malcolmschmitz

[malcolmschmitz]

someone on twitter is trying to claim that use of an em-dash is an indication of AI-generated writing because it’s “relatively rare” for actual humans to use it. skill issue

[malcolmschmitz]

The other thing she wants me to fix is the same thing my usual editor (read: beloved and long-suffering partner) is desperately begging me to fix

AKA: my wretched habit of typing like I'm on a Royal Model P rather than a Perfectly Reasonable Linux laptop.

"No, you do not need two spaces after each sentence. No, you do not need two lines between each paragraph! This is 2025, not 1925, and the parser does not speak typewriter!!!"

I got my first round of edit notes back for my first chapter of Bright Young Things, my 1920s superhero game.

My editor really liked it! ...But it turns out, I've absorbed a bit too much of the 1920s detective fiction I've been reading as research...

I got a note to the effect of "Be careful about using real world bigotry! Perhaps your obnoxious cabbie should not be Weird About Italians."

[malcolmschmitz]

I got my first round of edit notes back for my first chapter of Bright Young Things, my 1920s superhero game.

My editor really liked it! ...But it turns out, I've absorbed a bit too much of the 1920s detective fiction I've been reading as research...

I got a note to the effect of "Be careful about using real world bigotry! Perhaps your obnoxious cabbie should not be Weird About Italians."

[malcolmschmitz]

I have not one but TWO new short stories out, thanks to a TTRPG company I've worked with in the past!

They've put out two new anthologies of the work that their writers did for their TTRPG setting of Talmenor- and I'm featured in both volumes!

In volume 1, you've got Barmy Blakken and the River of Death, a whimsical folktale annotated by a very jaundiced scholar. There are copious footnotes. It's a bit Pratchetty, a bit Perrault-y. Get it here:

In volume 2, you've got a dark fantasy story about a woman who makes a pact with a god to secure her son's future. If you like The Apothecary Diaries you'll love this one.

Happy reading!

[malcolmschmitz]

Speaking of the mailing list: if you are at all interested in reading a story about lacemaking orcs, you can still get it for free by signing up for my mailing list.

I only send emails when the stars are right, the moon is in Aquarius, and/or I've got something interesting for you, so give it a look!

[malcolmschmitz]

Cover Update: The Unicorn's Beard!

I've never been satisfied with the cover of The Unicorn's Beard. I paid someone on Fiverr to do it back in 2018 when I first released it, and they gave me exactly what I asked for... which wasn't very good.

I've gotten a lot better at graphic design and have started doing my own ebook covers, and I figured it was time that The Unicorn's Beard matched the rest of the series. And so I give you...

The new cover! It should be available on Kindle in the next 72 hours and across other services as Draft2Digital updates.

If you got your ebook from the kind of storefront that does automatic updates, you don't need to do anything- the cover will change automatically. If you didn't, I've got a high quality PNG that I can send you, and you can use Calibre to change the metadata.

I'm still working on The Misadventures of Sawbones and its Menagerie #3- watch this space (and my mailing list) for further developments.

[malcolmschmitz]

Growing up, one of my dad's favorite quotes he'd say whenever he found me writing came from a movie called As good as it gets. In it, Jack Nicholson's character is asked how he writes women so well. He responds "I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability." My dad would later bastardize this quote to "I think of a man and then take away all logic."

rather than teaching me anything about writing, what this taught me was that my dad was never going to be able to understand a woman's point of view because he was proud he couldn't understand it. He thought of himself as "logical" and anything other as "illogical." I've met other people like my dad who won't read books with female main characters because it's "unrelatable." Growing up, most of the largest series in the world featured male characters with an occasional female side character. When an MC is a woman/nonbinary I hear "why do they have to be X?"

(and this is about ten times louder when a MC dares to be a non-amab person of color)

At the heart of writing there is storytelling. And, at the end of the day, there will be people who don't want to understand that story. Not because it's not well-written or important but because it doesn't fit their world view. they don't want to hear about a main character that's female, nonbinary, black, disabled, fat, queer, etc.

