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beige.party is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
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125 posts57 participants7 posts today
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RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist

#PennedPossibilities 646 — How would you describe your MC’s job or occupation? (You can be comedic about it, if you like.)

These stories hop around over more than a decade, thus the lists. Some stints are very temporary.

  • Thorn: High school then university student. Occupational prefecture governor. Astronaut.
  • Streak: High school then university student. Lover. Researcher. Test pilot. Advisor. Astronaut.
  • Devil-girl: Homeless ascetic, grocery clerk, prizefighter, transporter, bodyguard, dõna, troubleshooter.
  • May Ri: Student, mother, engineer, princess (she considers that one a joke but others don't), general.
  • Wintereyes (feral but kind human): Friend of animals (including wyverns), wolf pack member and provider, involuntary student, idiosyncratic mage.

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

#BoostingIsSharing

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

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RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist

#WordWeavers 2504.17 — Is your antagonist high maintenance? CW: Ugly potentially terrifying character description.

Today, not the usual suspect but a total cad.

Ezekiel Stan, one of the original scientist-colonists on Mars—one of the EM Mars Corp's colonial onsite directors until he butts heads with May Ri (the MC)—is a Decath religious macho jackass in plenty of unsavory ways. Depending on how you interact with him, he's super high maintenance, especially if you are a woman. It's hard to satisfy him; his wife knows about and must tolerate all his hypocritical indiscretions as we learn near the end of the book. For men, it might be worse. He has an eye for mistakes or venalities, and never forgets if he can use weaknesses to coerce and corrupt. He's not above violence, even against his own son who turns out "too feminine." If you must interact with him, especially if you live within his sphere of influence, you will do whatever it takes to placate him.

Except for May Ri. That makes Ezekiel and her mutual antagonists. She, however, is not the stupid woman he expects her to be—she's an engineer.

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

#BoostingIsSharing

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

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RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist

#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2504.17 — Do your real-world tastes show up in your writing?

[Well, you asked. If that's not enough of a content warning, read on.—RS]

I like people.

I may be cripplingly shy, strictly monogamous, and a bit autistic, but I like people. I observe them. From afar. I populate my stories with people that would interest me, who might attract me, whom I would interact with physically could I convince myself because I understand how safe they are or are not. They are the totally average, the generally honest, the sometimes ethically challenged, the occasionally passionate, and the intermittently ambiguous. These are my tastes. Why would I write about other's tastes? However, I work when writing to never fully describe the people who populate my stories so that the reader might satisfy their tastes, too. Notwithstanding red hair and freckles, of course—they look super cute on men as well as women. (Wait… Did RS really say that? Or is RS being funny?)

As for food: What I describe, sometimes in great detail, is my taste. Whether my stomach would rebel eating such a meal is another story altogether. Kippers and onions are salty oily heaven, btw.

I love impressionism. Art sometimes populates my stories, and it is always impressionist. When the character is a photographer, they are an extension of my soul.

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

#BoostingIsSharing

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#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
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AudraBalionArt

“Crown of Horns” is now available! @amazingstoriessk are hosting our Book Launch next month. Also at @artbarsk this Saturday, as part of the AHA Showcase.

So proud of @empyclaw for this awesome book, and it was great to work on it together. 🥰

PS: For each book sold, we are donating to @aidforartists_ua to help support artists in Ukraine, fighting for their lives and their culture.

Crown of Horns book cover. Features a painting of a regal and intimidating woman with spiraling horns. Red paint splashes across her eyes.
Box of books!
Stack of books!
Poster for book launch, may 14 at amazing stories in Saskatoon.
#crownofhornsbook#standwithukraine#politicalfantasy
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RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist

#ScribesAndMakers 2504.17 — Marketing can be difficult. As a reader/viewer, what catches your interest and makes you want to buy? CW: The opinions are solely those of the author and don't reflect those of any marketeer or designer.

I am a golden retriever. Movement and color catch my eye. Squirrel!

I am also like a crow. What is the shiny thing??? Must. Have. It.

I am a baby. I've not seen that thing. Stare…

Recently, it's been authors writing about their work or their books that have made me buy. I like seeing the self-promotions, if they don't come at me like spam (or look like it). Thusly has mastodon marketed your books! I can't say whether I'm typical or whether I'm unique, but there you go.

If I'm browsing without aim in the bookstore, cover art and title play equally big roles. Your presentation doesn't have to be like all the others. I like the imaginative, the primitive, the abstract, and the non sequitur as much as I like the interesting hunk or princess on the cover doing the outrageous thing they're not supposed to be doing. A bit of abstract art on a shelf or the beautiful people will catch my eye. A puzzler title, or one of innuendo or doble-sentido, or stating the obvious forcefully will get me to think, though. Combined with the art, they will make me pick it up.

Not helpful, I know. No secret sauce recipes here. However…

AI art will cause me to place the book pages-forward, or hide it from view behind other books. Won't buy it! No I won't. If the publisher cheaps out, I'm assuming the author did, too.

