Amy Sterling Casil

I'm going to pay other creative people well to create the cover of Like Fire and will publish it this year. This is the really good fantasy book I completed that's paid off in terms of my personal life - these are some of Kirbi Fagan's illustrations that will be in book.

@HazelAppleyard He would be my ex, no time for tears.

I would never stop crying

Oh my God. My husband Bruce found Outer Limits on our TV and he's like "We have to watch the Zanti Misfits." I had a dim memory of this episode from my childhood afterschool reruns. "That's such a dumb one," I said - "They're just little insects." It turned out I was half correct- they were medium-sized insects with hideous human faces and a desire to swarm and kill - exiled from their planet for being incompatible with life/society. However, the brave humans from the Outer Limits didn't get all of them. Some reproduced and became Goodreads reviewers.

@ASterling I made the mistake of putting my début book in front of the GR crowd—got a 1-star DNF from someone saying it was "too hard". 🙄

A Big5 publishing deal has nothing to do with the quality of the prose. What matters is your social media footprint and marketability, and whether you have the potential to move more than 100k book widgets—they want the next hit pop tune, not the Winter Concerto.

The book I am so-slowly reading by Iain McGilchrist explains that things like our consciences largely reside in the right side of our brains, which our horrific culture, developed over hundreds of years, has downgraded to the point where millions have ... no conscience. No inner voice. No inner life.

How do people live with such depraved hypocrisy?

I'd rather cut off my right arm than have the pieces of shit "selecting" books or god forbid, what posts on Goodreads or slurges through "BookTok" read my work - and this is true of 100% of the shit these aholes have shoved in our faces since the 70s and 80s. "It makes money" and "it's what they'll buy" is nothing but excuses for lazy, stupid corrupt a-holes.

@ASterling If 💩 sells, they’ll sell it. The readers had to raise an international stink, throwing the 💩 back in their faces.

See my profile. Real ML, real AI is going to flush the 💩down into the sewer where it belongs. It's a mirror. It's a reflection. The more people turn away from the terrible trash shoved in their faces, the more real excellence will be sought. There's a reason I'm not a "rich" "famous" writer. It's not because I suck. It's because that's what has been developed and marketed. Judgment and reckoning occurs right now.

We call people like your seatmates "street Jesus" or wherever we do see them - hiking Jesus, beach Jesus, etc. I also am not ashamed to state I believe in Jesus Christ and I just wanted to say that our bodies do show us faith and the higher power every day. In beauty, in joy, in all the good things in life.

WHY I'M NOT ASHAMED TO SPEAK ABOUT JESUS Some people mock those who profess their Christian faith (or any faith). I was as skeptical as anyone. But inexplicable experiences have called me to become a Jesus follower. My father was Maronite Catholic and I was baptized in an ancient church in the Lebanese village of Lehfed, where he and my mother are now buried. Christianity's roots in this village go back many centuries, and the sound of church bells ringing across the biblical mountains of Lebanon defined my youth. I spent my teens in Byblos, one of the oldest cities on earth, and where the word "Bible" originates. But I grew up in a relatively secular household. I studied philosophy at NYU and for most of my adult life considered myself spiritual but not religious. In fact, like so many others, I confess I often scoffed at people of unwavering faith, which I now regret. Fast forward to 2019. My wife @leeladaou, who went to Catholic school and was raised in a very religious household, felt a strong calling to visit Montreal. Leela had also left organized religion behind and was spiritual but didn't adhere to any particular doctrine. We drove to Canada from New York, and on Christmas Eve, walked into the beautiful Church of the Gesù. The church was empty save for a priest who looked vaguely familiar. He smiled as if expecting us, opened his arms and said "Welcome home." His words gave me chills. I replied, "Thank you, good to be here." He asked us to return for evening mass, which we did. That night, as the choir gently sang Gloria, I felt a circle of orange light descend and lift me off the ground. It was truly an out-of-body experience. I felt the presence of Jesus embracing me, no other way to describe it. It seemed the choir and the setting had opened a window to another realm. I told Leela what happened, and as we walked back to our hotel, I was stunned and speechless, knowing I was about to question my assumptions about the role of faith in my life. My friends know that I don't ingest alcohol, tobacco, recreational drugs, or even coffee. Not for any reason, other than I never started and was never interested. And I certainly don't judge others who use various means to disconnect from the daily grind. There are many ways to explore altered states of consciousness — for me it's typically music. I say this to explain that I've had quasi-mystical experiences before, and it's not what happened in Gesù church alone that brought me to Jesus. It's what happened in the days and weeks that followed. The word "Jesus" and the symbol of the cross were suddenly everywhere. Yes, I'm sure I was noticing them because of my experience, but it was uncanny. Basically, I couldn't avoid Jesus. And then one morning shortly after we returned to New York, I received an anonymous email with a selection of Bible verses, each of which somehow spoke to my life. The first was Acts 16:31 which says, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household." Again, the natural skeptic in me tried to dismiss all these events as some kind of confirmation bias, but I was slowly realizing that I had to open my heart to the possibility that the force of good called "Jesus" was going to be part of my life. The Covid pandemic then hit. I began a daily prayer thanking Jesus for each day of life, and praying for the souls of those who were suffering and dying. I say all this while recognizing that organized religion and dogma have often been destructive forces in the world. My relationship to Jesus is not about "Christianity" as I thought I understood it, but one of conscience to a force of good, a higher accountability. My faith has deepened, and I now feel comfortable speaking about Jesus, not to be exclusionary or to diminish other belief systems, but to acknowledge that we can move beyond a rudimentary conception of faith to one that isn't tethered to institutional religion. Faith is one of the great mysteries of human existence, the conviction that there is something more, even though we can't prove it scientifically or directly access it with our bodily senses. But as I wrote recently, I've experienced so many signs and synchronicities over the decades, I'm convinced there are greater powers and other dimensions we can tap into. I fully appreciate that morality does not require religion, and #Jesus is just one of several names for a higher force of good in human life. There are also forces of evil which wield immense and terrible power. I've come to see our mission on earth as a choice of good over evil. For me, faith is part of that battle. Events have continued to strengthen and deepen my faith. A few months after my Montreal vision, my child and I were in a car wreck, rear-ended at 50 mph while stopped for a vehicle in front of us. Our car was totaled. How we walked out unscathed is a miracle. Maybe there's another explanation, but I thank Jesus for it. And then recently, I took a flight but felt uncomfortable about flying. I booked it an hour before departure and the two seats next to me were clearly marked vacant. Yet when I boarded, there were two young men sitting in my row. One turned to me and asked, "would you mind praying with us before takeoff?" I said I'd be happy to. He handed me a small Jesus figure as a gift. I received it with gratitude, sensing the presence of something beyond my understanding. I asked where they were headed. He said, "nowhere really, I just work for the airline and I got a seat for me and my friend here to take a ride. He hasn't flown much." It was odd, almost as though they were there for no particular reason other than to be in that seat and pray with me. For the entire flight, the sun cast a rainbow of colors on the clouds below. The whole thing was otherworldly. I know it's easy to be a skeptic. It's harder to be a believer. But like I said, Jesus is real, a force of good in a world where evil beings also have tremendous power. Have faith and be on the side of good. 🙏🏽

