A.M. Tuomala
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amtuomala.bsky.social
A.M. Tuomala
@amtuomala.bsky.social
470 followers 160 following 2.3K posts
Author of fantasy novels about language nerds, dragonslayers, and roaming geologists. Pronouns are xie or zie/hir.

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/amtuomala
Website: https://amtuomala.com/
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amtuomala.bsky.social
A meme!
A meme image with text reading, Before the year ends... reply to this tweet and give your honest thoughts about me? The text is followed by a drawing of a wide-eyed, blushing emoji with an interrobang and anxiety rays by its head. The entire image is a bit pixelated.
December 30, 2025 at 5:41 PM
amtuomala.bsky.social
Something I've been wondering for a while--which of these four looks most like your first drafts?

A - Bare scene outline
B - More detailed scene outline with placeholders
C - Sketchy prose, some placeholders
D - Relatively polished prose
A - [SCENE of CLIMBING TO THE BAD GUY’S LAIR ON TOP OF AN OBSIDIAN MOUNTAIN] B - Katri & co are climbign the mountain to the bad guy’s lair but realize they have to turn back because it’s too dangreous to keep gonig. Katri is BIG MAD. [MMC NAME] is an asshole and she tells him to kick rocks. C - Katri reached up again, groping along the side of the mountain, but she couldn’t find a hadnhold. The Dark Lord’s fortress couldn’t be reached by climbing. “There’s no way up!” she shouted down. “Not unless you’re a bird!” “I told you we should never have come here,” Rodith growled. “Are you even sure we can get down?” “[TK ACTUALLY GOOD RESPONSE],” said Katri, determined and heavy-hearted. D - Katri’s handhold shattered, and she muffled a cry as volcanic glass bit through the palm of her glove. As she clung to the sheer obsidian cliff, all of her weight held poised between her off-hand and a slick toehold, she groped fruitlessly for any ledge or protrusion that might bear her. Blood trickled down her wrist, hot against the altitude’s chill. She fought not to look down. Instead, Katri craned her neck, gazing up at the expanse of featureless glass above her. Behind the Dark Lord’s fortress, the clouds roiled with the promise of storms. Her heart sank. Fury and despair filled her—they’d come so close, only to fail no more than a stone’s throw from their goal. They had to turn back before the storm began, or they’d have no hope of surviving. “Turn back,” she called down. “We’ll find another way.” “This was a fool’s errand from the start,” growled Rodith. Blood snaked down to Katri’s elbow as she lowered herself to the last handhold. “Then you shouldn’t have followed the fool.”
December 29, 2025 at 2:00 PM
amtuomala.bsky.social
If you are unfamiliar with The Map and the Territory, it's my post-apocalyptic picaresque novel about a cartographer and a wizard trying to get home in a shattered world haunted by gods and opportunists.

Amazon: www.amazon.com/Map-Territor...

