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Reposted by Sofie Tholin

dominish_books @dominishbooks.bsky.social · 2d

Another month, another TBR, and for some reason I seem to be mostly reading sequels in October. Check out my plan here:
youtu.be/JRbY4kQvTX8
What are you planning to read?

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 4d

#SFFChat Day 4 - Snippet: Haunting.

A snippet from Summer Empress. A villainess makes her spooky entrance!

The creature Haakon had called his moon goddess descended into the oubliette on steps of whirling glass. Veils covered her masked face, the silks shifting over pearlescent metal. She looked like a dead thing, some poet's sweetheart risen from her grave to haunt opium dreams.

Reposted by Sofie Tholin

Spotlight Indie @spotlightindie.bsky.social · 4d

It's time for an epic giveaway! To be in with a chance of winning the complete Dragon Spirit's trilogy by LL MacRae, please comment below with your favourite fictional creature companion. The winner will be announced at our Indie Author Summer Party at 9pm on Sunday 5th Oct. #bookgiveaway

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 4d

Whiskers, Jhary-a-Conel's winged cat, from various Michael Moorcock books!

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 5d

Oh wow, After Work looks amazing! Not sure what it says about me, haha, but it sounds right up my street. A snoop-and-rifle game? Yes please! :)

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Reposted by Sofie Tholin

Sean T. Collins @seantcollins.com · 9d

The Deep Ones, a comic about sea monsters by me and @thorazos.bsky.social

Why We Fear the Ocean

There’s something down there…

medium.com

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Reposted by Sofie Tholin

Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 10d

Thanks very much to Tim for this lovely interview that really got me thinking pretty hard about my process, and why I do what I do. Check it out! :)

Tim Hardie @timhardieauthor.bsky.social · 10d

I feature Swedish sci-fi author @sofietholin.bsky.social in Author Focus this month. Her novel Iron Truth is one of the best books I've read this year, so it was really interesting to find out more about her, her influences and creative process.
www.timhardieauthor.co.uk/blog/author-...

Author Focus – SA Tholin — Tim Hardie

SA Tholin is the award-winning Swedish author of The Primaterre science-fiction series. I read the first book, Iron Truth , earlier this year and absolutely loved it, so I was delighted when Sofie ...

www.timhardieauthor.co.uk

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 10d

Thanks very much to Tim for this lovely interview that really got me thinking pretty hard about my process, and why I do what I do. Check it out! :)

Tim Hardie @timhardieauthor.bsky.social · 10d

I feature Swedish sci-fi author @sofietholin.bsky.social in Author Focus this month. Her novel Iron Truth is one of the best books I've read this year, so it was really interesting to find out more about her, her influences and creative process.
www.timhardieauthor.co.uk/blog/author-...

Author Focus – SA Tholin — Tim Hardie

SA Tholin is the award-winning Swedish author of The Primaterre science-fiction series. I read the first book, Iron Truth , earlier this year and absolutely loved it, so I was delighted when Sofie ...

www.timhardieauthor.co.uk

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Reposted by Sofie Tholin

jaen nighly || ichormancer @jnb.art · 13d

BOOK COVER ARTISTS
QRP with your book covers.

hand-lettered & hand-skulled

#BookCovers #HumanMade #NoAI

a black and white illustration for the cover of the game HELLPIERCERS. It features a decorative border of metal and gems with skeletons bearing spears. the title text is written in a stylized hand-lettered blackletter typeface. there are arcane sigils and floating geometric forms, as well as two veiled and haloed attendants flanking the composition below billowing clouds. one attendant is holding a hammer and the other, a sickle. an angel wing and demon wing cross below the title text, and at the base of the art, demonic hands and limbs reach upwards.

A color cover illustration of a vast abandoned valley flanked by craggy mountains and crumbling castles. a skeleton with a royal crown and cape lays on a rock in the foreground. The title text spells “Dead Reign” and is written in a black letter typeface with a dagger in the middle for the ‘i’ in ‘reign’. The lettering also implies the shape of a crown and sits on top of a skull in the top center of the cover.

$A color illustration of a planet with an angry face exploding from its middle. The words “10 MILLION HP PLANET” are bursting out of the planet in the center of the composition. Black fractal-like circular forms, sometimes referred to as Kirby Krackle, are drawn around the edges of the image. The limited color palette of yellow, orange, red, fuchsia, and blue, is applied as halftone dots.$

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Reposted by Sofie Tholin

Verity Holloway @verityholloway.bsky.social · 16d

The ebook of my short story collection, Cheer The Sick, is a mere £2.49 at the moment. That's a lot of ghastliness per penny. Possibly too much ghastliness for such a trifling sum, actually.

blackshuckbooks.co.uk/cheer-the-si...

On a background of crumpled vintage paper rests the book cover for Cheer The Sick, featuring a plague doctor dropping a bouquet of flowers. The tagline reads "What ails you?"

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 22d

Can't beat analog when it comes to editing, IMO...

...even though my printer's an old piece of junk and I write 1000 page first drafts, so it takes me a week to print it all, haha.

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 22d

First draft finished! Murder, mystery, mayhem - and one rather important Moment - in an asylum seeker camp on Phobos.

Now onto the edits...

A printed out page with so many notes, just... SO MANY NOTES, haha.

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 25d

Oh wow, that's a fantastic illustration, truly horrific in the best possible way! I love the Tegenraanta, too. Consille sounds like a really interesting world (I mean, not sure I'd like to *visit*, but I'd love to read about it, haha).