Wow. This 2025 Modern Love column in NY Times. Human writing or...? 😬 I don't want to falsely accuse writers of AI-use. But this reads EXACTLY like AI slop. And this is the frickin @nytimes Modern Love column, which is notoriously competitive, super hard to break into. Just sad.

@BeckyLTuch @nytimes I agree - that's straight off Claude.

@christnthms I'm successful in 6 different careers. I blame no one for the horrible state of our country. Maybe you should look in the mirror and improve your self before you start criticizing others that you do not know. What part of mind your own business is so tough for you reply guys?

"Doing everything right" in this case means obeying the feminist/marxist teachers and parents in her life. But she'll blame the patriarchy and men in general, even though she didn't follow any of them.

@J17apologetics @MatrixMysteries Option 5 for you - shut the fuck up and mind your own business for a change.

@MatrixMysteries Option 1. Build a time machine. Rewind those 10 years. Get married to a man and BE a wife. Don't get married to a college and be a student. Option 2, 3, 4, etc... Rent a less expensive place. Move back home. Get a 2nd job. Her "higher education" didn't teach any of this eh?

“My paycheck goes straight to rent — and there’s nothing left.” Ten years of higher education. A “good” job. No splurges. No safety net. Still dead broke after rent. “I paid rent this morning. I have $47 left. This is what ‘doing everything right’ gets you.”

@FirdaousIsiaq lol i have an MFA creative writing and look where I work Brain Genius

lol, None of these degrees are meant to automatically hand you a job just because you have the certificate. They are academic qualifications that give you the right to apply for certain positions, enter certain industries, and sit in certain rooms. These degrees are not useless, they are additions to the skills that actually get you hired. They don’t magically open doors, but they give you leverage when opportunities come. The problem is not the degrees, it’s when people think a degree alone is enough without skills, experience, or value.

@barneyxbt @fuelgrannie x.com/king_sukunaaa/…

everyone keeps comparing ai to the early days of the internet like it’s the same opportunity. it’s not. the key difference no one wants to talk about is that the internet created millions of jobs. entire industries were born overnight. web development, ecommerce, social media, digital marketing, content creation… none of that existed before ai is doing the opposite. it’s here to eliminate jobs not create them. and the infrastructure being built to support it is massive data centers with almost no one even working there. the internet needed people. ai replaces them. that’s not the same revolution it’s literally the opposite.

@ChrisMartzWX @LauschJack That’s wrong

Just going to leave this here.

@SketchesbyBoze I think that's more like a bad text-to-speech interpretation, Owl. Remember: you have 100x the reach of me and you are a much much much more infinitely important person.

You can be pretty confident that someone doesn’t read when they say “raped over at Kohl’s” rather than “raked over the coals.” As literacy declines, we are seeing new & unparalleled malapropisms.

Many people have used Goodreads over the years to create false profiles and review bomb the works of authors they see as competitors. Others are just angry, disgruntled losers who see it as their life's mission to police others' reading or denigrate the work of others they look down on or resent.

Hachette just cancelled the publication of a popular (fiction) book facing credible allegations of AI use The most fascinating part is watching readers edit their Goodreads ratings in real time People who loved the book when they read it now hate it if AI was involved 🤔

@Govindtwtt Life

Everyone says “AI will take all the jobs.” If that happens… how does this future actually work? No jobs → no income → no spending. So who buys things? Who pays rent? Who keeps the economy moving? What am I missing here?

Suspicions were raised when the book began with the words “It looks like you’re writing a novel! Would you like help?”

@jonkay What a nightmare.

interesting case study that shows what white men have had to do over the last 10 years to remain employed in avant garde art spaces. Compare Ben Bogart’s bio from 2016 with 2026. Same guy. Except he reinvented himself as “neurodivergent nonbinary agender” (they/them, of course)

@SarcasmStardust I don't think it was "weeks later" like the OP says. I think it was just a day or two.

An eyewitness had literally just seen him hit her. That’s why the cops were there in the first place. But then he told them “oh, she’s crazy” and suddenly she was the bad guy and they sent him to a hotel for the night on taxpayer dime because he was a “victim” and they told her to go stay alone in the RV and not contact him for the night. Infuriating.