I’m intrigued… #SFF #MurderbotDiaries #SFF
Completed Fugitive Telemetry a couple days back, Murderbot Diaries #6. Another fun novella, adding to the overall knowledge of the story Wells is creating. 5/5 for me! #MurderbotDiaries #SciFi #SFF
B&N and I are still working out coupon snafus, but in the meantime I've dropped the regular price of the anthology to FREE. Might just leave it there. (Amazon may price match at some point. We'll find out!)
You get 10 spec fic short stories written between 2017 and 2021:
- 1 sweet sapphic paranormal romance
- 1 puzzling terraformer salvage
- 1 haunted teenager with a decision to make
- 1 family of spies
- 1 angry insomniac
- 1 grieving husband
- 1 threatening polyhedron
- 1 confused suburbanite
- 1 ex soldier who can't read the room
- 1 immortal starship facing mortality
I have my favorites. (I'll tell you if you ask. 
Anyway - Nook folx, here you go! #sff #ebook #writingcommunity
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/survival-tactics-elizabeth-bonesteel/1139931182?ean=2940160918709
Neuzugänge im Februar, Teil 1
#bookstagram #books #sff #sciencefiction #scifi #fantasy
#Today (March 3) begins the Smashwords ebook sale. You’ll find lots of indie authors there, including me. 
Go here to browse or search:
https://smashwords.com/shelves/promos
The vendor link under each book on my site will take you to its Smashwords page.
Woodspell series: https://crcollins.org/books/
Tales of Ardonna: https://crcollins.org/tales-of-ardonna/
2503.02 — Rights #Writever CW: Fictional Violence
May Ri clanged the arm of the mining exoskeleton into the wall of the habitat, drawing sparks, blocking the onrushing man, cutting him off when he tried to dodge under—before flipping him backwards back down the corridor. Blood gushed from his nose to match what stained his hands.
"I have the right!" he yelled, arm across his face to stem the flow. "She's my wife!"
May Ri's footsteps clanged as she stomped forward. He slid himself back on the floor as the other women in the Vigilantes caught up. They'd used the ugly word, Vigilante, intentionally; women weren't allowed but needed to police their domes, or risk injury from stronger men who suddenly got ideas.
She said, "Your wife is an import, like me? You left her to give birth alone, to raise her daughter, and now you want to take that daughter away? To sell to your boss? Really? Your right?"
She looked at the harried women, some breathing hard, sweating. Faces gone pale in fear, others with wide eyes trying to process how cruel reality had once again smashed all sense of security. May Ri understood: if they kept the male returnees from the inner belt disaster locked out of the habitat long enough, they'd have to capitulate. However, if she failed to demonstrate now that the Vigilantes could hold firm when a man broke his wife's arm, beating her to have his way—
He yelled back, "Marrying her off to a better life? Yes! Who are you to argue a man's God given right—?"
"Really?" she interrupted. Women had never had reliable rights, if you trusted history hadn't been rewritten. She didn't. She'd read books made of paper, yellowed, that smelled of centuries past! Her five kilogram gauntleted hand already in motion, she screamed, "Mars is not Earth! It never will be!" #RSMarsNeededWomen
[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]
#BoostingIsSharing and #CommentingIsCool
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #mars
#microfiction #flashfiction #tootfic #smallstory
#PennedPossibilities 602 — Think back on the SC you discussed last night. How do they dress?
Dante dresses in dark clothing. He's all legs, incredibly tall, and prefers dark dress trousers to jeans, always dons a pair of wingtips, and wears various shades of gray or black shirts. As with most cyberpunk fashion choices, he tends to dress with a combination of goth, punk, and futuristic styles. His jackets, although it isn't noticeable or necessarily said often, tend to be padded for protection. He's a doctor, after all. He's in a gang as well. Everyone wants him dead.
I really like Adrian Tchaikovsky's books but I should have picked a different time to start Alien Clay. It's set in a rather dystopian world and I've got enough of that in real life right now.
#PennedPossibilities 601 — Choose one of your SCs you’ve never spoken about. How would you describe their facial features?
Her name translates to Brunhild and she's very brown. Her skin, her eyes, her very frizzy uncontrollably curly hair. She prefers orange and wears orange ribbons, but isn't that lacking in fashion sense that she'd wear orange lipstick. She's got a cute button nose. Her ready smile is best described as witchy and, yes, she does have an affinity for brooms. She can self-levitate using them, which is one of those impossible miracles the devil-girl covets.
[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
#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2503.02 — How accurately does the first line represent your style and voice?
"I'm the mission commander and I am making the decision—you're giving me that look, again," Thorn Rose said, her dark eyes narrowed and equally dark eyebrows bunching together, adding emphasis to her annoyance.
I'm a grammar B writer and the initial ramble is an in-between indicator. I'm on again off again as to whether the place to start telling the story is near the ending instead of the beginning, however.
[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
Feed your TBR pile! We've got a ton of reviews of the latest short SFF fiction and novels for you over at locusmag.com
Toto wants you to go take a look ;)
#sff #sffbooks, #sciencefiction, #fantasy, #bookreviews, #scifi
A quick search for the phrase "cope-punk SFF" currently yields only a bunch of crypto shite.
I have a sense that there's already a body of literature that embodies ... whatever cope-punk implies, but I'm not sure what that would be, exactly.
Is _Hench_ (Natalie Zina Walschots) cope-punk? The grinding world doesn't change, but the protagonist does.
So, readers and writers of Mastodon, I ask, what is cope-punk to you?
#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2503.01 — How did your WIP’s premise take shape?
It was the merger of two ideas:
Of course, no premise, no set of ideas, is a story. What shaped the premise were the goals and dreams of characters that came to life in that universe of reluctant forces. That and a snarky 1st person narrator MC. Right. I shan't forget my growing willingness to depict spicy situations.
[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
2503.01 — Women #Writever
Mars needed women.
May Ri bought into the hype and the spiel, not realizing it was the last gasp of a long dead oligarch's dream. When the money dried up, nobody would finance the supply missions. Who cared about the ten thousand up there when you could outrage the millions down here with something less expensive? Earthers returned to their petty games of slavery—that wasn't called as such—and empire that ate nations.
On Mars, colonists were pushed to their limits: The terraforming mission, the domes, the spinlauncher and Deimosbase, the raising the first and second generation martians. Men died disproportionately. In the end, a few strongmen attempted to corner the growing "female resource" to their benefit and to the benefit their sons, working to crush the whisper of the half-forgotten promise of democracy that had followed May Ri to the planet of war.
She and her daughters led the way, fighting. Together with "sisters" and with "aunts," they redefined which gender would be considered a "resource."
They found that the blood of the ever-absent fathers spilled on the rusty regolith of Mars blended in nicely.
Earthers were outraged. #RSMarsNeededWomen 01
[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]
#BoostingIsSharing and #CommentingIsCool
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSInklingsStory #RSReluctanceStory
#microfiction #flashfiction #tootfic #smallstory
To start off the month, a newsletter promo featuring optimistic and cozy sci-fi and fantasy 
https://books.bookfunnel.com/hopefulscifiandfantasy/kzlvx9tcmt
Ha! With Rare: A Dark Anthology of Unusual Secrets coming out April 22nd, I officially have an Author Page on Goodreads!
#writer #writingcommunity #writers #writersofmastodon ##writerstodon #sciencefiction #sff #scifi #fantasy
