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randypacker.bsky.social
Did you know "Novelist" is an official job title in Canada? Queer Enby SFWA swordfighting scifi/fantasy mountain village living blacksmith and occasional cartwheeler. https://boxwrestlefence.com/works/
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Posts 26 Comments 24

Lunch sketch.

submitted 1 day ago • 45 comments

Second fantastic espresso/americano (gotta find a new word for that) in two days. Turns out, the best beans I could buy resulted in only tolerable results. Roasting my own? Glorious. Rich, smooth, creamy-chocolate/caramel flavours. Dark roasts can fuck off and die.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

My newly roasted coffee came into rotation this morning. I think I nailed the roast profile, but not as described. Costa Rica Caturra, Molasses ferment. Should be fruity, but it's...rich with the aroma of fresh-hot-from-the-oven brownies, and tastes the same. Yum.

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Good bit of writing advice I saw today, along the lines of "if no one wants to beta/pre-read your book: the premise sucks." Painful truth, there. Always accounting that friends/followers may not be your market, but a good sign to maybe just get to work on the next one.

submitted 7 days ago • 2 comments

Old plotting method: Setting, character, goal - build arcs, break into acts and chapters. Write. New plotting method (zettelkasten-based): Every single tidbit of thought onto cards. Link cards via context. Review cards to see what thoughts have the most links/cards. Write from this new context.

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

Philosophy is an essential tool of swordplay. It's a method to help us understand how our perceptions can be flawed, and can provide us with tools to correct those flaws.

submitted 10 days ago • 1 comment

A thing I've learned repeatedly in martial arts, that's very applicable to things in the coming days. Trying to be smarter than the opponent is sometimes a dead end. Sometimes the smartest thing to do is just punch them in the face. Do the thing they think you are too smart to do.

submitted 13 days ago • 0 comments

watching Trudeau and he might be the first person to ever tell some Americans that their actions have consequences

submitted 25 days ago • 1 comment

you should probably buy my latest book before it's banned idk www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Su...

submitted 43 days ago • 1 comment

My debut novel: Anubis War, just got cut in the first round of the SPSFC competition. www.tarvolon.com/2025/01/14/t... No arguments on the review, and the noted weakness is one I've already worked to improve. The comment on the strength of the worldbuilding kinda made my day, though!

submitted 43 days ago • 1 comment

Doing a little math, after reading @taowong.bsky.social's year end post. If you start out writing just 3 words today, and tomorrow write 6, and keep up at that pace? By the year's end you will be writing about 1000 words/day. You will have written over 200k words for the year. 2 novels. Go.

submitted 56 days ago • 1 comment

Now this is a lovely deal. Get all the first books in the System Apocalypse and spin-off series, including mine, all in one package. Grab it while you can! www.amazon.ca/dp/B0DRPS4M24

submitted 56 days ago • 0 comments

R/Fantasy book sale. 600 books. For every 50 books downloaded, $1 gets donated to the Mary Cariola Children's Center. www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/ Tons of new and indie authors on there, so I'm going to ask: Any recommendations from that list?

submitted 62 days ago • 1 comment

Just asked the AI how to build a five year physical rehab plan for an aging martial artist in poor shape but with excellent proprioception and technical skills, but very poor motivation. #$%#@$%-ing thing told me I should start teaching again.

submitted 65 days ago • 0 comments

Yo! David R Packer, Queer enby swordfighter living in a remote mountain village. I somehow managed to write a LitRPG trilogy last year. No idea how that happened. WIP is a cyberpunk psionic maybe-love story, and edits on a post-apoc epic fantasy which is a sequel to the current WIP. Because fun.

submitted 69 days ago • 1 comment

One thing you will never think after reading a great book or listening to a great album or seeing a great piece of art is, “I’m really glad this person remained cautious while they were making this and guarded against being perceived as weird.”

submitted 82 days ago • 103 comments

I'm a smart guy. I know that. I also just had to use a calculator to figure out 11-4. Brains are cool.

submitted 77 days ago • 2 comments

Here's the thing: We need to change the marketing model for authors and their books, away from being commodities. Because this dipshit is probably right that this would sell. We need a platform that works better than the existing models at engaging readers and writers in the writing process.

submitted 77 days ago • 1 comment

Great article. Really articulates where I think genre fiction is going in it's next evolution, and very much where my writing is happiest. I want to write stories about the survivors. The MC that changes everything on their own bores me. It doesn't echo as a truthful story in my heart.

submitted 79 days ago • 0 comments

[mysterious circle of robed figures] JK Rowling: hello children Rowling: i'm back from my advissory role in the transs genocide Rowling: Obergruppenführer ssstarmer thought i had sssome real interessting new ideasss Rowling: well, real interessting old ideass actually Rowling: ssome real classsicss

submitted 79 days ago • 12 comments

It's not that the murder of a CEO was right, as much as it was inevitable. The checks and balances of law and government have failed. Our structures provide no terminal protection against exploitation by corporations, even to the point of death. This reaction is inevitable, and only beginning.

submitted 81 days ago • 0 comments

This is the time of year when I review what I did for the last 12 months, and then start to plan for the next 12 months. Gonna create some dreams and then crush them. Or maybe...maybe this will be the year I magically become super-productive writer?

submitted 83 days ago • 0 comments

in the 2010s Silicon Valley underwent explosive growth because they made useful things people wanted, then they ran out of new things to make and kept making their existing things worse and they're so confused about why everybody hates them

submitted 83 days ago • 2 comments

I thought writing a scene where the two main characters mutually discover they have telepathy would be fun. Then my writing hands remembered that one character was a survivor of CSA, and started to write out how he would realistically react to having someone access his thoughts. Oooof.

submitted 85 days ago • 1 comment

Bluesky has shown me other social media sites could take moderation more seriously, they just choose not to.

submitted 85 days ago • 19 comments

You may have seen this post circling talking about how important it is to tell creators when you appreciate what they do. The irony is it's MY post from Tumblr stolen by someone else. Please reskeet THIS post & NOT the stolen one bc we support creators making their own work on bluesky.

submitted 87 days ago • 46 comments