#PennedPossibilities 932 — Share three facts about a favorite SC with us.

Night on Fire:

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#WordWeavers 2026.02.15 — Describe your MC’s eyes.

She's noticeably nearsighted, and it will affect her work when following people. Her eyesight is about 20/25. Most day angels have around 20/6, similar to an eagle's. Figuring out what people are carrying from rooftop height, or even whom they are from a block away can be challenging for her.

Since I write 1st person narrative, it will take another character to describe her eyes to me and so far I don't know even their color, let alone their shape or size.

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2026.02.15 — How big are your settings?

It could be an apartment where you could touch opposite walls, covered with photographs, with a hammock for a bed, or it could be an ancient south pole moon base illuminated by a sun always on the horizon as seen from a shadowed crater wall. I do claustrophobic. I do expansive. This short excerpt of an SF setting demonstrates an expansion of scope and scale. It'll make more sense if I tell you that these people (they are human despite wings) are nocturnal.

We rocketed out of the association our feathers still fragrant from our night sweat, neither walking through their rain room nor raiding the resident's cafeteria, only grabbing flasks of water and adjusting our wear as he pulled me by my hand outdoors onto the rooftop, to dive over the edge and soar above a boulevard. As the waking commenced across the city, early risers braved the furnace heat of what rapidly became yesterday, a cloudless sky over the brightly reflective domes and skyscrapers of uptown, now golden with long reddish shadows. The angelic took advantage of the late thermals to fly to work, and busses ran through the streets below us close enough to count the rivets as we flapped hard to find a good thermal over the furniture business district, where warehouse domes clustered, to spiral up, up, and up with dozens of other intercity commuters to a cooler altitude, before gliding east toward the reclaimed lands and leaving all wing traffic quickly behind. The westering sun painted banks of clouds that gathered in the east into wall of striped blue and orange, layers of massing cumulus and distant stratocumulus, with city-sized storm towers showing blue-tinted white far beyond. We weren't flying that far, though. Two leagues out, we began descending high over new forests and golden grasslands that barely hid lines of rubble from collapsed or fallen towers. At the start of the space age, I'd read, urban growth around Home City had stalled, retreated. The wilds worked to this day to reclaim streets and foundations, looking almost like a brown and tan plaid fabric below us, occasionally punctured by piles of rusty spikes that had been girders, all now discarded corroded junk.

I pointed; grey-white animals startled from cover, galloping, dust rising behind them. More beetle-sized than ant-sized at our altitude. "Heat Deer?"

"Pronghorn," he called back.

I squinted, sighed. "I know. Buy the flapping glasses."

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Looking for some new Great British sci-fi? First Among Equals is on the Nebula Reading List and on promotion at 99p until 18th Feb.
Grab yours now:

https://www.linktr.ee/marcuswhitnell
https://amzn.eu/d/08cSyg4U

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#PennedPossibilities 931 — In your MC’s opinion, what would be the worst way to die?

Bolt got herself forced to work for the mob because she was stupid. Pride, bad decisions, played by being naïve, framed for another's crime. She's tried not to be stupid since because getting killed doing something stupid would be the worst.

Her growing realization throughout the story is that everything she is doing now is stupid; she can't see how the mounting situation could end well.

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#WordWeavers 2026.02.14 — Who does your antagonist care about?

Valentine's Day Special! Pigeon the Pilferer (a day angel like Bolt, the MC) cares about other people last, and I think this is because he never really had anyone care about him. Doesn't know how. With no family—he was unwanted. He was raised where he was barely wanted, not wanted mostly because he never behaved. He fought against the faintest hint of disrespect, got busted noses, cuts, and lots of bruises because he was often the bulldog in the Doberman fight. Which meant, in high school, the scrawny boy visited the school nurse. Often. He liked that man, because the nurse cared for Pigeon, physically for his wounds, but also answering questions, being there to talk him out of planned ambushes, petty revenge, sometimes simply being a big brother to discuss boy things when the nurse offices would otherwise be empty between classes or during free periods. The man started being a school nurse when Pigeon started high school, but remained when pigeon (barely) graduated.

Pigeon has a crush on the guy.

And. Well… The dear boy, now 22, shadows the nurse around town. Okay, let's call it occasional stalking, always flying away the instant they might otherwise meet. Because. Pigeon got involved in gangs, later the mob. He roughs up people, he extorts coin, steals secrets, and in these ways has messed with one of the Bolt's newest (most innocent) friends. Things, so many bad things that Pigeon doesn't want to, can't admit to the one person he loves and knows couldn't love him, because nobody can, even his self.

The nurse is a side character in the WIP.

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If you're looking for a Valentine's Day movie, and your sweetheart is into weird stuff, then I totally recommend Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die. Come on, Wuthering Heights is so predictable! ;)

https://www.noahchinnbooks.com/2026/02/14/movie-review-good-luck-have-fun-dont-die/

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What if the most dangerous ability wasn't the one that created fire or bent gravity — but the one that could turn everything else off? 🤔

And what if the people in power had spent a generation ensuring no one with that ability survived?

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