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The Big Idea: Christian Bieck

Apr. 21st, 2026 07:49 pm
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Posted by Athena Scalzi

Just because something is created with a younger audience in mind, doesn’t mean it can’t be enjoyed by all. After all, whomst among us doesn’t love the idea of magic cats? Author Christian Bieck is here today to show us the result of his NaNoWriMo creation, A Basquet of Cats.

CHRISTIAN BIECK:

At some point early in their writing journey, every writer learns that a good way to start a story is by having an interesting what-if. So one day a few years ago I asked my family, “What if cats had magic?”

“That’s not a what-if,” our son said. He’s a walking encyclopedia, and generally knows what he’s talking about. “Cats do have magic. They can turn invisible.”

“Mrt?” Rex, our ginger tabby, said from behind me.

I turned to him; he was sitting on the back rest of the sofa. “Where did you suddenly come from?” I asked.

“And they have short-range teleportation abilities,” my wife said. 

“And some mind magic,” our son said.

Rex said nothing, but his smug look clearly told me I should have known that.

“I did know that,” I said to him. “So what do I do now?”

I’m going at this Big Idea essay all wrong, aren’t I? Let’s try again:

It all started with a family game of Microscope.

For the less nerdy among this blog’s readers, Microscope is a cooperative world-building/setting-creation game. Players create a fictional timeline, and then events and people within that timeline to any depth desired. Afterwards, you can jump in and roleplay a scene.

We set the game in an alternate Earth medieval France. And the “people” to cats—cats that have even more magic than our real-world ones. Our main character was the friend, companion, familiar, however you call it, of a human mage, the Archmage of France and Spain. (Mages obviously also existed at the time.) Other mages were visiting his tower with their own cat companions, and something happened to them: the first event. Now the cats had to find out what had happened. Murder mystery with cats!

We spent a pleasurable afternoon fleshing out the story, as it was, ending up with a stack of index cards, but without an answer to the question what happened to the mages. Didn’t matter, it was fun. That was in December 2019.

Fast forward to late October 2021. An online article reminded me of the annual writing event called National Novel Writing Month, a.k.a. NaNoWriMo, and on the spur of the moment, I decided to take up the challenge and restart my fiction writing after a ten year break. My first NaNo attempt in 2009 had been successful in that I did finish a novel, but less so in terms of quality of output. So around 2011, I had decided to put fiction writing on hiatus and focus on improving my craft through the non-fiction writing I was doing in my day job.

So, what to write for Nano 2021? What if I used that Microscope game as a basis for my novel? What if, on top of their normal, natural magic, there were special cats with special skills? With mind-based magic, a magic that was quite different from that of human mages. And a mind-to-mind connection to said humans. And what if something happens to the main character’s mage, and the protagonist and his friends have to set it right?

I couldn’t find the index cards from the game anymore, but I didn’t really need them. I had my main characters and the inciting incident in my head; the beats in 3 disaster structure were quickly sketched out, and the story of A Basquet of Cats practically wrote itself. With the active help of Rex, and our female gray tabby Neko, who helpfully provided dialogue. (Have you ever had that thing where you look at the companion animals living with you, and comic-style speech bubbles pop up over their head, telling you exactly what they would be saying in that moment? No? I am sure John knows exactly what I mean . . .)

Okay, maybe “wrote itself” is a bit of an exaggeration, because even for a fantasy novel you need a (to naive me) surprising amount of research if your setting is alternate history Earth. What time exactly? (13th century, when Aquitaine was English.) How does the magic work? (No spoilers, just that Basque is the human language of magic, and “Abracadabra” in Basque is “Horrela izango da!”) How close to real cats are my cats? (Close. But they are cats, and that has consequences for the way they see the world. And how they behave. And communicate. And, and, and.) Do other animals feature? (Yes! But the PoVs are all cats!)

And then there was the question: for what audience was I writing Basquet? A story with animal protagonists feels like a kids’ book, so that was my starting point. I ended up writing a story that I would have wanted to read as a teenager, and be happy to re-read at any point later in life: an adventure story, a story of friendship, of responsibility, and of learning to value the good things in life and in relationships. My publisher calls it “For young adults and animal lovers of all ages”, and he’s exactly right.

