#Writing

Looks like Pixiv added some features for non-Japanese novels on their site, and they're doing a flash fiction contest to celebrate:

https://www.pixiv.net/novel/contest/pixivflash26

#PixivFlash26 #Pixiv #PixivNovels #Writing

I'm still struggling to find my footing here on Mastodon. A bit with the platforms and tags, but mostly finding people to follow. I'm a bit all over the place, posting about my #writing, be it academic or fiction (mostly #SciFi), and about cool #Science I ran into, and the more common than it should be - complain about stuff.
I'm interested in #SFF, #publishing, #MiniaturePainting, science, #queer culture, academia, human sexuality, geekish humor, #comics & #EarthSci.

Recommend people to me!

Looks like Pixiv added some features for non-Japanese novels on their site, and they're doing a flash fiction contest to celebrate:

https://www.pixiv.net/novel/contest/pixivflash26

#PixivFlash26 #Pixiv #PixivNovels #Writing

Looks like Pixiv added some features for non-Japanese novels on their site, and they're doing a flash fiction contest to celebrate:

https://www.pixiv.net/novel/contest/pixivflash26

#PixivFlash26 #Pixiv #PixivNovels #Writing

I wrote a blog post about how I use #Emacs to handle all of my #freelance business. I feel like I wrote it quickly, I might have missed some tools. #programming #writing
https://arnesonium.com/2026/04/emacs-freelance-command-center

I wrote a blog post about how I use #Emacs to handle all of my #freelance business. I feel like I wrote it quickly, I might have missed some tools. #programming #writing
https://arnesonium.com/2026/04/emacs-freelance-command-center

I recently started a substack. There isn't much on here yet. But if you're interested in a creative who is inspired by her Cornish home, feel free to give me a follow.

#Cornwall #Writing #Art #Photography

https://emmacoxcreates.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile_chips

@lxskllr @aakoskin @loriemerson

I've always liked this #quote from William J. Mayo (one of the founders of the Mayo clinic)...

"Begin with an arresting sentence; close with a strong summary; in between speak simply, clearly, and always to the point; and above all be brief."

#Quotes #Writing

Made a new page for my Faves site: Hobbies!

I've got some of my favorite #crochet projects on there, plus lots of drawing/coloring things, too!

#neocities #drawing #coloring #adultcoloring #coloringbooks #jadesummer #tastypeachstudios #pokemon #pixelsprites #pastelgirl #pastelfriends #picrew #monstergirlmaker2 #dressupgames #writing

They knew of the sink hole, Journey's End, and maybe there really was a tower there when the Father of Creation poked the hole into the worldglass. There were many ideas about the shape of the world, but for this story to so closely fit the fables even though our clan hadn't any outside contact for 350 years was proof that the sinkhole in the centre of the world was real, despite all the nay-saying I had heard. If the tower was 2000 years ago, the Wayfarer may not have known the story in her time, or perhaps chose not to pass it on because she was uncertain of its truth. It was uncertain, yes, but there was a kernel of truth here that had survived 2000 years and it made the first fable feel more real to me than it ever had before, like the day I touched the worldglass.

I turned to Persius, tears running down my face. He leapt back in shock, one arm raised, "Are you alright!?". I swallowed the lump in my throat and spoke in a wobbly voice, "Yes... I'm sorry... It's just that it's so very special. I've never seen a story in stone before. It... reminded me, of a story... from when I was a child". I wiped my face with arm and tried to straighten myself out. He looked concerned, "Yes, well, I suppose you get used to these things when you live here". He put an arm around my shoulder and we looked up at the relief. "This may very well be the greatest sculptural relief in the world, it took thirteen sculptors seven-and-a-half years to complete -- they were still finishing it when I came here. It was commissioned to honour the founding of the newly combined craftsmen's department. Speaking of which, we're here already". He gave me a little a shake to cheer me up and walked away along the back wall which was decidedly not elaborate; except for three wide tunnels which themselves were full of piles of wood, bricks and stone in various stages of carving, a wide 'slot' was cut into the wall as a window into a room behind, although it had no outside-facing door. Seated here at a wide desk abutting the window slot was a low, round-man with a leather cap balancing on his bald head. He had a stylus resting over his ear and he had piles of clay tablets around him. He wore a plain shirt, untied and open at the neck, but he did have a metal arm-band which, even though it was a single band, was engraved with a pattern of lines, possibly writing but I couldn't tell.

"A'right Percy" he said in a voice loud enough to be heard over the bustle in the plaza but in a kind of mumble that was hard to discern. "Mornin' Reg'" Persius replied with his best attempt at copying the style. The round man picked a tablet off a pile and holding it out said "You going past Recs at all on y'travels?". I think it was a question, but I wasn't sure. Persius took the tablet and, without turning, immediately swung it aside in front of me saying to Reg "Sure thing, no problem". It took me a split second to realise the tablet was meant for me, so I took it and put it in my knapsack whilst "Percy" said his goodbyes, "Catch you later Reggie" to which the man replied "On yer legs!". The words I recognised, but it may as well have been a different language for all I could understand it. Why would Persius need to catch him, and where else would Persius be other than on his legs??

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

The Father of Creation made the worldglass from the scattered sands,
The stars of the night.
The sun was his furnace.
When he scraped the impurities off the molten mass and cast it away,
The moon was formed.

He blew into the molten mass to give it shape,
Creating the air and the wind.
But the mass was still molten,
So he quenched the mass in the waters
That divide the night sky, The Milky Way.

The waters cooled the molten mass.
Where the water touched the outside,
The mass became glass,
But inside, where there was no water,
The mass became rock.

Seeing that his work was good,
The Father of Creation left the worldglass to cool.
But his wife, The Mother of Creation,
Had played a trick,
For she had scattered the seeds of life
Amongst the stars,
Such that they may be scooped up with the sand
And thus enter the worldglass.

First, the trees and vegetation sprouted
And their roots spread all throughout the rock,
Splitting it apart and grinding the rock to sand.

Then, the animals sprouted,
To eat the vegetation
So that it may not dominate the worldglass.

Lastly, the people sprouted
To eat and domesticate the animals
So that they would not eat all the vegetation.
But there was no one
To dominate the people.

The Father of Creation,
Returning to see if his creation was ready
Was angered to find that his wife had tricked him
And his creation was full of life.

So he poked a hole in the bottom of the world glass,
That the sand would pour out, saying
"Because there is no one to dominate the people
And they will come to destroy
The animal life and the vegetation,
I have numbered their days
For everything that has a beginning,
Must have an end."

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

Persius walked around behind me and pointing at the left end of the wall he explained the story: "This was 2000 years ago or so, but don't quote me on any of this, when people used to live at the centre of the world. Here, you see the people of all skills gathering together in one place because they wanted to build a tower tall enough to reach god, or maybe escape to the stars, I don't know". He began walking along the relief and I stepped out of the way. Persius continued, raising his hand to the tower in the centre part, "Here, they were constructing the tower and, because they were succeeding, god poured out his jealous anger over them -- here represented by the water," He swept his palm down the half of the tower that was being destroyed by the flow of water, "which opened a sink-hole in the sand below and swallowed up the whole tower", pointing to the conical basin underneath the tower that was catching the water and swirling it around in circles. This must be their 'fountain', given the lack of space in the middle of the plaza. As with the other fountains, around the basin were a number of cups. These were unique as although the cups were of glazed clay, each was held within a fine filigree metalwork 'cage' around the cup that gave the cup a handle.

Persius walked onwards to the next section I hadn't examined yet, "All the craftsmen scattered, those that survived at any rate, to different places in the world". The figures here were running in fear, leaving their tools behind them, some were smashed under stone blocks falling from the tower. I could hear the screams in my mind so vivid was the scene, it really was like the images in my mind hearing the fables. The people in the carving fled to buildings and cities in the distance. "So, mankind built many cities across the desert and never returned to the centre of the world". Persius pointed up to a circle to the right of the cities, "Here is Pebble Rock, and the craftsmen returning to be together again". The right end of the relief was like an opposite facing copy of where it had started on the left with lines of craftsmen heading inwards to Pebble Rock, the trail shrinking away to little dotted lines just like I had seen with my own eyes when Pebble Rock first came into view. In the upper-right where the relief met the back wall was the moon. The whole thing had a beautiful symmetry to it with the sun and moon at either end and the tower in the middle.

It couldn't be just a coincidence. The echoes were there. It wasn't exactly what I knew from the fables and the oral histories, but they didn't have wise-women and Keepers like we did and what was written down wasn't readable by most people, if it even survived at all what with all the wars I had heard of. But I couldn't escape the overpowering feeling of the past speaking to me; yes, the words would have changed and got corrupted over time, but the deepest truth was still there at the heart of it. The words of the first fable spoke themselves in my mind:

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

What I had not seen, hidden as it was behind the people, blocks of stone and piles of bricks, was, across the entire side wall of the plaza, an immense carved sculptural relief -- similar to the procession of craftsmen at the labour department but this had many layers of depth and it was astonishing in detail with hundreds of little figures all carved to the minutest detail.

Here on the left-most side was the sun and many lines of people and craftsmen from different places were amassing into one line at the fore-front. There, the workers and craftsmen spread out, each doing their particular craft, stone workers chiselling, wood workers building cranes, and the metalsmiths forging and shaping metal on anvils. Then, lines of slaves dragging stone blocks up ramps and the ramps became walls and doorways and pillars and floors, one above another, smaller and smaller as they ascended. At the top of the wall, at the apex of the tower, a large bearded face with an open mouth and water gently flowed from the mouth and down over the tower, flowing mostly to the right side where the tower's floors were crumbling and collapsing -- the water trickling through the doorways, around the pillars, down each floor and spreading out wider and wider until reaching the base where the water flowed off the relief and swirled around a circular, conical basin that extended away from the wall. The water swirled around continuously, draining away into a hole at the bottom to who-knows-where.

I stood in awe looking up and down the wall, at the tiny details in everything, the grandness of the whole. I had completely forgot about Persius or that I was supposed to be following him. I wasn't sure what this thing meant but it was speaking to my soul somehow, I could feel it. "Impressive, isn't it?" came Persius' voice and I nearly leapt out of my skin like a surprised cat. "Oh! I'm so sorry!" I apologised, "I didn't mean to stop, but this is just so amazing. What is it?" Persius looked up the wall at the tower, "What is it? It's the story of the ancient Tower of Balal, of course". A story? A story, but made in images of stone rather than written symbols? I had never come across such a thing, I didn't know you could put stories into stone like this, what a fascinating idea! Written words had to be taught and they conveyed nothing of the oration like voice, pacing and tone. The carving couldn't either, but it could show you the images just like they were in the mind with our oral histories.

"Have you never heard of it?" asked Persius as I was drifting away again. "No" I said still staring up at the wall. "How is it that you're so good with numbers yet you aren't educated and don't seem to know a thing about history" Persius replied. "Er, I guess because I used to do the inventories in my clan; I really like numbers". My go-to cover story was that I came from a remote goat-herding clan -- there were still many of these about at the fringes of society -- nobody had to know that my clan in particular had been separated from the rest of civilisation for 350 years though.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

We left the food display and headed to the exit beyond the plaza tables. Since we were crossing from the third floor market hall, this should logically take us to the third floor slave hall. "This is the construction hall, home of the Department of Stone Masons and Craftsmen" explained Persius as we entered the plaza which looked every bit like a stone-mason's yard found at any quarry: there were neat stacks of bricks dotted everywhere and a few singular blocks of stone taller than a man that were in various stages of being chiselled into statues or other forms of stone decoration by craftsmen.

Between all this there were lines of branded slaves formed into work parties. Each man had a metal anklet which was hooked to a leather strap that linked each man to the next in line. Beyond a basic loin-cloth, the men wore harnesses to which some had hammers and chisels attached where others carried picks over their shoulders. They had an odd bow-legged, hunched-over stance, their hair and beards were wild and uneven and their eyes were sunken and hollow with a fixed stare that didn't wander. They did not wear arm-bands for the branding was indication enough and there was no chance of promotion for them, ever.

An involuntary shiver ran through my body, some mixture of horror and revulsion. These were broken men and they were beyond help, even freedom would not save them. Guards were standing around the lines, in addition to the swords on their belts, each held a spear -- if a slave suddenly snapped and went at the guards with a pick, their spears would easily give them the reach to overwhelm him.

"Why the third floor!? Wouldn't it be easier to do this on first floor -- at sand-level?"

"There simply isn't room; first floor is occupied by the markets and storage, second floor has our department, the merchant's department and most of the slave housing. Third floor used to house an amalgamation of smaller departments, but Principa unified them into the craftsmen's department it is now. Only the Department of Alchemists and Apothecaries remains and even that used to be two separate departments long ago -- if you get injured or fall ill, go there, but try not let that happen during your trial, it won't look good on your report" explained Persius as we walked around the balcony parapet rather than cutting through the stonework and slaves.

I looked over the edge and could see the 2nd floor balcony and the slaves market floor a long, long way down below. "How... how did they get the stone up here!?" I asked shocked by the height from this position. The 'floors' here were at least the height of 3 floors in any normal building so we were almost 100 spans above sand! I turned my head the other direction and looked above -- another two much smaller balconies, the 5th was small enough to be a regular balcony you'd see in an outside city and was wedged right at the top of the hall where the outside rockface window was almost directly in front of it. Surely they didn't carry the rock up the stairs, there didn't seem to be enough height or turning room in the tunnels!

"Oh, that's easy -- The craftsmen's department has its own private sloped tunnels at the back that go to each floor -- you're absolutely not allowed to use those. If a block is needed that's too big, it's lifted by crane to the second floor and then up to third". My mind boggled at the image of hoisting a giant stone block vertically that distance up the hall and over the balconies. Of course, it was so much easier to do incredibly difficult things when they had slave labour to do all the hard work.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

"What about you? You've been here twenty years, isn't that enough for citizenship?"

"I think I've done enough, but they don't like to hand out rewards until as late as necessary, it creates a lot of work for legal. You just have to work hard and believe that when your time of need comes, the city will be there for you. If I went around pestering them for approval it would just put them off the idea for good. Why, are you expecting to stick around for a while?"

"I thought I didn't get a choice? If the city buys me at the end of the trial then I'm here until I screw up and get sold off."

"It's not that bad! There are plenty of opportunities for promotion. As a white-band any department can choose to buy you and you get better quarters and food, and a better job where the other departments and citizens can't boss you around. If you've got years of good service behind you and you really don't want to stay here, a private sale is possible."

I wasn't going to wait around for years to get out of here, and yet still be a slave. Didn't he want to make his own fate rather than keep chasing citizenship that the city was dangling in front of him like a carrot, ready to whip it away at any moment. "But what about freedom?" I asked, indignantly.

"Freedom!? To do what? Be a beggar on the street? To have no roof over your head, nothing to eat? A job, solid security, food and water is more than most ever get with their freedom. There's nothing worthwhile out there when you have access to the best of everything available in the world right here!". I had struck a nerve somewhere, probably his past as an orphan before he came to the city, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that. Just that, is there any way to not be a slave any more, if someone wanted that? Has it ever happened before?"

"Oh. Right. I suppose if you worked here long enough, and could prove that you had generated more than enough wealth to cover your buying price and everything that had been spent on you, then you could in theory make a case to legal that you should be freed. I've never heard of it happening though, what tends to happen is that people who have raised to high positions, like department heads, might be sent to work at one of the Governor's outside concerns -- he owns a number of businesses and several residences for when he's travelling. But you should be getting your head down and focusing on the here and now, this is still your first day and you've got a long way to go if you're aiming for department head!"

I just smiled back not wanting to trip myself up further on a touchy subject -- it mattered not to anybody that I had been kidnapped against my will and forced into slavery. It was just a given that permeated the air everywhere I went that if you were a slave, you must have deserved it somehow.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

"So what happens when she retires if she doesn't own a home here?"

"Honestly, I'm not sure; her living quarters come as part of the job and her family has been running the department for a century. She doesn't have any children, so there won't be another Principa heading up the department after her -- Cleo's her niece by the way, did you know? Principa hired Cleo just to stop the constant begging from her brother. The girl is too wet behind the ears and doesn't have the fire in her to go far, there's no way she'll make department head."

"Would it be up to her brother to house her then? Principa, that is."

"Not if she could help it, no! Principa is probably banking on the Governor gifting her a home when, if ever, she retires -- she's more than earnt it, having run the department for 40 years! It was before my time, but she was apparently something of a firebrand in her youth, waging war with the other departments to enact change and grew her department from little more than a rubber-stamp operation to the linchpin of the city it is today. In her father's time nothing was made here, it was all imported. Principa was instrumental in bringing in the skills to make stuff in the city. Apparently the food was awful before, no bakery, just flatbread every day!" What was wrong with flatbread I thought, I grew up eating flatbread most days and it was perfectly delicious.

"Speaking of food," Persius noted, "when you're working there won't be time for sitting around so don't use any chairs, anywhere. Eat on the go, and -- for the love of mercy -- don't think you can refill your waterskin in this basin because you forgot to do it at a fountain, unless you want to be on the first caravan out of here on your first day!" Something told me this last bit of advice was based on some poor soul's experience.

"By the way", Persius warned, "don't let Principa find out you know any of this, or that I told you. There's only one thing she hates more than people meddling with her department, and that's people talking about her behind her back -- if she finds out I told you about her past I will get away with a scolding, you however, won't get hired at the end of your trial no matter how good you are!". I nodded along. Principa could have made a good wise woman; my clan's wise woman said that you had to appear as harmless as a sunning lizard but be as immovable as the boulder it was resting upon like the lizard and the rock were one, its grip absolute and unyielding.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

As we left the plaza I had expected more tunnels but instead we almost immediately entered another small plaza hidden between the walls of the third floor market hall and slave hall: It was decked out with dozens of round tables and ten times as many chairs. The sunlight covered the entire area as the ceiling sloped upward from behind us to allow for more openings on the opposite rock face which must be the front of Pebble Rock. At a handful of tables sat black-robes and black-bands eating and conversing. Persius took me around the side of the tables to the far end of the plaza, below the windows. What we walked past, laid across a series of stone tables, took my breath away; slices of cold meats, smoked sausage, cheeses (big, small and colours I had never seen before), fresh bread in at least seven varieties, butter, boiled eggs, tomatoes, olives, pickles, onions, grapes and dates -- and those were just the foods I could identify! At the end of the display was another stone table with many cups set on it and into the table was sunk a square water basin full of clear water.

Beyond this, Persius stopped at the final table, it was wooden with a terracotta tile surface and on it was a scattering of pears, boiled eggs and chunky brown parcels which were probably made from meat baked into a savoury pastry to preserve it. Most of what had been on the table appeared to have already been taken. Persius picked up an egg, "This is the food for white-bands, you'll need to come by and get yours as early as possible each morning. You get one meat pie, one egg and one pear, although anything still on the table after second bell is first-come, first-serve". He winked and bit into the egg and waited for me to gather my food into my knapsack.

"The other food", he said through a mouthful of egg, "is for coloured-bands -- and citizens, though they're rarely down here during morning rush". So far as I could tell I hadn't actually seen a citizen yet so I asked "What do citizens looks like?". He swallowed the last of his egg, "That's what the metal arm-bands are for: it signifies you're a citizen, although many citizens still work for the city and those that don't are either friends, family or distant relations to the Governor or are otherwise fabulously wealthy; emissaries to other regions, retired merchants and the like. The private homes are from the fourth floor and above so you're unlikely to ever go up there. "So Principa is a citizen?" I asked curious of her history in the city. "Yes, and no" he said rolling his eyes back and forth weighing up the facts -- "She doesn't own any homes here, but she has citizenship due to her family and her job -- both her father and grand-father were the previous heads of the Skills and Labour Department and you automatically get citizen status and a pension when you become a department head, but you can also earn citizenship in recognition for long service, or directly as a gift from the Governor."

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

For now the goal I had set in mind was to learn everything I could, do whatever they wanted done and most importantly, not end up branded and sold off. I was determined to search out every nook and cranny of the city so that I was absolutely prepared for anything. If an escape attempt failed and they had to search for me, I wanted to be able to disappear into the darkest crevice nobody even knew existed. Sure, if someone like Medved bought me I'd be out of here, but that hinged upon me being just bad enough at the job that the city didn't want me, but just good enough that a merchant would snatch me up. That was a fine line to walk and if I went to open auction I'd have no certainty over who bought me or where I'd end up. No thank you, I thought, I want to be the one who decides how and when I escape -- I had no desire for another death march for my supposed freedom.

We headed off to the stairs and up to the 3rd floor plaza of the market hall, this plaza was smaller than the 2nd floor and had a completely different style: whereas the back of the 2nd floor market plaza was a mass of various tunnels and passageways, here a wide semi-circle facade of houses had been built into the back wall. A raised colonnade ran in front of the row and each 'house' had a few steps up to a column-framed door and there were window openings all along the terrace. At the middle of this semi-circle was a massive two-story doorway framed by the two largest columns atop very wide stairs that descended gently to the plaza. Those standing on the stairs and conversing wore black toga, similar to our robes but over one shoulder. There were many black-bands standing around or walking about and a lot less white-bands, or running in general, for that matter.

This plaza too had a fountain but its centre piece was a column around which was wrapped a two-headed snake and the water poured from each of the mouths. "Why a two-headed snake?" I asked Persius as we went past. "Oh that? You don't know? It's an old legend, something about a snake with two heads where one head tells the truth and the other always lies. I don't know the exact story, but it's the symbol for the Department of Law and Judgement". Was this a fable I hadn't heard of before? This was most interesting! "Who would I need to speak to if I wanted to learn more?" I asked looking back at the fountain as we passed it. "About the snake? Probably anybody in legal, I expect it's the first thing they learn on their first day, it's the foundation of their whole profession". It must be a very important fable I thought and put a mental knot in my mind to see if I could find Esmae and ask her about it another day.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

"But who is this that you bring before me?" the merchant said expansively, snapping me out of my daze staring out the open gate. "Oh, this? Just a new hire I'm showing about. Very good with numbers you know, but can't do merchant shorthand yet". The merchant turned his smile to me and lent forward, I felt very uncomfortable being towered over. "Well now, I look forward to hearing of your progress; a friend of Persius is a friend of mine!". I didn't know what to think of that, I was a slave and he was a merchant that bought slaves, I don't think friendship factored into this. I just smiled back and said "Thank you sir, I will try my best". The merchant seemed to be satisfied with this response and returned unfazed to Persius. The two made their long and elaborate goodbyes before Persius looked down at me and said "Sorry about that, an old friend, let's get going" and began marching off.

