Kit Whitfield - fantasy writer
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kitwhitfield.bsky.social
Kit Whitfield - fantasy writer
@kitwhitfield.bsky.social
3.2K followers 1.4K following 3.9K posts
Novelist ‘as tart, dark and juicy as a summer pudding’. World Fantasy Award finalist. She/her.

Timeline cleanse queen.

The Gyrford series: tinyurl.com/nvvetupj

Horror reviews: https://tinyurl.com/5cyf7x5v

Agent: Sophie Hicks.
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kitwhitfield.bsky.social
Kit Whitfield - fantasy writer @kitwhitfield.bsky.social · Nov 22
Art by my husband illustrating one of the creatures of my IN THE HEART OF HIDDEN THINGS. (tinyurl.com/nvvetupj)

The brambles had been talking to themselves for a while, but it’s only when someone uprooted one that they started to get really stroppy…
Pen sketch. Spindly bundle of spikes with a blackberry for a head rears up like a mantis. Text caption: ‘Scratchity GOWAY!’ Pen sketch. Skeletal bramble bushes all over spikes hunch like spiders.
Reposted by Kit Whitfield - fantasy writer
emilydamstra.com
This #paleoart shows 3 views of the Devonian brachiopod fossil Paraspirifer bownockeri; one is reconstructed w/ some epifauna and boreholes. These are fun to find; they're an impressive size (for brachiopods). I had an excellent specimen to use as a reference for this painting.
#FossilFriday #sciart
Detailed color illustration showing 3 different views of the same specimen. Two at the bottom are the unreconstructed fossil from different angles. The reconstruction at the top shows the brachiopod in life position, with 9 visible boreholes and the common epibionts Cornulites and a bryozoan. The shell has pinkish and whitish horizontal stripes and the valves are slightly agape, with cirri lining the opening.
February 21, 2025 at 7:01 PM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
And to add to the Blyton point below - Blyton was clear ‘tomboy’ George wasn’t just ‘boys have more fun.’ There’s another book where a girl called Roberta is hiding from kidnappers with them and it’s decided they’ll cut her hair and pretend she’s a boy.

Roberta FREAKS OUT. 1/4
February 14, 2026 at 2:29 PM
Reposted by Kit Whitfield - fantasy writer
danwhitehead.net
To give you an idea of how deranged the UK has become about gender stuff, here's Enid Blyton - the absolute avatar of classic English conservatism and a huge fan of racist "gollywogs" - casually describing a gender non-conforming kid in the 1940s and having their friends be totally cool with it.
"I say! Are you Georgina?" The child in the opposite bed sat up and looked across at Anne. She had very short curly hair, almost as short as a boy's. Her face was burnt a dark-brown with the sun, and “Famous Five 01 - Five On A Treasure Island” By Enid Blyton 7 her very blue eyes looked as bright as forget-me-nots in her face. But her mouth was rather sulky, and she had a frown like her father's. "No," she said. "I'm not Georgina." "Oh!" said Anne, in surprise. "Then who are you?" "I'm George," said the girl. "I shall only answer if you call me George. I hate being a girl. I won't be. I don't like doing the things that girls do. I like doing the things that boys do. I can climb better than any boy, and swim faster too. I can sail a boat as well as any fisher-boy on this coast. You're to call me George. Then I'll speak to you. But I shan't if you don't." "Oh!" said Anne, thinking that her new cousin was most extraordinary. "All right! I don't care what I call you. George is a nice name, I think. I don't much like Georgina. Anyway, you look like a boy."
February 14, 2026 at 11:33 AM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
Reply:

