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Samantha Rich

@srich-writer.bsky.social

111 followers 127 following 352 posts

Speculative fiction writer, Midwesterner, fond of space opera, high fantasy, and slipstream.
srichfiction.wordpress.com/my-work/
The Tiger Line (2026), 12 Willows Press


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Samantha Rich's avatar Samantha Rich @srich-writer.bsky.social
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There's a bookseller in the stalls, and as the wet seeps into the books they become something entirely new. Fungal blooms carry ink and smell like paper, the ideas of the original texts changing as they rot and grow. Cut a mushroom, put it under your tongue. Taste literature beyond words.

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Samantha Rich's avatar Samantha Rich @srich-writer.bsky.social
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Today I got words down on two projects and sent one of those hustle emails I avoided yesterday. Little victories! I also formatted a weird little hybrid chapbook I wrote a while ago that's proven unsaleable; might put it up on KoFi as a PDF for 99 cents or something. More to come on that!

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Samantha Rich's avatar Samantha Rich @srich-writer.bsky.social
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Lovely notes on translating my Tiny Tales post from yesterday into Hebrew! So flattered that @lydiamoed.bsky.social was inspired to translate this.

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Samantha Rich's avatar Samantha Rich @srich-writer.bsky.social
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Oh wow, thank you so much! Reading through your thread and seeing the thought you put into it was wonderful. I'm glad my post inspired you!

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Samantha Rich's avatar Samantha Rich @srich-writer.bsky.social
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There's a bookseller in the stalls, and as the wet seeps into the books they become something entirely new. Fungal blooms carry ink and smell like paper, the ideas of the original texts changing as they rot and grow. Cut a mushroom, put it under your tongue. Taste literature beyond words.

0 replies 2 reposts 8 likes

Samantha Rich's avatar Samantha Rich @srich-writer.bsky.social
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I meant to do some hustle today on here, look for opportunities, all that, but instead I've sent out a microfic and contributed to a ko-fi and I've got nothing else. Maybe tomorrow. Oh I need to get back on that books that influenced me meme but I might not have that in me tonight either. ❤️ ❤️

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Samantha Rich's avatar Samantha Rich @srich-writer.bsky.social
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May I ask where the submissions page is? I didn't see it on Solaris' website, though I might have overlooked it!

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Zamira Rahim's avatar Zamira Rahim @zamirarahim.bsky.social
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'Sometimes things don't go, after all, from bad to worse' Thinking a lot about this poem today.

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Samantha Rich's avatar Samantha Rich @srich-writer.bsky.social
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The last few days writing has felt like squeezing water out of a stone but we persevere! Just put in an inquiry for commissioning art of one of my characters as a cheer-up, we'll see how that goes. Hope you're all having a nice Friday.

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Samantha Rich's avatar Samantha Rich @srich-writer.bsky.social
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The challenge is to choose 20 books that greatly influenced you. One book per day, for 20 days. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. Day 9: Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain

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Laura Helmuth's avatar Laura Helmuth @laurahelmuth.bsky.social
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Scribes in ancient Egypt wrote while sitting down for extended periods. A new analysis of their skeletons found they probably had pain in the knees, fingers, thumb, ankles, shoulders, lower jaw, right collarbone, neck and back. Perhaps you can relate. 🧪 www.scientificamerican.com/article/anci...

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Samantha Rich's avatar Samantha Rich @srich-writer.bsky.social
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The challenge is to choose 20 books that greatly influenced you. One book per day, for 20 days. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. Day 8: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King

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Samantha Rich's avatar Samantha Rich @srich-writer.bsky.social
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The challenge is to choose 20 books that greatly influenced you. One book per day, for 20 days. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. Day 7: The Forsyte Saga, John Galsworthy

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Samantha Rich's avatar Samantha Rich @srich-writer.bsky.social
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I'm also taking note of your commissions for my next paycheck! 😀

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Samantha Rich's avatar Samantha Rich @srich-writer.bsky.social
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These are amazing. Do you sell prints anywhere?

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Samantha Rich's avatar Samantha Rich @srich-writer.bsky.social
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Dispatches from today's words on the epic - sometimes it's HARD to just mark something as "come back and fix this later." I REALLY wanted to stop and rip it all up and research the right answer and lose an hour on hacking away at a single sentence but instead I tagged it and moved on. Witness me.

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Premee Mohamed's avatar Premee Mohamed @premeemohamed.com
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This is true, and if you also have someone bossy-looking in a different-coloured hard hat with a clipboard, you can get away with literally ANYTHING. e.g. You and three other people have white hard hats, put a guy in a blue one. You all become invisible.

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Samantha Rich's avatar Samantha Rich @srich-writer.bsky.social
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Hi, Premee, is there any plan for a US release currently or should I go ahead and order from the UK?

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Samantha Rich's avatar Samantha Rich @srich-writer.bsky.social
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I think it was in my dad's collection from when he was a teenager? I took it off the shelf when I was a kid and really loved it.

