C.C. Finlay
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ccfinlay.bsky.social
C.C. Finlay
@ccfinlay.bsky.social
3.7K followers 720 following 930 posts
writer, editor, teacher | part of the great Twitter diaspora
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ccfinlay.bsky.social
I was still in bed
when Monday Morning said
"Wake up, sleepyhead."
November 3, 2025 at 12:45 PM
ccfinlay.bsky.social
New story day! "The Matador and the Labyrinth" is up at Diabolical Plots. Borges meets Hemingway. www.diabolicalplots.com/dp-fiction-1...

The image is from a kylix drinking cup, c. 515 BC. The inscription around the edge reads "The boy is beautiful."
The image of a black mintoaur crouches in the center of an rust-orange circular cup in a kylix tondo from c. 515 BC. The inscription around the edge reads "The boy is beautiful." Courtesy of Marie-Lan Nguyen and wikimedia. Link: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tondo_Minotaur_London_E4_MAN.jpg
March 4, 2025 at 4:33 PM
ccfinlay.bsky.social
Deer o'clock. AGAIN.
A photograph taken through a nine-pane window in a white frame. Outside, about ten feet away, on the other side an a narrow patio, sit three grown-ass deer like they're on a freaking couch watching tv. The one in the middle has her head turned to look at the camera, as if to say, "Hello! Be polite and mind your own business!"
February 5, 2025 at 9:39 PM
ccfinlay.bsky.social
Due to extreme cold, we experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly of a water pipe and now have several inches of standing water in our basement and no running water at all while we wait for the plumber.

But here's a picture of Agatha, an absolute knockout of a cat who is visiting us temporarily.
An absolutely gorgeous female cat with light brown stripes and a face that is vaguely like an Abyssinian. She is standing on a bed with a white quilt and white fabric headboard, placed against a peach colored wall. Her face is turned toward the camera, and the window behind, and panes of bright sunlight drape across her body. Her golden eyes gaze into the distance, her expression regal and mysterious. You know, normal cat stuff.
January 23, 2025 at 5:42 PM
ccfinlay.bsky.social
It snowed yesterday. This is what our side yard looks like today. Those are all animal tracks. It's like we're a superhighway for wildlife and stray cats!
Trees cast long shadows over fresh white snow criss-crossed by hundreds of animal tracks.
January 15, 2025 at 9:44 PM
ccfinlay.bsky.social
A tiny buck ghosting through our front yard at 2am.
Picture taken from inside a dark house through an old paneled window. A single street light outside makes the snow shine bright across the curving driveway that cradles the front yard. Centered in the window is a small deer, antlers visible only as blurs. The streetlight casts the buck's elongated shadow across the snow.
January 10, 2025 at 3:16 PM
ccfinlay.bsky.social
Here I am in New Mexico last week, talking to the next generation of spec fic novelists at @catrambo.bsky.social's Wayward Wormhole workshop.

Photo by Robert Chang.
A man with a big white beard and long white hair, sits at a kitchen table, clinging to a mug of hot coffee with both hands like it's the last headboard from the Titanic. Light pours in through the glass doors behind him, creating a sorta halo of soft evil around his head. How do we know it is evil? We don't, but it pays to be careful.
November 27, 2024 at 4:54 PM
ccfinlay.bsky.social
The last few raspberries in October feel like a blessing. The walnuts feel like an effing chore.
a close-up picture of a couple bright red raspberries on a stem in October, with a brick house in the background a handful of bright red raspberries in October a blue 5-gallon bucket full of green-shelled walnuts sitting in some brown grass littered with lots of other walnuts a red wheelbarrow full of green-shelled walnuts sitting next to a blue 5-gallon bucket also full of walnuts
October 11, 2024 at 11:10 PM
ccfinlay.bsky.social
These haunted clowns tried to follow us home from the antique store yesterday. Fortunately, they were only two feet tall so we outran them.
HAUNTED FUCKING CLOWNS
September 14, 2024 at 3:41 PM
ccfinlay.bsky.social
Pink ladies in the house!

Rae invited them inside last night, but there's still a whole mob outside in the yard. They smell pretty amazing.
A close-up shot of about two dozen freshly cut pink lady flower stems in a glass vase. A photo of a foyer with a glass vase full of pink lady flowers in a marble niche next to a small painting of a town in Nova Scotia hanging on the wall.
July 28, 2024 at 6:02 PM
ccfinlay.bsky.social
While I was mowing the yard this afternoon, I had a visit from the City Lawn Inspector.
a young make deer with a mouthful of clover stands in a slightly overgrown backyard staring at the photographer with an attitude like "what are you doing in MY yard, buster"
July 6, 2024 at 11:06 PM
ccfinlay.bsky.social
So this is 60! I celebrated by staying up until 7am to reread one of my favorite Robin Hobb books. Now, I'm haunting Kindle waiting for the new Bujold Penric novella to drop.