Roses are red
Violets are blue
I hate one of us now
But I’m not quite sure who.
Post by PEN, Professional Editors Network, @MplsPEN, Feb 14 2022 Roses are red And John’s eyes are blue But you said they were hazel Back on page 52 #CopyeditorValentines
February 14, 2026 at 12:35 PM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
What’s your favourite love poem this Valentine’s Day?
Love is Not All (Sonnet XXX) Edna St Vincent Millay 1892-1950 Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise and sink again; Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; Yet many a man is making friends with death Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. It well may be that in a difficult hour, Pinned down by pain and moaning for release, Or nagged by want past resolution’s power, I might be driven to sell your love for peace, Or trade the memory of this night for food. It well may be. I do not think I would. Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Love is Not All" (Sonnet XXX), from Collected Poems. Copyright 1931, 1934, 1939, © 1958 by Edna St. Vincent Millay and Norma Millay Ellis. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Holly Peppe, Literary Executor, The Millay Society. www.millay.org.
February 14, 2026 at 11:17 AM
Reposted by Kit Whitfield - fantasy writer
richardmortimer.bsky.social
#BlueSkyArtShow #Wood
February 14, 2026 at 9:10 AM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
Aye, there's a woman sits by the lake on Valentine's Day you can ask about love if you like. She'll mostly tell you how she loves the world rather than who you'll marry, but it's good advice nonetheless.

#AskAFairySmith

tinyurl.com/nvvetupj

Artist: Chie Yoshii
Painting. A pale-skinned woman with dark brown hair heaped in a neo-Classical-looking ornate style, decorated with bejewelled butterflies and natural-shaped gold. She sits against a dark background, butterflies fluttering around her; her dress is Virgin-Mary blue but slipping off her shoulders. From behind her peeps a glowing heron. Two fox cups sit on her lap, one dozing and the other putting up a trusting paw to her chest. She also holds a bitten pomegranate in a hand decked with a heavy emerald ring. Watermark: copyright 2022 Chie Yoshii.
February 14, 2026 at 9:06 AM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
Let's play a game: if you were picking the perfect Wuthering Heights director, who would it be?

I'll start: Stanley Kubrick.

I'm serious. That book is the Full Metal Jacket of its day. A gaze into a culture dominated by violent people so culturally segregated their rule goes unquestioned...

1/9
February 13, 2026 at 9:56 AM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
I like to feel that if it came to a knockdown drag-out style-off between me and my notebook, I’d stand at least some chance of winning.
Photo; two notebooks on a wooden table. The higher, labelled ‘The notebooks people give me’ in ‘Elegant’ font, is a V and A notebook with a beautiful Japanese print in midnight blue and shining gold. The lower, labelled ‘The notebooks I use’ in ‘Typewriter’ font, is a plain navy A4, cheap and basic as possible.
February 13, 2026 at 8:51 AM
Reposted by Kit Whitfield - fantasy writer
robheighton.bsky.social
A warning to always keep me well away from the 8th-century Anglo-Saxon Franks Casket, because it just looks too delectable and I can't be held responsible for what happens next
One face of the Franks Casket, showing an intricate whale's bone carving Speculoos biscuits, whose moulded decoration looks vaguely similar to the carvings of the Franks Casket More of the biscuits More of the casket
February 12, 2026 at 11:20 AM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
I didn’t watch the war between the People of Thompson’s field and Gillam’s ditch, but looking at how crestfallen the fairy-mounts are looking in Thompson’s field I’d say the ditch has it.

#AskAFairySmith

Books here: tinyurl.com/nvvetupj
bealeiderman.bsky.social Bea Leiderman @bealeiderman.bsky.social · 2d
How about a rare Colombian moth photographer? 😏

Genus Symphlebia, not very rare but look at that punim!
A moth on a twig, facing the camera. The moth has dark gray eyes and is very furry. The fur is mostly orange around the eyes and fades to yellow. The legs are also orange and yellow. The antennae are mostly hidden, also dark gray
February 12, 2026 at 1:08 PM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
Middle-aged feminism is when you don't correct doctors who mistake your baby for a girl because they'll be gentler with him, and don't correct officials who write to you as 'Mr' because they'll listen to you more carefully.
February 12, 2026 at 11:45 AM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
Morning all.