Other Purchase links: bsky.app/profile/amtu...
The cover of the book The Map and the Territory, which depicts two people standing back to back. One of them is a tall Black man in elaborate wizardly robes, and the other is a short woman with brown skin who wears practical clothes for adventuring.
December 10, 2025 at 4:21 AM
amtuomala.bsky.social
The cats are entrenched
Two cats lounge together on a comfy chair. One cat, smaller and black and white, is curled up and facing away from the viewer. The other, a big black cat, looks up at the viewer with weary recrimination in his enormous eyes. Behind them, the top edge of a heating vent can be seen.
December 9, 2025 at 6:47 PM
amtuomala.bsky.social
Anyway, if you were wondering how the fountain pen journey is going ...
Photo of a notebook, on which is written: Anyway, the Pilot Preppy with Diamine Aurora Borealis ink seems to work well for me. =)
November 17, 2025 at 12:02 AM
amtuomala.bsky.social
The first snows of winter are upon us, and in anticipation of many cozy soups, I have assembled ... the Bean Hoard.
A photograph of a pantry cabinet that is full of glass jars of various beans. (There is also a canister of cocoa powder, as well as some containers of nuts, seeds, and tea.)
November 11, 2025 at 3:31 PM
amtuomala.bsky.social
It is extremely hard to write today
A photograph of a black cat with wide eyes and alert ears, lying on a desk and resting his chin on a white person's wrist.
November 2, 2025 at 3:10 AM
amtuomala.bsky.social
Went to a local art gallery with my wife, and not only did they have an incredible exhibit including two of Yayoi Kusama's infinity rooms, they also had an entire room of Akseli Gallen-Kallela's landscape paintings! Seeing his work in person has been a longtime dream of mine.
A photograph of Yayoi Kusama's art piece Infinity Mirrored Room--My Heart is Dancing into the Universe. In a dark room with mirrored walls, ceiling, and floors, there hangs an array of black spherical paper lanterns with polka-dot cutouts. The lanterns shift in hue, showing an eerie vista of vivid pinks, blues, purples, oranges, and spring greens, infinitely mirrored. A photograph of Akseli Gallen-Kallela's painting Mäntykoski Waterfall. A whitewater cascade emerges from a crevice in the craggy rock, pouring into the dark water below. Five thin golden lines bisect the painting, and it includes a wooden frame in what appears to be a folk art style with simple floral motifs.
October 28, 2025 at 12:00 AM
amtuomala.bsky.social
Had some leftover eggplant, so I oven-roasted it with onions and peppers and glazed it with miso, soy sauce, ginger, and honey~
A photograph of a plate of food: eggplants, red onions, and cherry peppers roasted brown, glazed with a soy, miso, ginger, and honey sauce. The diner has clearly already begun eating before remembering to take a photo.
September 2, 2025 at 11:24 PM
amtuomala.bsky.social
Without downloading anything new, where are you mentally?
A screenshot from the play The Bacchae. The text reads, Enter Dionysos. Dionysos: Okay ladies, up we get, no more crouching, no more sobbing.
August 26, 2025 at 12:06 AM
amtuomala.bsky.social
I have given my cat A Perch (a pillow on top of a utility shelf) so that he can watch the birds through the window, and it is his new favorite place to be
A black cat curled comfortably on a pillow beside a window; the great outdoors can be seen beyond, featuring a neighbor's fence, a tall bunch of yellow flowers, and a tree. No birds are visible ... yet. But he is vigilant. Ever vigilant.
August 13, 2025 at 3:09 PM
amtuomala.bsky.social
The cats are flopped together in Mutual Despair
Two cats lying together on a coffee table--one smaller and black and white, the other larger and all black. Two cats lying together on a coffee table, back to back, heads together--one smaller and black and white, the other larger and all black.
August 10, 2025 at 3:51 PM
amtuomala.bsky.social
Little shrimp ...
A photograph of a black and white cat on a sofa, nestled between two patterned throw pillows. Her body is curled in a shrimp-like pose.
August 5, 2025 at 9:50 PM
amtuomala.bsky.social
All my best wishes, and two of my best cats. <3
Two cats, one all black, one black and white. They are curled up together on a purple couch, surrounded by throw pillows.
July 28, 2025 at 11:19 PM
amtuomala.bsky.social
Reading Ursula K. Le Guin's The Farthest Shore--and it is such an important story for living in a time of despair, when all of the arts of the world feel meaningless and cruelty seems to rise like a wave. In this book's villain, I see shades of our own world's villains:
A passage from The Farthest Shore that reads, You exist: without name, without form. You cannot see the light of day; you cannot see the dark. You sold the green earth and the sun and stars to save yourself. But you have no self. All that which you sold, that is yourself. You have given everything for nothing. And so now you seek to draw the world to you, all that light and life you lost, to fill up your nothingness. But it cannot be filled. Not all the songs of the earth, not all the stars of heaven, could fill your emptiness.
July 23, 2025 at 2:00 AM
amtuomala.bsky.social
If you see this, post a shark that isn't from Jaws.
A photograph of a statue on Buffalo's Canalside waterfront. The statue depicts a little girl in a short-sleeved, short-skirted bright blue dress with a red sash; she wears ruby-red slippers, like Dorothy in Oz. She sits on sculpted grey rocks with her feet crossed at the ankles and her hands folded in her lap. Oh, and her head is a giant toothy shark head.
July 10, 2025 at 11:36 PM
amtuomala.bsky.social
Only three and a half days to get 14 books for $25! And this is a GREAT bundle, stacked with luminaries like Melissa Scott, Bogi Takács, Ginn Hale, Brent Lambert, a We're Here anthology, and more. (Also, I am here.) If any of these books are on your wishlist, buy this bundle! storybundle.com/pride
All the books which are in the Pride Storybundle: The Map and the Territory by A.M. Tuomala, Be the Sea by Clara Ward, Fallen by Melissa Scott, A Necessary Chaos by Brent Lambert, Point of Dreams by Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett, Fairs' Point by Melissa Scott, So You Want to be A Robot by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor, Price of a Thousand Blessings by Ginn Hale, Reforged by Seth Haddon, These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart by Izzy Wasserstein, Welcome to Boy.Net by Lyda Morehouse, Power to Yield and Other Stories by Bogi Takács
June 30, 2025 at 5:10 PM
amtuomala.bsky.social
Finished a quilt for a dear friend. This is 100% hand-stitched--no machine-sewing at all--and I hope that my friend knows that every single stitch means, "I love you."
A photograph of a quilt comprised of mostly greenish-blue hexagons in fabrics of various patterns.
June 15, 2025 at 2:54 PM
amtuomala.bsky.social
The Map and the Territory is available in the Pride Storybundle--14 books for only $25! Also includes such luminous works as Point of Dreams (Scott and Barnett), A Necessary Chaos (Lambert), We're Here - The Best Queer Speculative Fiction 2023, and Power to Yield (Takács)! storybundle.com/pride
The cover of the book The Map and the Territory, which depicts two people standing back to back. One of them is a tall Black man in elaborate wizardly robes, and the other is a short woman with brown skin who wears practical clothes for adventuring.
June 5, 2025 at 11:05 AM
amtuomala.bsky.social
Beans~
A photograph of four small pots of seedling beans, in varying states of robustness.
June 4, 2025 at 4:34 PM
amtuomala.bsky.social
First Sprout brought friends! 🌱
Image of a planter filled with rough dirt and about a dozen seedlings crowding to break free.
May 13, 2025 at 3:42 PM
amtuomala.bsky.social
This story is a locked-room murder mystery about a rainbow of wizards desperately pretending that things might still be normal under a nascent fascist regime, even as they're picked off one by one.

