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#pennedpossibilities

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@cstross@wandering.shop · 2d ago
#PennedPossibilities 996 — Share some of your favourite lines from your WIP. "Praisebones was notorious for having his old bodies taxidermied and posed in the lobbies and boarding tubes of his ships, to welcome his passengers' mortal remains (and their mourners) aboard. And he had been absolutely livid when, two years earlier, someone had replaced eighteen of his crania with badly printed plastic replicas."
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@Inverse_Shadow@indieauthors.social · 2d ago
#PennedPossibilities 996 — Share some of your favourite lines from your WIP. "...the camera zoomed in on a large wooden statue of a beautiful woman, her gaze staring defiantly forward, her coiling hair seeming to blow back away from her, the woman proudly and defiantly pushing out her naked chest towards the sea. Below this, however, the carved statue's midriff gave way to a mass of long, coiling, surprisingly well-rendered tentacles that once clung artfully to the prow of the Kraken."
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@cstross@wandering.shop · Apr 20, 2026
#PennedPossibilities⁩ 991: Tell us about your WIP. What is the genre or genres? Very loosely, space opera. More specific: it's book 2 of an extended *Stainless Steel Rat* tribute, in which the Trickster King and the Murder Queen take up private investigations, as a life of crime now bores them (they stole a ton of money and retired). Weirding it up: it's taking the piss out of TESCREAL/singularitarians by examining the televangelist-adjacent grifts they succumb to in a far future setting.
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@anderlandbooks@bookstodon.com · Mar 27, 2026
#PennedPossibilities 672 — What’s the current word count for your WIP? #FridaOfHamelin has 75k, but that includes the author's note. It's a little less than the German version. It's also one of my shortest books.
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@klepsydra@wandering.shop · Apr 17, 2026
#PennedPossibilities 988: Tell us about your MC’s bravest moment. Three published novels, a fourth complete one, a fifth in progress, and I honestly can’t answer this prompt without spoiling one of them. Is anyone else finding this difficulty? Surely it must be common for an MC’s bravest moment to form (or at least appear as part of) the climax of their book?
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In reply to
@cstross@wandering.shop · Apr 17, 2026
@klepsydra@wandering.shop Yup, me too! Anyway, what kind of bravery are we talking about? Physical bravery against an assault? Bravery against a threat to self-image (eg. willingness to undergo surgery)? Willingness to speak truth to power? Willingness to face the possibility that one might have been wrong for a very long time? Bravery is a multivalent term, far too imprecise for this kind of question to be meaningful. #PennedPossibilities 988
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In reply to
@cstross@wandering.shop · Apr 16, 2026
#PennedPossibilities Illustrative quote: "Tabitha walked her dog again. The subsequent funeral was very emphatically a closed coffin ceremony: contagious necrotizing osteosarcoma was nobody's idea of a fun way to end an exit interview ..."
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@cstross@wandering.shop · Apr 16, 2026
#PennedPossibilities 987: "Do any of your characters have an unusual or uncommon pet? What is it? How did they acquire it?" Current WIP: Tabitha has a highly illegal terrier: a cloned descendant of one she originally paid millions for, grown from a smuggled blastocyte with the DRM hacked. Possession of a rebaser hound is a very serious crime, roughly on a par with owning an H-bomb, because they're biological weapon factories. But Tabitha dotes on hers because, when all's said and done: dog.
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@cstross@wandering.shop · Apr 15, 2026
#PennedPossibilities 986: Check-In! How are you enjoying working on the WIP? Not much right now, I had eye surgery three weeks ago and need new prescription lenses so I can't read (or write on screen) clearly at present! Otherwise it'd be going swimmingly and I'm expecting rebound productivity in 3-4 weeks when my eye has settled down and my opthalmologist sees me and prescribes new varifocals.
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@tiefling@bardicperspiration.club · Apr 15, 2026
#PennedPossibilities Check-In time! How are you enjoying working on your WIP? I... am actually working again? And I've been enjoying it a lot. My prob is that instead of like, telling a short spicy story, I've kind of like... found more to it so now its a for real story with spicy parts. And I was hoping to finish soon but... there's so much to talk about. "What is it?" I mean just really basic overview? It's kind of about the not quite relationship between alt Dio and a classmate; how it happened, how it develops, and maybe also how it ends. It's polyamorous in the way I experience it, and I'm trying to make it as true to ppl as I can. I'm not writing smut, I'm writing... life. But since its an alt version of my life, there's some sex and smut involved too, ha ha. I'm not giving a "will be done" day but I've written like, a lot for it lately. And maybe it'll suck but it'll suck in a way that feels right for me. #writing #writers
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@EvanderLFragoso@universeodon.com · Apr 15, 2026
#PennedPossibilities Check-In time! How are you enjoying working on your WIP? I've been enjoying working on it, although it feels like a struggle, and some bits are frustrating me. It's the sequel to my last book, with the focus shifted to a character that I've been wanting to work on an ongoing series with for a long time. This was supposed to be one book, but it's being divided into long parts. I guess it'll have to take a collection of books to finish this monster up. 😅
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@Inverse_Shadow@indieauthors.social · Apr 15, 2026
#PennedPossibilities 985 — How long have you been writing or when did you start? I'm not sure. But I do remember writing some extremely cringe crap when I was a small child that I am deeply thankful will never see the light of day.
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@therivercrow@bardicperspiration.club · Apr 14, 2026
#PennedPossibilities 985 — How long have you been writing or when did you start? I started writing little stories as a small River (a rivulet, or stream perhaps) but then got all clogged up with life detritus and stopped. A few years ago, I met @tiefling@bardicperspiration.club who started sharing her (amazing) writing with me, which encouraged me to write more again too, some attempts at poems and short stories for my Baldur's Gate character, Tempest. Then the Dragon Age hyperfixation took hold of me! Between that, poems, and other stuffs, I'm probably writing more now in the past year or two than I have in a lifetime.
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In reply to
@tiefling@bardicperspiration.club · Apr 14, 2026

