#WordWeavers 30/3: What do your characters get nostalgic about? What triggers that?
For Jerya it’s mostly taste and smell. There are various references to honey/ beeswax, and in Vows and Watersheds a moment triggered by goats’ milk: fitting as she’s about to head back to Delven for the first time in ten years.
#books #writing #writersofmastodon
#books
See tagged statuses in the local Rambling Readers community
A game of secrets and lies. ‘Bloody Orkney’ is a fast-paced thriller set in Scotland, mainly in Orkney, during World War Two. It uses many real settings.
Although its main focus is Orkney, the central characters also seek to resolve a crisis at Gruinard Bay in Wester Ross, the real-world site of secret biological warfare experiments during the war. This modern view shows Gruinard House and Bay.
Find out more on my website:
http://www.kenlussey.com/blork/index.html
#WritersCoffeeClub 30/3: Do you label your works as LGBTQIA+? Why or why not?
I don’t. My books aren’t aimed at any one group, whether LGBTQIA+ or not. I don’t want someone to think ‘Three Kinds of North’ isn’t for them just because it centres an F-F relationship. I prefer to embrace the possibility that that person might get to that point and be sufficiently engaged with the characters to keep on reading anyway.
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Finished reading The Sunbearer Trials and I really liked it! I haven't read YA in ages, but this was a good one. I liked teens behaving like actual teens, I liked that the MC was not a brooding loner but a likable guy with friends, and I absolutely adored all the detail and fun references that went into the world building. It is a colorful, exciting, likable book.
... that ends on a cliffhanger so now I gotta read the next one 😄
I finished book 20 was A.A. Milne’s (as in the guy who wrote Winnie the Pooh) “The Red House Mystery”. This is the only murder mystery the author wrote. My only complaint is that while someone said the word “bother”, no one said “Oh, bother.”
It was a very good book and the full report can be found here: https://substack.com/profile/22175895-jim-bodie/note/c-104491711
Researchers Unveil Lost Stories of Iceland’s Medieval History
https://scitechdaily.com/researchers-unveil-lost-stories-of-icelands-medieval-history/
#WritersCoffeeClub 29/3: How do you handle foreshadowing? How do you navigate building up to the ‘big reveal’?
Being the kind of writer I am, it often isn’t consciously planned. But planned or serendipitous, it’s important not to overdo it. It’s the obverse of Chekhov’s Gun: yes, there’s a gun on the wall, but don’t have a character in the first scene going, 'Gosh, I say, chaps, is that a GUN on the wall?'
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When the hunter becomes the prey. ‘The High Road’ is a fast-paced contemporary thriller set mainly in central Scotland and the far north-west.
Portpatrick in the Rhins of Galloway is a very long way from where the novel reaches its climax but Callum Anderson visits in the hope of finding his missing cousin; and unwittingly brings death in his wake.
Find out more on our website:
https://www.arachnid.scot/book-thr/index.html
#WordWeavers 29/3: What superpower would suit your MC in story context?
Jerya’s achieved quite a lot without any ‘superpowers’, and as she still considers herself a scientist, even if she rarely has time to practise, she would be highly sceptical of their existence.
But perhaps the gifts which enabled her to pick up years’-worth of mathematics in a matter of weeks, and to share in an original contribution to planetary science, are a kind of superpower anyway.
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Meta Secretly Trained Its AI on a Notorious Piracy Database
Databasen heter LibGen. Där kan man uppenbarligen hitta piratuppladdningar av enorma mängder e-böcker.
Bland annat mina böcker.
På dessa piratsamlade böcker har Meta, med Mark Zuckerbergs goda minne, övat sin generativa AI. Man tyckte visst inte tid att göra det på lagligare sätt.
Läs mer i skärmklippen.
Länkar till källor för mina skärmklipp:
https://www.wired.com/story/new-documents-unredacted-meta-copyright-ai-lawsuit/
https://forfatterforbundet.no/2025/03/21/meta-har-trent-sin-ki-pa-millioner-av-litteraere-verk/
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/03/search-libgen-data-set/682094/
#författare #writing #writer #ai #meta #böcker #books #pixelbooks #pixelböcker #booksky #bookstagram
Just arrived! The very beautiful Dragonbane Bestiary!
New review: On the Wing is an excellent, factual primer on the evolution of flight that helpfully assumes little background knowledge.
#Books #BookReview #Scicomm #Evolution #Flight #Biomechanics #Paleontology #Palaeontology @bookstodon @EvolLetters
If your ideal vacation would be to stay in a library/bookstore, here are some places to go!
Gladstone’s Library - Hawarden, Wales
https://www.gladstoneslibrary.org/about/
Shakespeare and Company, Paris
https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/tumbleweeding
The Literary Man – Obidos Hotel - Óbidos, Portugal
https://www.theliteraryman.pt/en/
The Open Book, Wigtown, Scotland
https://www.airbnb.co.uk/rooms/7908227?source_impression_id=p3_1743164534_P3qRhmL2yDOfsPSx
La Librairie, Paris
https://parisboutik.com/en/la-librairie-hotel-room-le-marais/
Book and Bed, Toyko, Japan
https://bookandbedtokyo.com/en/
Requeering Wilde
Oscar Wilde is an icon of gay liberation from secrecy. But his life and his sexuality were not so simple – nor so binary
by Sam Mills
Oscar Wilde at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/111
The siege is over but the war goes on. ‘The Eye of Horus’ is an atmospheric World War Two thriller with settings that move from the Highlands of Scotland via Gibraltar to Malta.
This modern photograph shows the interior of the Xara Palace in Mdina, Malta. Today it is a luxury hotel but in 1943 it served as an RAF officers’ mess. It is visited in the book by Bob Sutherland as he and Monique get to know the island better.
Find out more on my website:
http://www.kenlussey.com/eoh/index.html
