Gods and Monsters Installment 9: Jo-Jo’s
Reading Time: 9 minutes From his booth inside the club, Gabriel sees her spinning on the dance floor, beautiful as a fallen star, deadly as the arsenic hidden inside the seed of a perfect apple.
The Faster They Eat Her
Reading Time: 26 minutes Young Daisy must evade the clutches of forest-dwelling witch Madame Sosostris and Malcolm, the town brute, as she tries to solve the mystery of her friend Violet’s disappearance.
The Imaginary Librarian
Reading Time: 2 minutes In a sparse, orderly imaginary office, a librarian awaits unseen directives, tending to imaginary tomes with quiet diligence. As dawn approaches, she fulfills a final task, providing closure for a life departing.
Nexav Workplace Harassment Training Module (Required)
Reading Time: 4 minutes Discriminatory actions aren’t the only thing to look out for when considering workplace harassment. Promoting harmful material or ideas amongst coworkers can also be considered harassment, even in cases where they are promoted outside of work.
Gods and Monsters Installment 8: Sweet Dreams are Made of These
Reading Time: 6 minutes He has found a gift. The kitchen, which at home smelled of disappointment and lost hope, is now a place of amelioration. But when the full moon rises, he hears the night call his name. It sounds like fear. It smells like nightmare. It tastes like death. He departs with the sun.
A Darker World
Reading Time: 6 minutes Technology allows us to revisit the most cherished moments of our lives. But is that a good thing?
The Fool’s Fiddle
Reading Time: 18 minutes Dragons can’t lie, right? That’s what the legends say. So, when Guy finds himself at the wrong end of a failed heist, he puts that knowledge to the test. Compatriots dead. Hope gone. And his last chance at life is convincing a dragon to let him go.
Souls
Reading Time: 4 minutes We went to the funeral. It was a little awkward, since we hadn’t been around for a while. His parents were grateful to see us, though. In their grief, they seemed to take our presence as some sort of affirmation of their son’s life. We didn’t do anything to disillusion them.
Willow Prentiss
Reading Time: 5 minutes Guilt, melancholy, and the lost soul of a love form the basis of this twist on the paranormal/magical romance.
Gods and Monsters Installment 7: Heaven Can Wait
Reading Time: 8 minutes Chip, Tom, and Brian are never found, or at least not most of them. There are only remnants: a stray finger, a discarded shoe with a foot still inside… Only one entire body is discovered amidst the carnage. It is that of an unknown man, naked and unmarked, save for a hole through his heart.
The Wreck of the Lorelei
Reading Time: 21 minutes Trapped in an experiment in faster-than-light space travel, the captain of the ship searches for what went wrong.
Best Friends Forever
Reading Time: 4 minutes Branch by flexing branch, Mike climbed higher. Powdery bark stained his fingers green. At the top, he laughed and drank in the view, from his family’s tiered concrete blockhouse to the river’s patrol boats. “Come on up here, Sim—” Mike almost fell when a freckled face appeared beside him. “This is dangerous,” Simon said. “We should go home.”
Gods and Monsters Installment 6: Wild Animals in the Halls of Learning
Reading Time: 7 minutes River is strong, nimble and has the element of surprise. Brian and Tom lie back on damp earth, as if sleeping. River kicks Chip’s face. All of his rage and disappointment, all his sorrow and fear explode in righteous anger.
Perspective
Reading Time: 2 minutes While what we were about to do was arguably harmless, it was definitely illegal. I kept wondering whether we were right to do this at all.
Freedreamers
Reading Time: 18 minutes In the future, our dreams are mass entertainment … or a weapon of mass destruction.
Terra Forma
Reading Time: 11 minutes Mirabyi has been tapped to join the moon colony to explore the possibility of converting the dusty surface to life sustaining soil. Her experiments have unexpected results and maybe not the good kind.
Demonology
Reading Time: 3 minutes With his life spiraling out of control, and a desire for revenge taking over his mind, a man takes drastic actions.
A Witch By Any Other Name
Reading Time: 4 minutes They whisper it like rumors between old wives: in confidence, in shock, in need. They complain over it, bawdy and slurred, between men and their beers—the secret that everyone knows. All of it doing my work for me, letting everyone from cottage to castle-side know I’m here, and what I can do.