@therivercrow@bardicperspiration.club

    • Dio writing not guaranteed to be amazing

#PennedPossibilities

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@cstross@wandering.shop · Apr 14, 2026
#PennedPossibilities 985 How long have you been writing or when did you start? Around age 9/10, school english teacher set my class a term-long project: to write a story that filled an entire exercise book. (I was part of the 10% of my class who filled two.)
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@cstross@wandering.shop · Apr 13, 2026
#PennedPossibilities 984 — Where does your MC feel the safest? Is there a particular person or object that helps them feel safe? (Current duology): Jum feels the safest when he's robbing a bank, burgling a high noble's palace, or hijacking a starship. That's because these situations are dangerous, but predictably so: and he's a repeat offender. The only *person* who makes him feel safe is Tabitha. Mainly because she's in love with him and should come with a sign saying THIS END TOWARDS ENEMY.
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@tiggy@mastodonapp.uk · Apr 09, 2026
#PennedPossibilities 980 — Have you ever had your work plagiarized or stolen? Yes. And several times professional work was used without attribution. I don't know that my stories or poems have been but someone stole a picture of my cat that I used as an icon on FB to use as their icon. FB of course did nothing.
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@cstross@wandering.shop · Apr 07, 2026
#PennedPossibilities 977 Have your characters ever travelled outside their country of birth? If so, when and where did they go, and why did they go there? Neither Jum nor Tabitha remember their respective planets of origin, let alone their country of birth. But it seems likely they left home as soon as possible, one jump ahead of an arrest warrant. And every reincarnation, it's the same all over again!
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@TimHayes@indieauthors.social · Apr 02, 2026
#PennedPossibilities 974 — Does your MC become jealous? If so, to what degree? How does their jealousy manifest? Not exactly jealousy, but my deuteragonist, Vick a hereditary witch is extremely over-protective when it comes to her partner, Nathan the protagonist. She’s the Action Girl of the duo who has no qualms about immolating someone stupid enough to point an assault rifle at the love of her life. Nathan, on the other hand is the kind of lovable rogue who sole means of offence is a two-shot Taser and whose favourite form of defence against danger is to rapidly head in the opposite direction of any threat. #bookstodon #WritersOfMastodon #Author #Novel
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@TimHayes@indieauthors.social · Apr 01, 2026
#PennedPossibilities 973 — How do you select the names of your characters? For you, is there a method? I use multiple methods to generate character names including ones based on mythology and popular culture. The head of a law enforcement agency known as the Hounds goes by the name of Drummond. An androgenous character is known as Orlando. I’m fortunate that my urban fantasy involves magic so it’s unwise to use one’s real name, resulting in a number of punny names such as Hounds called Ripley (believe it or not) and a duo named Thompson and Thomson. And, as a last resort, it’s always worth glancing at one’s bookshelves and creating a name which is a mash up of some of your favourite authors. #Bookstodon #WritersOfMastodon #Author #Novel
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