#PennedPossibilities 726 — If your SC had a picture frame with slots for 3 photos, who / what would be in the pictures?

Okay, helpful since today this SC is about to get her very own story told.

The photos Bolt would choose wasn't obvious until her situation improved. She had commiserated and been open about her life with another woman caught in a situation like her own. No act of bravery. Simple sharing of support and making now better. It was enough to cause the devil-girl to save her at great risk when their situation went pear-shaped, which (in Bolt's eyes) made Bolt lose perspective and do something arguably suicidal in turn to save her new friend. Her life changed.

The frame would contain:

1. A monochrome halftone picture of a handsome crime boss in chains, clipped from a newspaper. It represents her stupidity in letting herself be framed and blackmailed by him—and that after darkness comes light.
2. A state portrait of Rainy Days, who is a scary woman as well aa the Director of Home and the Nine Outer Worlds, a maybe enemy whom Bolt recently figured out hired her for her potential, which wipes out her past sins.
3. The devil-girl. Maybe it's a crush, maybe it's something more, certainly it's weird since until now she's flown only with men. The devil-girl is certainly her friend.

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

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Part 3 begins! Finally, the stakes come into focus. How does it all end? Chapter 29 of "A New Faith" is up on the website at tinjar.ghost.io/a-new-faith #solarpunk #hopepunk #books #novel #climatechange #adaptation #migration #mystery #thriller #booksky #authorsky #sciencefiction #climatefiction

A New Faith

Part 3 begins!

Finally, the stakes come into focus.
How does it all end?

Chapter 29 of "A New Faith" is up on the website at https://tinjar.ghost.io/a-new-faith

Parts 1 and 2 are available to #download (or read online) for #free in #DRMfree #PDF and #EPUB formats

#solarpunk #hopepunk #books #bookstodon #novel #climatechange #adaptation #migration #mystery
#thriller #amwriting #WritersCoffeeClub
#WordWeavers #ScribesAndMakers
#PennedPossibilities #writingcommunity #sciencefiction
#climatefiction

Janet Rudolph reported that author Martin Cruz Smith, author of the Arkady Renko series, passed away.

I took this photo of him when he was signing books at Hotel La Fonda in Santa Fe during the Left Coast Crime conference.

I was a big fan of his work, particularly his ability to write evocative descriptions.

https://mysteryreadersinc.blogspot.com/2025/07/martin-cruz-smith-rip.html

@bookstodon #books #Bookstodon #noir #thriller #newmexico

#PennedPossibilities 725 — Do you have a favorite character in your current WIP?

My favorite character changes based on my mood and what I recently wrote. I'm big on emotion and what today they call feels. If I choke up while reading my story, I know I've done it right. I'm liking Lightning Bolt the day angel SC who ends up training as a praetorian after having really messed up as a youth. Her story Reframing the Experience, linked in my pinned samples post, DOES choke me up. She's a jock type who has seen her juvenile pride crushed. At 27, she's now learning how thinking about what you are doing keeps you from making stupid spur-of-the moment decisions. She will learn she's not so stupid after all.

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

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Drop () #Mystery #Thriller

Everyone's a suspect. Violet, a widowed mother on her first date in years, arrives at an upscale restaurant where she is relieved that her date, Henry, is more charming and handsome than she expected. But their chemistry begins to curdle as Violet begins being irritated and then terrorized by a series of anonymous drops to her phone.

https://www.coryd.dev/watching/movies/1249213

#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2025.07.12 — How much do themes of transience or permanence appear in your work?

Often, it appears. Characters, even the most entrenched, find their world is fragile or unpredictable. Like in real life. The devil-girl uses this to her advantage. Any time somebody tries to use a job, a situation, or something material to pressure her (sometimes to the point of blackmail) she tells them if they continue she's okay with throwing it all away and starting elsewhere where they won't have her services. Usually, she gets her way. One story, however, she's attending a school and is loath to give that up. What crap she willing to endure, what bad things she's willing to do, in that situation proves interesting—what the antagonists end up suffering when she reaches her breaking point is even more so.