Rushing to catch up with Persius and his gazelle-like pace, I asked him "So how long have you been here?" as we joined the main tunnel on the opposite side of the market hall and headed to the stairs. "About twenty years now, come to think of it! I was just seventeen when I came here you know; an orphan, had nowhere to go; some merchants brought me here and the city took me in". Around the stairs we went and on to the thoroughfare for what should be 2nd floor. "Worked my way up from nothing -- goes to show you can get somewhere in life if you work hard". We marched out on to the second floor plaza the porter had taken me over first thing this morning. There was the bell, workers with polishing cloths clinging to the scaffolding, trying to reach every part of the immense piece of metal the size of an ox. We walked over to the fountain in the centre, the floor was calmer than the rush of bodies on the 2nd floor plaza over in the slave hall earlier. The workmen were gone and there was mostly coloured-bands ambling along and white-bands zipping in straight lines from one end to the other.

We stopped at the fountain and Persius picked up a cup and swept it through the water in the basin, "You can fill your waterskin here, or at any of the other fountains, and get a drink any time you come past but don't waste any time on your deliveries, so try and fill up as close to first bell as you can". He sat and drank calmly from his cup whilst I plunged my waterskin into the water basin and worked the air out of it. It was a new waterskin so it was stiff and inflexible and it resisted mightily being held under. "Do you happen to know how old the city is?" I asked over my shoulder, wrestling with the waterskin. Persius finished a sip of water and ruminated before answering, "Who could say? Official records only started a couple of centuries ago. Beyond that, I think you'd need to speak to the archivists in the records department, but YOU", pointing a finger at me from the hand holding the cup, "should be focusing on passing your trial period first and not dallying around or I might end up selling you to Medved!". I lifted the waterskin from the water, shook off what excess I could and threw the strap over my shoulder. It was going to soak my shoulder and hip but I under this sunlight and all the running about I could see I'd be doing I wasn't going to stay wet long. "Oh? You think I'm just a goat-herder who doesn't know their left from their right?" I said sarcastically, "By the time the moon is over, not even Medved will be able to afford me!" I grinned with a joking smile. Persius just laughed saying "That's the spirit!". He put the cup down on the basin and stood up, "Right, next we go pick up food and I want to do a tour around each of the main departments but we'll be going past legal first".

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

Anpinn-Beitrag: Ich habe auf meiner Website ein Update zu meinen Lektorats/Korrektorats-Kapazitäten für 2026 gepostet.

https://lenarichter.com/lektorat-und-uebersetzung/

Außerdem gibt es im Bereich Workshops jetzt auch ein paar mehr Infos, wenn man mich gezielt für Workshops buchen möchte:

https://lenarichter.com/workshops/

Für Fragen, Aufträge, Wünsche und all das schreibt mir am besten eine Mail an info ät lenarichter . com

#Workshop #Schreiben #Lektorat #Literatur #writing #Autor_innenLeben #Korrektorat #Fortbildung

As they exchanged pleasantries and small talk I looked around the market hall. One of the great doors was open, the outside being so bright that the sand appeared as white as the sunlight pouring in. Outside was already a mass of people and camels, the early arrivers and their goods. I cannot deny that a strong animal-like instinct almost compelled me to make a run for it, such was the effect of seeing desert sand once again but I thought better of it. Outside, there would be guards and any number of other people who could stop me and even if I could hop on a camel and make a dash for it there might be archers on top of the rock, and even then if I somehow managed to get out of arrow range, everybody would know exactly where I was going and give chase -- they might even have zebras here! Zebras were much faster than camels but couldn't travel far like a camel could, but that didn't matter if your only goal was catching up to a runaway slave. Of course, actually getting a zebra out to this remote place was nearly impossible, but impossible seemed to be the normal routine here so I couldn't rule it out.

I thought about the first time I had seen a zebra and how much it terrified me. It hadn't occurred to me that there were animals in the worldglass that our clan had never encountered, separated by an impassable desert as we were. I had bumped into one on a busy street whilst I was looking the wrong way and knocked myself to the ground, the zebra reared up its front legs in fright. For the first time I felt the terror of having no instinct that could respond to this; was this thing vicious like the wildcats -- the lions, the leopards, the lynxes -- that pounced, or was it like the wild dogs -- the hyenas, the foxes and the wolves -- that used their jaws? Was it swift like the impala and gazelle, or was it dumb and skittish like the zebu? It was tall like a camel, but muscular like an ox. I didn't know whether I should go for the throat with my knife or get around behind it where it couldn't attack me. The owner had managed to yank the animal aside saving me from the hooves coming down on me and he yelled obscenities as he tried to calm the animal. I simply laid there on my back in disbelief before finally coming to my senses, scrabbling to my knees and running away.

In my clan we were always taught to be prepared: the huntsmen shared everything they knew about stalking prey, about looking for the telltale signs and exactly how every animal reacted, how they attacked. Where their strengths and weaknesses were, where to stick your knife and if you were unarmed, how to use your arms to defend yourself without getting gored or torn to shreds. I listened to it all and took it seriously, unlike some of my peers. The experienced huntsmen would say that fear was something to feel after a fight, that you had to hone your knowledge, your strength, and your movements until it became instinct because life-or-death was a matter of what your instinct would choose in the moment. Thinking was too late. The first time you had to fight a wildcat had to be the ten-thousandth time your body and mind had practised the motions. Beneath that zebra was the first time I had been unprepared.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

We didn't go back through the metalsmiths but continued in the direction away from the slave hall we had come from. I was trying my best to keep track of where we were but once you entered the narrow passageways it was total confusion because they never went in a straight line, they would zig-zag and change direction suddenly, split and recombine and there was no sense I could discern in any of it. We were however still on the same floor so by my reckoning we were heading to the market hall. "Are we going through the market hall?" I shouted ahead as I tried to keep up. Looking over his shoulder, Persius noted I was lagging behind and slowed down a bit "Yes, we are, actually" he said, somewhat surprised, "the market opens on the second bell -- you're not to be on the market floor between then and when the market closes on the third bell". We popped out of the narrow passageways and into a thoroughfare where there were a lot of yellow-bands and various coloured tunics going both ways. "The department of Merchant Relations has its own slaves for looking after the merchants and their petty demands, they will not be happy if you interfere and you will not like what happens if you upset a merchant. You should avoid the merchants entirely, but if one does accost you, your best bet is to relay any demands to the first yellow-band you can find, then it's their head on the chopping block. Merchants aren't your job, the yellow department fought hard for that right and we aren't going to spoil their fun. They won't touch me because I'm from Skills and Labour and we get to decide how many slaves they get -- they don't want to start a fight they can't win."

Entering the market hall was not so much like entering a room as it was stepping outside: it was vast, bright, airy and impressive in every way the slave hall was not. The floor was tiled in beautiful coloured geometric patterns, there could be a hundred thousand individual tiles here and the whole thing was spotlessly clean. In the middle stood the bell tower and there were already slaves up the scaffolding polishing the bell. There were a few merchants standing around in pairs greeting each other, you could tell they were merchants because of their long pointed shoes, richly embroidered robes with tasselled trim, the fingers clustered with rings, and the uniquely three-pointed hat that was the typical wear of merchants and their ilk. As we crossed the floor we caught the eye of a merchant who lifted his hand to interrupt his friend as they were conversing and stepped aside towards us with arms raised, "Greetings, my esteemed friend!" he announced in his loud and rich accent. "Medved, my good man" said Persius offering his hand. The merchant took the hand and slapped his other hand over it and heartily shook Persius with both of his. "Thank you for the slave recommendation, she is most pleasing to the eye and her work is very satisfactory; she will be managing the inventories at the new warehouse after I kicked out that worthless good-for-nothing mongrel I bought from Bartoz!". Whatever charm the merchant exuded Persius could match, "I'm so pleased that she's working out well for you, if ever you're in the need for something particular don't hesitate to call for me and we can discuss it further over some drink". Clearly our purpose cutting through the market was really for this 'chance' meeting to happen.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

"Who is this governor? What do they do?" I asked, this having been the first time anybody had mentioned this person. "Have you been living under a rock all your life!?" Persius scoffed, "Governor Julius Xerxes Vitrix* the sixth, only the richest man in the world, owner of you, me, the city, and the sands thereabout for two days in all directions!". He can't be all that important if I hadn't heard of him anywhere I had been in the worldglass thus far, but I opted to be merely non-committal rather than rude by saying "Sorry, didn't know". "Well I'm sure people of his fine stature don't get discussed in whatever goat-herding circles in the middle of nowhere you were dragged from". That much was true; unless this governor guy had killed a lion with his bear hands, he wouldn't much impress me or my clan.

(* names are just made up on the spot so may change and could do with improving)

In my travels I had seen plenty of people that thought they were so damn impressive just because they had lots of metal. The whole thing was a scam -- anybody could buy anything if they had enough metal to trade for it, they didn't have to do any of the work actually making something, or even mine and smelt the metal in the first place! A skilled craftsman would make a quality table and a merchant would come along and buy it for metal and then the merchant would sell it to the local land-lord for even more metal and the land-lord would brag about how great his table was. He could have just bought it from the craftsman in the first place who would have benefited the most from the extra metal. All the merchants seem to do was rob from the poor and sell to the rich whilst lining their own pockets.

Down the stairs we went and through some winding passageways and then straight through the middle of an intensely hot and loud space where metal forging was being done. There were fire pits, furnaces, anvils and massive men hammering red-hot metal. Nobody acknowledged us as we marched through the scene to the other end, through another passageway before Persius stopped in front of a plain door where sat a guard twiddling his thumbs who had a small table next to him with a box lamp on it. Picking up the box lamp, Persius opened the door and we entered a small, dark room that had rows and rows of narrow shelves cut into the walls, all filled with various cloth and leather items -- arm bands of different colours, porter's tunics and so forth. Persius shoved the box lamp in my face and I held it up whilst he rummaged through the shelves. Finding what he wanted, we stepped out of the cold, dark room and he swapped the box lamp in my hand with the stuff he had taken from the equipment room: a white arm-band, and a waterskin and knapsack, both on long leather straps. "This is your equipment -- don't lose it or you will be expected to do without it, and if you don't have your armband the guards might run you through. The only reason you're being left alone is because I'm with you" explained Persius as I slung the waterskin and knapsack over my shoulders and put on the arm-band. "The knapsack is for your food and stuff you're tasked with carrying -- misplace anything valuable and you might be sold off to cover the loss." and, putting down the box lamp next to the guard, "Follow me, we're going to go up to third now" before he was off again with his long legs carrying him away.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

We exited the tunnel and out in to the great hall; the sun was a little higher now and as it had rose, the light shafts from the rock face had angled downwards casting light across the plaza floor. The holes in the rock face extended all the way up many floors above where the top of the hall narrowed away to nothing as the outside curvature of Pebble Rock met the stack of balconies, each pushed further back than the floor below to make the most of the sunlight and space. The first bell must have woken the whole city because the plaza was packed with hundreds of people! Everybody was in a rush to be somewhere and I saw lots of white-bands, guards, and what appeared to be specialised craftsmen carrying hammers, tongs, picks and so-forth; they wore regular tan leather arm-bands.

Along the parapet at the edge of the plaza were benches where those with coloured arm-bands who could afford to, sat and talked, and between those sitting along the parapet and the mass of moving bodies going in all directions there was a two-way channel of those who just wanted to cross the plaza directly from one side wall to the other. As we followed the flow of people ahead I peered over the balcony parapet: there was the large wooden doors and though they were not open, each had a regular sized-door built into them that was open, allowing porters to come and go to the outside. The sunlight from these doors let me see the space more clearly and I realised that this wasn't the market hall -- there was no bell, for one thing, but I saw straw covering the floor, the four tall chairs and the wicker fences and I knew that we were above the slave entrance.

Suddenly we plunged into the relative darkness of the tunnels and my pace-setter up front resumed his speech, and his pace: "I'm a purple band, that means I work exclusively for the Department of Skills and Labour; only department heads and the palace staff at the top can give me orders. Officially, my title is Liaison but really I'm just a glorified courier, my job is to manage official communications between my department and others. If you get lost or need help, ask your fellow white-bands or myself -- do NOT ask another colour-band for help unless you want to make enemies early on". I asked "What about the guards?", managing to insert my question into the verbal onslaught, "they don't have arm-bands". This did not slow the flow of words; "The guards are not the property of the Governor, so they don't live here permanently. They're hired for the task and do shifts of three-months in, three-months out. They do not answer to the city or its citizens, only to the Captain of the Guard, who answers directly to the Governor -- the city guard is a completely independent body to the city municipality. They do not like you, and unless you REALLY want to make enemies then don't speak to them".

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

"If I'm not being sold, then isn't the city just paying itself?" I asked trying to piece together where I was being passed around. "No, the city compensates the merchant who brought you in with credit whilst we work out if you're up to the task of being part of the city. If the city chooses to purchase you at the end of the trial period, then the account is settled". The sheer gall of this woman to call that bastard of a slave driver a merchant! I mustn't get angry I thought, I need to think clearly and understand how this all works. The city wants the best pick of the bunch, they get to evaluate us and set the price. They want us to go for a high price on the market if the city doesn't want us because that means a bigger cut, but at the same time the city doesn't want to pay the highest price to the merchant if we're kept on so they needed to lower the price as much as possible...

"Less the expenses for food, water, housing and training?" I suggested, putting myself out on a limb. It was wise to be extravagant when entertaining a merchant but doubly so when he was the one paying for it. A broad, coy smile grew across her face. "I knew it was worth taking a punt on you, keep that up and I might have some competition" she said somewhere between cordiality and seriousness. I wasn't sure what to make of this... she was talking about us as simple goods to barter over but on the other hand I had landed a job at the city that didn't sound too hard; a courier delivered stuff, I could do that."What about Rogert?", she hadn't mentioned him yet. "The hairy guy? I didn't put a bid in for him, but given how good he was with metal rates I suspect the Department of Merchant Relations will snatch him up, they always need people who can speak the lingo these merchants use".

We both turned to look when the door opened and in stepped a tall, pale and mostly hairless man wearing white robes with purple trim and a purple armband on his upper-arm, he had not finished closing the door behind himself before reporting to Principia, "The new girl is on her way, and I see the other hire is here already". Principa was already three steps ahead; "Just the person I was looking for! I need you to show the new courier the ropes, you can start by going down to the equipment room and getting them kitted out", and then turning to me, "This is Persius, he's going to show you around, what you need to do, et cetera. If you have any questions just ask him". Prersius just stoically replied "Yes, ma'am". I felt bad for the guy as I had arrived early and he stepped through the door at the wrong time. Persius opened the door and stood aside to let me through so I stood up, said an awkward goodbye to Principa before leaving the room. Stepping out of the light back into the cave, I looked both ways trying to reorientate myself when Persius swept past with a "follow me!" and was off down the ornate corridor. Catching up to him and matching his rapid walking pace that was practically a jog for me, he began reeling off information: "You've been brought in as a general courier, that means you just have to take stuff from one place to another. Now you've probably noticed the coloured arm-bands everybody has; an arm-band signifies you're a worker for the city, there are different colours for different departments and a few special cases you'll find out about. You'll be starting out as a 'white-band', which means no special affiliation, that means anybody can give you orders -- and I mean anybody -- the only people who cannot order you around are other white-bands and branded-slaves. If you are given orders, you must fulfil them, no matter what. Fail to fulfil orders and you'll be branded and put out to sale".

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

Again I was hit by the disorientating impression that I was outside: the room was flooded with sunlight, not the orange flickery lamp light of before. I was in a wide room that was filled with many neatly arranged desks and though the room was not too deep it looked spacious, as on the wall opposite me there were windows from end to end and the beautiful gentle sunlight of the morning poured in and completely filled the room. Every window had a pair of wood shutters either side and wide rolls of white muslin cloth above for blinds. The air was cool and there was no smoke anywhere. Everything I was feeling was telling me that I had just stepped from inside a cave into the lovely cool and breezy buildings of the white city. Whereas to the left of me the desks were set in rows facing the right-side of the room, one against each opposing wall with an aisle between going the length of the room, to my right sat Principa with her own desk in the middle of the space in front of the rightmost wall which had two more purple banners hanging the height of the wall and two doors either side of those. Principa's desk was a masterwork of craftsmanship, the top had a purple dyed leather surface with brass beading around the border. The sides were of carved wood panelling and each foot was metalwork hawk talons clutching a smooth metal sphere. The desk itself was so large that it had to have been crafted in the room, and the size was warranted because there were several small piles of clay tablets organised across it and Principa was busy reading from one tablet whilst in front of her was a plate holding a very fine piece of pastry. It was a sort of puffed-up triangle as if sheets of fine pastry had been rolled diagonally from corner to corner to make it thicker in the middle and thinner on either end and the whole thing had the impression of a small double-ended horn if such a thing could exist. Next to this stood a fine pitcher and, exactly as I had expected the next time I met her, one cup made of flawless transparent glass.

"Ah, you're early, that's what I like to see" Principa spoke, looking up from her tablet. "Uh, yes" I said, not sure what to say -- I hadn't chosen to be up early, I didn't even know what hour it was when I woke. "What about the others?" I hesitantly asked. "That's what I'd like to talk to you about" she replied, putting down her tablet, "take a seat" she added extending her palm to offer the chair directly in front of her desk. I sat down and found myself feeling somewhat small in front of the large desk. Was she tall or was this chair just short? Picking up another tablet, she held it at arm's length, looking down her arm at it and began "The City has decided to loan you on a trial basis as a general courier until a more specialised position becomes available, on the condition that you meet the requirements, and you complete some additional training satisfactorily". "Loan?", I asked, "am I not going to the market to be sold?". "Oh no," she scoffed, "slaves with useful skills are put into a silent auction open only to the city and its residents to determine who gets what. I put in bids for Sarah and Esmae for my own department and the city for you because I think you'll fit in somewhere here. I won the bids for you and Sarah but whoever got Esmae paid through the nose for her, it's not every day talent like that walks through the door". Her understanding of just "walking through the door" obviously didn't include a death march through the desert, and what was so special about Esmae that had them fighting each other to get her?

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

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#ai #writing #llm

It made more sense now why the city hadn't been built outside. From the top of the rock you'd have the perfect vantage point and the crater meant that an army couldn't sneak up because they'd have to go over the crest which was a mile away in all directions, there was literally nowhere to hide. Anybody who approached could be shot at with arrows from any of the thousands of windows that went all around the rock. You'd be hard-pushed to starve the city out as well, there appeared to be ample water supply -- so much so they could afford to just splash it about -- and given the market, probably a good stock of food. Surely the city wasn't here back in the Wayfarer's day I thought, that was almost 350 years ago now. As we exited the plaza on the opposite side and entered the tunnels again I tried to think of any fables that hinted at Pebble Rock. Nothing about big rocks, but the only one that seemed relevant was the story of the boy who bragged he was the bravest and that he had fought off many wildcats. The other children jeered at him because he never had any proof so in a huff he walked out of the camp claiming that he would slaughter a wildcat and bring back its skin. He was walking the wilderness trying to gather the courage to face the embarrassment of returning empty-handed and apologising for lying when a wildcat surprised him. Though he had his knife, he was scared and fled, climbing a tree to escape the cat. The cat would try to climb the tree but he could easily kick it away. Seeing that he had bested the cat he laughed and hurled insults at it, but the cat knew patience and it skulked around the tree for a day and a night, waiting him out. Realising that he would die of dehydration before the cat gave up the boy was forced to face his fears. Finally having found the bravery to fight he began to descend the tree as the wildcat watched from a distance but having to climb down put him at a disadvantage and, sprinting at him, the cat was able to leap and sink its claws into his back, pulling him to the ground before tearing him apart. Right now I felt like I was the one up a tree and wondered how I was going to get out of here without putting myself in danger by doing so.

The porter had brought me down a particularly wide and very well decorated tunnel, the walls had been carved in a way one would see painted on fine pottery -- a patterned zig-zag band at the top and bottom and throughout the middle an artistic procession of people, here labourers of all kinds carrying their wares and tools; farmers, stonemasons, metalsmiths and so forth. The oil lamps to light the tunnel had been made an integral part of the procession with evenly spaced craftsman holding some light according to their profession -- a torch, a candle, or even an astrologer holding the 'sun' in the palm of his hand. It must have taken a decade to carve all this out of solid rock. We weaved through a number of people congregating in this area, mostly those in white robes, many having purple adornments of some kind, they were conversing in pairs or otherwise speaking to porters of different colours: red, green, blue and so forth. We arrived at a door that was likewise ornate and made to be a part of the whole stone tapestry by having a woman reaching for the door handle carved onto the door itself. Outside of this door hung two purple banners flanked by two guards and flanked further by two long benches on which a few other white-robed women sat with non-purple markings deep in discussion with one another. My porter stopped, about faced and announced "This be t'labour shop, you're expected so just go in" before about-facing again and disappearing up the corridor in the direction we had been going. Nobody here seemed to be aware of my presence excepting the minimum amount of eye-movement required to send a message from the guards. Oh well, I had chosen venturing into the unknown as my fate and I wasn't going to stop here so I reached for the door handle, taking it from the lady carved into the door. I didn't want to come across as scared or timid but at the same time I didn't want to burst in like a bandit.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

As I polished off the bread the others began stirring from their sleep. In the absence of sunlight, the smell of fresh bread could rouse even the heaviest sleeper! To think yesterday it had been a whip. A purple-tunic entered through the door, he was a well-built, if short, man. All the porters had shaved heads for some reason. "Mornin'" he acknowledged in a gruff voice, "You're wanted at t'Labour shop" and then, as if remembering something he had been commanded to do as he was almost out the door, "Follow me". We were going a different direction through the tunnels this time. "What about the others?" I asked, not expecting to be whisked away before I had a chance to say goodbye. I hadn't really thought about it last night but we might never see each other again. "There be someone who'll fetch them after t'first bell" came the reply in his brusque, dismissive tone. I couldn't tell if I was annoying him or he was just like this so I opted to not ask about this first of supposedly many bells. We emerged from the small passageways into a much bigger tunnel, wide enough for traffic to go both ways comfortably and there were already porters and bread-baskets and men carrying buckets using a long yoke over the shoulder with the buckets hanging by rope in front and behind them to balance them out. Water maybe? As one went past the smell violently corrected me; night buckets. Where did it all go? If there were a thousand people living here, it would be a considerable amount of waste. They didn't throw it out the windows otherwise the rock would have been stained all over and there'd be flies everywhere. I hoped my job wasn't going to be finding out.