I don't Spotify, so here it is: one of the last surviving Windows Media Player playlists.
A playlist created in Windows Media Player that contains the following songs: Everybody Wants to Rule the World (cover) - Lorde Lilith - Halsey and SUGA Bones - Imagine Dragons Metal - Second Person Until it Sleeps (Live with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra) - Metallica The Hollow - A Perfect Circle Rolling in the Deep (cover) - Boyce Avenue Spectrum - Florence and the Machine Feanor (Herr des Lichts) - Oonagh Sweet Dreams - Eurythmics Never Enough - Epica Wood - Second Person Every Me Every You - Placebo Rainbow in the Dark - DIO Wicked Game (cover) - HIM To Each His Storm - Rome Dangerous (feat. Linea) - Two Steps from Hell Speak in Tongues - machineheart Havoc in Heaven - Jesca Hoop
April 17, 2025 at 1:28 PM
amtuomala.bsky.social
I'd particularly recommend reading about the history of American immigration. Here's what's on my bookshelf! Many of these books are in conversation with each other (especially The Uprooted and The Transplanted), and they're certainly not the last word on immigrant experiences. But a starting place!
A stack of books: Inventing Irish America by Timothy J. Meagher, Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco by Judy Yung, Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration by Richard Alba and Victor Nee, Authors of Their Lives by David A. Gerber, The Uprooted by Oscar Handlin, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America by Florian Znaniecki and W.I. Thomas, The Transplanted by John Bodnar, Polish Immigrants and Industrial Chicago by Dominic A. Pacyga, and At America's Gates: Chinese Immigration During the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943 by Erika Lee.
April 11, 2025 at 9:44 PM
amtuomala.bsky.social
My cat thinks that a quilting hoop makes a catbed
A picture of a black cat curled adorably in a quilting hoop (a device used to keep the layers of the quilt together while it's being quilted). The quilt caught in the hoop is primarily composed of blue-green hexagons.
April 10, 2025 at 11:23 PM
amtuomala.bsky.social
Just for you, a picture of my new cowriter~
A black cat napping cozily on a white person's arm in front of a computer.
March 28, 2025 at 1:14 PM