Write those stories anyway. Bang on their doors and plaster those words everywhere they can see. Get comfortable telling your stories and get even more comfortable making those people who cover their ears uncomfortable.

There is community in what we do and in the stories we tell. Don't let those people who are proud that they don't understand diminish the great things you're going to contribute to that community.

[malcolmschmitz]

In the "Casual Passing Thought" dep't

Every single character that ever was, no matter how well known worldwide they may be now, was an OC once.

Stop acting like your OCs are nothing much.

And all the rest of you: Support OCs.

They're what's next.

[malcolmschmitz]

🌟are you an author?

✨do you have a book coming out soon?

🌟do you want help promoting it?

✨look no further! I am offering to interview authors on my YouTube channel about their books! I will also crosspost some clips from the interviews to my other social media platforms for even more reach.

🌟How it will work:

You give me an ARC or your book to read

I’ll come up with questions and give you time in advance to come up with your answers

We’ll schedule and film the interview

It’ll go up around the time of your book’s release

I’ll also leave an ARC review if you want me to!

✨Requirements:

That your book is being published soon (within the next few months, let's say)

This is a loose suggestion, not a requirement, but I would prefer to cover books in the scifi/fantasy genres.

🌟That's it! It's just that simple! I'm doing this because I want to uplift other authors, engage with my community, build new networks of authors, and just generally be able to help.

Marketing as an author can feel so isolating, so overwhelming, and so impossible. I'm here to make it easier and more fun to get your book in front of new eyes.

✨If you’re interested, please email lilamarybooks@gmail.com and we'll go from there!

especially if you're an indie author, I would love to have you!

GENERAL TAGLIST: @worldbuildng @muddshadow @nikkywrites @47crayons @directionoftime

@chayscribbles @magic-is-something-we-create @rodentwrites @notwritinganyflufftoday @rustywritessometimes

[malcolmschmitz]

Ursula K. Le Guin

[malcolmschmitz]

Even a unicorn can gore you if you seem like a real danger to her kids (though that’s another story for another day).

Goddammit, Sawbones, now I'm going to have to write that one too.

[malcolmschmitz]

The best story I've ever seen that does both is The House With The Clock In Its Walls by John Bellairs. Don't want to spoil it, but it manages to be BOTH "the safe adult keeps you safe" AND "the safe adult gives you a sword" in a really appealing way.

ok i think what gets me about the kind of post that's like '[children's media] has child soldiers, where are their parents!!' is that those stories really and truly aren't for people who'll think about that, they're for the people the children's age, who don't, for the most part, want to be kept safe or told they're too young to participate in the world, they want to be given a sword

[malcolmschmitz]

Well, I finally read Murderbot, and dang, @wolffyluna was right to compare my character Sawbones to everyone's favourite SecUnit.

[handshake meme] The Mask Stays On So You Don't Have To See My Facial Expressions? Forged In The Fires Of Customer Service?

The thing that would keep them from being friends is that Sawbones would try to, like, critically analyze the plot of Sanctuary Moon, and would walk away Very Unhappy with the whole affair.

[malcolmschmitz]

I'm about to have a hot take and I would say it shouldn't be controversial but this is Tumblr so who knows.

A few weeks ago, I saw Jurassic Park for the first time, and there is a scene in there I think every aspiring filmwriter should be forced to watch and dissect. You may be thinking it's a Big Moment, like the timing on getting the power back on, or whatsisface IT guy shutting down the system to go steal embryos. You may think it's the kids and whatsisface who kinda looks like but isn't Harrison Ford* seeing the brontosauruses for the first time. Or the moment the first T-rex crashes the fence. But it's not any of those.

No, it's when Ellie finds Hammond in the dining room and he's eating whatever was supposed to be served for dessert and he's like "it was melting. I didn't want it to go to waste."