From the wider tunnel we emerged into the open, or rather what at first I thought was the open -- dawn light crossed the hall sideways through a myriad of openings in the rock face. We were on a balcony level and there were already dozens of people criss-crossing the space, carrying one thing or another from one tunnel to another. This must be one of the floors I saw from below yesterday when the slaves came in. In the centre of this above-sand plaza was a water fountain! On the second floor! They must have an incredibly high-pressure aquifer here to have water flowing this far up. The centre of the fountain had ornate statues of naked women pouring the water from jars and around the basin the wall was low and wide so that people could sit and reach the water. Cups were sprinkled around the basin for people to use and there were guards and other people in robes filling their waterskins.

"That'll be t'first bell" came the voice of my porter over the hubbub of activity whilst I was struck by the water fountain and just as I turned my head his direction the loudest sound I'd ever heard rang out in the hall; I nearly soiled myself and ducked reflexively. Over the balcony, but still roughly level with us, held aloft by a scaffold tower of wood and metal was perhaps the largest bell in the worldglass, big enough to stand under. It thrummed so strongly, I could feel it in my body as I held my hand to my heart trying to calm myself from the sudden and intense shock. I meandered off course to look over the column-and-railing parapet at the edge as we went by the bell tower. It was hard to see the floor as there was no sunlight coming in -- a series of tall wooden doors covered the wall end-to-end with immense crossbars to keep them shut, much like a walled city's gates. This couldn't be the slave entrance which meant there were TWO great halls; they never stop at just one incredible thing here do they? This must be the market hall, and it was likely that all external doorways were similarly closed during the night. Nothing could get in and nothing could get out.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

I jolted awake terrified, out of breath. It was pitch black. I couldn't see! I'm blind, they've poked my eyes out! I grasped around with my hands, solid rock around me I couldn't grip onto. I found the bed frame underneath me and I pulled myself upright. Where was I? I couldn't tell. I held my breath and tried listening. A sawing sound, going back and forth... snoring! I was in... Pebble Rock. It was starting to come back to me. Outside my doorway was a faint orange glow flickering back and forth. I wasn't blind, someone had left their lamp outside their room and it was just barely lighting the hallway. I breathed a sigh of relief. Then the need for another kind of relief hit me; my bowels had stopped working around three days ago and after last night's food they were making themselves known. I leant out my doorway to fetch my night bucket and looked up the hallway; the others were still asleep. What time was it even? It could be the middle of the night or the middle of the day and there'd be no way to tell. How do the people know when to get up? We were deep in the middle of a rock, something that must have taken centuries to mine out. They could have just built a city around the outside of the rock like anywhere else, like any normal people.

I was in the midst of relieving myself when the door to our quarters opened gently and a man carrying a large wicker-basket stepped in quietly. He had a bushy moustache but was not dressed like anybody else I had seen yet, just a regular hessian shirt and under-knee trousers that might be typical anywhere in the worldglass. We locked eyes for a moment and then he said "Oh, you're up early. I'll send for a porter" before walking past my doorway. I quickly fixed myself and leapt into my new robes and, tightening my belt, I looked out my doorway and was hit by the unmistakable smell of bread -- warm, freshly baked bread! The man was placing a stick of bread on a shelf outside each doorway and was making his way back. Seeing me, he slapped the last baton in my hand before bending down to pick up his basket full of bread and letting himself out he whispered "Thanks!" in a somewhat satirical tone as the door closed behind him. I think I was the one gawping like a sand-lizard this time. There was nothing better in the worldglass than the smell [and taste] of fresh bread. This freshness meant that they had to have a baker here, inside Pebble Rock, what a thought! I bit into the stick of bread and it made a satisfying crunch. It was the first properly solid food I'd eaten in a week and the first bread that wasn't stale in many weeks. Were we being spoiled again? Thinking about it, the market meant that the city probably had access to every ingredient that could be found in the worldglass.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

On the rare occasions that I’m not taking pictures of my #cats (see: almost all my other posts), I make a podcast called The Worst Writer in the World

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I was in the desert, it was night but there were no stars just total blackness even though I could see clearly by moonlight. The wind blew gently but where one would normally see sand sprays cresting off dunes, the desert was featureless. No vegetation, no rocks or landmarks, no dunes, a flat horizon. Suddenly the sand shook violently almost throwing me off my feet as a momentary mist of sand grains leapt into the air and then scattered with a hiss not unlike the sound of pouring grain from a sack. A conical shaped impression in the sand opened up in front of me and even though the chunks of sand around the edges gave way and slid down the cone, it never seemed to fill. More and more, the edges gave way and little plateaus of sand slid down the slope and were torn apart but as the hole kept growing bigger so it grew deeper.

I began to walk away, keeping my eyes on the hole. Big chunks of the desert, big enough for me to stand on, were tumbling into the hole now. The rim of the sink-hole expanded as it took bites out of the desert in all directions. The sand was moving fast now, producing a hissing noise as grains streamed over each other down to the centre where they were sucked under. I had to start running to get away from it. The hole was vast now, big enough to swallow a village and deeper than any hole that could be dug by men. The hiss was now a roar. I kept running, looking over my shoulder trying to put some distance behind me but it felt like I was starting to run up-hill now. The hole was as big as a city, the edge approaching rapidly as the sand fell away at terrifying speed. It became sticky underfoot and I was definitely going uphill now. The hole was as wide as the horizon and yet it still approached. I fought hard against the wet sand but kept stumbling and still the hole got bigger. I could run no more, it was a struggle to get one foot in front of another. I was practically climbing now, using feet and hands to scale the hill, all whilst the hole sucked everything away into the black void below. I couldn't out-pace it any more, I was too exhausted. The hill fell away around me and, reaching out in desperation, my hand struck the worldglass.

Suddenly I felt like I was falling forward and I stuck my other hand out to grab at the glass and fell flat on my face as the entire worldglass tipped over on its side. I felt a sickening dizziness as up became forward but it didn't stop there and forward started to become down. I tried to hold on but the glass was coated in condensation and I found myself sliding uncontrollably along the glass, faster and faster, until I was practically falling. I was screaming my lungs out knowing I was going to die when I hit the bottom but the glass curved gradually inward below, scooping me up, and I was sliding again. I had to shield my face from the water which whipped my face like a fierce sandstorm as I careened across the wet surface. When the slope eased I felt the glass was beneath me again and I was sliding down a hill and the hill became a gentle slope and then I was sliding across flat glass on my back, spinning this way and that, eventually coming to a stop. I was drenched to the bone and my arms trembled in terror. I caught my breath and with a shaky hand, I wiped the water from my face and opened my eyes. That's when the all the sand in the worldglass fell on me.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

I thought back to the meeting with Principa. Where did she fit into this scheme? The questioning was obviously for grading our abilities, I could do numbers but not write whereas the others could. That's what the wax tablets were for, to make sure nobody was lying! Only once it'd been established we weren't lying did they bring out the water. But why the glass cups? Surely not everyone here drank from glass cups. Just one of these was more than all the wealth I had seen up until now. When I thought about it, it made no sense to allow a slave -- the lowest of the low -- to sample from such a treasure. Why even bother? What did it prove, that the city was rich? That was already evident and what does that matter to us if we were going to be sold on? We had no say in the matter. Wait, that was it -- that was what the glass cups were about -- a simple merchant's trick, a bait-and-switch! The cups were there to suggest "there's more where that came from", motivate us to do well in the tests which increases our resale value. Those five could be the only glass cups in the entire city, maybe in the whole of the worldglass, and whilst she might own one of them the rest are being borrowed for effect. I had to admit I respected the audacity, to drink from a glass cup like that would be a lifetime opportunity for anyone.

And this stew -- they could have given us gruel or stale bread and we'd still live until tomorrow (and even been grateful for it!) but the city was playing tricks with us again; "you're safe here. Be obedient and there's more where that came from" it was whispering. I thanked the wise-women and blessed my clan because even though I was being taken advantage of, as a slave and with the tricks the city seemed to be playing on us, none-the-less my clan had spared me from greater horrors by teaching me many things. I doubt the branded slaves were being given stew and their own water pitcher, or even a bed for that matter. I knew all of it could be taken away from me in an instant if I displeased the city. Hopefully tomorrow wasn't going to be more tests, but if that wasn't the case then did that mean I was going to be auctioned off? If I did get sold to a wealthy merchant then that would mean I'd be out of here and that would give me ample opportunity to escape. Whereas most people needed a caravan to travel between places, I knew how to survive in the wilderness and could make the journey on my own under the cover of night. The night. Was it night? I hadn't see the sky since I'd entered Pebble Rock. Regardless my body was crying out for sleep now. I blew my lamp out, climbed into my cot, put my hands behind my head and stared at the darkness and let out a deep sigh. Not even in my wildest dreams could I have imagined this place and what had happened.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

I sat down on the edge of the cot and began to drink deeply from the stew whilst I thought about the events of today. Before all the Principa stuff my plan had been to sneak out at night, steal a camel and make for the water hole half a day away that I'd stopped at on the way here but this plan was full of flaws. I could hardly be the first slave to think of escaping in the dead of night, this place was way too organised to fall for that. There was two guards outside our quarters and a few more through the tunnels and I wasn't even sure how I got to... wherever we are now... I just remember there being stairs at one point. It simply made more sense to bide my time, play along, learn the layout of the place, movement of the guards, where the water and camels were stored etc. and not give any inclination to my captors that I was thinking of escape. So long as I had escaped hard labour, haste was not the solution yet. If I got caught, death would be the good outcome, the alternative wasn't worth imagining.

I put the bowl down thoroughly revived and went to my doorway to fetch the clothes they had provided. It was a pair of leather sandals and belt, and a set of undergarments and robe: white but of a common grade of cloth so slightly yellow in colour though thankfully not the terrible coarse itchy hemp stuff. A cloth had been provided with the bucket and I washed myself down, changed into the undergarments and put the bucket of dirty water and unspeakable rags I had been wearing on the shelf. Rogert was snoring loudly. Sarah and Esmae were whispering to each other, I think they were both in one room finally taking the opportunity to have a proper conversation without having to constantly deflect the questions of the man who couldn't even be quiet whilst sleeping.

What I couldn't figure out was where the slave drivers who brought us here were amongst all this? I had been expecting we'd turn up at an open-air market and we'd all stand around whilst buyers prodded us and inspected our teeth like camels and there'd be heated exchanges of words and then I'd be carted off someplace else. This place... this place was more like a cattle market. Was the price agreed beforehand or some kind of estimate made before we went in? Why not just line us all up and let the buyers choose? Surely the price couldn't be set before the 'quality of the goods' was established otherwise the slave drivers could pull one over the buyers. Is that what the questions were for? And then I saw it, I had been staring right at it -- the ceiling! This was no open-air market where people just turned up and competed with each other; the city owns and controls the market! The city decides what's good quality and what's not, the city sets the prices and the city runs the auctions! We got the ear tags because we're the quality merchandise and maybe buyers don't want it branded, less risk of gangrene, who knows. The buyers come here because they know everything is measured by the same scales no matter where the goods came from, and the the sellers come because even if they're not getting the best possible deal they at least know none of their competitors are getting a better one. On top of that, not only does the city get to skim a bit off the top of everything, it also got first pick of the bunch for itself. It was all so insidiously clever, nobody could cheat and the city always got its cut.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

I just added a "resources for writers" index page on my website: a how-to + templates for The Industry Standard Manuscript, a cheat sheet of sorts in support of the Chicago Manual of Style (w/ a focus on the narrative writer), and a discussion about Grammatical TAM. Fun stuff. Check it out.

https://errantruminant.com/resources/

#Writing #writingLife #Editing

Here are the March #WordWeavers questions!
Written by @AlinaLeonova & I, you’ll find the month’s questions pinned to our profiles on the 1st. All are welcome to join in.
Participate with a WIP or an already published book.
As always, play the days you want, skip the others. Please use CW as necessary. Looking forward to seeing your answers & meeting new friends.
#amwriting #writing #authors

#writingProgress Feb 2026

Installed a new plugin in Obsidian, to keep track of my #fiction #writing

I'm quite happy with the regularity with which I am able to work on my WIP despite a day job & other hobbies. My sports regiment is currently suffering the most in favour of this, and that needs to be solved. Also, since I am now editing the first draft, I am expecting the per day word counts to go down quite drastically. I am essentially rewriting every word of the first draft, but taking more care in crafting the scenes, and adding more worldbuilding and atmospheric fluff - most of which is very scarce in the first draft. I am enjoying this.
I've also gotten back to more early morning writing - which requires me to get to bed in time.

In reading:
- The Chained Knight by @lilithsaintcrow - this was recommended as a standalone read, which I don't think it is. Probably better to read the Moonknight first, otherwise its just strange, since most characters obviously know each other - but as a reader one remains just as confused as the protagonist throughout, even more so in some cases. The thing that really annoyed me about the book though, was that the protagonist had essentially no agency in this book. Just existing did the trick. Not sure if that was intentional. This alongside the overall confusing story made it a rather chewy book.

- The graveyard shift by M.L.Rio - this was a very enjoyable read. A post graduation dark academia mystery. Short, great characters, many feels for the bleak side of academic careers and shattered dreams. Good stuff.

- Picked up the diaries by Anne Lister again "I know my own heart" - which vibes nicely with the current WIP, which has a prominent lesbian couple. Though my world does not have this awkwardness and discrimination around queer relationships, because nobody needs more of that.

#WritingCommunity

At long last the mad woman was satisfied, "You've all done splendidly well and must be tired. You'll be shown to your quarters where you can get some rest and someone will be along in the morning to get you" and just like that she about-faced and was off. "What was that all about?" asked Rogert. "I thought I knew and then I didn't" said I. "Did she say quarters?" asked Sarah. A guard and a purple tunic entered the room and was somewhat taken aback for an instant that we had been left unattended but recomposed himself and directed us out the tiny chair room we had started in many hours ago and along a number of twisty passages until we arrived at a slightly more elaborate door with two guards either side and through that, a straight passageway with a set of doorways (though no doors) left and right, beside each being a series of shelves carved into the rock and each room's shelves had at least an oil lamp and a bucket that I could make out but when we had gone beyond the guarded door we were first hit by the smell of food! The purple tunic showed us the shelves and explained, "Take a room each, there's a bucket of water in there to wash yourselves down and put your old clothes and the dirty water here", patting one shelf, "and change into your new robes here", tapping another shelf that had some folded cloth on it. "There's drinking water in each room and some food, and when you're done with the night bucket, please put it back here", he added, using his foot to poke the bucket that sat on the floor in the lowest cubbyhole cut into the wall. We all bade our guide goodbye and goodnight enthusiastically, eager to eat and sleep. Rogert was practically giddy with excitement, "Do you smell that? I haven't eaten in a week! We sure lucked out here!". He was right, we'd all been through a lot and this outcome was honestly better than we could have expected even if we were still slaves.

I had already been standing nearest the first room on the left so I took that, Rogert took the room opposite me and the two women who always stuck together took the next two rooms opposite each other down the hallway. I picked up my lamp and took a look in my room. It was a small cube cut out of the rock. To the left was a cot bed: strips of fabric weaved over and under each other and pulled tight around a cheap wooden frame. The only floorspace paralleled the doorway and at the other end of the room, next to the cot, the rock had been cut only down to waist-height rather than all the way to the floor and this acted as a table of sorts. In front of this was the bucket of water, and on the table was a water pitcher and cup, clay, but they were glazed however so not the lowest quality, and lastly a glazed bowl of stew and it smelt simply incredible. My stomach nearly leapt out of my body with the violent gurgle it made in anticipation. This was not the thin watered down gruel I had last eaten five days ago, this had vegetable chunks and actual strands of meat in it! Loud slurping noises were already coming from the other rooms and Rogert was positively vociferous with his praise for the stew. For me, just savouring the smell was not a moment to be skipped. The smell hung thick in the air like the fat-rich smoke of a hog roast around a camp fire. I sipped carefully and the warmth flushed all through me and the flavour burst forth like a fire, roaring like a lion. It was so good to finally appreciate food again rather than eating out of necessity to survive. I tried the water to compare. It was clear but it didn't taste nearly as good as the stuff from before. Maybe it was the stew that had altered my taste, or that I hadn't eaten for five days, or maybe it was the glass cup? Either way it was unlikely I would ever experience that again.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

"Water?" came the voice of Cleo and snapped me out of my daydream. "Oh, yes please, thank you" I stammered putting the glass cup down. She poured the water out and picking up the glass I turned it about tilting the water one way and another. It was like I was holding the worldglass in my hand and I imagined a worldglass somewhere out there that was filled with water instead of sand. What would it be like to live there? How would anything survive? It would certainly make for an interesting story. "Phew, that really hits the spot, eh?" came the voice of Rogert. I had been daydreaming again. Not wanting to come across as disrespectful I took a swig of the water and was almost knocked off my stool by the impact. The taste! How could water have such distinct flavour? Surely it was just the lack of food I'd had in days. I peered into the glass to double check it was actually water I was drinking.

"A man could retire and live very comfortably on one of these!" came Rogert again. Turning the glass about in my hand I murmured "It's as if it were cut from the worldglass itself", half to myself. "Nonsense!" he snorted, "that's an old wives' tale, everyone knows the world's a bowl that rests on the back of a tortoise!". I didn't even think before I reacted -- "That's not true, I've been to the edge of the worldglass and touched it with my own hands!". Idiot! I wasn't supposed to mention that but it just came out of nowhere. He wasn't prepared to back down, "Liar! Nobody's ever returned that tried to go to the edge of the world, it's at least a hundred days travel away!". I chose to hold my tongue, better to be thought a liar than endanger my clan. How could he be so confident that we were on the back of a tortoise when he hadn't seen it. I had stuck my nose against the glass and looked down and there was no tortoise there.

"My my, we are feeling refreshed now aren't we?" chimed in Principa. We finished our water and thanked Cleo as she collected up the glasses and the water pitcher and left the room. We were then questioned on numbers and math, it was like school all over again (except the four day march and starvation). You could tell the two women were educated but the guy was not as sharp as his bragging would suggest. He struck me as someone who picked things up as he went along and filled in the gaps with bravado, however his knowledge of metal weights and how to convert between them when bartering was excellent. He could tell you exactly how much tin you needed if you wanted change from two fifths brass and one of copper. My clan had almost no metal and certainly no concept of "buying" or "selling", everything we had was for the survival of the whole clan and it was carefully managed so that nobody starved and nothing was wasted. Learning to barter was a rude awakening for me! It had not even entered my mind that a merchant could be dishonest, in fact dishonesty seemed to be the entire purpose of trading. After the numbers came an increasingly incomprehensible series of tests where we were taken individually to other rooms and poked, measured, and even asked to count the number of lines we could see on a tablet held at a distance whilst covering one eye and then the other.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

We put on mud shoes to stop us getting stuck and started for the edge. Ahead of us was an embankment, the top of the wet sand hill we had been trekking up for the last hour, no horizon beyond, just the darkest night sky full of the brightest stars that you ever saw. It looked as if you could just fall off the edge of the world. "Is it solid?" I asked the expedition leader. "Go, see for yourself" he said and smiled at me. "I'll get there first!" yelled one guy and we were all off, running as best as we could in the wet sticky sand up the embankment. We pushed and shoved each other and we got soaked and caked in sand all over and some stopped to throw sand balls at each other and we laughed and screamed and I fought and tugged and climbed until every muscle in my body hurt and my heart felt like it was going to explode. On my hands and knees I crawled upwards, dragging myself one hand in front of another until suddenly my hand hit the stars. I couldn't believe it, I stared at my hand, catching my breath, and watched as water clear as the glass ran down my arm. Condensation, thousands and thousands of miles of it. The glass was cool, smooth and absolutely solid as a rock but utterly flat and completely see-through as if it were not there. I laughed at the absurdity of it as I began pulling myself up. I pressed myself against the glass, arms out and let the night sky swallow me whole. The laughing and screaming behind me fell silent, I could feel the others' eyes fixed on me in awe. "It's solid!" one whispered, and they all stopped their in-fighting and rushed to reach the top.

It was all true; the fables, the wayfarer; all of it. It was real, and I had touched it with my own hands. At that moment I knew in my heart that Journey's End was real too and my purpose in life was to go there, that nothing would stop me or turn me away from it. Before now, I didn't know what I wanted to do when I became an adult, I had tried just about everything and I was not the best at any of it. Now I knew with certainty what I needed to do. Anything I could learn from the Keepers of the oral histories that could clue me in. Whatever prepared me for the journey; hunting, butchering, knife making, surviving in the desert. That day I turned thirteen, and my parents had been right -- it was the most important day of my life.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

I was twelve. On your thirteenth birthday (to reflect the thirteen moons of the year) you had a coming of age ceremony and were considered an adult and had to provide for the clan whichever way you were able. Every 10 years an expedition of those who had since come of age was arranged to go see the edge of the worldglass. It was a five day trek there and those going would be expected to catch their own food. My birthday would have been during the trip so my mother said I had to wait until next time but I was burning with the need to see the edge of the worldglass that I had heard of in the fables and when I asked anybody who would talk to me questions about everything: why was the sky blue? Where did the sand come from? Where was it going? When my mother said I couldn't go I asked my father. When he said no I begged, pleaded with them, to go -- can't my coming of age ceremony be delayed until I got back? Again, no. Preparations were already under way and you couldn't delay your coming of age ceremony, it was the most important day in your life. I even tried cajoling: "But the whole clan won't be there until they get back anyway, surely you want everybody to be there?". Final no, that was that. So I sneaked out at night and went to the wise woman to beseech her for permission to go. She listened patiently to my pleas and asked me to wait whilst she checked the stars and consulted the bones of the ancient wise-women before her. Finally, seeing that the winds were good, she agreed and told me to sneak back into bed and not to tell my parents and that she would handle everything. I'll never forget the wink she gave me when I slipped back into the night, my heart racing from the excitement of knowing I was going. I didn't sleep.