I dream that Rex and Neko would also read and be pleased with the story.

(Full disclosure: I made up that dialogue at the beginning. But it could totally have happened that way; after all, real-life cats do have magic. Don’t they?) 


A Basquet of Cats: Amazon US|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s 

Author socials: Website|Bluesky|Linktree

Read an excerpt.

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Posted by John Scalzi

Old Man’s War. Art by John Harris

This is fabulous news: The entire Old Man’s War series, from OMW to The Shattering Peace, has been nominated for the Best Series Hugo this year. What a lovely accolade. Here is the entire category:

  • Emily Wilde by Heather Fawcett (Del Rey US; Orbit UK)
  • October Daye by Seanan McGuire (Tor US; DAW)
  • Old Man’s War by John Scalzi (Tor US; Tor UK)
  • The Chronicles of Osreth by Katherine Addison (Tor US; Solaris UK; Subterranean)
  • The Craft Wars by Max Gladstone (Tor; Tordotcom)
  • White Space by Elizabeth Bear (Saga Press; Gollancz)

And here is the full list of finalists for this year. In my category as well as in others are writers and editors and artists and others who I like and admire. This is an excellent year for the Hugos, and I’m delighted to be part of it.

Also, yes, I will be attending Worldcon this year. In addition to anything else, I am DJing a dance!

— JS

Rejoice, we triumph, sort of

Apr. 21st, 2026 08:15 pm
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin

That is, I have finally knocked off a review that has been hanging over me for months, probably needs a little more fiddling with but it was very much I had got to the stage of 'just sit down and write the bloody thing' and did it. It's a book I'm fairly lukewarm about, doing fairly useful work with what it does but it feels a bit all over the place and hard to get a proper grip on.

Also, yay, am feeling rather less washed out than the past few days following vaxx.

We have appointment to see solicitor about our Testamentary Dispositions next week - finally found one in the fairly close vicinity through the Law Society Find a Solicitor facility.

Have just been getting Documentation from the local authority who are actually paying me to go and talk about johnnies in their collections in just under two months, so I guess that's sort of the next thing on my agenda.

Though am gradually making my way through ms by deceased colleague, though there is not major urgency on this as my collaborator is still in academic life and overwhelmed with the responsibilities of that at present.

GNU Rubynye AKA Minoanmiss

Apr. 21st, 2026 01:23 pm
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[personal profile] ride_4ever
Part memorial tribute to Ny and part public health PSA, this by [profile] werpiper posted on AO3: COVID: Speaking Out About Rubynye. These are the notes for what [profile] werpiper said at Ny's memorial.

(no subject)

Apr. 21st, 2026 04:21 pm
spiralsheep: Sheep wearing an eyepatch (Default)
[personal profile] spiralsheep posting in [community profile] endings
It was a face that spoke of long-continued and hardened vice—it was one in which the Past had written indelible characters. The brand of the hangman could not have stamped it more plainly, nor have more unequivocally warned the suspicion of honest or timid men.

Witch Hat Atelier Icons

Apr. 21st, 2026 11:06 am
linky: Profile of Coco's face. (Wha - Coco - Float)
[personal profile] linky posting in [community profile] fandom_icons
A batch of 8 icons. Icons 4-8 were made for [community profile] smallbatchicons.



Find them here at [community profile] chemyxstory.

anatine

Apr. 21st, 2026 07:26 am
prettygoodword: text: words are sexy (Default)
[personal profile] prettygoodword
anatine (AN-uh-tain, AN-uh-tin) - adj., pertaining to or resembling a duck.


If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's anatine even if it isn't a duck. Anatine also, in a technical use, can mean pertaining to or belonging to the subfamily Anatinae, the dabbling ducks, or the family Anatidae, which includes Anatinae as well as geese and swans. Taken in the 1830s from Latin anatīnus, of ducks, from anas via its stem form anat-, a duck (which ultimately goes back to PIE root *h₂énh₂ts, a duck, because of course the PIE homeland had ducks, as they're worldwide).

Also, >quack!<

quack!
Thanks, WikiMedia!

---L.