I Will Paint the Night
Reading Time: 26 minutes Can Allii come to grips with the pain her family has inflicted on a nation and heal a land wounded by centuries of injustice, hate, and fear. (And find the killer of her beloved stepmother).
Gods and Monsters Installment 10: Bucket Orchid
Reading Time: 6 minutes “It sounds,” River says, “like the orchid is smarter than the bee.” He considers. “I’d still rather be a bee though; I’d like to be able to fly.”
Death and the Doctor
Reading Time: 5 minutes I cut into the girl on the table before me, exposing her living viscera to air as biology never intended. I am committing a trespass of integument in order to heal, a perversion of the natural order in order to preserve what is natural. An apparition stands in the corner, watching with interest. Death says: “Your work continues to fascinate, Doctor.”
Gods and Monsters Installment 9: Jo-Jo’s
Reading Time: 9 minutes From his booth inside the club, Gabriel sees her spinning on the dance floor, beautiful as a fallen star, deadly as the arsenic hidden inside the seed of a perfect apple.
The Faster They Eat Her
Reading Time: 26 minutes Young Daisy must evade the clutches of forest-dwelling witch Madame Sosostris and Malcolm, the town brute, as she tries to solve the mystery of her friend Violet’s disappearance.
The Imaginary Librarian
Reading Time: 2 minutes In a sparse, orderly imaginary office, a librarian awaits unseen directives, tending to imaginary tomes with quiet diligence. As dawn approaches, she fulfills a final task, providing closure for a life departing.
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REVIEWS
Wishes are Like Curses in The Quelling by C. L. Lauder
Reading Time: 3 minutes A great read involving factionalized parasitic aliens, a morally grey protagonist, and a harrowing rescue mission.
Shadow Speaker by Nnedi Okorafor
Reading Time: 3 minutes powers, with strong themes of coming-of-age and striving against a world whose structure seems predisposed to injustice and violence.
13 scariest stories from the first three years of MetaStellar
Reading Time: 8 minutes 13 scary short stories to put you in the Halloween spirit. Get it? Spirit?
‘Dragonfall’ is an inclusive fantasy where the dragons have feathers
Reading Time: 3 minutes Come for the dragons, stay for the queerness.
Uranians by Theodore McCombs
Reading Time: 2 minutes Uranians — an anthology including four short stories and one novella — is the perfect marriage of sci-fi and queerness.
Juniper and Thorn by Ava Reid
Reading Time: 2 minutes Troubled young lovers, an awesome-but-miserable wizard father, a setting based on a Ukrainian city amid industrialization, and a door-mat protagonist who gradually finds her strength…
The Bridge to Magic by Alex Thornbury
Reading Time: 3 minutes The Bridge to Magic is a dark YA fantasy with a feisty female lead.
Where the Lighting Goes by Jackery Salem
Reading Time: 3 minutes Salem builds something truly unique out of many familiar fantasy tropes — dwarves, dragons, amnesia, all kinds of magic — and ties it up with compelling characters and a deeply satisfying conclusion.
Writing Advice of the Week
Writing Advice of the Week: Finish the Story You Start
Reading Time: 12 minutes If the story is important enough to start writing, it’s likely to be important enough to finish writing… and more than 100 brand-new writing advice links from around the web.
Writing Advice of the Week: Write While Nobody is Watching
Reading Time: 12 minutes Committing yourself to your writing, no matter what form that commitment takes, is a big part of successful writing. Plus: Over 100 all-new links to writing advice articles, videos, and podcasts!
Writing Advice of the Week: Done? Start the Next One
Reading Time: 9 minutes Working hard is part of any success journey and continuing to push forward is key. Plus: 100 brand-new links to the best writing advice from around the Web.
Writing Advice of the Week: Your Book is a Conversation
Reading Time: 7 minutes Writing a book allows you to have a conversation with a reader you’ll never meet. So, what do you want to say? Plus: 75 all-new links to writing advice from around the Web.
ESSAYS
Life: modern physics can’t explain it – but our new theory, which says time is fundamental, might
Reading Time: 5 minutes Over the short span of just 300 years, since the invention of modern physics, we have gained a deeper understanding of how our universe works on both small and large scales. Yet, physics is still very young and when it comes to using it to explain life, physicists struggle.