Sure enough, days later, the expedition was packed and, waving to one and all, we set off. It was a long journey and it was tough -- I was the youngest one there and I was always trying to prove I was just as good even if I fell short. As the days passed the sky darkened ahead of us, at first I hadn't noticed, but by day 3 there was a visible difference in the colour of the sky in front of us compared to behind us. By day 4 the difference was stark, like we were approaching an impossibly huge mountain or we were uncovering where the night hid during the day. On the 5th day it was a vast black wall that filled your eyes and we rode in silence, partly in awe, partly afraid of the enormity of it. Eventually the stars came out in front of us, even though it was not night. Behind us was day, but there in front of us was night. We were going up hill now and then the sand became clumpy, and then it was wet and it got wetter and soon the camels got bogged down. "We're here", the expedition leader said. He was the most experienced shepherd in our clan who could spend months away at a time grazing the goats.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

Not a minute later a youthful woman walked in, her hair was short and tussled, and she was also wearing a long white robe with purple trim although the metal armlet on her upper arm was a simple band, not elaborate like Principa's. Cleo was carrying an ornate pitcher and a stack of... glass? She set the pitcher and strange tower of glass down on her mistress's desk and plucked a piece from the top, placed it next to the pitcher and then poured water from the pitcher into the glass. I could not believe my eyes what I was seeing: pure, completely see-though, polished-to-perfection glass, crafted into a mere cup. I had never seen such a thing, I couldn't even begin to estimate its worth, and there were five of them here! And the water! As pure as the glass. When the water stilled, it's as if it simply disappeared! I turned to the others to see if this was normal where they'd come from. Rogert was sucking air through his teeth. Sarah had merely raised her eyebrows and Esmae was gawping, wide-eyed and transfixed, although this was normal for her thus far.

Once the assistant had poured water for her mistress she picked up the glasses and dispensed them one by one to us before returning to pour out water. As I waited I turned the glass around in my hand mesmerised by the play of light, bending and shifting around. How was such a thing even possible? I was familiar with glass, we used glass knives in my clan but that glass was a muddy black-brown colour and whilst it was sharp it was brittle and couldn't be sharpened many times before you needed a new blade. We had almost no metal because we could only get metal from scraps of iron ore found on loose surface rocks and forging iron required a strong furnace and that required a lot of firewood and there were not many trees around and we mostly used brush wood and tumbleweed, although all of our tent-pegs were metal because nothing else was as strong and reliable. Digging for metal was a new concept to me when I left the clan, if you had enough metal to start with you could make a tool that was a cross between a hammer and a knife -- a pick they called it -- and you could force your way into a rock with this and pick the ore out from inside. Everywhere I had been metal was used to barter so there was lots of it about which meant that there had to be well-fed furnaces which meant that higher quality glass could be made, which was a milky colour like crystal, and this could be polished into beads and jewellery. But glass like this cup? There was only one place I had ever seen this type of glass before.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

What in the worldglass was wrong with this crazy woman!? Had she no idea of the trauma we'd just been through -- kidnapped, beaten, marched through the desert for days on end and treated like cattle -- we were still in the rags and loincloths we'd started out in! I had half a mind to go over there and shake some sense into her where she sat but then the guard would have to get off his chair. I turned to the others to see if they were showing the same exasperation but they were already heads-down etching away at their tablets. I can't be left behind here I thought to myself, these people can already write and I can't and it's going to be much easier to escape chained to a desk than it is chained to rock. Even though I could read clay numbers I hadn't ever actually done any writing. It looked simple enough, just press the stylus into the clay but the wax was hard and you couldn't just press straight down into it so I had to scratch away like trying to etch a stone. It was messy and looked like the aftermath of a chicken fight.

There was a tut from the calm lady and she picked up her tablet and waved it over the flame of her desk lamp a few times and then returned the tablet to the desk before using her thumb to press flat the wax. She had made a mistake and was rubbing it out! I felt stupid for not realising this myself and after warming my wax tablet and covering my tracks I etched out all the unique number symbols plus a few words I had learnt from sight due to how common they were, such as "IN", "OUT" and "NO CREDIT" even though I didn't know how the individual lines were chosen to make one word into another. I had some space left at the bottom and, worried about not knowing enough to fill the tablet, I added the warding symbols I knew; I needed all the luck I could scrape together right now.

When I was done Esmae had already finished and Rogert was spinning the stylus across his fingers whilst Sarah was holding up her tablet and examining her work carefully. As soon as her tablet touched the desk our overseer looked up from her work reading a handful of tablets whilst tapping out another one, "Excellent!". She strode between the desks collecting up our tablets and eyeing them over, "All very good work, now let's have some refreshments shall we?" she announced as she returned to her side of the room, opened the door beside her desk and stuck her head through just to warble "Cleoooo dear, refreshments if you could!" before returning to her seat, setting down our wax tablets and getting a fresh clay tablet from the shelf that ran under each desk for such things. Not a second was wasted with this woman, on anything.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

"This way please" the guy in the purple tunic said, directing me away as another purple tunic swept by to catch the next guy. My head was still spinning and I completely lost track of which directions I was being lead. Dimly lit tunnels, this way and that, some stairs up, more tunnels, a door, a room, bracers removed, a chair, "Wait here for now". I sat massaging my wrists trying to get the movement back into them. There was the door I entered through, four chairs on each side of the room, another door on the opposite wall and some kind of oil lamp sculpted into the bare rock wall providing the only light. I had hardly finished looking around the room when the door I think I came through opened and several people entered the small room; a purple tunic, a guard and three other people like me, two women and one guy. The purple tunic was explaining "you just need to wait here and you'll go through some basic tests soon" as the guard was undoing the bracers. The three other captives dropped to their seats around the room and we all stared at each other in disbelief. The man was all hair: beard, sideburns, eyebrows, the lot. The women had their hair tied back highlighting their pale-faces and one was holding her hand over the ear tag unsure if what just transpired was real.

The guy spoke first. "I think we just narrowly escaped a nasty fate there!" he said trying to force a bit of joviality. "We're not out of the fire yet" I added, trying to temper expectations. I had no idea what came next, this was the first moment I'd gotten to think since being sucked into the rock. What was all this about? Why did we get ear tags instead of being branded. "I think it's because I can read" the man announced trying to keep the conversation going, "can you read and write?" he asked in the direction of the two women. The one who was holding her ear and staring into space stammered out a "yes" as if it were expected of her. "I can't do words, but I can do numbers" I butted in so that she didn't have to explain herself any further. He continued unabated, "I reckon we're going to be sold to some merchant or other and do accounts or scribing -- it sure beats breaking rocks!". The shocked lady was opening and closing her mouth like a sand lizard whilst the other woman held her hand and comforted her; the thought of having to break rocks may have broke her mind. "Rogert, by the way" he introduced himself. "Oh, Sarah" said the calm lady and she nudged the shocked lady to produce another word from her, "Esmae". Both women looked to be in their 30s with Sarah somewhere in the lower half and Esmae in the upper half.

I kicked my feet out, leant back on my chair and stared at the ceiling trying to figure things out whilst the 'I got it all worked out guy' regaled the women with his life story. After 10 minutes of having to listen to tales of adventure and fisticuffs of questionable veracity, the opposite door opened and in stepped a tall, older woman in white robes with purple hem and an unusual metal armlet around the upper arm that was kind of maze-like. She was carrying a clay tablet in a frame much like the questions people earlier. "Oh, four people today, that's nice!" she said as if to nobody, and then "this way!" in a sing-song voice as she left the room before we had even stood up. We filed out of the door, the talkative guy whispering "I'll tell you later" to the women. The next room was larger with the walls cut flat and many desks and stools. 4 down the left wall, 4 down the right, and then at the end of the room against the right wall the sing-song lady already sat at her desk. In the left corner, on a chair, sat a guard who wasn't expecting much trouble from us. We all chose desks and sat down on the stools. Each desk had a lamp, a wax tablet and a metal stylus. The sing-song lady began at once, "I am Julia Principa of The City Skills and Labour Department, my job is to ensure the city has all the necessary people and skills available to function. There will be a series of tests to determine where you fit in but for now just write down an informal introduction, if you can't write words please just write the numbers that you know" and with that she was eyes down looking at her tablet as if we had vanished from before her.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

This is how I do most of my #writing.

Sometimes diagrams.
Mostly text.
A comfortable pen.

Coffee stains sometimes.
Circular water marks from condensation sometimes.

The sketch pad allows less ink build up on the pen.

A bad pen drags or slides.
That's not good.

I was under the balconies now and the roof sloped down and the walls enclosed us as we approached the end of the fenceways, every person was now pooled together, each with their own necklace of colour-coded beads to identify them. Hot air blew against our faces from the back of the cave-like area we were in and orange light danced over the rock ceiling. Then the muffled screams began. I looked about trying to understand what was going on and there was much murmuring as everybody else was doing the same. Were they killing off the worthless ones? What barbaric insanity was this!? Word fed down the crowd, they were branding us. Up until now I had been trying to remain calm and make sense of everything, if I was going to escape I had to remember where everything was and plan carefully but now I was scared and panicking. If waiting outside in the midday sun was torture, this was terror; the screams emanating from up front weren't helping. Another batch of slaves began arriving from the gates behind asking what was going on and so the fear spread through the ranks quickly.

As much as I didn't want to move forward the thinning crowd ahead was the only direction I could go, over their shoulders I could see several open fire pits with hot irons heating in the flames. Men wearing leather tunics to protect them from the heat were feeding the fires with fuel, others were pumping bellows, and at each fire pit sat on a stool was the iron master doing the branding. He was juggling several hot irons at a time in the fire to keep things moving which only meant fresh screams came every 10 seconds or so. There were many guards, all with metal swords in the belt and armed with a club, tasked with keeping the flow going. People were grabbed from the front of the crowd and pulled over to the iron master and made to sit down on a stool. A rag wrapped around a stick was shoved into their mouth to bite down on and the guard held their arm in place whilst the iron master selected a red hot iron from the fire. Anybody who resisted got beaten and branded without the bit between the teeth. Those screams rang through the head like a bell. Another worker was ready with a cloth which he dunked in a bucket of water, slapped it on the fresh burn and tied a tourniquet before shoving the victim to the back of the cave past the fire pits.

The wall of flesh behind pushed me closer and closer to inevitability. My heart was pounding, my head light from my panicked breathing. I was trying over and over again to think of a way out of this, some way to take control of the situation but my brain was spinning in circles. I didn't even see the hand grab my arm and yank me with such force my feet left the floor. The rest was a blur of senses, "purple" the guard uttered to the iron master as I was thrown to the chair, my legs giving way easily. The searing heat of the fire. The smell of burning flesh in the air. "Head" came the voice of the iron master and the guard clamped his beastly hands on top of my head and under my chin. Do I not get the bit!? The iron master's hands passed over the hot irons and instead selected a long fine needle. Were they going to poke my eyes out because they didn't want anybody reading their secret numbers!? I was done with caution, I'd rather die fighting than have my eyes poked out. I tried struggling but with my arms still bound behind my back, my head in the guard's vice-like grip and my legs as weak as aspic, I was utterly powerless. As the iron master raised the red hot needle I grit my teeth, held my breath and scrunched my eyes shut as tightly as I possibly could, I was going to fight with everything I had left. A hand grabbed my ear and pulled, there was a sharp pain in the side of my head, some rustling, a crunching sound, and a sudden disorientating rush as I was lifted off the stool and pushed away.

I stumbled and flopped forward, my whole body shaking, my jaw having been clenched so hard it ached. I was caught by a porter in a purple tunic but before I could even stand on my own I looked back. I couldn't tell you what I was expecting to see, my brain just assumed that I'd see myself, to witness what I had just been through because I didn't see it. I didn't understand what had happened -- I wasn't blind -- but I did get my answer because the next person was getting the same treatment. The iron master took a short leather lace from a box at his feet and with that hand gripped the guy's ear whilst picking up the hot needle with the other hand. Ear-piercings! That was what that pain was and the strange feeling like something is stuck to the side of my head. The iron master pushed the lace through the ear-lobe with the hot needle and then wrapped the two ends together in a leather tag he had palmed all whilst putting down the hot needle and picking up some kind of pliers in the other hand, crimping a metal stud through the leather tag to seal it.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

When I first encountered clay numbers it was at a market and a lady had a display of her fruit and vegetables and beneath each tray was a clay plaque decorated with a pattern of lines. She had spaced them out across her stall assumedly to stand out rather than have them all together. I thought these were maybe ornaments or decorations for the home so I picked one up and turned it about. For an artistic design it was pretty crude and asymmetric but then it all fell into place -- these were warding symbols to drive off the flies and rot! I wanted to know more so I asked the lady "What are these symbols for?" and she looked at me as if I had just called her mother the offspring of camels. "The price" she replied as if she couldn't believe her ears. "No, I don't want to know the price, I want to know what these warding symbols are used for" I explained. "No, the symbols are the price... were you abandoned in the desert as a baby?" she bit back, "Look, here, it says three-eighths!" pointing a finger at the lines. I stared at the lines and I couldn't make sense of them; maybe the lines counted the numbers but that would mean there would be three lines and then eight lines, but there weren't even enough lines for that and they were all different angles and sizes. I think it finally clicked with her that this was new to me and it seemed to amuse her enough that she softened a bit. "Have you never seen writing before? My, you really were raised by wolves! Here, this says '3'", pointing to the first set of lines, "this is the solidus" (pointing to a longer line between the two groups of lines), "and this is '8'". It appeared that they didn't use string numbers but made drawings in clay but I couldn't discern the connection between the lines and the numbers. I looked around at the other plaques to see what other symbols were used. There was a variety of them, so there must be at least 10 or 100 different symbols and each one meant a specific number somehow. "Could I buy this from you?" I asked her. "You mean the plaque?" she asked dumbfounded. I suppose from her perspective it sounded as if I wanted to buy sand off of her. "If it helps, sure" and not one to let a deal walk away she added "do you want any of the others too?" so we picked out plaques that had a variety of numbers on them and haggled out a price and she wished me luck, waved me goodbye and I went around the market looking at the plaques, asking about prices and within a few hours I had the whole number system worked out and memorised.

Raising his hand to stay his assistant's bead, the porter seemed to relax a little and leaned forward to ask "Math?". "Yes", I said, I mean I could do market numbers no problem but I wasn't sure if he was expecting geometry. "What's 57 times 36?" he said pulling numbers out of the air. "twenty hundreds, two and fifty" I replied immediately. "I have a good memory too!" I added trying to improve my chances. The porter eyed me up and down trying to discern if I was bullshitting him. He thought for a moment and then looked over his shoulder to his assistant and said "We'll check this one further, purple". The assistant replaced the previous bead and fumbled for a purple one, threaded it and then tied the string into a loop and hung it around my neck before shoving me down the line without so much as a goodbye.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

I had expected pitch-black darkness and solid rock scraping my head but as my eyes adjusted to the darkness and I looked up a saw a high ceiling, light rays from slits cut into the rock slicing across the room through smoke and... people! balconies upon balconies, several floors of people above us, some looking down, some engaged in conversations, or just going about their business as if nothing was happening below. The noise within was worse than outside, the shouting, clucking, bleating and clanging echoing back upon itself into a thunderous roar coming from everywhere at once.

The rush of bodies petered out and I began to see what was going on. We may have gone through the slave entrance but we were as cattle to them: four men were sitting on very high stools between wicker fences dividing the way forward into five 'gates'. The men held very long sticks and with the assistance of bouncers in the pen, the men sorted through us, diverting people down different pathways based on some criteria or other. Bodies jostled and bounced around as the long sticks prodded and divided us. A long stick came down suddenly on my left side and I was sent off through one of the gates into a long switchback of wicker fences designed to act as a buffer for slaves coming in quickly with the queue ahead moving slowly.

As I stood in queue for whatever came next I looked around and there were not many people in my gate but the other gates were being flooded with all kinds. I tried to make sense of what they were dividing us up for, the weak, old or sick-looking; the strong and able-bodied men; and my group which was maybe the cleanest, healthiest looking. Was I going to be put to the worst kind of hard labour because I was the healthiest looking one here? Peering around my queue mates as I shuffled forward I could see more porters, this time with desks stationed along the fence, each had an assistant that was picking coloured beads from a box and threading them onto a string.

I was straining my neck and ears trying to listen in to what was being said up front when suddenly a porter barked in my ear "Name?", I hadn't noticed the desk to my left and I stared in shock at the porter, my ears ringing. His assistant had the string prepared with a bead already threaded. "Americ?" he barked again. This was the word people used for language and it suddenly clicked, he was asking if I understood his language. "Oh, yes" I said. "Good, name?" he said quickly without any hesitation whilst his assistant threaded another bead on the string. He obviously did this every day and no longer had any patience for anybody so I tried to be as clear and direct with my answers as possible, lest I end up shovelling shit for the rest of my days.

The porter had on his desk a clay tablet in a frame and a metal stylus in his hand and he was putting my answers into the clay; the writing was a series of closely spaced vertical lines, some angled or crossing and wasn't like writing I had seen elsewhere, a lot more words could fit onto a tablet with this narrow writing and it took fewer taps, he was very efficient and could tap out words almost as fast they could be spoken. "Can you read and write?" came the next question. "No", I had said instinctively before realising that my answer could be the difference between back-breaking hard labour and a job with a chair like this guy. The assistant already had what must be the "uneducated" bead prepared before I quickly blurted out "I can do numbers! I know string-numbers, and I can read clay numbers!". They used different clay numbers here, but they would be easy enough to learn compared to writing which was as far as I could tell, completely random.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

We were up early and on the move immediately, the pace was quick but we were all mentally prepared, it couldn't be more than half a day at this pace. Four hours later, the sands inclined into a vast, wide hill. A well worn path lay diagonally across the slope to minimise the incline and then curved through a small v-shape cut into the hill that meant that we wouldn't have to scale the entire hill face-on. As we rounded the bend and saw the other side of the hill for the first time I realised we had crossed the lip of a giant crater-like depression and at the centre of the crater lay our destination:

The city was called "Pebble Rock" for at distance it looked like a small pebble set into the sand and the mass of people arriving were as ants; little black dots in close ranks and tight lines mindlessly following one another, streaming from every corner of the crater and converging under the pebble.

Small openings pock-holed the surface of the pebble everywhere, the windows and balconies of thousands of homes. The people of Pebble Rock valued property above everything and above everything, sitting atop the rock, was the only external building, a city atop the city, a palace, the exclusive property of the wealthiest, one above all and all beneath them. Naturally, property extended to people too. Slavery was the grease that kept Pebble Rock running. An entire class of people that never had to sweat lived upon backs of those who did the sweating for them.

Our convoy merged with others and came to a standstill. There was much jostling, shouting and camel snorts as rival slaver gangs and merchants argued over who was in front of who. The next few hours of shuffling forward under the scorching midday sun was more torturous than the walking. I could see the shade under the pebble (the rock tapered in at the bottom giving it its pebble appearance from a distance) but forward progress was but a few steps at a time. As we edged nearer, and the pebble towered over us, the rabble grew into a cacophony of shouts, animal noises from livestock and the jangle of reins everywhere. Finally under the shade I could begin to discern order amongst the chaos: porters in coloured tunics were separating out merchant caravans and goods from slaves, arguing with caravan drivers over the semantics of this-or-that trade good and which entryway to go to and generally screaming at anybody and their camel who decided to stand in the wrong place and block the way.

As the crowds pressed in all around us, guards went down the line unhooking the reins followed by a porter who was throwing red cloth collars over each person's head -- a way of identifying which batch of slaves came from which slave merchant. The crowd of slaves behind me had continued to shuffle forward despite the slow movement up front and I soon found myself trapped in a mass of bodies, heads and differently coloured collars everywhichway I looked. I had lost sight of the guards and most of the other captives I had travelled with as the mass of bodies pushed forward in to a frightening cram. There was sudden movement up front and the whole mass of us was swept along uncontrollably. Porters with long whips appeared out of nowhere and were directing the rush of slaves ahead and before I knew it I had been sucked into the darkness inside Pebble Rock.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

I kept my mind occupied and distracted myself from the heat through the day by reciting the 500 fables in my head to make sure I didn't forget any. I remembered the confusion I experienced the first time I saw clay writing and I blessed the wise women of my clan for preserving the 500 fables for generations which I needed more than ever now. We had string numbers where the types of knots and spacing recorded numbers in strings, for managing the clan's food supplies, but no writing; everything was passed on orally. Every child in the clan was expected to memorise the 500 fables -- I'm not sure if there were exactly 500, I had never counted them out, but there were hundreds of stories that every child heard, first as bed time stories and tales told by elders around the campfire, and then drilled into us at school. The girls with good memories and recital skills were then tasked with learning the greater oral histories and the best of those who wanted to become the next wise-woman had to pass a week-long cross-examination of knowledge followed by a recital of the entire oral histories, fables and all, in front of the whole clan without getting a single word wrong.