Artist: Yu Chengyou
Print: two graceful little brown pheasants picking berries off the white snowy ground. Above them, the ground becomes so thick with black berry-stalks and tiny red berries the image has a Jackson Pollock look.
February 12, 2026 at 7:48 AM
Reposted by Kit Whitfield - fantasy writer
lyndseycroal.bsky.social
A woman befriends a sea witch at the end of the world, in The Loneliness of Water, first pubbed in @hexagonmagazine.bsky.social hexagonmagazine.ca/wp-content/u...
hexagonmagazine.ca
February 5, 2026 at 12:49 PM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
Bluesky has supposedly added a 'drafts' function, but I'm finding that if I try to save more than one draft, it eats either one or both of them. Anyone else getting that?
February 11, 2026 at 10:28 AM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
#booksky #bookqw word today was 'unbelievable', which stumped me. Went with UNLIKELY.

Sometimes the People dance in an oak grove. The fairy-smiths of Gyrford would be happy to leave them alone, but sometimes the customer insists.

Buy here: tinyurl.com/nvvetupj
To deal with a grove, you must first place iron bands around the trees, and fell them only after they are shackled. This will hold for a while, but iron rusts and must be maintained. If you can keep the People out of the grove for seven years and seven days, they generally take the point, but if you let the iron fail before then, you can expect worse than thorns in your bed and blood in your porridge: you can expect the People after you with all the fury of a stolen home, and they will seize you so thoroughly that it’s a matter of priestly speculation whether even your soul will be able to escape to Heaven. Certainly your body is unlikely to be found, at least in any form your own mother would recognise.
February 11, 2026 at 8:36 AM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
My husband swears this:

He once dreamed he was a noir detective teaming up with a female sleuth. She would have been a more typical dame, except she was, I quote, ‘spending a year in the body of Barry White for tax purposes.’

Their crime fighting was SMOOTH.
February 10, 2026 at 10:13 PM
Reposted by Kit Whitfield - fantasy writer
jeremycshipp.bsky.social
Today's a great day to support some creators.

Writers and artists and creatives of all sorts: reply with a link to one of your works, if you'd like. And feel free to tell us about it.

Everyone: let's check through the replies and buy some creations and support some human beings.
February 10, 2026 at 8:24 PM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
There’s owls can talk in the woods this season. Look wise as you please, but it turns out all their insights are about mice.

#AskAFairySmith

tinyurl.com/nvvetupj
February 10, 2026 at 8:28 PM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
One for the ‘pictures Jane Eyre might have painted’ collection.

Artist: Friedrich Hechelmann
Painting: a giant crescent moon towers over a lake between mountains, being drawn along by a team of white figures skimming over the water. The scale is so monumental you can’t clearly see what they are.
February 10, 2026 at 8:50 AM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
I need a light backpack and can’t find one I like.

There are, however, plenty of nice tote bags, and I have a sewing machine I want to get the hang of. Has anyone got a beginner-friendly pattern for converting a tote bag into a backpack?
February 9, 2026 at 2:58 PM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
Just saw the first cover mock-ups of THE SNAKESTONE GIRLS!

It's always a head-bender to see covers because it makes something entirely imagined suddenly tangible. But they put a big smile on my face, so that's definitely good news.
February 9, 2026 at 10:21 AM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
Mornington Crescent: a rant.

Or: how a goofy word game about train stations is the key to how devout causes can ruin people's ability to have a conversation.

Stand clear of the closing doors, let's begin.

1/18
White-tiled wall with a London Underground sign, a blue centre bar in a red circle. The centre bar reads 'MORNINGTON CRESCENT'. Source: https://www.christopherfowler.co.uk/blog/2014/12/30/mornington-crescent-still-peculiar
February 9, 2026 at 8:51 AM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
An entirely excellent point.

O’Bannon was a way better draftsman than me though. The designer made sense of it, but it took me about five tries to draw this rubbish.
Very crude sketch on printer paper headed ‘Family Emblems.’ On the left, labelled ‘Smith’, a five pointed star with hammer and tongs above. On the left, labelled ‘Mackem’, an anvil with hammer and tongs above, encircled in seven horseshoes. It would take worse spelling than I’m capable of to communicate how rubbish the drawing is. The same emblems rendered with neat professionalism atop a well-laid-out family tree.
February 8, 2026 at 10:19 PM
Reposted by Kit Whitfield - fantasy writer
inkybat.bsky.social
Neolithic Faerie Cauldron
February 8, 2026 at 7:38 PM