3 AI tools I use regularly that aren’t ChatGPT or Midjourney
Reading Time: 4 minutes I use Otter AI, Canva, and Notion nearly every day, and here is why other writers should, too.
The multiverse: how we’re tackling the challenges facing the theory
Reading Time: 5 minutes The idea of a multiverse consisting of “parallel universes” is a popular science fiction trope, recently explored in the Oscar-winning movie Everything Everywhere All At Once. However, it is within the realm of scientific possibility.
AIs ‘learn’ by creating mini-AIs and it’s super weird but also very cool
Reading Time: 3 minutes According to a paper released last fall by researchers from Google, Stanford, and MIT, large language models learn new information and concepts by creating new, miniature machine learning systems on the fly.
NEWS
Leonardo AI best new alternative to Midjourney — and free
Reading Time: 8 minutes Leonardo AI offers 150 free images a day. They’re not quite as good-looking at Midjourney, but within throwing distance.
Adobe’s Firefly will be a Midjourney killer for book cover art
Reading Time: 4 minutes Adobe Firefly’s images are almost as good as Midjourney, the interface is infinitely better, and artists will get paid for their training data. The beta is open now, and it’s looking extremely promising.
WGA backtracks on anti-AI stance, as long as writers get credit
Reading Time: 2 minutes The Writers Guild of America, which represents screenwriters, is backing off on its anti-AI stance, Variety reported today.
Google falling farther behind in AI race
Reading Time: 5 minutes Edge, Opera and Brave all now have AI built in. Google’s Chrome is not even in the race yet.
Adobe, Nvidia announce ethical AI image generation
Reading Time: 4 minutes Adobe and Nvidia both announced AI image generators today — Firefly and Picasso, respectively — that do not use artists’ work for training data without their permission. Both companies also promise to pay artists for work generated in their signature styles, as does Getty Images.
Study: Writing occupation will be most affected by AI
Reading Time: 3 minutes According to research released today, the more high-level and creative your job, the more likely it will be to be disrupted by AI. Top of the list? Writers and authors — with up to 100 percent of their jobs likely to be affected.
GPT 4, Claude, and Alpaca all went live this week and yes, we need to worry
Reading Time: 8 minutes It was a big week for AI news these past few days. GPT 4 was released on Tuesday, Midjourney 5 was released on Wednesday, and Alpaca — a $600 clone of ChatGPT — was released on Monday. Yes, you can now have your own large language model for less than the cost of new phone […]
Midjourney 5 released with more aspect ratios, photorealism
Reading Time: 4 minutes The fifth generation of the super popular Midjourney app is out, and it’s more photorealistic and better at hands and faces.
ON WRITING
Dall-E 3 looks great, but lacks respect for artist rights
Reading Time: 3 minutes OpenAI announced its newest AI image generation tool yesterday, Dall-E 3. The images look fantastic, and it can do things that no other AI image generator can do. But it lacks a little bit in terms of respect for creator rights.
Claude Pro is here — and writers should sign up
Reading Time: 2 minutes This morning, Anthropic announced the paid version of Claude, the best alternative to ChatGPT currently on the market. Writers need to sign up.
Adobe Express offers free AI art and is out of beta
Reading Time: 3 minutes Adobe Express is now publicly available, with free AI image generation. Plus, since it’s Adobe, the AI is trained only on fully-licensed art, and artists and compensated.
Scalzi, other spec fic authors head for the X-it
Reading Time: 3 minutes Authors are leaving Twitter — rebranded today as just “X” — for other platforms. Many are landing on Threads.
Sci-fi author uses AI to promote new book about AI
Reading Time: 2 minutes Best-selling Brazilian author PJ Caldas used AI technology to release a book trailer for his first novel in English.
How to create a good author profile photo
Reading Time: 6 minutes Some free and easy ways to create good-looking author headshots and profile pics.
Can Claude AI fix your grammar mistakes? No, it can’t, but there’s an AI that will.
Reading Time: 11 minutes Claude AI, the hot new chatbot for book authors, works well as a grammar tutor, but is bad at fixing mistakes in your text. However, I did find one AI-powered tool that caught every error I threw at it.
10 ways Claude AI can help you self-edit your book — for free
Reading Time: 16 minutes Claude AI is the single best editor I’ve tried so far. And it can do a whole book at a time. For free.