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diabolicalplots.com
SF/F/H magazine, Ignyte Award winning Submission Grinder tool for writers, Long List Anthology. https://ko-fi.com/diabolicalplots
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Posts 12 Comments 38

Sometimes I just hit my daily limit for Peopling and just cannot People any more until I get a full night sleep to reset. ... ... And some days that happens at 9am. grumblegrumble

submitted 32 minutes ago • 0 comments

Hawt take: Why ask ChatGPT anything when there are still Magic 8-balls? 🎱

submitted 6 hours ago • 1 comment

Yoda Stitch: dark twines of wood

submitted 18 hours ago • 1 comment

I'm BEGGING short fiction markets (of any size) to include their AI policy in their submission requirements. This brought to you by reading 5 straight that made no mention of a policy at all. Sad to say, but no mention means anything they publish would invite the shadow of AI-generation suspicions.

submitted 20 hours ago • 1 comment

Yes maam it would appear your son went out on the moors after claiming to have sighted the deadlights, and was claimed by the vengeful peat bogs. No maam we couldn’t retrieve him. The good news is he’s almost certainly in excellent physical condition and always will be. The bad news is he’s dead

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

LOL sometimes I swear half my experience with social media is seeing memes responding to memes responding to memes of something that I completely and utterly missed and I never ever find out what the heck everyone is meming about. just endless punchlines that are missing all context

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

Sidetopic on this, the reason that some editors may get away with this kind of thing is because there is an inherent power imbalance, especially when dealing with new writers who lack the experience to know the pitfalls. Editors (IMO) worth working with will NOT lean into this power imbalance.

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

I've definitely gotten rejections with an offer to edit my story for a fee. Those places quickly were added to my "Predatory" pile.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Yikes. I take a pretty firm line on this stuff: It is wrong to solicit money at any stage of the story submission process - even just subscriptions - because it gives the impression that one can pay to play. It’s abusive as hell whether intended that way or not.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

It's not uncommon for an editor to both have open calls for submissions for publication, and to offer paid editing services. This, in itself, is not a problem IMO, as long as there is a clear separation of concerns, but it becomes a problem when the editor crosses the streams.

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.

submitted 2 days ago • 558 comments

Heatwave in the UK. OK, I grew up in Italy, and when it is very hot and you have no air-conditioning, you do this - 1) Unless there's a good breeze, CLOSE all the windows and draw all the blinds and curtains until sunset. The outside air is hot, you do not want it inside with you. 2) DRINK WATER

submitted 2 days ago • 48 comments