While I have your attention: There are open spots in my editing calendar for July and August...

1/2
A 60-year-old Caucasian man with wavy gray hair down past his shoulders, standing in a brightly lit room in from of bookcases filled mainly with genre books. He looks kinda smug, for a 60-year-old dude. Not sure what that's about.
July 1, 2024 at 4:53 PM
ccfinlay.bsky.social
Jacob Lawrence, The Legend of John Brown.

I remember seeing it right around the same time I was reading W.E.B. DuBois's biography of Brown, so that probably heightened my appreciation.
June 9, 2024 at 10:01 PM
ccfinlay.bsky.social
Grabbed the season's first raspberries off the bush today. The wild strawberries we dug up from the yard and planted around the patio as an evergreen border plant are also doing gangbusters.
A hand full of ripe raspberries held in front of a bush full of soon-to-be-ripe raspberries planted beside an old brick house with big white doors full of windows. A mound of bright green wild strawberry foliage covered with tiny red berries. A strip of bright green wild strawberry foliage covered with tiny red berries between a patio and a house.
June 5, 2024 at 2:31 PM
ccfinlay.bsky.social
When we say we have a herd of deer living in our yard, it's because we look out the window and see THIS.

(Please ignore the weedy patio, please and thank you.)
Looking out from the window of a house, across a patio, and there are six white-tailed deer grazing in the narrow yard, with a brick house just behind them.
April 2, 2024 at 9:52 PM
ccfinlay.bsky.social
I keep getting these ads, and to me it all sounds something like "Do you wish sex was over in just two minutes? Wouldn't you rather swallow a pill than eat a bowl of ice cream? Have you ever wanted to visit a whole country in just ten minutes?"

Jfc.
April 1, 2024 at 10:45 PM
ccfinlay.bsky.social
Weird. I checked the list of Duolingo languages and can't find "Beast" anywhere. But here we are.
March 30, 2024 at 1:09 PM
ccfinlay.bsky.social
The views from the solarium (where I sip my first cup of coffee) and my desk (where I go to work) this morning.

Someone did not get the memo about spring!
Interior, a bay of windows is filled with plants. Outside the glass, a dusting of snow covers the ground, the trees, all the bushes, and the spring flowers that were trying to come up. Interior, looking through tall windows, over the tops of boxwoods, covered with snow, to a large lawn covered with a dusting of snow, across the street to houses where the rooftops are white with snow. It's springtime, people!
March 23, 2024 at 12:32 PM
ccfinlay.bsky.social
I spied Sidequest spying on me during my morning walk. First time I've seen her in a couple weeks, and, once again, in a whole new part of the nature preserve.
March 21, 2024 at 5:09 PM
ccfinlay.bsky.social
This morning's walk was delayed until late this afternoon. The air was vast and clear, the sun icy bright.

our shadows stretch
over a fast flowing river
- the sunset comes soon
Vast, clear sky. Sun icy bright. A fast-flowing river, with winter trees on the far bank The author's shadow barely reaches off the bank and across the rocks to lie across the water.
February 29, 2024 at 9:31 PM
ccfinlay.bsky.social
Spotted Sidequest in a new part of the Nature Preserve and from a very great distance on my walk this morning. She ran off into a thicket before I could get close.

I called her "a void" but she must have thought I said "avoid!"
A muddy path with patches of grass in a nature preserve under a pale blue sky. A thicket of winter bare shrubs on one side, and naked trees in the rear. Way down the path, so small as to be a detail-less void, is the silhouette of a tiny black cat.
February 26, 2024 at 5:26 PM
ccfinlay.bsky.social
QT with a little you

*bonus sister and a pair of cousins
February 22, 2024 at 4:29 AM
ccfinlay.bsky.social
February 21, 2024 at 5:18 PM
ccfinlay.bsky.social
I was looking for an author picture to send someone for a thing I'm doing that's going to be announced soon, and I found these old pictures: me at 21, me nineteen years later at 40 (with Jim Kelly), and me nineteen years later again at 59.

Live comes at you slowly, then suddenly.
A black and white photo of the author as a grinning, feckless 21-year-old. Wearing tie and jacket and khakis, arms crossed, leaning up against a brick wall. A black and white photo of the author at 40, sitting next to Jim Kelly, and looking remarkably like Alan Tudyk. He's sitting Ryker style, arms crossed over the back of the chair. Still pretty feckless tbh. The author in a recent photo, bearded, with long white hair hanging down over his face and shoulders. He peers through this mess over the top of his glasses. Full of feck.
February 7, 2024 at 5:42 PM
ccfinlay.bsky.social
Yes, there is a cat in this picture. It's Sidequest, but maybe I should call her Waldo.
A brown winter thicket full of fallen branches, dead leaves, trees, and sticks and shadows. One of the shadows is a black cat.
February 1, 2024 at 6:51 PM