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Reposted by Sofie Tholin

Geology Johnson @geologyjohnson.bsky.social · 25d

We return to planet Consille where the horrifying Awns have eradicated (almost) all land based life. CW body horror for the next skeet. 1/n #SciFiSeptember #Writer #WorldBuilding

Digital painting of an Earthlike planet against a starfield. Half of the planet is in shadow.

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · 29d

Captain Flora Lark and the cataphract Sigrid Rokland, exploring an underwater cave system on a planet far more alien than they expected.

At the edge of a bridge that had no railings, for it had been designed for the coiling of sinewy bodies, Lark stared down into the source of the pale light. Her mind recoiled, but her feet stepped forward, because the abyss called to her, sang with the voice of water and pulled with the force of something greater still.
Rokland pulled her back from the edge. In the vastness of the city, even the cataphract appeared small. Behind them lay the tunnel, and how comforting those oppressive walls suddenly seemed; how lovely it would be to walk on a red carpet and hear their footfall bounce off old and crumbling, but so very normal, concrete. Ahead, the bridge cut an inky line through the twilight band between the cave dark and the light rising from the deep. The noise, the light, the terror – this was nothing like the cave where a young Lark had once lay dying, but she felt like that girl again. Her hand found Rokland's, their fingers interlacing tightly, and together they approached the edge again. It did not matter how small they were; forward was the only way.

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · Sep 8

Only on Google maps. :) I'd love to visit - besides the possibility of monster sightings, it looks beautiful. Did you go there for research?

Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · Sep 7

A snippet from my WIP (which is 99% complete! Yay!). Still a first draft in pretty rough shape, but as a little teaser, here's a snippet in which our characters are having a bad time in the Big Wet.

#WIPSnips

The fog turned from white to a diffuse orange, lit by enemy encampments along the shore. They skirted them as quietly as they could in their stolen boat, until they were as close to the towermen as it could take them. Back at Exning, the Galateans had drones in the air, spitting missiles like Catherine wheel fireworks. Jackson was grateful for the distraction. Better to focus on the action back there than the mud sucking at his greaves and the splashing, sighing, croaking, bubbling noises of the Big Wet.
The ground turned solid under their feet. The fog released its grasp on them, fading to a wispy mist. A dilapidated industrial area to the west, flatlands to the east, the mountain-peak skyline of the city at the horizon, and everywhere the lights of enemies glowed bright. Flashlights, searchlights, headlights, drone lights; the rumble of engines, the footfall of boots, the barking of dogs; there was nowhere to hide, not even for the towermen who came running across the industrial area, their prismatic armour's camouflage flashing off and on. They dragged two crates and one of their own – Haukes, minus one leg – across cracked concrete and collapsed chain-link fences, and hot on their heels a dozen infantry fighting vehicles came bursting through factory walls, a wolf pack of Galatean soldiers loping alongside them.
Jackson and Zimmi laid down covering fire, and Jackson had forgotten that sometimes it could be glorious like this, APF-redirected enemy fire bending around him as though he could will himself invincible, his own bullets finding their targets every time as his awareness flowed through the air with them, battling hostile countermeasures.
Then he heard the buzzing. Mosquitoes, he thought, but the buzzing grew louder, and with it a strange feeling.

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · Sep 7

#SciFiSeptember Day 7:

At a glance, I think people sometimes assume Iron Truth is all grimdark scifi and military action. It is, but it's also... this, haha. :)

$Given the choice of an elevator shaft and a perfectly good ladder; the cold, dark, fall-to-your-deathy option wasn't the one Joy would've picked. The flare looked distant enough to be a star and the drop long enough that she'd have time to think about her landing if she fell. She'd thought of it plenty already, a horror-reel of fracturing bone and rupturing skin playing in her mind. "I'm just saying," she complained to Hopewell, "Cato's one silver lining was the lack of heights. Oh sure, it's got tunnels and spiders and more lunatics than you could swing a cat at, but at least I rarely had to worry about plummeting to my death." "Cheer up," said Hopewell and tightened the straps of a harness around her waist. "One way or another, it'll all be over soon."$

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · Sep 6

Thank you! :)

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · Sep 6

Haha, yes - I'm forever spending days researching things that end up amounting to a single, and not necessarily important, sentence.

(That description of the foresail, though - absolutely beautiful!)

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Reposted by Sofie Tholin

E.M. Faulds / Beth @bethkesh.bsky.social · Sep 6

British writers who hate having to promote yerself: you'll know the cycle of suck well.
bibliotta.com/musings/the-...

The Cycle of Suck

Or, how writers talk themselves out of promoting their own work: UK writers' advice on how to get out of your head and get your book into the world.

bibliotta.com

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · Sep 6

Genuinely shook up at how that Top Ten Habits list describes me to a T!

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · Sep 5

Finally got a chance to listen to this and was treated to a Memphre mention! So consider me hooked :)

(My taste is very simple - even a crumb of sea/lake monster and I'm all in)

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Sofie Tholin @sofietholin.bsky.social · Sep 5

I love the word lanehunter! Exactly the kind of vibe I like in science fiction :)

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Steve Hugh Westenra @stevewestenra.bsky.social · Sep 4

Here is the exciting thing!!

Oliver reads the first little bit of my novella, The Barbarian at Dream's End aloud!

He did an absolutely fabulous job.

New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine @newedgeswordmag.bsky.social · Sep 4

🪐 🐛 Here's a sneak peek of the first chapter of the Second novella - and oh, that music...🕷️ ⚔️

The Barbarian at Dream's End : First Chapter

Just one of four excellent new Sword & Sorcery novellas - learn more here: https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/brackenbooks/new-edge-sword-sorcery-novellas-2025

youtu.be

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