(no subject)

Apr. 21st, 2026 09:31 am
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] lexin!
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Posted by John Scalzi

The Astra Awards are an award given out by the Hollywood Creative Alliance, and in previous years have been primarily for film and television, but this year they have branched out into books as well, across seventeen categories including Best Science Fiction Novel. And what do you know, in this inaugural year for the book awards, When the Moon Hits Your Eye was the winner. I am, of course absolutely delighted.

The awards were livestreamed, which I have posted above, and you can see my acceptance speech starting at 28:56 (if you don’t want to watch the whole thing, the full list of finalists and winners is available here). In my speech I specifically thank my editors Patrick Nielsen Hayden and Mal Frazier, as well as my agent Ethan Ellenberg and my manager Joel Gotler, but also generally everyone who worked on the book up and down the production chain. There would be no book without their work.

In any event, how cool is this? It’s made my day. Winning awards is fun.

— JS

chanter1944: a lilac tree in bloom (Wisconsin spring: lilac season)
[personal profile] chanter1944
Also I'm low on eloquence and the tireds are setting in, so forgive the rare brevity.

a Covid vaccine booster in the arm=:)
a fantastic musical performance (Hairspray, which my family loves pretty much to a person)=:)
walking the Horicon Marsh main trail=:)
*not* losing a glove on the very same trail thanks to a reasonably brief search, whew!=:)
not getting to pet the black labby who whimpered at me out a slow-moving car's open window=:( - I had to settle for saying "Awwww, baby," as the friendly fuzz and their possibly-a-golden sibling went by. They were clearly well-loved, but still. I would have so pet both puppydogs, had I been given the chance and the okay.
Storm damage=:( - not us, but other parts of Wisconsin, yikes
Merlin IDs=:)
Cardamom in black coffee=:)
Neighbors being excellent to each other=:)
Oldtime radio streams=:)
Synaesthesia=:)
The chance to, potentially, audit a summer course on the literature of the U.S. women's suffrage movement=:) the professor is making sure to include PoC voices in her selections, too
A family and friends political zoom getting zoombombed by that same professor's 50-pound short-haired pointer deciding to be a lap dog=:) there were pets by proxy
Daylilies overwintering successfully and returning from a dormant state=:) Yay! Little green shoots are go! I thought she was a goner for a second there.

Aaaaand not conking out in my chair is probably a good idea. I'm going the heck to bed!

The ACLU sent me a text

Apr. 20th, 2026 08:30 pm
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
About their fight against the racist War on Drugs.

It includes what looks like a tea leaf emoji? Whatever sort of leaf this is, it’s not marijuana, even I know that. Maybe no emoji at all would’ve been the better call….

Daily Check-In

Apr. 20th, 2026 06:06 pm
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[personal profile] starwatcher posting in [community profile] fandom_checkin
 
This is your check-in post for today. The poll will be open from midnight Universal or Zulu Time (8pm Eastern Time) on Monday, April 20, to midnight on Tuesday, April 21. (8pm Eastern Time).

Poll #34505 Daily Check-in
Open to: Access List, detailed results viewable to: Access List, participants: 22

How are you doing?

I am OK.
11 (50.0%)

I am not OK, but don't need help right now.
11 (50.0%)

I could use some help.
0 (0.0%)

How many other humans live with you?

I am living single.
10 (45.5%)

One other person.
7 (31.8%)

More than one other person.
5 (22.7%)




Please, talk about how things are going for you in the comments, ask for advice or help if you need it, or just discuss whatever you feel like.
 

Wheelchair Modification FAQ/AMA?

Apr. 20th, 2026 05:27 pm
crashmargulies: (Dog house)
[personal profile] crashmargulies
In case you haven't seen on other platforms, I'm in the process of heavily modifying an extremely basic wheelchair to make it better suited to independent use!

Here's the basic chair I think I started with versus what mine looks like right now!

an internet retailer photo of a basic hospital style wheelchair with fixed footrests, no cushions, and a high back
A Karman LT-980, no adaptations

Phone photo of that same chair, heavily modified with soft cushions, a narrower backrest with no handles, and a more solid centered footplate.
My modded chair! I'm taking name suggestions!

What questions do you have about the mods ahead of my first process write-up? Anyone done anything similar and have advice? Also, what the heck do I name this guy!? I name all my important gear, but I guess since this chair is so imperfect for my needs, I've been really struggling to find a moniker!