Gods and Monsters Installment 34: The Fault Line Within
Reading Time: 7 minutesNow, after the advent of dreams and the appearance of color, when Gabriel reads of a killing, something inside him screams. When he looks upon a charcoal figure that so recently possessed unearthly beauty, he mourns. He wants to create, not destroy. He doesn’t like the role in which he has been cast.
Honeypot
Reading Time: 5 minutesA derelict spaceship turns out to be a trap for a space pirate and his very unusual copilot.
Gods and Monsters Installment 33: Pamela
Reading Time: 8 minutesVampires followed the deluge of fluid and fear, tracking the lonely, homeless, and lost to the city, drawn by the need for belief, as well as blood.
A Perfect Day
Reading Time: 4 minutesA day at the beach turns into something unexpected for a young couple.
Gods and Monsters Installment 32: Time Before Time
Reading Time: 7 minutesThanatos never kills. He’s just the messenger.
The Fingers of Regina Durette
Reading Time: 9 minutesWho says your body has to take orders from you?
The Snow Hath No Queen
Reading Time: 5 minutesIn a future where the continents are gone, the oceans are dead, and humanity survives atop the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a man goes on a dreamquest to rediscover cold and snow.
Gods and Monsters Installment 31: Small Time Gods
Reading Time: 7 minutesEver since he found Gabriel in the field, River has been cut off and alone. Separated from humanity by a knowledge that he didn’t even realize he possessed, a perception deep within his bones. An understanding that though fairy tales may come true, they are written in blood and lies.
Gods and Monsters Installment 30: The Morgue
Reading Time: 8 minutesThe door is heavy, about four inches thick. A long narrow staircase leads down into darkness. He is in total darkness. Feeling his way slowly along the wall, carefully tapping his feet to see where the stairs begin, he finds a light switch. Harsh fluorescence floods the stairwell. This light would make anyone look dead, River thinks.
Spell to Find Amelia Earhart
Reading Time: 4 minutesMagic circles, incantations—could this be enough to bring back Amelia Earhart?
Body Donor
Reading Time: 4 minutesDavid volunteers for NASA’s Body Donor program, where human corpses are exchanged for advanced knowledge of an alien species.
Gods and Monsters Installment 29: Beautiful and Strange
Reading Time: 7 minutesPamela stands in the doorway. River stops stirring and opens his arms. Pamela doesn’t even need to cross the room. She melts into him, soft as butter into flour. She is cold, damp as night fog.
Taking Care of Our Own
Reading Time: 3 minutesThere’s an aswang on the loose and it’s up to us to deal with it. Don’t forget to bring trash bags…
Forest in Apartment Number Ten
Reading Time: 4 minutesWhen Gretel grew up, she left the Sugar-Candy House and the forest behind her, but some stories won’t allow you to walk away.
Gods and Monsters Installment 28: Journey’s End
Reading Time: 8 minutesThat night, Jackson does not come to Bert’s.
The Shell
Reading Time: 25 minutesA little boy discovers a mysterious seashell that contains more than just “ocean sounds” – a lot more…
Gods and Monsters Installment 37: Love & Death
Reading Time: 10 minutesWhen Margareta is not working, and if Pamela has been very, very good, Sarah lets her model the lacey cap. When Pam puts on the cap, she becomes an enchanted princess. The dirty pigeons that clutter the ledges of the city are snow white doves that come at her call and do her bidding. She leans out her window, arms spread wide, embracing her kingdom… until Sarah catches her and pulls her inside.
If We Can Just Get to the Cabin Before…
Reading Time: 4 minutesMarsha and Frank are driving along a country road on a rainy night, with Frank regaling Marsha about his knowledge of Japanese Samurai films,
when they encounter a ghostly specter in the middle of the road.
More Strange Than True
Reading Time: 19 minutes After an epically shitty day, Jewell Jamieson unknowingly eats a magic-spiked meal and makes a certain wish – and that’s why she awakes the next morning to discover a beautiful naked man in her bed.
The Psychics
Reading Time: 5 minutesPsychic magicians must fight off a enemy who is trying to break the spells protecting their academy. Family and romantic relationships complicate things.
Gods and Monsters Installment 36: Stained Glass Soul
Reading Time: 9 minutesMike grabs Ashley from her quilted comfort. Her head droops back like a wilted flower. Her neck shows white in the night. Mike’s canines grow long with desire and need.
Grim Harvest
Reading Time: 9 minutesWhen their mother dies, a pair of precocious twins are placed in the care of their father, a conservative and stern man with whom their Wiccan practices immediately clash.
Hope of Green
Reading Time: 3 minutesIn the face of a devastated climate, humanity’s last hope is to relocate to another planet, but not everyone sees it that way.
Resident Tracker
Reading Time: 3 minutesA sentient satellite finds a new home.
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Best space operas with kick-ass women
Reading Time: 10 minutesNine favorite space opera series with kick-ass female leads.
Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for Oct. 4, 2024
Reading Time: 10 minutesWe read the first few chapters of each of the top five free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list includes dark magic, ancient evils, and serial killers — just in time for the spooky season.