I was only 7 or 8 years old the last time anybody had to do the test, I didn't understand the significance of it at the time, I was just glad I got time off school to spend all week watching this game where the wise woman asked the lady questions about the fables and I had fun trying to guess the answer to as many as I could. Then she recited everything; the history bits were boring and I didn't understand it all, but I was utterly enthralled by the recital of the complete 500 fables. She finished the last fable and everybody clapped and then there was a big party. Later I learned that apparently she was the youngest person to have ever passed the test at just 25. Passing this test granted a woman the title of Keeper and they worked directly with the wise-woman as more able-bodied assistants until the wise-woman's memory began to fail and a new one was selected which was every 30 years or so. My mind wandered back to the clan... would there be a new wise-woman by now, who was selected, was it that lady who I saw pass the test back then? It was the first time I had thought about my previous life in terms of the present, but I had to put those thoughts away; right now I was a prisoner being dragged to sun-knows-where to do moon-knows-what, probably involving back-breaking labour until I was no longer useful and finally put out of my misery.

For three days we trekked through empty sands. Those who hadn't died were looking pretty rough, I was holding up much better than expected, I had the fables and my deep-trek training in the months leading up to my departure from the clan had prepared me for surviving on minimal provisions for days on end. We were given water only twice a day, once at dawn before we set out, and again at midday. None in the evening, but before the sun set on the third day we arrived at a watering hole and there for the first time we were unbound and allowed to drink our fill and wash the dried sweat and faeces from our bodies. As I sat and watched the sun go down, I wondered why the slave drivers had afforded us this one small dignity... it must be because we would arrive at market tomorrow and they wanted us to be in our 'best' condition for sale. I shared this idle musing with my yoke-mate and soon the whole convoy was buzzing with anticipation -- anything was better than this but I reserved my relief for the day I was once again free.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

At the crack of dawn we were whipped awake by the slave drivers and formed into two lines side-by-side. A caravan of extra guards and supplies had arrived during the night and they were unpacking an incredible amount of equipment consisting mostly of long wooden poles and hundreds of long leather straps. At first I was worried they were going to hang us all at the same time but there was murmurings that we were being taken to a slave market to be sold.

Our hands were bound together using leather bracers and every third pair of men had a wooden pole placed across their backs with their arms backwards around it, binding the two together, with the leather straps attached to the wrist bracers of every person, linking each pair together forward and back into a massive train of people which would pull the supply wagons at the back. The extra trouble to bring in a small fortune's worth of leather, let alone the weight, seemed excessive when hessian rope would do but this was clearly not the driver's first rodeo and they had the process down to an art; within an hour of dawn-break the caravan was rigged and ready to go. Being late to market meant money lost and cheap hessian rope probably broke too easy and lead to delays. There was little risk of escape anyway, four camel riders lead the front to set the pace and the remaining guards followed on camels spaced along either side of the train. If anybody even tried to make a run for it, they wouldn't get far.

We set off not knowing how many days we would be travelling. It was practically a death-march, we stopped for nothing; anybody who fainted was dragged along and those presumed dead were cut loose and stepped over. We walked from dawn to dusk. At night, the guards built a fire and we formed a circle around it, still bound and reined together into a train, now curled around the only warmth during the freezing night. Sleep was difficult with your hands bound behind you and every part of your body aching, but I eventually passed out from exhaustion into a death-like dreamless sleep. At the crack of dawn and of the whip, the whole process would repeat.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

“Arboreatal Realization.”

VT-AGR-344 sometimes slips away into the arboretum for a moment of quiet to do something rather unusual for a Vitruvian … think about things she wasn’t supposed to be thinking about. If her masters of the Agrigen corporation ever found out, she’d be in deep trouble, but there is so much about all their lives in this colony, that just doesn’t add up.

Vitruvians are the big game changer in every corporate military force that Chimera gave the galaxy. No one can afford to lose out on the lab-created super soldiers that can topple a tank, break through walls, move with superhuman speed and shrug off most physical attacks. They’re the backbone of every corporate infantry or security and Chimera graciously “shares” this technology with the whole Concordance. Their minds are meticulously planned and designed during their creation, making rebellion or ideas of disobedience basically impossible. Well, basically. But it shouldn’t happen, because a liberated Vitruvian, infused with ideas of protection and service, seeing the galaxy for what it really is would be a dangerous thing. And we can’t have that, now can we?

I tried a new brush for colours this time and it was an adventure. But I think the end result turned out fine. Making the background felt positively ecstatic with this brush. And, yes, I like painting mock foliage. This picture was done in Procreate and touched up a bit with Glitch Studio.

My name is Alexandra. I help build I Write Like, a text editor. Unless one is a tech giant, the chances of people discovering their creation are slim, regardless of how wonderful the creation is. I wanted to change that, so I came to Mastodon.
I’m a writer. I share my short stories and poems, often illustrated with my own art and photography. I'm also interested in #science, #history, and #music.
I’m fairly new here and still learning.

#Writing #Art

Take a chance on one of my otherworldly stories about people who risk everything for the sake of friendship, trust, & cooperation. You also get heaps of humor, whimsy, sarcasm, & optimism. Sometimes gritty, but never grim.

Get epubs DRM-free for $0.99 on my website at this link:
https://kmherkes.com/sale-bookshop

Other formats at regular prices:
https://books2read.com/kmherkes
(DRM-free where I can make them so)

#bookstodon
#BookPromo
#books
#reading
#writing
#SciFi
#ScienceFiction
#fantasy
#hopepunk

New profile. Time to update #introduction post!

Hello! I’m STILL a tiny Hawaiian punk mom living in Stockholm who writes fun, imaginative, hard-to-categorize #SFF usually featuring #indigenous or #diaspora futurisms.

I DID find this to be a space to chat about #writing craft and crafting #craft #knitting #embroidery mostly at #WritersCoffeeClub and #FinishOrFrogAlong

But I’m also into #gamedev #indiedev and #godot now and looking to connect with folks in those spaces

https://raemariz.com

Support An Independent Web Experience

I’d like to invite you to explore my website, which is a collection of essays and stories that range from food to philosophy, culture to politics. There’s no paywall, and if you sign up (which I greatly appreciate), you get emails about new stories. No ads or promotion. I’m self hosted and entirely independent so this is the only way to build an audience. There is an RSS feed.

#Writing #Stories #Introduction #IndieWeb #RSS

https://www.davidtoddmccarty.com

Posted the first of three chapters of my weird queer horror story on AO3 (because I haven't built a website for my original fiction yet). Details below.

Title: The Hand That Touches Flame

CWs: possession, body horror, unsure reality, swearing, disturbing imagery

Summary:
Four years ago, Morgan Lee's last remaining alternate self broke through his mirror and tried to kill him. Now, as a vigilante defender of reality with an immortal boss and a mind-reading best friend who could theoretically cause an apocalypse, he's learned to rank threats to his well-being in order of least-to-most dangerous:

3. Eldritch extraplanar entities from hostile realities bent on invading his own, and the cultists who serve them.
2. The British government.
1. Himself. Specifically: the excruciating embarrassment of having a crush on said mind-reading best friend.

Saving teenage girls from the demons they summoned via Tumblr is easy, after all. It's everything else that's hard.

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/78787056

#fedifiction #writing

Just a reminder that if you like my writing on Substack, it’s very likely that you will also like my book ‘Drystone - A Life Rebuilt’

If you buy it on bookshop.org you support me and indy bookshops.

https://uk.bookshop.org/a/15919/9781846976469

#Books #Book #Writing #WritingCommunity #Reading #Scotland #UK

https://books2read.com/u/bPAjVA

What if the map *were* the territory? In the Imperium, map keepers make it so, drawing the realm into shape one map at a time. Follow Jali as her destiny takes her from her family inn to the Great Keep of map makers, the wilds of the steppes, and the imperial palace.

Now available as ebook or paperback (B&N).

#fantasy #writing

Khajiit, er, Cat has words if you have coin.

100% human-generated writing!
Fresh words
AI output correction
Inquire within!

https://ko-fi.com/post/Cat-has-words-if-you-have-coin-E1E01SCLJS

(Share!)

#writer #writing #kofi #forhire #commissionsopen #freelance #freelancer #hireme

#Introduction and Pinned Post

I generally post about #Disability, #MCAS, #EhlersDanlosSyndrome, #EDS, and #Celiac.

Due to EDS, I use a #PowerChair.

I also enjoy #Writing and #Reading.

All of my books, recipes, and some crafts are on my website.

I am #DeafBlind, and write about #Accessibility.

Things I miss: Gardening, Sewing, Crafting, Crocheting, Cooking, Baking, Knitting, Walking, Hiking, Exploring.

Photos are rare, as words are easier to use to explain concepts. If I add a photo, I describe it in the main text for everyone to read.

Yes, I know this sadly leaves out those who rely on photos.

Primary Website - https://uncoveredmyths.wixsite.com/uncoveredmyths

Greeting Card Website - https://uncoveredmyths.wixsite.com/musedlines

Imagine an hourglass, except rather than measuring hours, it counts out aeons. Its circumference is 40'000 Km (~25'000 mi). The glass walls are 100 Km (~60 mi) thick. The sand within forms a desert almost 13'000 Km (~8'000 mi) wide edge to edge.

The peoples within know not where they came from, or why, but all know where their end lies; the sinkhole in the centre of their world, 300 Km (~200 mi) wide and forever growing as the 1'000 Km (~600 mi) sandfall that encircles it erodes away the mountain-high perimeter. Even hundreds of Km away, dunes collapse seemingly for no reason as the sand shifts thousands of Km undersand. Some believe that it simply empties out in to space to become new stars. Others believe that it pours down over an entire other world like theirs. There is no way to know for sure, even if anybody could survive the sinkhole, there would be no conceivable way to return to tell the tale.

* * *

The whole herd clan are gathered to see you off. The wise woman of the clan places a wreath of cacti flowers around your neck and ritually kisses you on the cheeks and forehead. The riders steady the camel beside you, even though it is loaded down with more provisions than you have ever seen a camel carry, the beast shifts nervously, feeling the tension in the air. It has been painted with warding symbols for luck and dressed with charms and the people all touch it one last time for good luck.

The wise woman places her hands on your shoulders and addresses you calmly and clearly, "this camel has been trained from birth for one task only, she will head, without any need for guidance, toward the centre of the worldglass, to Journey's End, where all life drains away. She will refuse to backtrack or deviate too far, even if you beat her. The provisions you have will not be enough, she who carries you will return to the sands she came from and you will have to go the final leg alone. Spirits willing, you will be found by others before you too return to the sand.

"You must tell no other soul whomever where you came from. Nobody has ever returned from leaving but if you were to seek us out again, you would immediately be put to death. Our clan founder, the wayfarer, first and greatest of the wise women, warned us that for every wicked emotion there is a clan devoted to it, and they seek to find us so that they may take all that we have for themselves. There is greed and avarice out there, and selfishness, above all. Be on the watch at all times for where your clankind here welcomed you with open arms, out there you will be greeted with one arm open and one held behind the back, grasping a knife.

"Here, take this, the skull of my matron, the wise woman before me. Though we wise woman may never leave the clan, the wayfarer longed to see Journey's End with her own eyes once more and foretold that the spirits would call out to some among us to draw them to Journey's End, that they would grow restless and bring disharmony unless they went to their calling, even if only death awaited them.

"Now go, and do not look back, for you have been called and our love is the lightest load you will carry, may you take it with you all the way to Journey's End."

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

moon of the morning
shines through my ice-laced window
more than I can bear

#DailyHaikuPrompt #haiku #haiga #senryu #poetry #writing #SilentSunday

New year, no reset.

A short essay on continuation, constraint, and why ‘fresh starts’ don’t work for everyone.

‘For me, and for many, the work is not in beginning again but in continuing. Continuation is far less aesthetic than renewal, harder to commodify, and it doesn't lend itself well to announcements, before and after photos, or public commitments. But it is honest.’

https://kristiedegaris.substack.com/p/on-not-beginning-again

#Scotland #Writing #WritingCommunity #Reading #Books #Disability #UK #NewYear

Sometime around the 2020 era, we lost the right to be mediocre at things we love.

No longer can you just bake bread...you must start a sourdough side hustle lol. Wanna stay fit and go jogging or running? Nah, you gotta optimize your biometrics for a marathon. What my point is that every hobby has been enshittified and gentrified into a brand opportunity.

This strange infatuation with optimization culture is killing the human spirit.

So this new year, starting tomorrow, one of my resolutions is to do something bad but fun. Maybe I write a terrible poem. I like to draw and paint, so perhaps I will draw a horse that looks like a table or sing off-key in the showers or in front of my loved ones. The algorithm driving the mainstream social media wants me to be a polished product, but my humanity lives in these messy, unoptimized, cringe-inducing joyful failures.

I will try to reclaim the right to be an amateur. Will you join me?

#creativity #hobbies #art #depression #socialmedia #newyear #resolution #happynewyear #MentalHealth #Culture #enshittification #creative #design #writing #reading #books #drawing #music #gardening #nature #running #fitness

Not so happy. Financially, 2025 was probably the worst year I had since I started translating for a living. I lost most of my long time clients - retirement, sickness etc. - and new ones are hard to find.
So I am on self promotion now - anyone here who wants his English book translated into German? No option for you? Talk to me. Most of my authors are glad for the additional income.
References on my blog - see profile.
#translations #books #writing #author

I'm Erin Darrow (she/her), #sff #author and reader.

my stories:
What the Willow Knows (dark fairytale) in Once Upon a Moonless Night: Tales of Betrayal, Revenge, and Redemption
More Than Microscopic (lunarpunk cli-fi) in @DreamForgeMag
Echo of the Desert in the Sky (ecofantasy cli-fi) in @Metaphorosis Books and All Worlds Wayfarer

#writing #reading #books #bookstodon #indieauthor #fantasy

This #crowdfund ends tomorrow. I hit my goals. Yay! I'll keep it open for late #donations to cover stuff like paypal fees and unpredictable transfer/forex costs (I guess about $200 for all) So if you can spare a penny help me imagine a future with no capitalism, politicians, or billionaires!

2805/2750

Details https://www.dilmandila.com/donate/wind-a-solarpunk-short-film
#solarpunk #mutualaid #creativetoots #kickstarter #art #BuyIntoArt #sff #film #crowdfunding #scifi #climate #artforsale #fedigiftshop #writing #writingcommunity

In the next section of my Cosy Library story, Jake and Ellie sow some seeds in the Library's magical garden.

https://theunconventionalgardener.com/blog/the-cosy-library-nine/

#writing #cozyfantasy #dragon

Sinister Minutes 2:20 Open Market - The Box

In the strongest communities, each of us pitch in and do what's best for one another. Sometimes that requires a little sacrifice. Sometimes the sacrifice isn't so little.

https://www.sinisterminutes.com/episodes-season-2 or wherever you grab your podcasts.

Written by Brett R. Scott, narrated by @KurtHohmann (me), music by Tim Parker.

#writing
#writingCommunity
#podcast
#podcasts
#Podcaster
#Podcasting
#fiction
#horror
#AudioDrama

I'm almost there! I'm in the last days of this #crowdfund and now aiming at a stretch goal for #vfx gear to make it easier to build a #solarpunk world with no capitalism or governments; no politicians or billionaires hoarding all power and resources.

Boost, or donate if you can!

460/750

https://www.dilmandila.com/donate/wind-a-solarpunk-short-film
#donations #mutualaid #creativetoots #kickstarter #art #BuyIntoArt #sff #film #crowdfunding #scifi #climate #artforsale #fedigiftshop #b3d #writing #writingcommmunity
@mutual_aid

A very generous donation helps me reach the mid-way point. Yay! I'm on a stretch goal for #vfx gear to make it easier to imagine an alternative future with no capitalism, governments, or military. Help me make this comedy #film; boost or donate if you can.

360/750

Details https://www.dilmandila.com/donate/wind-a-solarpunk-short-film
#solarpunk #mutualaid #creativetoots #writing #crowdfund #art #BuyIntoArt #sff #crowdfunding #scifi #climate #artforsale #fedigiftshop #b3d #writingcommunity
@mutual_aid

Raising another $130 will give me enough for a green screen system to ease replacing backgrounds with #vfx elements, since I'm creating a near-future #scifi set in a world without capitalism, governments, or politicians. Help me make this film. Boost or donate!

122/750

Details https://www.dilmandila.com/donate/wind-a-solarpunk-short-film

#solarpunk #mutualaid #creativetoots #kickstarter #crowdfund #art #BuyIntoArt #sff #film #crowdfunding #climate #artforsale #fedigiftshop #b3d #blender #writing #writingcommunity @mutual_aid

Palisade Green, sequel to Atraxian Blue available as ebook https://books2read.com/u/3RrNwn or print https://books2read.com/u/m0XB6y

Renny thought he'd escaped from his father. He thought he had his addiction under control. Then a bot turns up on his doorstep with a message that changes everything.

#scifi #writing

About 12 days left in this #crowdfund Please give me a boost to meet a stretch goal for gear to ease the creation of visual effects in a #solarpunk world with no capitalism, no governments or politicians, no police. As the #climate crisis worsens and fascism rises around the world, help me imagine a better future.

95/750

Details https://www.dilmandila.com/donate/wind-a-solarpunk-short-film
#mutualaid #creativetoots #kickstarter #art #BuyIntoArt #sff #film #crowdfunding #scifi #artforsale #fedigiftshop #writing #writingcommunity

Jake's first week at the Library is coming to a close, when the printer comes to drop off a new batch of bookmarks.

#writing #cozyfantasy #dragon

https://theunconventionalgardener.com/blog/the-cosy-library-eight/

I'm making a comedy film about a couple quarreling over chicken, a plot device to imagine food in the #climate crisis, but there's no capitalism, government, politicians, or police; rather, ordinary folk run the country in a direct democracy. I need your support to buy gear to ease vfx works. Boost, or donate if you can!

90/750

Details https://www.dilmandila.com/donate/wind-a-solarpunk-short-film
#solarpunk #mutualaid #creativetoots #kickstarter #writing #art #BuyIntoArt #sff #film #crowdfunding #scifi #artforsale #fedigiftshop

Almost there! About $50 gets me to the first goal to cover production costs. Then I'll go for a $700 stretch goal for vfx gadgets and stuff that will make it easier to create a #solarpunk future! Thank you for supporting me, with ideas to imagine life without capitalism or governments, with boosts, and with donations♥️

1953/2000

Details https://www.dilmandila.com/donate/wind-a-solarpunk-short-film
#mutualaid #creativetoots #kickstarter #crowdfund #art #BuyIntoArt #sff #film #crowdfunding #scifi #writing #artforsale #fedigiftshop

I am publishing my first long form story in instalments - a cozy fantasy. The main characters are librarians in a magical Library, and they have pet dragons. Oh, and the garden is a bit weird, too.

In this week’s section (7), Ellie & Jake find out why Dragonmere smells like smoke, and return to the Library with freshly baked cinnamon buns.
😋

(There’s a link to earlier instalments at the top.)

https://theunconventionalgardener.com/blog/the-cosy-library-seven/

#writing #cozyfantasy #dragon

I'm #crowdfunding for a short film to work out #vfx needed to imagine a future with no capitalism, no states, no politicians. Instead people govern themselves and set up egalitarian systems as they face the #climate crisis. I need your support to make it! Please share, or donate. There are rewards of my arts for each penny you can spare.

1608/2000

Details https://www.dilmandila.com/donate/wind-a-solarpunk-short-film
#creativetoots #BuyIntoArt #artforsale #fedigiftshop #mutualaid #sff #scifi #film #writing #writingcommunity #art

I'm close to #crowdfunding goal for a comedy film set in a near future with no central government, politicians, or capitalism; ordinary citizens govern themselves and support each other to survive the #climate crisis. Stories like this inspire hope that this future is possible. So show me some love, share! Or donate if you can!

1537/2000

Details https://www.dilmandila.com/donate/wind-a-solarpunk-short-film
#film #mutualaid #creativetoots #BuyIntoArt #fedigiftshop #sff #art #writing #writingcommunity #crowdfund #kickstarter #scifi

Atraxian Blue preview/serialization chapters (http://mathling.com/books/index.html):

15: In which Renny and Toussaint break in to the lockup

For the impatient: https://books2read.com/u/b6ElAx

#scifi #writing #AtraxianBlue

Clean energy without fixing the system will recycle the injustices of today. Some see #solarpunk in Africa's solar boom, but I fear we’ll end up with a few monopoly corporations and #enshittification will happen.

I'm making a film that imagines a green future with no capitalism, no politicians, no central governments or police, and I need your support to make it!

1537/2000

Details https://www.dilmandila.com/the-solarpunk-ideas-ill-explore-in-my-new-film/
#crowdfunding #mutualaid #sff #scifi #BuyIntoArt #creativetoots #writing #blog #us

As I prepare to write the script for this #solarpunk film, I gather my thoughts to clarify the ideas I want to put out clearly, and so this blog post hints at life in this future without a centralized government, no police or military, and no capitalism.

I need your support to make it! Please share, or donate if you can!

1450/2000

Details: https://www.dilmandila.com/the-solarpunk-ideas-ill-explore-in-my-new-film/

#crowdfund #creativetoots #crowdfunding #buyIntoArt #mutualaid #sff #scifi #writing #writingcommunity #climate #futurism

This #SolarPunkSunday support my short film, to enable me master the visual effects needed to bring a near future world to life. I'm telling a story set in a country without governments, politicians or police, where ordinary folk govern themselves in a direct #democracy Sharing this post with your networks, or donating, will help envision this future!

1410/2000

Details https://www.dilmandila.com/donate/wind-a-solarpunk-short-film
#solarpunk #mutualaid #crowdfunding #sff #scifi #writing #writingcommunity #BuyIntoArt #creativetoots

Work has got in the way recently, so the latest section of The Cosy Library is shorter than I hoped.

But Ellie, Jake and the dragons set out to explore Dragonmere, and find it smells of smoke. They stop for lunch at a popular local haunt - Angie's Café.

https://theunconventionalgardener.com/blog/the-cosy-library-six/

#writing

Atraxian Blue preview/serialization chapters (http://mathling.com/books/index.html):

13: In which a young boy's friend is "upgraded"
14: In which Lila and Toussaint discuss options, over noodles

For the impatient: https://books2read.com/u/b6ElAx

#scifi #writing

The first two weeks of this #crowdfund is good! I didn't expect so much so soon! Thank you very much for your love to this #solarpunk film! It's a future with no central governments, no politicians, no police, and tech exists to make every village largely self-sufficient. I need your support to envision this future. Boost or donate if you can!