Because there is so much humanity in that line. It's not some big, grand theme statement. But I guarantee each and every one of us has been in a situation where life is going to hell in a handbasket for whatever reason, and we sit down and we may not be crying outwardly but we're screaming inside, and we wash the dishes. Or fold the laundry. Or eat the leftover Chinese so it won't be thrown away. We have exactly one point of control over one tiny little thing that seems (and often is) absolutely futile, and fuck it all, we need that control. Just for a moment. Just to feel something that isn't black screaming despair.

Hammond's guests and grandchildren are in grave danger. There is nothing he can do about it. Ellie's fiance is one of those guests. There's nothing she can do about it. They're in a severe thunderstorm in a place with mostly dirt roads in the middle of the night and all of the power is out and there are animals that dwarf skyscrapers outside. They. Can. Do. Nothing.

So they sit down and they eat the ice cream.

And then when Ellie says "it is good," Hammond just very quietly says "spared no expense."

His entire dream is in ruins. I know in the book he's more morally dubious, but in the movie I think he really genuinely believed he was doing something that could be wonderful and got stars in his eyes. In this moment he's grieving the potential loss of his grandchildren. The knowledge that even if (if!!) they survive, they will likely never see him the same way again--nor will his children. He's grieving because his beautiful dream has killed multiple people and he's realized he created a nightmare. He's grieving because he's in a hell of his own making and there's nothing he can do about any of this.

The animatronics are amazing, the CGI is top-notch (especially for its era), the story is solid, the cinematography is ace, but the moment that made that movie to me was that scene in the dining room lit only by the lightning, where two terrified human beings eat a dessert they almost certainly aren't really tasting, and say "it was melting" and "it is good" because if either of them says what they're really thinking, even breathes so much as a "do you think--", they will both scream until they go insane.

We've none of us faced dinosaurs run amok but we've all of us eaten the ice cream. And I think every prospective filmwriter out there, and a whole lot of shitty execs who wouldn't know a real emotion if it danced naked in front of a neon sign, need to see that scene and be forced to really sit with it.

I think movies would be the better for it.

*I would apologize for only learning half of these characters' and/or actors' names but frankly my facial recognition was already bad and has gotten worse in the last couple of years so you'll just have to deal with that.

[malcolmschmitz]

The curtains were blue because everything in the room was carefully colour coordinated, reinforcing the character’s stylish and controlled characterisation. The curtains were blue because everything in the room was a different colour, reinforcing the character’s eclectic and globe-trotting personality. The curtains were blue because the character is elsewhere established to hate the colour blue, subtextually implying that their deceased spouse was responsible for that decoration choice.

The curtains were blue because throughout their filmography the director consistently uses cool tones to mark moments of distance between characters. The curtains were blue to tie the events in that room into the broader oceanic motif of this particular novel. The curtains were blue because the assonance evoked a contrast with the following stanza of the poem.

Even the curtains looked expensive: floor to ceiling velvet drapes, in a flawless royal blue. She tucked the saucer up on the windowsill and tied back faded blue curtains with a loop of string. The narrow blinds were the same navy blue as the pinstripe suit of the man who served eviction notice that sent them to this office.

The curtains were blue because the author’s childhood home had blue curtains, which they discussed in their letters related to their feelings of comfort in that place. The curtains were blue because the author’s childhood home had blue curtains, which they discussed in their letters related to their feelings of grief in that place.

The curtains were blue as an allusion to the contemporary joke about literary criticism, an extension of the author’s autocritical approach that will be further discussed in section seven.

The curtains were red, as a pun on;

The curtains were read.

[malcolmschmitz]

AO3 is down. Want a short story that reads like good fanfic?

Karvek, a cowardly orc lacemaker, must travel into the desert to get to a silkworm oasis. But the last caravan saw an undying, flesh-eating firebird. With a beast like that roaming the desert, there's safety in numbers. And his only traveling companion is a former friend, Alkett. She betrayed his tribe; Karvek still bears an ugly grudge. If they're going to survive the journey through the desert, Karvek must face that grudge- and the two of them must clear the air.

I've got a short fantasy story about orc lacemakers, and you can read it for free right now if you subscribe to my mailing list!

[malcolmschmitz]

On it, boss!

make adventure modules