Deep Black Has Everything You Need: Action, Aliens, and Conspiracies
Reading Time: 2 minutesDeep Black goes deeper into human-alien relationships and what it means to explore the vastness of space. It also questions whether AI should be trusted or not.
Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for September 27, 2024
Reading Time: 9 minutesWe read the first few chapters of each of the top five free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list includes a romantasy by a USA Today bestselling author, a space opera box set, time travel, and a gaslamp mystery.
Artifact Space by Miles Cameron Takes You for an Interstellar Ride
Reading Time: 3 minutesMiles Cameron’s space opera Artifact Space opens with a very action-forward sequence that sees Marca Nbaro, the protagonist, running away from space cops to board a huge cargo ship called the Athens because her dream has always been to work and serve at that ship.
Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for Sep. 20, 2024
Reading Time: 9 minutesWe read the first few chapters of each of the top five free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list includes a demon who cost a witch her job, time-traveling tourists, and so, so much fantasy romance!
Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for Sep. 13, 2024
Reading Time: 9 minutesWe read the first few chapters of each of the top five free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list includes two box sets — military sci-fi and romantasy — and urban fantasy by a USA Today bestselling author!
Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for Sep. 6, 2024
Reading Time: 11 minutesWe read the first few chapters of each of the top five free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list is all about magic women falling in love both in the modern day and in fairy tale settings.
Writing Advice of the Week
Writing the Other: Fictions and Culture
Reading Time: 6 minutesFiction is unique to human communication, which is fascinating on its own. But why do we still look to fictions? What do they do for us in the modern age? Why does fiction matter? And what considerations must go into crafting culturally honest fictions?
7 Story Structures to Know (and Disregard)
Reading Time: 5 minutesStory structure is the framework around your literary jigsaw puzzle, the order into which you organize the events in your story to create a beginning, a middle, and an end. So let’s talk about some common story structures you may encounter while researching storytelling techniques.
Three Craft Reads For Revising Your Story
Reading Time: 4 minutesMastering story edits isn’t easy, but there are a few books I’ve recommended to my clients repeatedly to assist them during edits, and these are also books I use myself when editing my work. The good news: Once you’ve absorbed the material covered in these books, you’ll be able to apply the lessons over and over without really thinking about them. They’ll become second-nature to your writerly process.
Story Is Goal, Motivation, and Conflict
Reading Time: 6 minutesWhether you are looking for a new story idea, developing an existing story, or beta reading a story for another author, identifying the protagonist’s goal, motivations, and conflicts is important to understand the story’s message to readers.
ESSAYS
3 AI tools I use regularly that aren’t ChatGPT or Midjourney
Reading Time: 4 minutesI 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 minutesThe 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 minutesAccording 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.
Distant star TOI-700 has two potentially habitable planets orbiting it – making it an excellent candidate in the search for life
Reading Time: 5 minutesNASA recently announced the discovery of a new, Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone of a nearby star called TOI-700.
NEWS
Google falling farther behind in AI race
Reading Time: 5 minutesEdge, 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 minutesAdobe 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 minutesAccording 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 minutesIt 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 minutesThe fifth generation of the super popular Midjourney app is out, and it’s more photorealistic and better at hands and faces.
AI work can be copyrighted, if human creativity was involved
Reading Time: 3 minutesThe US Copyright Office issued a ruling today that AI-generated content can, in fact, be copyrighted — as long as a human being has contributed work to the end product.
Authors Guild proposes new AI training use clause
Reading Time: 2 minutesAuthors Guild proposes contract clause to block AI training use without permission.
Flash Fiction Submissions Open March 1
Reading Time: 2 minutesThe spring 2023 submission cycle for original speculative fiction begins on March 1 and closes at midnight on March 31.
ON WRITING
Book editing with AI: Code Interpreter vs. Claude — there’s no contest
Reading Time: 8 minutesAnthropic’s Claude beats ChatGPT hands-down when it comes to analyzing full-length books.
Best free Canva fonts for sci-fi, fantasy, and horror
Reading Time: 6 minutesMore than 70 great free fonts for Canva ebook covers for sci-fi, fantasy, and horror genres.
Midjourney’s new zoom out feature great for book covers
Reading Time: 7 minutesMidjourney adds zoom out feature, which is great for creating art for book covers.
Adobe will indemnify customers against lawsuits
Reading Time: 2 minutesAdobe promises to cover any legal costs that companies might incur as a result of using their AI-powered image generation tools.
Claude AI can read and analyze an entire book at once — here’s how to use it
Reading Time: 19 minutesClaude can read a 75,000-word book and identify structural and style problems. It can also create outlines and character sheets.
Authors can now use WordPress to create newsletters — and get paid for them
Reading Time: 3 minutesWordPress.com now lets authors get paid for their newsletters.
Adobe adds Firefly’s AI image generation to Photoshop
Reading Time: 7 minutesAdobe has added Firefly’s AI image generation to Photoshop so that you, or your cover designer, can create book covers using commercially-safe AI image generation.
How to use the new Midjourney ‘describe’ function to create great book covers
Reading Time: 6 minutesA week ago, Midjourney, which is the best AI generator on the market today, added the “describe” function, which lets you upload any image and get some suggestions for prompts that could have created it. It’s a great shortcut for creating images for book covers — or anything else you need graphics for.