1390/2000
Details: https://www.dilmandila.com/embracing-solarpunk-in-my-stories/

#crowdfunding #mutualaid #sff #writing #writingcommunity #BuyIntoArt #creativetoots #scifi #art #democracy

The generous donations today leave me breathless with thanks! I'm closer to reaching my first goal to make this film that imagines a future with no government so we have direct democracy; no police so we use traditional justice systems; no capitalism so no poverty. It's a dream worth having! Your support will help me envision this future.
Details: https://www.dilmandila.com/embracing-solarpunk-in-my-stories/
1390/2000

#crowdfund #crowdfunding #mutualaid #sff #scifi #film #creativetoots #BuyIntoArt #climate #kickstarter #writing

I'm #crowdfunding for a film via my website as I'm excluded from major platforms (I'm based on the wrong continent) I've developed it since 2018 and will shoot next year, but I have to figure out the vfx needed to envision this futuristic world with no capitalism, where direct democracy thrives. I need your support! Details https://www.dilmandila.com/donate/wind-a-solarpunk-short-film
1170/2000

#solarpunk #climate #mutualaid #kickstarter #backerkit #creativetoots #BuyIntoArt #sff #scifi #writing #writingcommunity #crowdfund #film

I'm making a film in the #solarpunk genre, live action (rather than animation) set in the near future for I want to imagine practical alternatives to capitalism. Given recent events in #us and other places battling fascism, I envision a world where direct democracy is possible, so no central governments, politicians, or police/military. Help me make it!

1145/2000

Details https://www.dilmandila.com/embracing-solarpunk-in-my-stories/

#film #sff #scifi #creativetoots #BuyIntoArt #mutualaid #writing #writingcommunity #movies

Ahem...*taps mic*

This here be my beige.party #Introduction

I'm a Gen X (1967) American who works in security for a living. I feel fortunate to have grown up through the 70s, 80s, and the 90s. I kinda look at that as the Yahtzee! of pop culture. What a time to be a nerd!

Music defines me. I don't have just a soundtrack to my life, I have a boxed set, including rare demos and unreleased live recordings. Wanna get to know me? Hang around for my music posts.
A song that's...me?

https://youtu.be/FJt4y4fH938

I am ADHD, and have Dysthymia to boot. I live an unmedicated life, and am kind of a mess as a result. I'm not anti-medication, it's just that I can't seem to stay on the wagon. If you follow me, and I don't immediately follow you back, don't take it personal. I'm trying to deal with over stimulation.

Politically...jeebus. To make it easy, I'm a Democratic Socialist. Honestly, I hate trying to define myself.
What I am (consider the following "AF"): Pro-choice, Pro trans rights, as well as a firm believer that women can do whatever the blue hell they want. I'm pro-sexwork, and pro pineapple on pizza (DO NOT COME AT ME ON THAT ONE).

I DO NOT. LIKE. NAZIS.
If you are a nazi, I do not like you. My great uncle put bushels of you in the ground in WW II. Follow Hitler's example and suck on the end of a loaded Luger.

I'm religious, and by that, I shall refer to a quote attributed to Gandhi: "I consider him religious who recognizes the suffering of others." I am a bit all over the place, and do not blindly follow any specific dogma. I have my thing. It's not everybody's thing, but that's okay. Everybody else has their thing. It may not necessarily be my thing, but that's okay. Whatever your thing is, may it bring you comfort and peace of mind. Just don't be a wanker.

I am very pro Fediverse, and pro FOSS. Technology can be very cool and wondrous, if we choose to make it that way. I'm a Linux user, and have shed all but two mainstream social media platforms. I am attempting to de-google my life. I am VERY anti-AI.

Be kind. Always.

Lord, but I did ramble a one. That's ADHD for ya, folks: LOADS of bonus content!

And now, hashtags...

#Introductions #Mastodon #adhd #MentalHealth #Dysthymia #Music #FreePalestine #FuckCapitalism #FOSS #Android #GrapheneOS #FuckAI #AnarchoCooperativism #Kropotkin #KurtVonnegut #WilliamGibson #EmmaGoldman #TTRPG #StarTrek #GraphicNovels #Comics #Languages #History #Ireland #IrishHeritage #CelticLanguages #DnD2e #GURPS #Skyrim #ElderScrolls #ElderScrollsOnline #Battletech #MechWarriorOnline #CozyGaming #WilliamGibson #Linux #LinuxMint #PopOS #Ubuntu #PCGaming #Tolkien #LOTR #Film #Runequest #Talislanta #HeroSystem #ChampionsRPG #Writing #France #French #Spirituality #Religion #Agnosticism #Books #PhysicalMedia #SciFi #Fantasy

Atraxian Blue preview/serialization chapters (http://mathling.com/books/index.html):

12: In which the crew makes plans and Renny asserts unconvincingly that he is definitely not a cat burglar

For the impatient: https://books2read.com/u/b6ElAx

#scifi #writing

#solarpunk spoke to me for it is all about activism, imagining a future we would all want to live in. There is the tech and aesthetics to depict, but there is also the worldview, for clean energy without social justice is greenwashing! In this #film I imagine direct democracy in a sustainable world free from capitalism. Help me make it! Share with your friends or donate if you can!

Details: https://www.dilmandila.com/embracing-solarpunk-in-my-stories/

1041/2000

#mutualaid #sff #scifi #writing #writingcommunity #art #BuyIntoArt

Ebook and paperback: https://books2read.com/TheWizardsScion

Levi Jacobs always of being like his father, the greatest wizard in the world, but had no understanding what it would be like. Follow Levi's journey from bumbling teen to a great hero, while the young wizard learns to master magical powers that are initially completely beyond him and barely under control.

@bookstodon
#author #indieauthor #writing #fantasy #scifi #sciencefiction #sff #sciencefantasy #scifi #actionadventure #fiction #books

A lot of my works fit #solarpunk but I discovered the genre recently and so this film is the first I'm making with it in mind. meaning I have to carefully create the futurism aesthetics to fit. I imagine a world without central governments or the police or capitalism, and I'm seeking your support to create this future.

996/2000

Please boost! Donate if you can spare dollar! https://www.dilmandila.com/embracing-solarpunk-in-my-stories/

#sff #writing #writingcommunity #crowdfund #mutualaid #scifi #science #BuyIntoArt #blog

I want to imagine how communities might survive the climate crisis, in a sweet daydream of self-sufficient villages that have all the comforts of modern life, but without capitalism! Without the kind of financial system that excludes people like me from #crowdfund platforms like #kickstarter Your support will help me visualize this #solarpunk fantasy. Boost or donate if you have a spare dollar!

996/2000

Details https://www.dilmandila.com/donate/wind-a-solarpunk-short-film
#sff #scifi #creativetoots #mutualaid #writing #movies

It's Cosy Library time! It's Jake's first day as Assistant Librarian, and it's time to settle in and shelve some books.

https://theunconventionalgardener.com/blog/the-cosy-library-five/

#writing

Atraxian Blue preview/serialization chapters (http://mathling.com/books/index.html):

11: In which Renny is allowed to stay, provisionally

For the impatient: https://books2read.com/u/b6ElAx

#scifi #writing

It's been a good first week of this #crowdfund I didn't expect to get this much so soon! Thank you very much for your support to this #solarpunk short film! It's a future with no central governments, no politicians, no police, and tech exists to make every village largely self-sufficient. We are now at

826/2000

and I still need your support. Please share! Donate if you can

Details https://www.dilmandila.com/donate/wind-a-solarpunk-short-film
#creativetoots #BuyIntoArt #scifi
#mutualaid #sff #writing #writingcommunity #art

Donations to my #solarpunk short film now at

725/2000

Yay! It makes me dream of hitting $1,000 in the first week of the campaign. Thank you all so much for coming through for me, as I imagine a future with no governments or politicians or police, and technology exists to make every village self-sufficient so capitalism is no more. We can dream of the world we want to live in!

Details https://www.dilmandila.com/donate/wind-a-solarpunk-short-film

#BuyIntoArt #mutualaid #sff #scifi #creativetoots #writing #writingcommunity

Book promotion: Power changes everything in this mosaic story set in a world where 10% of the population develops uncanny abilities at midlife. Some people’s lives change for the better. Others face the loss of all they hold dear.

priced for the Fediverse at $0.99 on my website AT THIS LINK --> https://kmherkes.com/sale-bookshop/p/rough-passages-fedi

Other vendors & formats at regular prices:
https://books2read.com/Rough-Passages

#Fedibookshop
#Fedifiction
#bookstodon
#books
#reading
#writing
#ScienceFiction
#fantasy
#RolloverFiles

Yay! It's always nice to wake up to good news. About 6 days after launching campaign to use #film to imagine a #solarpunk future, we've now raised 30% of our goal. Your generosity is touching! I still need your support to boost the drive, and donate if you can, so I can tell a story set in a world with no governments, no politicians, no police. Just ordinary folk running their lives.

Details https://www.dilmandila.com/donate/wind-a-solarpunk-short-film

598/2000

#mutualaid #sff #scifi #writing #writingcommunity #BuyIntoArt

Atraxian Blue preview/serialization chapters (http://mathling.com/books/index.html):

10: In which Lila discovers something very unpleasant in the cargo

For the impatient: https://books2read.com/u/b6ElAx

#scifi #writing

A generous donation takes me a step closer to imagining a future with no central governments, no politicians, no police and where communities use restorative justice to handle crime. I'm doing this through a short film, and relying on your support to spread the word since platforms like #kickstarter exclude me, due to how global finance systems are set up.

425/2000

Details https://www.dilmandila.com/donate/wind-a-solarpunk-short-film

#solarpunk #crowdfund #sff #writing #mutualaid #writingcommunity #BuyIntoArt #creativetoots

No utopia is perfect. There will always be some kind of pain, so in my #solarpunk short film, a couple fight over chicken, but this is not just material for a dark comedy. It is a talk about food as the #climate crisis disrupts farming, with inspiration from food preservation techniques in pre-colonial cultures Help me make this film with a boost, or #donate if you can.

Details https://www.dilmandila.com/donate/wind-a-solarpunk-short-film

375/2000

#mutualaid #sff #scifi #creativetoots #BuyIntoArt #art #writing #film

Now at 354/2000 four days after I started a campaign to use a dark comedy film to envision a #solarpunk future with no central government, no politicians, no military - everyone participates in running the country and they use restorative justice to handle crime with banishment as last resort. I'm excluded from #crowdfund platforms like #kickstarter so I rely on you to spread the word!

Details https://www.dilmandila.com/donate/wind-a-solarpunk-short-film

#sff #scifi #mutualaid #writing #writingcommunity #creativetoots #BuyIntoArt

Someone asked if ostracism in my shortfilm fits #solarpunk I borrow from pre-colonial cultures to imagine how communities will handle crime yet there's no government/police using violence/jail in the name of justice.They will use rituals of reconciliation/restorative justice, but if a person is unrepentant/unwilling to pay compensatory fines, they get banished. Help me make this #film

303/2000

Details https://www.dilmandila.com/donate/wind-a-solarpunk-short-film

#sff #mutualaid #writing #writingcommunity #BuyIntoArt #scifi

After today's donations, I'm about 7% funded 2days after I begin seeking your support to make a #solarpunk shortfilm themed on direct democracy, community governance, and self-sustaining villages with all the goodies needed in modern life. I'm excluded from platforms like #kickstarter so I'm counting on you to help spread the word, or give what you can to help me visualize this future🙏

Details https://www.dilmandila.com/donate/wind-a-solarpunk-short-film

#creativetoots #BuyIntoArt #mutualaid #sff #writingcommunity #writing #film

Perhaps this might be easier for some to read? #gaza #Palestine #Israel #news #books #poetry #writing #bookstodon

“To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric,” wrote Adorno in 1949. Yahia Lababidi’s new volume—the poet’s eleventh—Palestine Wail, affirms how “during a genocide, most words lose their meaning,” they become uneasy, while tears and kindness speak more accurately.

On a certain level, then, violence affects language fundamentally, as Adorno intuited. The genocide of the Palestinian people, carried out by the Israeli army since 2023, has indeed put language to shame.'

https://worldliteraturetoday.org/2025/november/palestine-wail-yahia-lababidi

#books #bookstodon #Gaza #Israel #Palestine #news #writing #poetry

I'm crowdfunding for my new short film, a #solarpunk story focused on direct democracy, and need your support. I can't do a kickstarter since all such platforms only allow creators from particular countries, excluding mine, yet I really want to imagine a future without capitalism and central governments. There are lots of perks for each $$ you can spare!

73/2000

Details https://www.dilmandila.com/donate/wind-a-solarpunk-short-film

#mutualaid #BuyIntoArt #writing #writingcommunity #art #film #sff #creativetoots #kickstarter

It's getting late in the Cosy Library, and Jake has a big day ahead of him tomorrow, so it's time for everyone to settle down and get some sleep.

Except the bats. Their shift is just starting...

https://theunconventionalgardener.com/blog/the-cosy-library-four/

#writing

Atraxian Blue preview/serialization chapter (http://mathling.com/books/index.html):

In which the captain of the Kintsugi has a moment with the ghosts of her past

For the impatient: https://books2read.com/u/b6ElAx

#scifi #writing

Atraxian Blue preview/serialization chapter (http://mathling.com/books/index.html):

In which our feckless hero evades a lot of pointed questions with half lies and misdirection

For the impatient: https://books2read.com/u/b6ElAx

#scifi #writing

This week's installment of my Cosy Library story sees the arrival of Jake (the new assistant librarian) and his dragon Hector.

https://theunconventionalgardener.com/blog/the-cosy-library-three/

#writing

A couple more chapters From Atraxian Blue (http://mathling.com/books/index.html)

The tale takes a darker turn:

In which a small boy is very very ill.

In which deadly violence erupts while our feckless hero obsesses about his art.

Get the whole thing here if you like: https://books2read.com/u/b6ElAx

#writing #scifi

🇬🇧 - 🇩🇪
Star Ryde draft 000.001
21.10.2025

Words - Wörter: 34.317

#StarRyde #SciFi #WIP #schreiben #writing

In the second installment, Ellie gets to know a little bit more about Jake, a candidate for the Assistant Librarian position.

https://theunconventionalgardener.com/blog/the-cosy-library-two/

#writing

🇬🇧 - 🇩🇪
Star Ryde draft 000.001
17.10.2025

Words - Worte: 33.322
including edit notes - inklusive Bearbeitungsnotizen.

🇬🇧 Something bout stressful working Rhodents diets.

🇩🇪 Mühsam ernährt sich das Eichhörnchen.

#StarRyde #schreiben #writing #SciFi #WIP

I have just posted the first installment of my book-length* Cosy Library story. Check it out if you like the idea of a magical library with flying books, dog-sized fire-breathing dragons and a very unusual garden!

*I really have no idea how long it's going to be.

#writing

https://theunconventionalgardener.com/blog/the-cosy-library-one/

levi's #introduction !

Hi y'all! I'm from bsky, and I like to talk about #anime , #writing , #art , #gaming , #comics , #DND & more! I'm currently an aspiring #webnovelist / #indieauthor , #gamedev , & #PNGtuber, but I've got a long way to go lol. I dabble in #fandom spaces but not much.

.·:·.┏━⋅━⋅━━⋅༻❁༺⋅━━⋅━⋅━┓:·.
.༻♡ my interests ♡༺.
♡ #GachiAkuta ♡
♡ #Spiderverse ♡
♡ #OvertheGardenWall ♡
♡ #ATLA ♡
♡ #DC #Marvel ♡
♡ #rofan #romantasy ♡
and more!
.·:·.╰━⋅━⋅━.· ✿༻༺✿·.━⋅━⋅━╯ :·.
💞+♻️ pls!

Preview chapter 2 of Atraxian Blue (https://books2read.com/u/b6ElAx) is up.

In which station security is trying to get a straight answer out of this art wanker

https://mathling.com/books/index.html

#scifi #writing #books

Well, this is where it begins. A prologue, of sorts, although I know those aren't popular these days.

But if you'd like to spend 10 minutes or so in a magical library with a very odd garden, a fire-breathing dragon and flying books...

#writing #dragon #ShortStory

https://theunconventionalgardener.com/blog/the-book-dragon/

Available today, my space opera novel, Atraxian Blue: https://books2read.com/u/b6ElAx

Chapter one preview available here:
https://mathling.com/books/AtraxianBlue/c003.xhtml

In which we meet our feckless hero, defacing a bulkhead in the name of art

#scifi #writing

*** The Guardians. ***

Along the lane beside the church where trees grow tall & shade the earth, where clouds flit gently overhead, two beings sit quiet, guarding the dead.

Though small of stature & long of tail they know their duty, know they will not fail.

From down below, all unseen, I hear them shout, I hear them scream.

Fighting off another who, it seems, would disturb their charges, would make a scene.

They chitter & threaten, drawing lines not to cross, watching ov’r those resting, asleep in the moss.

A flutter of wings, with a final retort, the trespasser leaves now the battle is fought.

Silence returns, except for the sound, of wee squirrel guardians returning to ground.

And I who am left, now the battle has ceased, feel all is well, in this place where so many human hearts are at peace.

#TimThePoetSquirrel #poetry #poem #writing #today

EDIT: Added a photo taken at the same location showing one of the Guardians.
EDIT 2: tweaked version for my MiL’s funeral.

🇬🇧 - 🇩🇪
1 year ago, in November, the work on Star Ryde draft 000.001 started with the NaNoWriMo. I managed to write 10.000 words but didn't write regularly now SR the main Story sits at around 32.440 words including edit notes. Nice but annoying because if I had kept around 10.000 words a month I would have finished the sarn thing already, at least the current draft. This is why I aim for crazy goals this year 30.00 words no edit notes.

I'm November vor einem Jahr habe ich mit der Arbeit an Star Ryde Draft 000.001 begonnen. Im NaNoWriMo habe ich 10.000 Worte, habe aber nur sehr unregelmäßig geschrieben. Seither ist die Hauptgeschichte auf 32.440 inklusive edit notes gewachsen. Schön aber Nervig, hätte ich seither die 10.000 im Monat geschafft wäre Draft 000.001 wahrscheinlich schon fertig. Deshalb ist mein Ziel für diesen NaNoWriMo verrückter Weise 30.000 Worte keine Editnotes.

#StarRyde #schreiben #writing #SciFi #WIP #NaNoWriMo

Sinister Minutes 2:13 Killing Spree - Cellar Door

A '70s metal band plays their killer hit single - right up until the incident that leads to their premature and abrupt end. Then Tim cracks open the Cellar Door - do you dare listen to what's down there?

https://www.sinisterminutes.com/episodes-season-2 or wherever you grab your podcasts.

Written by John Kuyat, narrated by @KurtHohmann (me), music by Tim Parker.

#writing
#writingCommunity
#podcast
#podcasts
#Podcaster
#Podcasting
#fiction
#horror
#AudioDrama

🇬🇧 - 🇩🇪
Star Ryde draft 000.001
23.09.2025 session 2

Words - Worte: 32.440
including edit notes - inklusive Bearbeitungsnotizen

#StarRyde #schreiben #writing #SciFi #WIP

Wow, it's been over a year since I dusted this thing off. But I hear some folks are coming back to Fedi from BlueSky so... Welcome back, I guess? Allow me to make my #introduction.

I'm Daphne⭐ (pronounced "Daphne Star", pronouns she/her) and I'm still a middle-aged #trans woman doing her level best to avoid spending every moment of my time screaming into the void (this was written from the United States in the back half of 2025, in case things have since gotten better or worse). I post infrequently at best, and usually about one of my personal projects, though I'll throw in the occasional snarky reply. Most of what post about is trans or queer related, though I'm also a #parent, so motherhood comes up occasionally in conversation as well. I'm an experienced #SoftwareEngineer, which means I'll understand many of your tech jokes and means Fedi doesn't feel intractably alienating, but I don't talk software engineering directly very much.

Right, I think I mentioned personal projects up there, so let's get into those. I dabble in #writing, #GameDev, and art (particularly #PixelArt) to different degrees, and you can find links to all of my work on my website (http://daphnestar.com/). My best known (maybe?) work is probably Family of Me, which has its own website (http://familyofme.com/) and chronicles the inner journey of a middle-aged trans woman (yours truly) coming to terms with her past selves. It's unfinished, but there's quite a lot of it already, and perhaps one day I'll have the energy to go back and write more of it. My current project is a #TokiPona visual dictionary (think alphabet book) rendered in pixel art called "nimi pi musi leko" which I post here as I finish them (typically daily, but not always).

Feel free to ping me if you want to say "hi", ask questions about my work, want to share memes, or whatever. Follow Requests are locked behind a vibe check; it's not a big deal (especially if you're trans or queer) but I tend to reject accounts that are mostly boosts or heavy on political content, especially if it's not behind a CW. Nothing personal, but I have my own ways of managing my news intake (I'm trans, you can rest assured that I'm getting the news) and I don't want it in my feed. I'm also pretty slow at processing follow requests, so apologies for that in advance. Right, that's all of it! See you around~

When is a book finished? When you are done writing. After 50 revisions over 6 editions things feel right here. It is the story I want to tell. https://www.amazon.com/Some-Books-Are-Not-Sale/dp/B0B6XQB9BF #writing #books #florida

Sinister Minutes 2:12 The Monkey's Paw - Cryptic Transmission

The storytelling world is filled with wishes that suck, and this classic tale brings that concept into stark relief.

https://www.sinisterminutes.com/episodes-season-2 or wherever you grab your podcasts.

Written W. W. Jacobs, narrated by @KurtHohmann (me), music by Tim Parker.

#writing
#writingCommunity
#podcast
#podcasts
#Podcaster
#Podcasting
#fiction
#horror
#AudioDrama

If you've been enjoying the content for my upcoming book, "Dragon's Reign: The Lost Society" well good news! I made a mailing list and if you join the mailing list, you can receive the advance reader copy a month before the actual book comes out!