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

#BoostingIsSharing and #CommentingIsCool

#gender #fiction #writer #author #photographer #chef #cooking
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#RSdiscussion

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RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist

@orionkidder
We hear the term body image, how it affects the self-worth and health of women and men. Is that affecting cover art and authors now?

When I look at covers, I see lots of fantasy-perfect people who are sexy or dangerous as the genre demands, or Michael Whelan grand landscapes of lands or space vistas that fire the imagination with incredible intricacies. Plenty of great artists do both, mind you. I've commissioned art.

What other authors (or marketers) see, sadly is a resource out of reach financially, out of budget, or a waste of their money when it's "free" and you don't have to interact with ugh people.

I miss the great covers of old, sometimes abstract, sometimes simple photography, sometimes pastiche, often art differently talented people can do without becoming a Rembrandt, which arguably might be more affordable for demand or creation effort. Or authors (assuming indie here) could simply learn to use stock art and try composting images and titles themselves. Creating covers from found materials can be powerful and can hint at and support narratives.

AI art is lazy. I agree it's a criterion for not buying a book.

I don't consider myself an artist, but the cover below is in lieu of a handsome bare-chested stereotypical bearded male with outstretched white angel wings on which the forward margin of his primary feathers are ruby-edged and look sharp. Didn't know angels can have razor wings, did you? Considering the feminist subject matter of the story, I'm not sure I'd want the artist's impression of ethnicity or masculinity. My first cover was for a story that took place in Japan and I got a Vogue model; marketing

Sometimes simple can be evocative.

#BoostingIsSharing

This is cover art for an as of yet I'm published novel. It has a white feather with a red edge with blood dripping from the quill as if it were ink. It reads, "Reluctant Moon," with a full moon in one of the Os. A subtitle reads, "A Reluctance Novel by R.S."
#Author#Writer#AI
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J. Scott Coatsworth, Author

I love sharing some of my author friends with y'all. Check out Shawna Reppert

Fantasy, Paranormal

Shawna Reppert, an award-winning author of fantasy and steampunk, is proud of keeping readers up all night and making them miss work deadlines. Her fiction asks questions for which there are no easy answers, while at the same time taking the reader on a fine adventure that grips them heart and soul and keeps them ...


limfic.com/mbm-book-author/sha

#AuthorSpotlight #Bookstodon @bookstodon #author

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MikeDunnAuthor

Today in Labor History April 17, 2014: Journalist and author Gabriel Garcia Marquez died on this day. Affectionately known as Gabo, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982. Two of his most famous books were, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985). Garcia Marquez was a socialist and an anti-imperialist, and critical of U.S. policy in Latin America.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #GabrielGarciaMarquez #columbia #author #writer #fiction #nobelprize #books #Literature @bookstadon

Garcia Marquez in 2002, with graying hair and moustache, and wire rimmed glasses. By Jose Lara - Flickr: Gabriel Garcia Marquez (on malvenko.net: [1]), CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19150435
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Owen Tyme

Chapter 17 of Jigsaw City is available to read on #RoyalRoad: royalroad.com/fiction/108234/j

Separate plot threads converge when the Architect of Kurg uses the city's mental pathways to reach out to Nicole, asking for her help.

He voices his desire to be freed from the confines of the closed and sealed section of the city he's been trapped in for millions of years.

Royal RoadJigsaw City | Royal RoadNicole Jacobs is twenty years old and unsure what direction to take in life, because the opportunities available to her are too numerous and no one job fits all of her talents, but she passes the time doing research on dragons. To that end, she hatches a dragon egg, but in the midst of the harrowing work required, she dreams of the ancient, magical (...)
#author#indieauthor#writing
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RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist

#PennedPossibilities 645 — What was the most unexpected challenge you encountered while writing your WIP?

I'm of two minds how to answer, so I'll answer twice.

The mainline WIPs both deal with the topic of sex, peripherally—in any case not graphically, but also without shame. How the content of my stories reflects on the stories' author has caused me to choke (as in stop writing) repeatedly. Visit my pinned intro post; the second comment is the mantra I used (use) to get me writing again.

Writing Mars Need Women was unexpectedly challenging production-wise. As a writer who can pump out 2-4K in a writing session, 750 words composed to a prompt to fit a story line, shoehorned into a toot, revised, and published each day for 31 days proved exhausting as it was exhilarating. I'd thought I'd work on the other WIP at the same time. Pfft! Some days I had to give up, then get two stories out the next day to stay on schedule. Well, I did it once… so I can do it again?

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

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Rich Rubin

As an #author I will always write the stories did like to read, and hopefully others will enjoy as well. I also #selfpublish which gives me more control over what I push out into the universe.

In fact, last night I went back to read a section of one of my previous books. I’m feeling a little stumped with the chapter I’m #writing . So I went back for a little inspiration. Turns out I spent the rest of the evening reading the rest of that book #writingcommunity

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