Stephen Cox Author

@stephenwhq
777 Followers
596 Following
5.1K Posts

Warm intelligent accessible #SFF
THE CROOKED MEDIUM's GUIDE TO MURDER - spooky, sapphic, Victorian - sequel coming.

Our Child of the Stars/Our Child of Two Worlds.
https://stephencox.co.uk/books/upcoming/

#Free #fiction on website and smart #newsletter.
Services to help creatives be interesting

Bi, parent, humane, "writes beautifully" I'm told. UK/the world

Genial bearded guy. Not genial about AI - make techbros pay for stealing

Website/Bloghttps://stephencox.co.uk
Newsletter signuphttps://substack.com/@stephencox
Buy links The Crooked Mediumhttps://stephencox.co.uk/books/upcoming/
All the linkshttps://linktr.ee/stephencoxauthor

@stephenwhq @foone @cstross

"Oh, old stranger-friend, you look confused to be hailed as hero. In two years since it will have make more sense. Then you shall have met us for the second-third time will have tell us thow you will have was gone to the future where you twice-will be'd meet the Space Princess-to-be Iridia and with her help shall-has-done perfected your time-machine and foughting the Empire of Woe, broughed joy to the time-stream and much despair to English departments everywhere."

#WritersCoffeeClub 4/4: Do you switch between past and present tense? How do you make it work?

Present can create immediacy. The various pasts are a reliable way of storytelling. In Our Child of the Stars I wrote Cory the alien boy in third present so you got his bubbling enthusiasm and his deep fear. In the second book I wrote the same style but in third past and noone noticed. which I thought was interesting.
#amwriting #writingcommunity #writing #books

"I had sex with a piglet I stole. People *must* accept that this is the future of interpersonal relationships... Right?"

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/02/artificial-intelligence-writers-powerful-language?CMP=share_btn_url

I wrote a novel using AI. Writers must accept artificial intelligence – but we are as valuable as ever

Mastery of banal style is losing its usefulness – but language is more powerful than ever. It’s up to the writer to do what machines can’t

The Guardian
Happy #Passover to my fellow Jews and to everyone everywhere who believes in human liberation.
@floofpaldi I just wanted to express my thanks for your continued curation of PennedPossibilities for authors on mastodon. I really appreciate your commitment to keeping this going. Thank you!

#WritersCoffeeClub 1 April: What arrangement of plots do you have? No plot? Only one? A main plot and a side plot? Something else?

Typical plot has
external focused plot (save the child, solve the mystery)
a romantic or relationship plot which directly impacts or indeed, incites the above
other arcs
which work together

#WordWeavers Apr 1 - Your opinion on April Fool's Day & do you incorporate the day into your work?

It's mentioned in every chapter of every book I ever wrote.

Just to reiterate, because my old account got banned.

When the president gives the order to deploy nukes, that decision goes through a chain of command until it reaches the person who actually deploys it.

Each person in the chain of command has the power to say “No.” and just like that, none of the people under them in the chain of command can deploy nukes.

If we are talking about a nuke that deploys from a missile silo, there are two people at the end of that chain of command. They each have to turn a key at the same time to deploy, or the weapon is not sent. The key holes are far enough apart so that one person cannot deploy alone.

Each of the servicemen with those keys has a pistol in case the other one goes crazy and tries to do something horrible.

As you can see, the system is designed to make it unlikely that nukes actually get deployed, but not impossible. The government doesn't want it to be impossible, because making threats with nukes is much more useful than actually using them.

During the Cold War a test was conducted. This was at the height of the Cold War when everyone understood that nuclear annihilation was a possibility. Even under what are arguably ideal conditions in which the chances of deployment were maximized, the test showed that in a real situation, only 10% off the nukes would actually deploy. (Note: you didn't hear that number from me. I'm not supposed to know that.)

This is worth mentioning because we have a madman in the White House who is too stupid to understand all of the negative political, diplomatic, etc, consequences of deploying a nuke (I suspect this is why Putin has yet to use them).

It is also worth mentioning that a lot of people in the US military have been referring to the Iran war as “Operation Epstein Fury.”

If the command is given, I fully expect the actual deployment chances to be far below 10%.

I know this is a small comfort given that we have a brain-damaged shitgibbon in the White House, but I hope this information helps you sleep a little better.

@quixoticgeek

the aging, people with small children, and the disabled must suffer in case a homeless person might lie down.