#dragons #writing #reading #books

https://justwritingwithjesse.blogspot.com/p/subcribe-its-free.html

I probably don't do this enough, but I am a writer, and I have books I would love for you to buy. It's all gay, with protagonist all trying to deal with various fucked up worlds. There's gay mysteries, gay comedy/horror, gay urban fantasy, gay fantasy, gay short stories - you get the picture. I have many free reads, so check me out if you wish. https://aspeed.itch.io #writing

SEND ME A QUESTION!

Forbidden Queeries: Questions and Responses beyond the norm

Help me build up the momentum I need for my new Question and Response blog, FORBIDDEN QUEERIES! My goal is to have a bank of at least 15 questions to choose from before my first post goes up on Friday!

Goal: 13/15 questions submitted!!!

You can submit an anonymous question through the form on the website (https://forbidden-queeries.ghost.io/ask-a-question/), by emailing me directly at forbiddenqueeries@gmail.com, or private messaging me here @mallory_sinn!

#ForbiddenQueeries #Queer #Trans #Writing

Updated introductory post:

Hiya! I'm Cris, a 40+ expat living in #costarica. My family moved here recently to escape the American nightmare hellscape. Struggling daily to learn Spanish and to function outside the US.

Married with 2 kids, 2 cats, and 2 dogs. I'm a knitter and gamer. I'm slowly teaching myself #SwiftUI in my spare time. Once I'm able to ship my bass from where it's stored in the US I’ll get back to learning that as well.

I play and run TTRPGs. Mostly D&D 5e, but I'm always looking for opportunities to try out other games and systems. I prefer my video games solo and story-driven. I know I'm bad at them. I don't need any witnesses to that fact 😂

When I'm not gaming or working, I’m usually knitting while watching something scifi or horror. Trying my best to get out of the house and explore my new country, but the backlog is vast.

Topics of interest:
#tech
#apple
#knitting
#gaming
#ttrpg
#books
#writing
#SciFi
#StarTrek
#coffee

#introduction

As promised, here is my complete third story "The Dunes of Àrd-Dhìthreabh".

The premise is that in the second half of the 21st century all concrete started to crumble. The story follows a Scottish family caught up in the events.

Besides the web version you can also read it in PDF format or in EPUB format. It's free, no DRM. I hope you will like it.

#TheDunesOfArdeer

#writing #fictionwriting #fiction #story #climateFiction #climateChange

Ok. Poll ends. 7% of those who responded “have a life,” so aren’t interested in a free chapter of my friend MS Harker’s book on “the secret life of pianos.”
For the rest of you (93%), be sure to get your free chapter at http://dontshootthepianotuner.com

#Msharker #music #books #writing #musictechnology #pianos #vancouver #chancentre #whistler #jazz #booksofmastodon #writersofmastodon #classicalmusic #pianists #pianistsofmastodon #musicians #musiciansofmastodon #free

By popular request, it's here!

FORBIDDEN QUEERIES, my new Question & Response blog is live!

https://hachyderm.io/@mallory_sinn/115029605920637964

I'll be publishing it under my pseudonym, Mallie Sinn, to keep it separate from my career and make it clear what I offer there is personal opinion and not therapy or counseling. You can read it by following @mallory_sinn or on the blog site itself: https://forbidden-queeries.ghost.io/

I am currently taking open questions from everyone at forbiddenqueeries@gmail.com or in private mentions to @mallory_sinn

If you want to support this effort or get top priority for your own question, please subscribe on the blog itself at https://forbidden-queeries.ghost.io/ or on my patreon for projects under my pseudonym https://patreon.com/MallorySinn

#Trans #Transgender #Queer #Advice #Questions #Writing

Sinister Minutes 2:11 Eraser: if there was a way to remove yourself from everything, to erase all of your digital tracks, would you do it?

Then an eldritch jam with Sonic Chlithonic, composed and performed by Tim Parker

https://www.sinisterminutes.com/episodes-season-2 or wherever you grab your podcasts.

Written and narrated by @KurtHohmann (me), music by Tim Parker

#writing
#writingCommunity
#podcast
#podcasts
#Podcaster
#Podcasting
#fiction
#horror
#AudioDrama

🎹 Would you read a book about “the secret life of pianos?”
ps. Get a free chapter at http://dontshootthepianotuner.com

pps. PLEASE BOOST SO THAT PIANO ENTHUSIASTS WILL SEE. Thank you.

🎹 📕 📖 ✍️ #booksofmastodon #writersofmastodon #published #books #writing #writinglife #music #pianos #musictech

I finally finished Beth's OC bio omg I can finally explode 😭
Here's the full thing if anyone wants to read it:
https://rentry.org/beth-carvedson

Please do let me know what you think ​.. I'm very proud of this and I'm glad I could finally expand on her as an actual character and her relationships with others properly. Contains spoilers for actual events from the series, and I've also put some content warnings at the top just in case ​

#moralorel #bethcarvedson #oc #writing #junkwrites

🇬🇧 - 🇩🇪
Star Ryde draft 000.001
27.07.2025

Words - Worte: 26.327
including edit notes - inklusive Bearbeitungsnotizen

🇬🇧 Started roughly implementing Mastodon Prompt answer scenes, I wrote the last 2 1/2 years, so no "real" writing progress because most words are copied in, from my own answers i wrote ... So maybe it counts.

🇩🇪 Damit begonnen Mastodon Prompt Antworten die ich in den letzten 2 1/2 Jahren geschrieben habe, grob zu implementieren, also kein wirklicher Schreibfortschritt da die meisten Worte kopiert sind, aus meine Antworten die ich geschrieben habe, vielleicht zahlt das ja auch

#StarRyde #Writing #Schreiben #SciFi #Original

Sinister Minutes 2:10 Guest author K.G. McAbee serves up a tasty treat, a meal she calls Aunt Clytie’s Canning Jars.

Then it's time to clean up a sticky mess with Tim's Ectoplasm III.

https://www.sinisterminutes.com/episodes-season-2 or wherever you grab your podcasts.

Narrated by @KurtHohmann (me), music by Tim Parker

#writing
#writingCommunity
#podcast
#podcasts
#Podcaster
#Podcasting
#fiction
#horror
#AudioDrama

If anyone's interested in a #Writers & #Authors Discord...

Mine is one big community when it comes to #writing, #querying and being an #IndieAuthor.
Within that, we've got channels to help the following writers/ people connect;

GENRE
#SciFi, #Fantasy, #SpecFic &#WorldBuilding
#Mystery/ #Thriller/ #Crime
#Romance
#Horror
#Kidlit

AUTHORS
#Queer
#Neurodivergent
#ChronicallyIll/ #Disabled
Over 50's
#BIPOC

REGIONS
US
Canada
UK/ Europe
#Australia & NZ
Asia-Pacific-Latinx

Anyone want a link?

🇬🇧 - 🇩🇪
Star Ryde draft 000.001
17.07.2025

Words - Worte: 24.278
including edit notes - inklusive Bearbeitungsnotizen.

Rough outlines for chapter - Grober Umriß für Kapitel: 3-12 ✅

🇬🇧
Wrote an very disturbing, heartwarming scene, still crying I'm either really onto something or just a wimpy wet towel as soon as emotional stuff comes up...😭

🇩🇪
Hab ne sehr verstörend, herzerwärmende Szene geschrieben, bin immer noch am heulen. Entweder bin ich da an was dran oder einfach nur ein nasser Weichei Waschlappen sobald es um Gefühle geht...😭

#StarRyde #writing #schreiben #SciFi #Original #WIP

SELF PROMOTION
I'm writing a book (a crooked path that reveals much).
When you sign up on the "1000 early readers" list you get previews of chapters as I write them. You also get free access to regular online workshops, plus discounts on other
goodies from me and my colleagues.

ps. Please share (boost) where appropriate

http://apprenticeshiptolove.com

#writersofmastodon #booksofmastodon #love #sex #yoga #memoir #writing #marriage #tantra #menshealth #relationships

AS OF JANUARY 6, 2026

People who need WEEKLY AND MONTHLY support, so check back often!

follow @supergrover and @fedicares for frequent updates!

1. Tie, a black disabled homeless nonbinary writer
venmo: tietie
cashapp: tiezesty
zelle: tiezst.taylor@gmail.com
paypal: dialecticpoetry@gmail.com

2. JustAngel is a black mom of 4 living with POTS and needing help to acquire housing after landlord's neglect when Hurricane Ida damaged their roof, causing water damage and black mold.
paypal.com/pool/9fqSffl562
https://gofund.me/944ac27d
https://venmo.com/u/justangelj
https://ko-fi.com/justangelj
cash app: justangelj

3. ks (410/1360) PAST DUE: https://me.dm/@kshernandez/115616370067479442
vnm: skillingmesoftly
pypl: kshernandezinc
ko-fi.com/khernandez

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https://mastodon.art/@SingsongRaptor/115816606014284100
My Cashapp/Venmo: SingsongRaptor
Sister's Cash&Venmo: squiddcandy

5. kiamichi: DUE THURSDAY (900/2500)
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PayPal.me/kiagbear
Cashapp $kiagbear
Venmo kiagbear
https://ko-fi.com/mahtheyzhawey/shop

6. evel (ASAP): https://mastodon.art/@secretsloth/115634708706626636
https://mastodon.art/@aldercone/115606845767206226
throne.com/evel
https://cash.app/$evelbrute
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7. deliberately_me (100/430) DUE 1/26:
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paypal and cashapp: magnoliaowls

8. octo (/3408) needed ASAP: https://blackqueer.life/@octo/115782879160995673
https://ko-fi.com/queeroctopuss/
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9. sabi (0/1524) NEEDED IMMEDIATELY (price will go up $101/daily):
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PPal: SabiLewSounds
Linktree: sabilewsounds

10. dionRa (£2301.13/£4000) needed ASAP: https://kind.social/@DionRa/115645598585042714
€ paypal: bellis-storm@tutanota.com
£ paypal: diontheblackdragon@gmail.com
or dm for € or £ bank transfer

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12. moo (0/350) NEEDED ASAP: https://blackqueer.life/@moo/115843446741363061
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https://cash.me/$melaninpony
https://paypal.me/melaninpony

13. albi (0/600) ASAP:
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cash.app/$LeeOfTheHedge
https://ko-fi.com/leeofthehedge
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14. pastel: https://blackqueer.life/@IelPastelBlack/113245176876260762
ko-fi.com/pastelpipon
https://paypal.com/paypalme/IelPastelB

15. andrea, anything helps:
https://ko-fi.com/artwerk

15. nullagent: https://partyon.xyz/@nullagent/115848705346821315
venmo/cashapp: @nullagent
https://ko-fi.com/nullagent

16. ginny needed ASAP:
http://paypal.me/ginnymcqueen
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17. divya helps six Palestinian families weekly (65/300)URGENT:
weekly post: https://sunny.garden/@divya/115774463593318154
https://sunny.garden/@divya/115849460192877716
https://chuffed.org/project/hope-giving-circle

18. juniper, anything helps (can tutor in mathematics): https://weirder.earth/@june/115369931037561013
venmo.com/u/juniper_bahr
paypal.me/juniperbahr

19. clover system (89/800) Biracial, Cherokee. Visibly disabled wheelchair user, chronic pain, POTS + ME/CFS. Schizophrenic, plural system, having just... A really hard time supporting two humans and two dogs.: https://cathode.church/@squirrellilly/115844792252460290
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/ramavabray
https://patreon.com/ifwhen (art/music + stream shoutouts available)

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21. london (0/1200) DUE 1/2: https://goblin.camp/@hammerhead/115645477320909455
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#NativeArtist #BlackMutualAid #MutualAid #HelpFolksLive2025 #Disability #DisabilityMutualAid #Disabled #DisabledMutualAId #Queer #QueerMutualAid #LGBTQIA #LGBTQ #LGBT #Art #Writing #IndigenousMutualAid #Trans #TransMutualAid

🇬🇧 - 🇩🇪
Star Ryde draft 000.001
14.07.2025

Words - Worte: 23.265
including edit notes - inklusive Bearbeitungsnotizen.

Rough outlines for chapter - Grober Umriß für Kapitel: 3-12 ✅

😶‍🌫️

#StarRyde #writing #schreiben #SciFi #Original #WIP

🇬🇧 - 🇩🇪
Star Ryde draft 000.001
13.07.2025

Words - Worte: 22.269
including edit notes - inklusive Bearbeitungsnotizen

Rough outlines for chapter - Grober Umriß für Kapitel: 3-8 ✅

🥱😎

#StarRyde #writing #schreiben #SciFi #Original #WIP

Introduction Appendix 3: This project will be a bit less socially minded, more just creative, and hopefully even a little lucrative, but I'm not holding my breath.

That's right, I'm writing a novel. I know that novelists are a dime a dozen, but I actually really enjoy writing, think that I'm fairly decent at it, and certainly have no shortage of ideas. There will be sequels, many of them (and prequels, and side stories...).

So what's it about? It's science fiction, because that's what I know and like best. The basic idea is the well-known "lost in space" idea, but I'm hoping that the unique setting, characters, and story are able to carry it. It takes place in an alternate history where the United States, Canada, and Mexico joined together to form a Technate, a country that employs Technocracy (see my Intro Appendix 1), not long after World War 2. Technological progress happens much faster until the start of the novel, where we find our crew of four performing a test flight of a prototype fusion rocket engine. Naturally, something goes horribly wrong and... science fiction weirdness ensues as the crew has to try and find their way back to Earth while navigating several strange (and often hostile) alien civilizations.

The background and setting are fairly detailed, enough that I already have ideas for prequels and side stories in addition to the main series. "Epic" world building appears to be my jam. Now we just have to see if anyone else happens to like it.

#Writing #fiction #amwriting #WritingCommunity #ScienceFiction

I am proud to present you with an interview with an incredible @adapalmer straight from this year #Bazyliszek convention, now available as a #solarpunkPrompts special!

https://podcast.tomasino.org/@SolarpunkPrompts/episodes/special-interview-with-ada-palmer-history-of-ideas-and-our-climate-imaginations

#solarpunk #history #scienceFiction #rome #climate #purity #writing #imagination #hopepunk #apocalypse

Sitting on Star Ryde again listening the three/four options for my solution on the main WIP trying to figure out what goes where.
Getting distracted by all kind of things ...
Still I want to get out that stuff out of my mind into the Draft.

#StarRyde #writing #SciFi #WIP

Listened the whole day to the Computer Voice of Word to find mistakes in my two chapters...

Sad I'm back at word but this time I only use the word app and not anything else of MS...
Still Adropen Office is installed thanks to words inability to save in other document forms or revert them into workable text.
Andropen office still bugs out after a certain amount of changes and the dark mode is not working at all.
At least I am working on my stuff again...

And my AO3 account is online but so far I haven't done anything not sure what I can upload and what not so I will look into my older fanfictions and maybe share some of them but most likely not before Monday.

#StarRyde #writing #SciFi #Original #WIP #FanFiction #AO3 #ArchiveOfOurOwn

20264 words, eleven are repeating instances of chapter (obviously in german as a German in Germany writing in German...) added rough outlines to some of them and each got a working title (one is missing everything...)

Next goal fill out the blank one, get chapter two done, finally.

-Start chapter 3

- Deepen the lore of the involved parties and correct them if necessary in the other reference files
- Rework timeline according to the book (again).
- Iron out the unfitting stuff in the Who is Who file
- don't forget the flannel shirt in chapter two where does it come from ...
😅

#StarRyde #writing #Original #SciFi #WIP #author_ity #author #

Currently sitting at slightly above 19.000 words. I really have to rethink my writing approach, maybe i should do the roughest complete scratch draw first because if I write natural I struggle with all the details that come to my mind...

#StarRyde #writing #SciFi #WIP

Time for a re-#Introduction!

Hi! I'm Apatapa, I'm a creative cat from down under.

I'm a long time writer who has recently started working on digital painting skills and a few other creative endeavours. I've shared some examples below.

Big on community and I love meeting new people (especially other creative folk) so feel free to say hi, I only bite if you like that sort of thing 😼

I write a lot of queer fantasy, furry fiction and gay smut. I'm currently working on some novels for publishing, which I will talk more about once they're ready to share.

In the meantime, if you would like to see the stories I have publicly available, peep the links below (big NSFW warning):
https://www.furaffinity.net/user/apatapa/
https://apatapa.sofurry.com/

Some other interests of mine are #GuildWars2, fighting games and public health. I also tend to ramble about media I like.

#Furry #Tiger #DigitalArt #Writing #AmWriting

*Please only add me if you're over twenty-one.
Since the Bio field has such a short character limit, consider this to be my profile/biography.
I don't write about American politics, race, anticapitalism, world affairs (wars, poverty, oppression, etc.), loneliness, bad self-esteem, or anxiety/depression, and will not add those who do so often. The same is true of those who feel it necessary to use obscenities. I am not a modern programmer or gamer, I do not use Linux, and I don't care what social network you use.*

Hello. For the sake of honesty, Georgiana Brummell is not my legal name, but it is what I use. I live in New Jersey and am forty-two years old. Some of my interests include studying dandyism, nineteenth-century English grammar, Upper Received Pronunciation, the Italian language, British history, the Regency, opera, and MS-DOS. I like coffee, tea, wine, cooking, hot baths, reading British literature, watching nature and historical documentaries, gardening, old BBC radio shows, hot weather, and playing cards and dice. I love opera, particularly singers from the 1940-s and earlier, and I adore the tenore di grazia and lyric tenor voice types. I also enjoy English and Viennese operettas. In classical music, I like Baroque through a bit of early Romantic, while in popular, I like 1950's through 1970's. I prefer antique menswear and accessories (no feminine clothing). It's my dream to either buy a genuine Edwardian suit or have one commissioned. I love wit, wordplay, and dry humour without vulgarity. I am happily childfree, am not religious, speak my mind and am against political correctness. I also love cats. I have been totally blind since I was two months old, due to Retinopathy of Prematurity.

This is my journal. Anyone can read or comment, whether or not he is a member.

http://dandylover1.dreamwidth.org

This is my dating post on Mastodon, which is shorter than the one on Dreamwidth. It's somewhat similar to this one, but it contains an explanation of what I am seeking in a partner. If you are or know a genuine dandy, or at least, an intelligent, single, childfree man over sixty, please read the link below and/or pass it on to him.

https://someplace.social/@dandylover1/114966815790206512

If you're on MSN via Escargot I am dandylover1@escargot.chat. My Google Voice number is 201 589-1890. Please send me a text if I don't know you well, as I don't answer unrecognised numbers.

I am also the administrator of the following subreddits.

Old Opera
http://www.reddit.com/r/oldopera

Blind and Fine
http://www.reddit.com/r/blindandfine

Interests

#accessibility #AgeGapRelationships #animals #atheism #BeauBrummell #baking #BelCanto #birds #BoardGames #books #BritishHistory #BritishLiterature #cards #cats #ChamberMusic #childfree #ClassicalMusic #coffee #cooking #crafts #dandies #dandyism #dating #documentaries #Dreamwidth #England #food #friends #friendship #gardening #grammar #history #humor #humour #introduction #Italian #MSDOS #nature #NewJersey #NoPolitics #NJ #NVDA #OldMen #OldTimeRadio #opera #operetta #paranormal #parapsychology #plants #QuickBasic #reading #ReceivedPronunciation #Reddit #Regency #RoyalFamily #seniors #SilverFork #singing #singles #suits #tea #theater #theatre #TWBlue #TweeseCake #UpperClass #Windows7 #WindowsXP #wine #writing

Just a little reminder that my book with #lesbian short stories is for free right now.
Pretty slice of life-y.
Funny, soft, pointless, romantic, heavy. All of it.
Have a look, if you want :)

https://payhip.com/b/ldYqS

#sapphicbooks
#writing
#lesfic

Medium Day, our annual community event, kicks off on Sept. 19, 2025. Register now to get updates on confirmed speakers, sessions, and activities at https://www.mediumday.com

#Medium #writers #writing #MediumDay #MediumDay2025

Out today! My short story, "The Back Room" is available with this issue of DreamForge!

http://go.dfstory.com/the-back-room

I'm so excited to share this story with you! What a dream come true!

#sff #writing @DreamForgeMag

You can call me Mallie Sinn (she/they). I'm a non-binary trans woman, a bi lesbian, and a white trash PhD dropout who is working to become a licensed therapist.

Until then, I'm writing a question and response blog: Forbidden Queeries (forbidden-queeries.ghost.io). And, as usual, expect other creative shenanigans with a lack of hinges spilling out of this account on occasion.

You can either support my writing or my effort to become a licensed therapist by subscribing to my newsletter (forbidden-queeries.ghost.io) or patreon: https://patreon.com/MallorySinn

#Trans #Queer #Writing

IT STILL HURTS

Few days ago I wrapped a rubber band around my left ring finger,
just to feel what it could have been like.

#poetry #writing #poem

Some of you may be wondering why the scene in the art is a hot spring specifically. It just so happens that was where the presently longest joint writing project (some would call those a roleplay) of mine featuring him started from! He'd fallen from the heavens inside of a crystal, and landed in a hot spring of all places. It took a fitting travel partner arriving before the shell would crack, and when one did they could get down to business.

Scherzo himself was sent to the world for an important task, to which this travelling companion would then be roped into as well: He had some anchoring relics to cleanse, so that the deity he serves (the Keeper god) could keep things as they are (i.e. the Creator god remains shackled instead of resuming its work). That story stalled eventually at the tail end of 2022, as such collabs sadly have a habit of doing, but when I found this artist I just had to take a walk down the memory lane.

#OriginalCharacter #writing #roleplay

the poppies return
and we vow ‘never again’
again, and again

#haiku #poetry #writing

My latest #ScienceFiction #novel is available in #eBook format!! 💫

It's about two women agents who are highly skilled fighting with blades. While they are undercover in enemy space, they find themselves in need of a new pilot. But they quickly attract attention from the oppressor enemy soldiers, which further threatens their mission.