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

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Time for a ranking of everything I saw in cinemas in the first half of the year. What did I put ridiculously high? What's shamefully low? What are your favourites so far ?

https://dansaysitsalright.blogspot.com/2025/07/2025-halfway-ranking.html

#film #movies #movierankings #2025 #bestfilms2025 #2025ranking #movielists #horror #comedy #action #thriller #comicbookmovies

Veja a letra da música “Thriller” de Michael Jackson
#MichaelJackson #Thriller
https://daletra.com.br/michael-jackson/letra/thriller.html

When "Mr. Robot" premiered 10 years ago, stars Rami Malek and Christian Slater both believed the show about computer hackers was giving us a glimpse into our real-life future.

#MrRobot #RamiMalek #ChristianSlater #Hacking #Cybersecurity #Hacktivism #USANetwork #Netflix #SciFi #Thriller #TVShow #TV #TVNews #Television #Entertainment #EntertainmentNews #Celebrities #Celebrity #CelebrityNews #CelebrityInterviews #TelevisionNews

https://www.hollywoodoutbreak.com/2025/07/11/rami-malek-christian-slater-mr-robot-would-be-our-future/

ENDING JULY 14 - The Kindle edition of "Academic Displacement" is available for FREE worldwide via Amazon! If you're a fan of speculative fiction, sci-fi, horror, or thrillers, this should be your next read but don't take my word for it.

https://amazon.com/dp/B07XDLZHJ9

@specfic @scifi @horrorbooks

Who’s at the Door? Thrillers & Mysteries That Build and Break You

Who’s at the Door? Thrillers & Mysteries That Build and Break You If The Watcher or You kept you up at night, these stories will too. With mounting tension, creepy vibes, and a killer always just one step away, these reads don’t let up. A Cat’s Guide to Danger…
https://www.newinbooks.com/whos-at-the-door-thrillers-mysteries-that-build-and-break-you/

#AuthorInterviews #eBook #Mystery #Thriller
@indieauthors

#PennedPossibilities 724 — MC POV: Tell us about your relationship with your family. CW: Innuendo.

[Thorn Rose:] Well, I anticipate my relationship with Mother is about to get weird.

My mother is strict, and cold—and wealthy enough not to be frugal. She's a refugee immigrant who wasn't welcomed by the people she resembles, nor the day angels that populate the neighborhood we were forced to live in. If I wanted to attend university and the Academy of Thaumaturgy, I needed to get myself a full scholarship, or work in Mother's business until I could afford my own tuition. As the top academic student at school, I asked for and received a scholarship—but realized it meant living apart from my friend Streak, a day angel, so I got him a scholarship, too. Demanded it. Walked into the dean's office (okay, Streak says, marched into the dean's office), saying if they wanted me to attend, Streak had to attend.

Turns out the Academy is run by Rainy Days (the Dean), you know, the Director of Home, the planetary ruler, the greatest thaumaturge in the world [and the main series antagonist].

She discovered Streak had a talent that was interesting enough to gain him admission, and set to testing him. That's not your answer, though!

A week later, she decided to test me, too. She'd gotten my permission to do so when I accepted the scholarship, but decided to ask my mother†. The Director of Home visited our home when I was at school. The woman made them both tea, which they enjoyed in our kitchen, until she persuaded my mother. My mother can be difficult. During her visit, Mother showed her my room.

The woman found my favorite toy.

It greatly resembles Streak.

My mother doesn't like day angels. She doesn't like Streak. She doesn't like our relationship. Less now, considering the toy. There will be questions, embarrassing questions, and I dread having to answer them.

=+=+=+=+=+=
†Rainy Days asked permission to take me into a war zone, a war she was about to start.

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

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2025.07.10 — Describe a way you've developed a character.

How about some character development by driving around?

1. Started with a vanilla sense of the character's personality, their gender, their agenda, the current setting. The devil-girl wants to be left alone to earn enough coin to study her magic. She has a secret past she's run away from (it's in the title of the novel) and lives anonymously in an old eastern city. She is too young for what she's doing.
2. I figure out where she will be when the story ends: She will face off with the Rainy Days, the main series antagonist and world's strongest thaumaturge, so must learn to be magically and physical strong.
3. She's coming home from her job at a grocery when a male gang member wolf-whistles her, together with his other teenage gang members who aren't entirely impressed with his technique, especially one who acts like she might be his girlfriend. The devil-girl sticks her nose in the air and walks away.
4. She gauges him as he follows, verbally sexually harassing her. Is he the one? she thinks, The one who'll help me use my special miracle?
5. I run with this idea and realize she was only able to use the miracle once when her life was at stake. She looks over the gang member. Scrawny. Obviously showing off. She wonders about his performance in bed (considering what he's saying about her "assets"). Lots of bark, little bite there. She's safe so long as he doesn't pin her. She decides to taunt him so he shows off for his cohort, and maybe acts stupider.
6. Goaded, he isolates himself from immediate help as she speeds up. She can handle one miscreant, she thinks, but if they all attack, she feels she might feel threatened enough to rediscover her special miracle. Taunting, using her extensive vocabulary that insults him but goes over his head, she manages to lead him and the others into another gang's territory…

