#ttmd — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #ttmd, aggregated by home.social.
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@QuasiTemporal
#ScribesAndMakers 15: #TTMDInteresting question. Our Child of the Stars worked into a novel became "how can Cory the alien boy's family keep him safe it he isn't a secret?' - and of course he hopes his people will come to find him. It's not too spoilery to say people found the ending of that book satisfactory but left more to know. I thought the average reader would want the unresolved resolved and a middle book would drag. Positive I was right.
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#ScribesAndMakers 15: #TTMD with @stephenwhq
A duology is interesting, many aim for a trilogy. Did you have both books plotted out to start, or were elements of the second still a mystery even as the first came out? Did you wish you could change anything in the first?
Perhaps related, is turning a short story into a full narrative the same kind of process each time, or dependent on the plot?
And finally, anything else you wanted to talk about that didn't end up being asked? Here's a chance!
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SO FAR I have known the answer to the mystery in broad terms but haven't worked out how I get there. Then I write the story which throws up all the questions and problems and like you, it's the second draft that fixes everything. The first draft doesn't have to be brilliantly plotted.
RIght now book three is coming together and I am still settling on what the great big thing is.
All my books have mysteries in them!
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Today's top ten tag trends:
10: #ahsoka
9: #insektensamstag
8: #TTMD
7: #ScreenshotSaturday
6: #新規多いので自己紹介しよう
5: #froscon21
4: #d23
3: #CatsOfMastodon
2: #Caturday
1: #RelaxTheCacksAPlace -
#ScribesandMakers #TTMD for @stephenwhq
Are there times when the words don't come when you're working on your books? What do you when that happens?
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#ScribesAndMakers #TTMD »2026.08.15 — Featured creator Stephen Cox @stephenwhq
How do you approach writing a mystery? Do you plot it out completely, knowing the entire story, before writing any of it? Do you write the murder scene and the solution scene first, then let the characters drive the story and pants it until the two scenes connect and form a story? Do you write backwards from the solution scene until you have a story? What's your process? What's most important?
I ask this because, whilst I'm not writing mystery stories, most of my stories incorporate a mystery or two to drive the plot. As a pantser, I do a lot of writing backward and backfilling of clues as I discover them.
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#BoostingIsSharing
#gender #fiction #writer #author
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#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion -
#ScribesAndMakers #TTMD enjoyed this and will dip back again later - pleased to see people checking out the free short fiction on my website and enjoying it,
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Would you like to tell us a bit about your marketing and promotion strategies?
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thank everyone for their brilliant questions, not one stinker among them!
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Glib answer an idea for a short story popped into my head, a mother sewing a Halloween costume for her kid, it's a small town in the US, and the kid is unusual. You see how much she loves him and him her, before you see him... and you start to realise why she has to keep him a secret.
I've always been interested in the US, the UK is deluged with US culture, my parents worked there for a while so I could have been brought up American.
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#ScribesAndMakers 15
Stephen Cox #TTMD
@stephenwhqWhat led you to choosing a Victorian setting and the popularity of medium's during that period?
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#ScribesAndMakers Aug 15 #TTMD @stephenwhq
Happy YOU Day!!
How has being a Quaker influenced your writing?
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#ScribesAndMakers August 15. Talk to me day. #TTMD
There are writers who inspire all my work, in broad or specific ways. LeGuin, Bradbury, Pratchett. Stephen King, E Nesbit, Joan Aitken, Diane Wynne Jones all told me that grounding a work in real people and settings then allows you to muck with reality to more effect. Lots more contemporary writers in aggregate as it were.
I also admire writers like Saki, Woodhouse, Gene Wolfe but I am not sure how much that shows.
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my answer just disappeared. No, I hired a human, an I hate AI human, who delivered a brilliant design and is also a complete genius. Matt at Inkspiral Design.
It was always intended to be a series design and therefore The Crooked Medium's Guide to Terror was quite straightforward. Indeed, the cover design and colour design for 3 is clear in my head.
here is the blog I did on the process. I will update when I have a moment.
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#ScribesAndMakers August 15. Talk to me day. #TTMD
Today's featured creator is: @stephenwhq
Did any writing or other works inspire your first two books? If so, did they inspire your second pair of books too or did you draw on different inspiration?
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Book #1 (The Crooked Medium's Guide to Murder) stands alone.
Book #2 doesn’t spoil the whodunnit mystery of the first book but you will miss out on some other stellar twists if you read it first!
Book #3 I am still figuring it out. It may push me into this being an "ideally read the books in order series." because of the story logic.
I'm nor sure standalone sequel is quite right term the more I think of it.
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Does your series require people to read in order? The demand is for more books centring the three women, my “detectives”.
If writing a detective series, story order or indeed continuity may not matter (Sherlock Holmes/Poirot); there may be an order with the characters developing but each book stands alone as a mystery (Peter Whimsy Harriet Vane); and many writers have a book level plot and a longer arc. I'm not sure yet what The Crooked Medium Series is.
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#ScribesAndMakers #TTMD @stephenwhq
Something I have recently revisited prompts these questions...
What was the worst feedback you ever received and how did it affect you?
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Do follow allong as I answer questions from the Talk To Me Day Team
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I had faith in it and decided The Crooked Medium's Guide to Murder was good enough to self publish (paying for a professional edit but under my direction.)
The fourth had no trad agent or editor to bounce ideas off – it is in a sense the the more purely self published.
I suspect your ambition for the first solid draft being great will always disappoint you as your standards rise as fast as your ability. -
@gahlearner
#ScribesAndMakers #TTMDEach book poses its own difficulty and gives its own joy.
The first SF book Our Child of the Stars was my traditional debut and my first encounter with the developmental edit with first agent then editor - the biggest learning curve of my book!
The second was a sequel, concluding the story, without grasping what makes those tricky. Again big learning.
My agent and I parted over our commercial differences on the first Victorian mystery (the third) 1/n