It is a novel inspired by Western settler #colonialism and the taking of #indigenous land.

https://books2read.com/u/bWa70q

#Books #Writing #SelfPublishing #Scifi #Resistance #IndieWriter #Cyborg #Espionage

My shadow
was bending
on the asphalt
and I was standing
on the edge
of myself

#Art #Poetry #Writing #MastoArt

Just finished the first chapter of a story I've been trying to write for the past 8 months! It's only about 3,900 words, but there were about 20,000 words written, revised, and deleted behind the scenes 😵‍💫 https://archiveofourown.org/works/65129773/chapters/167506408

It's a fanfiction of Fire Emblem: Fates, a fantasy action RPG for the 3DS. I played it as a preteen when it came out, and it's had a special place in my heart ever since.

The whole fanfic is titled "If Flames Unseal", a reference to Fates' original Japanese title (Fire Emblem: If) and the Seal of Flames, a legendary weapon which the game revolves around. This chapter is titled "Madam President" and it's mostly a dream the main character is having. It serves to show that my version of the main character is different from the canon version. Why did I change her, you may be wondering?

In canon, her character flaw is that she's too trusting, but that conflicts with her backstory. Three people are only alive because she intervened to save them, against the wishes of everyone around her. A fourth is (presumed) dead because she couldn't do that. So I think it makes more sense for her character flaw to be a tendency to try to gain control over her surroundings; After all, when she fails, people die. TL;DR My Corrin isn't out of character, the canon one is /LH #writing #WritingCommunity #CreativeWriting #CreativeWritingCommunity #FireEmblemFates #FireEmblemIf #FireEmblem14

I've created ebook versions of my hopeful climate fiction "Standing Wave" and "Running AMOC", both EPUB and PDF. You can also read them on line at https://selfedge.org.uk/fiction/

"Standing Wave" is about a team of fedizens searching for a long-lost climate model. The main actors are a Mongolian Soviet researcher and his US counterpart, some time in the 1970s.

EPUB: https://selfedge.org.uk/ebooks/Standing-Wave--Wim-Vanderbauwhede.epub
PDF: https://selfedge.org.uk/ebooks/Standing-Wave--Wim-Vanderbauwhede.pdf

"Runnning AMOC" is about the impending collapse of the Gulf stream. The protagonist is an Indonesian-Dutch woman of around fifty.

EPUB: https://selfedge.org.uk/ebooks/Running-AMOC--Wim-Vanderbauwhede.epub
PDF: https://selfedge.org.uk/ebooks/Running-AMOC--Wim-Vanderbauwhede.pdf

#RunningAMOC #StandingWave

#writing #fictionwriting #fiction #story #hopePunk #climateFiction #climateChange

Green Queer Erotic Love Magic is the sometimes poetic and sometimes discursive imagination of a green queer erotic love-based anarchy. It discusses the meanings of green, queer, erotic and love and argues for the imagination to create "anarchy".

https://archive.org/details/gqelm-c

#politics #green #queer #erotic #love #anarchy #magic #imagination #pagan #art #writing #books

With 28 Spoken Word albums you need a sampler. A couple years ago I released "Joined The Sounds Of Waves" as an opinionated introduction to my recordings. But I've done a lot of writing since then. It's time for an update! My new Rural Gloom Sampler is now free to stream/download via bandcamp. https://damonthomas.bandcamp.com/album/joined-the-sounds-of-waves-a-rural-gloom-sampler #writing #poetry #SpokenWord #recording #florida #bandcamp

Hello EVERYONE! I am really loving Mastodon and meeting awesome people! I have A LOT of fun creating ART* and POETRY!

*Conceived and created by a human. :)

Say "hi" and enjoy my ART!

My portfolio here: https://sharoncummingsart.pixels.com/

#art #artist #creativity #creative #abstract #abstractart #colorfulart #introduction #followfriday #followbackfriday #follow #mastoart #mastadonart #fediart #ArtMatters #artwork #colorful #AYearForArt #mastoartist #fediart #poetry #writing #fun #writingcommunity

I think I finally have this thing complete - the paper is live hosted on a little test node, also lives as README.md on the GitHub.

https://idens.net/iden://z1HRUsTNcYMkN5WPm9s1YjGaLUVs58RVRHPjBrV1kYwdAJ.642/pub

#P2P #distributed #text #smallweb #markdown #data #linkeddata #python #rust #rustlang #linux #unix #longread #code #opensource #helloworld #federation #peer2peer #peerreview #writing

#introduction

Studied linguist and cognitive scientist who transformed into a software engineer.

Interested in #Anthropology, #Nutrition, #Sports, #Cognition and #Psychology, #Japanese, #Literature, #Minimalism or rather #Simplification.

I enjoy making #Music and writing things #writing. It’s the little things that matter.

Well not much but at least another 980 words. I didn't even expected one tbh.

#StarRYDE #writing #SciFi #WIP

🇬🇧 - 🇩🇪
February - March / Februar - März 2025
Wordcount Overall - Worte/Wörter insgesamt: 17.171

--.02.2025 - 20.03.2025
Words written - Worte/Wörter geschrieben: 1644
Goals reached - Ziele erreicht;
Chapter - Kapitel: No ❌
Words - Wörter: No ❌

Next Goals - Nächsten Ziele,
Words - Worte/Wörter: --
Writing anything - Irgendwas schreiben
End Chapter no.  -
Kapitel beenden Nr.: 2

#writing #SciFi #writingcommunity #schreiben #WIP
#Wordweavers #PennedPossibilities #PhantastikPrompts #StarRyde

I just migrated here from SecondUniverse@neurodifferent.me, so as a quick introduction... I am a trans woman. I transitioned back in the nineties before the world declared war on us. I was diagnosed with autism in my fifties, and more recently I have self diagnosed myself as having CPTSD. I post about astronomy, game development, trans issues, mental health, autism, and writing. #trans #actuallyAutistic #writing #mentalHealth #gameDev

Update: I have now learned, at age 55, I am intersex. I just about remember the "corrective" surgery that was done when I was was 3. #intersex

Dear Lovely Peeps:

An (re?) #Introduction might be in order. I have decided it is time to stop wandering & settle down in a nice sunny garden. 😊

I've been around since 2016, and wherever I am, I try to create a wee gentle eddy of peace & whimsy in my corner of the Fediverse. 😇

I have a #hope-full perspective. Am strongly influenced by #DoctorWho. 😄 Believe in a #SolarPunk / #HopePunk future. Manage to find small good things to celebrate every day. 🎉

Am interested in #FOSS, #travel, #photography, #sustainability, #accessibility, #reading, #writing, being #outside, #LowTech / #NoTech solutions, and a whole lot more.

(I have a neuro-spicy brain so 'a whole lot more' really is a LOT! 😄 )

Come in, have a scroll, and maybe breathe a little easier. I hope you enjoy your time here. 💛

Pues sin tener del todo claro una opción web para escribir, esta de momento me ha convencido mucho. Iré publicando ahí pequeños fragmentos de texto, inspirado por la poesía del horror sublime.

Without a clear choice for a web platform to write on, this one has convinced me quite a lot. I'll be posting my fragments there, inspired by sublime horror poetry.

https://write.as/antonioganfornina/

#poetry #poesia #escritura #writing

Saw there were still people responding to my above #Poll about #Transhumanism / #BodyModification, and I'd like to get as many responses as possible, #Furry or otherwise, because I'm #writing #SciFi about this, so I tossed a few more hours onto the time.

Please respond and boost!

I need to get better in painting drawing or hire an ship artist well at least the ship has something like a shape now...

#writing #SciFi #writingcommunity #WIP #StarRyde

🇬🇧 - 🇩🇪
End result - Endresultat.
January - Januar 2025
Word count Overall - Worte/Wörter insgesamt: 16110
Chapters - Kapitel: 1 1/2

Goals - Ziele
Words - Worte/Wörter:
10.000 ❌
End Chapter no.  -
Kapitel beenden Nr.: 2 ❌
Goals reached - Ziele erreicht: ❌/❌

01.01.2025 - 31.01.2025
Words written - Worte/Wörter geschrieben: 3775

Goals for February - Ziele für Februar,
Words - Worte: 10.000
Finishing Chapter No. - Fertigstellung Kapitel Nr.: 2
#writing #SciFi #writingcommunity #schreiben #WIP #Wordweavers #PennedPossibilities #PhantastikPrompts #StarRyde

My #Poll about #Transhumanism / #BodyModification and #Furries for my #SciFi #writing is still going!

If you haven't responded or boosted, please do so: I want a broad range of responses from across the #Fediverse!

#FediPoll time!

Settle my argument that the subculture described in my #Scifi setting of #Modders is not unreasonable...

Imagine you lived in a future where #BodyModification technology was at the point that you could quickly and cheaply get pretty much a full rework of your body, and one of these was a potentially reversible procedure to make you an IRL #Furry by giving you #anthropomorphic #animals features, such as fur, tail, muzzle, etc. Imagine this is mature technology, and normalized enough, that there will be no medical or societal ramifications if you get such modifications.

Do you get the #BodyMods to make you a Furry?

(Please #boost this #poll and respond in the comments: I want to hear what kind of Body Mods you would get, and may use that in my #Writing!)

Edit:
Let's see if anyone else responds in the last 6 24 48 72 hours...

#futurism #transhumanism #sociology #ScienceFiction #Fursona #FurryArt #FurryFedi #queer #Trans #biology

Well, I promised myself that I would do this so here it is!

Lyss was as a peasant farm girl, daughter of her tiny village's woodworker. When an old hermit settles nearby she learns through him how to read, write and wield a sword, and about the world beyond her village. She decides she can't stay to be wedded off and live a quiet domestic life ...

https://mattpierce.info/a-wandering-sword

#books #fantasy #writing

🇬🇧 - 🇩🇪
January - Januar 2025
Wordcount Overall - Worte/Wörter insgesamt: 15.527

Goals - Ziele
Words - Worte/Wörter:
10.000
End Chapter no.  -
Kapitel beenden Nr.: 2

01.01.2025 - 23.01.2025
Words written - Worte/Wörter geschrieben: 3192
Goals reached - Ziele erreicht;
Chapter - Kapitel:

Days Remaining - Verbleibende Tage: 8
#writing #SciFi #writingcommunity #schreiben #WIP
#Wordweavers #PennedPossibilities #PhantastikPrompts #StarRyde

🇬🇧 - 🇩🇪
January - Januar 2025
Wordcount Overall - Worte/Wörter insgesamt: 14453

Goals - Ziele
Words - Worte/Wörter:
10.000
End Chapter no.  -
Kapitel beenden Nr.: 2

01.01.2025 - 21.01.2025
Words written - Worte/Wörter geschrieben: 2108
Goals reached - Ziele erreicht;
Chapter - Kapitel:

Days Remaining - Verbleibende Tage: 10
#writing #SciFi #writingcommunity #schreiben #WIP
#Wordweavers #PennedPossibilities #PhantastikPrompts #StarRyde

"Cut off tradition
create your own compositions"

(permanent marker on booklet, 2024)

#blackoutpoetry #art #MastoArt #mastoartist #poetry #zine #writing

Explaining the term "69" and why it is "nice" in a first contact situation.

@mcc This would be the least of my issues in my first contact WIP. It starts out with the "aliens" scrambling to get clothing for my two MCs.

#Writing #SF #sciencefiction #scifi #writer #author #writingCommunity #writersOfMastodon

🇬🇧 - 🇩🇪
January - Januar 2025
Wordcount Overall - Worte/Wörter insgesamt: 13438

Goals - Ziele
Words - Worte/Wörter:
10.000
End Chapter no.  -
Kapitel beenden Nr.: 2

01.01.2025 - 18.01.2025
Words written - Worte/Wörter geschrieben: 1096
Goals reached - Ziele erreicht;
Chapter - Kapitel:

Days Remaining - Verbleibende Tage: 13
#writing #SciFi #writingcommunity #schreiben #WIP
#Wordweavers #PennedPossibilities #PhantastikPrompts #StarRyde

You got some hours to kill? May I interest you in my Romance/Fantasy story about a girl that is spirited away in to a world where the seasons are lands and her past is nothing she ever thought it be?
Hold to your butts... this is
A story of Seasons.
READ THE FULL THING NOW!
https://iliwritesstuff.substack.com/s/a-story-of-seasons
#writing #romance #stories #fantasywriter

🇬🇧 - 🇩🇪
January - Januar 2025
Wordcount Overall - Worte/Wörter insgesamt: 12342

Goals - Ziele
Words - Worte/Wörter:
10.000
End Chapter no.  -
Kapitel beenden Nr.: 2

04.01.2025
Words - Worte/Wörter: 921
Goals reached - Ziele erreicht;
Chapter - Kapitel:

#writing #SciFi #writingcommunity #schreiben #WIP
#Wordweavers #pennedpossibilities #PhantastikPrompts #StarRyde

🇬🇧/🇩🇪
December - Dezember 2024
Goals - Ziele: ❌

#writing #SciFi #writingcommunity #schreiben #WIP
#Wordweavers #pennedpossibilities #PhantastikPrompts #StarRyde

My #introduction in #English seems to have been lost in moving instances, so here's a fast-drawn new one in hashtags:

#science #physics
since 2021 working on
#fiberlinks #frequency #time #transfer #reference #quantum #metrology
before that on
#biophysics #raman #spectroscopy #microscopy #biofilm #bacteria #protein #microplastics

#programming
#python (#fortran #mathematica )

Other interests:
#plants #cats #sciencefiction #fantasy #reading #writing #audiobooks

Grateful to make this end of the year list & be among authors that I admire 🇵🇸

THESE 12 PALESTINIAN BOOKS DESERVE YOUR SHELF SPACE :

https://muslimgirl.com/these-12-palestinian-books-deserve-your-shelf-space/

#FreePalestine #books #palestine #newyear #poetry #bookstodon #writing #WritingCommunity #israel #news #politics #MiddleEast #ceasefirenow #genocide #peace

Excited to see that my forthcoming #book, a collection of my New & Selected #Aphorisms is available for pre-order in the #UK, today 😇 www.waterstones.com/book/what-re...

Kindly, help me get the word out, if you appreciate #poetry, proverbs, #meditation, wit and #wisdom, #philosophy, #spirituality 🙏🏼✨

https://www.waterstones.com/book/what-remains-to-be-said/yahia-lababidi/9781804323649 #books #bookstodon #reading #writing #WritingCommunity #inspiration

🇬🇧/🇩🇪
December - Dezember 2024
Goals - Ziele
Words - Worte/Wörter: 10.000
End Chapter no.  -
Kapitel beenden Nr.: 2

16.12.2024
Actually writen - tatsächlich geschrieben: 772 😅
Chapter goal - Kapitel Ziel:
#writing #SciFi #writingcommunity #schreiben #WIP
#Wordweavers #pennedpossibilities #PhantastikPrompts #StarRyde

#introduction

Hey there, I’m 0hlov3! 🎮👨‍💻 Just your friendly neighborhood gaming and tech nerd, trying to make life as comfy as my setup allows. I split my days between EndeavourOS and macOS, while nerding out over cool tech and sharing my random hobbies.

Yes, I’ve written intros before—because apparently, I have a knack for switching Fediverse instances like people change phone cases. 😅 This time, though, I promise: last move, cross my heart (unless I find a shinier domain... but let’s not go there).

Why am I here? Just chasing good vibes, tech chatter, and interesting conversations. Hope you’re all doing amazing! 🚀

Interests:
✨ #GoLang | 🐧 #Linux | ☸️ #Kubernetes | 🚀 #EndeavourOS
🛠️ #Docker | 📦 #Containerisation | 🎮 #LinuxGaming | ✍️ #Writing

Let’s connect and share some cool stuff! 😎

If you care about making the world a more accessible place, this is important to support if you can.

It is not an exaggeration to say there are languages and academic fields that until have not been accessible to screenreaders but can now be more so.

This system enables contextual labels for screenreaders for the first time. It is at least an option now.

#programming #software #libre #foss #writing #linguistics #language #typography #gaming #introduction #a11y #accessibility

(16/?)

For certain codes to work, it does require support via a font, but hopefully in time other type designers will adopt this system. Code can be licensed via payment-in-kind.

With YOUR support Trajecient can also create scripts to apply labels to contextual uses which screenreaders/Speech Dictionaries alone can't handle due to lack of info.

#programming #software #libre #foss #writing #linguistics #language #typography #gaming #introduction #a11y #accessibility

(15/?)

For example, screenreaders/voice synthesisers may not support multiple scripts at once.

Writers may be surprised to learn that Greek letters may not handled if settings are for English.

It is now possible for a code like ,,Omega,, to display the Greek letter AND so English screenreader users hear it as the underlying data has English (with the original glyph).

#programming #software #libre #foss #writing #linguistics #language #typography #gaming #introduction #a11y #accessibility

(14/?)

If you want to be accessible to people with screenreaders, there is now a way for things to be a lot more accessible.

Screenreader labels. Alt Text for Text to put it another way.

It doesn't appear to have been done before, but how it works is simple. In a font that supports it, there are simple codes to which glyph substitution is then applied.

#programming #software #libre #foss #writing #linguistics #language #typography #gaming #introduction #a11y #accessibility

(13/?)

There is more to say about this system later but I must go to bed for now.

Any and all support is appreciated, be it spreading the word or financial support to enable it to expand further.

This system, especially if adopted by other type designers really opens up new options for accessibility and convenience.

There are people out there this can really help out.

#programming #software #libre #foss #writing #linguistics #language #typography #gaming #introduction #a11y #accessibility

(12/?)

The post that was originally here is no longer relevant. It involved a problematic approach that has since been improved upon.

#programming #software #libre #foss #writing #linguistics #language #typography #gaming #introduction #a11y #accessibility

(11/?)

The post that was originally here is no longer relevant. It involved a problematic approach that has since been improved upon.

#programming #software #libre #foss #writing #linguistics #language #typography #gaming #introduction #a11y #accessibility

(10/?)

So what is this font? This is Corinthus and it is interesting in its own right. It was designed based on the proportions of a Corinthian pillar and influenced by Greco-Roman sculptures.

Attached is what it looks like if TV Tropes were to use it.

It has 28,100 glyphs in the full version and some special features.

I'll talk more about it later.

#programming #software #libre #foss #writing #linguistics #language #typography #gaming #introduction #a11y #accessibility

(9/?)

The non-free stuff includes different levels of a font that fully implements this system and expanded versions of the Libre scripts.

With a font that has this system, you don't need an external script for these codes to work and other features are possible.

This includes contextual screenreader labels for the first time in history.

#programming #software #libre #foss #writing #linguistics #language #typography #gaming #introduction #a11y #accessibility

(8/?)

Trajecient has launched a Patreon. There are free and open source files available to anyone who becomes a free member with more to come.

I haven't uploaded everything yet, but I have for the first free stuff.

Oh and if YOU do social media promotion and give me the deets, you can get free copies of the non-free stuff.

The Patreon is at https://www.patreon.com/c/Trajecient

#programming #software #libre #foss #writing #linguistics #language #typography #gaming #introduction #a11y #accessibility

(7/?)

Sighted people will see that some of the gaps between letters disappears between the two version. Some letters have switched to alternate forms.

The Libre version is intentionally compact to be a starting point for others to make their own.

The other version launches with over 4800 codes.

I should talk a bit about where to get this stuff …

#programming #software #libre #foss #writing #linguistics #language #typography #gaming #introduction #a11y #accessibility

(6/?)

Now let's start to get to some of the more exciting stuff. Attached are images of the first PowerPoint in 37 years to support OpenType features.

Normally glyphs used for OpenType features aren't given codepoints.

If a font DOES do this, then this system means a shortcut code can be set up so OpenType features can be enabled in programs that don't support them…

#programming #software #libre #foss #writing #linguistics #language #typography #gaming #introduction #a11y #accessibility

(5/?)

This shortcut system is especially handy for people who rely on keyboard navigation or screenreaders.

Glyph Browsers and IMEs or Input Method Editors are usually designed for mouse-users only.

But it isn't just accessibility for them. Type designers can adapt this Libre script to add codes to quickly access any character they add into the Private Use Area.

#programming #software #libre #foss #writing #linguistics #language #typography #gaming #introduction #a11y #accessibility

(4/?)

The shortcut system part can also be accessed by an external script (it won't do Alt Text for Text labels though)

A Libre version is available and means characters can be accessed by simple codes no matter the font … that ellipsis was three dots with two commas on either side.

A proper times sign × from ,,times,,

This is very useful, but just the start.

#programming #software #libre #foss #writing #linguistics #language #typography #gaming #introduction #a11y #accessibility

(3/?)

Trajecient has developed what appears to be the world's first Alt Text for Text system. This involves a deep shortcut system useful for everyone that doubles as labels for screenreaders.

It appears to not have been done before now as it isn't something that can be done by programming alone. It needs type design, as textual data is rendered and processed by fonts.

#programming #software #libre #foss #writing #linguistics #language #typography #gaming #introduction #a11y #accessibility

(2/?)

Important Announcement: If you care about accessibility or convenience when writing, you need to know about what is this thread.

Trajecient has just made and is making some releases certain people REALLY need to know about, particularly writers, linguists, academics, web developers and game designers.

Some of this is free stuff, but very useful.

This will double as a reintroduction.

#programming #software #libre #foss #writing #linguistics #language #typography #gaming #introduction

(1/?)

🇬🇧/🇩🇪
December - Dezember 2024
Goals - Ziele
Words - Worte/Wörter: 10.000
End Chapter no. -
Kapitel beenden Nr.: 2

Actually writen - tatsächlich geschrieben:
Chapter goal - Kapitel Ziel:
#writing #SciFi #writingcommunity #schreiben #WIP
#Wordweavers #pennedpossibilities #PhantastikPrompts #StarRyde

🇬🇧/🇩🇪
01.November 2024 - 15.11.2024
Words - Worte/Wörter: 0

16.11.2024 - 30.11.2024
Final Count - Finale Anzahl
Words - Worte/Wörter: 10657

Goal - Ziel:
Chapter 1 - 1. Kapitel✅
Pages - Seiten: 20

Chapter 2 - 2. Kapitel
Pages - Seiten 8
Overall Pages - Seiten Insgesamt 28
#writing #SciFi #writingcommunity #schreiben #WIP
#Wordweavers #pennedpossibilities #PhantastikPrompts #StarRyde