At this point, I've learned a lot about the devil-girl's personality. Hints of her yet to be defined past. That she's magically strong but has magical performance problems she's working to overcome. She is confident now but has nearly died once. She thinks she can fight. Her inner dialogue is snarky, condescending, and uncensored, unlike the demure and measured banter she taunts her antagonists with.

I decide to write the scenes that led up to her having her life threatened, using this scene as a teaser, and write a novella full of words as she learns how to fight so she can take on the gang members at the end (and begin part 2 of the novel).

More would be spoilers.

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

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"𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗧𝗲𝗻𝗮𝗻𝘁" by: Freida McFadden

There's no place like home...
Blake Porter is riding high, until he's not. Fired abruptly from his job he is unable to make the mortgage payments on the new brownstone he shares with his fiancée, he's desperate to make ends meet.
Enter Whitney. Beautiful, charming and looking for a room to rent. She's exactly what Blake's looking for. Or is she?

https://bookblabla.com/book/the-tenant

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ICYMI: The Kindle edition of "Academic Displacement" is free worldwide via Amazon until July 14. If you love speculative fiction, sci-fi, horror, and thrillers, this is a story you should read. Bonus points if you're from Pittsburgh. You'll see why.

https://amazon.com/dp/B07XDLZHJ9

@specfic @scifi @horrorbooks

#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2025.07.09 1/3— Are there "normal" words you avoid using? Why?

This is an in-the-weeds answer in semantics that is strategic to the subtext of Reluctant Moon. Remember, word choice DOES matter. What I speak of will never be in your face. Messaging by omission, if you will.

For example, "luck" exists in none of characters' mental space, but when the situation demands it, they will ask, "Skill or chance?"—which sounds quaint. To this, the answer is "skill" if you got a good result by your effort or "chance" if it would have gone right or wrong whatever you did. Note how that the Venn diagram of "luck" and "skill or chance" only partially overlap. People's mental space assigns responsibility to self, blame unto others, or interference due to natural factor everyone would agree is out of anyone's control. A supernatural force is nonsensical to them. "Bad luck" has no meaning anybody would comprehend.

More generally, because of differences in family structure (female-centered), different gender roles, mental hygiene standards, and sexual dynamics, I need to edit out, or find alternatives to, all permutations of these words: love, belief, believe, curse (as in swear), faith, fortune, religion, spirituality, supernatural, deity (god, etc.), divine, heaven, hell, father (the noun), patriarch, and matriarch. None of these words or derivatives are known. Indeed, many of these concepts are forbidden and signs of mental illness (treated via free and mandatory† health and mental services.

Some extraordinary antisocial words like "slave" do exist, but are forbidden to the insufficiently educated populace; if you are found using them, you will find yourself undergoing re-education—as does the female MC when she gains access to a restricted library and asks the librarian an innocent question.

=+=+=+=+=
†If you are willing to forego basic income, you can avoid all government services. Failing to maintain your genetic registry (tracking who you've slept with), regardless of foregoing services, is always punished severely.

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

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"State of Shock" is a 1984 single by #theJacksons and #MickJagger. It was written by #MichaelJackson and #RandyHansen. The song was originally sung by Michael Jackson as a duet with #FreddieMercury, and was later slated for the #Thriller album in 1982; however, due to differing time schedules, Jackson ended up recording it with his brothers and Jagger instead.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suGaLsUOP7c

Chapters 27 and 28 of "A New Faith" are up on the website at https://tinjar.ghost.io/a-new-faith

Parts 1 and 2 are available to #download (or read online) for #free in #DRMfree #PDF and #EPUB formats