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Samantha Rich's avatar Samantha Rich @srich-writer.bsky.social
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The challenge is to choose 20 books that greatly influenced you. One book per day, for 20 days. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. Day 6: I’ll Trade You an Elk (Charles A. Goodrum)

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Samantha Rich's avatar Samantha Rich @srich-writer.bsky.social
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Finished a draft of the sword and sorcery novelette! Not bad for a Friday. 😊 Now to let it sit for a bit and then go at it with the revision scalpel.

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Samantha Rich's avatar Samantha Rich @srich-writer.bsky.social
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the "TK" placeholder is also great for this! (the idea being that "tk" doesn't appear as a letter combination in many words in English, so you can search TK in the document and find your placeholders.)

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Samantha Rich's avatar Samantha Rich @srich-writer.bsky.social
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Empty Theatre, Jac Jemk (Sisi and Ludwig II, melting down in the Empire)

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Samantha Rich's avatar Samantha Rich @srich-writer.bsky.social
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Dayspring, Anthony Oliveira (Jesus and John the Evangelist Fucked Nasty, beautiful prose) Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York, Ross Perlin (language preservation, individual and cultural stories)

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Samantha Rich's avatar Samantha Rich @srich-writer.bsky.social
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I hear we're recommending books! Recent reads I marked as "highly recommended" in my spreadsheet: Brickmakers, Selva Almada (Rural Argentina, violence and masculinity, sins of the father) From the Belly, Emmett Nahil (Maritime horror, body horror, powerful things in the deep)

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Samantha Rich's avatar Samantha Rich @srich-writer.bsky.social
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The challenge is to choose 20 books that greatly influenced you. One book per day, for 20 days. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. Day Five: The Books of Jacob, Olga Tokarczuk

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Samantha Rich's avatar Samantha Rich @srich-writer.bsky.social
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If you get really in a groove and are pouring out words and realize you've been switching tense paragraph to paragraph--just keep going. You can fix it later. Hitting the brakes to clean up your tenses is very likely to derail your creative brain entirely.

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Samantha Rich's avatar Samantha Rich @srich-writer.bsky.social
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The challenge is to choose 20 books that greatly influenced you. One book per day, for 20 days. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. Day 4: Winds of Fate, Mercedes Lackey

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Samantha Rich's avatar Samantha Rich @srich-writer.bsky.social
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It can be hard to demonstrate aromanticism without bringing everything to a screeching halt so the character can deliver a speech about how they experience relationships. But I do love slipping in characters that I know are aro quietly, and hope that a few readers will pick up what I'm putting down.

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Samantha Rich's avatar Samantha Rich @srich-writer.bsky.social
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Sentient crystals, complexity growing with each facet that forms. We don't understand how they communicate--not yet--but we can see that they build structures to divert water and minerals, they make structures to defend themselves from wind and sandstorms, and they sing sing sing under the moon.

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Samantha Rich's avatar Samantha Rich @srich-writer.bsky.social
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The challenge is to choose 20 books that greatly influenced you. One book per day, for 20 days. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. Day 3: The Cage, SM Stirling and Shirley Meier

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Samantha Rich's avatar Samantha Rich @srich-writer.bsky.social
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Working with Inner Worlds is great, I recommend it!

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Samantha Rich's avatar Samantha Rich @srich-writer.bsky.social
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The challenge is to choose 20 books that greatly influenced you. One book per day, for 20 days. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. Day 2: Little Women, Louisa May Alcott

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Samantha Rich's avatar Samantha Rich @srich-writer.bsky.social
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My general thought is that, well, a bunch of novelettes can be put together into a novella or novel-lengrh collection, right? If all else fails.

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Samantha Rich's avatar Samantha Rich @srich-writer.bsky.social
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Got some coffee shop words done on the sword and sorcery story. Seems like it wants to be a novelette, just to be completely unsaleable. 😂 But I do love it, I love this character. (Reminder you'll get to meet her in @newedgeswordmag.bsky.social first!) And I'm having fun writing again.

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Samantha Rich's avatar Samantha Rich @srich-writer.bsky.social
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The challenge is to choose 20 books that greatly influenced you. One book per day, for 20 days. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. Day 1: Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton

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Bert’s Books's avatar Bert’s Books @bertsbooks.bsky.social
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Will you be adding to your pile of unread books today? - Michael

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Samantha Rich's avatar Samantha Rich @srich-writer.bsky.social
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Barrelhouse conference! I've been once and desperately want to go again! Hopefully the scheduling will work out for this fall. :D Recommended!

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Samantha Rich's avatar Samantha Rich @srich-writer.bsky.social
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I mostly* read litfic and mostly write specfic, and fusions of the two, so whenever this debate goes around about one of them being more "real" than the other I wonder if I somehow missed a memo or am an alien or something. * I have not actually crunched the numbers, this is just a feeling.

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