John Rickards

Things I am: John Rickards; freelance editor; author; decent enough human being. Things I am not: regularly or reliably on TwiX; Batman.

[John Rickards @Nameless_Horror]

I've had 4 novel-length jobs w/ existing clients vanish/fall through in as many months, and with September queries being v quiet, my October+ schedule isn't so much thin as skeletal. Bad for my freelancer's jitters but does mean no real wait times for clients. Silver linings...

[John Rickards @Nameless_Horror]

Blowing the dust off my TwiX account to say if anyone needs an experienced, affordable editor at short notice, do give me a shout @ https://t.co/Z8utrj7chD. Work of any length, in any genre, fiction and non-fiction, critique, copyediting/proofing, all the way to dev editing.

[John Rickards @Nameless_Horror]

@FootballCliches After the recent talk of what's allowably "ghosting in", I was delighted by Jacqui Oatley's twist in West Ham v Forest. She said (@ 30:25 on MOTD2) Forest "didn't smell Jarrod Bowen ghosting in to make it two all". Can you smell a ghost approaching?

[John Rickards @Nameless_Horror]

@DaveDiverGame Hi. Why is the game not available in Ukraine? It’s not on the Steam store there.

[John Rickards @Nameless_Horror]

Of interest - Ted Chiang on “AI”. https://t.co/K52Zfh2UmA

[Suw @Suw]

I'll be chatting to bestselling crime writer @writer_north at 19:00 BST on Thurs 8 June about the craft of writing, his rollercoaster career, and what happens when he gets the wobbles halfway through writing a book. Find out more: https://t.co/dDOPvYxvOb

[John Rickards @Nameless_Horror]

@stevemosby And literally everyone from Europe is descended from Charlemagne.

[Nick Buy My Book Mamatas 🤼‍♂️🏴🧭 @NMamatas]

My favorite line from one of the AI stories: "As she examined it more closely, she noticed faint traces of blood on one of the remaining shards. The blood didn’t match the victim’s DNA."

The sleuth peered at the blood verrrrrry closely, you see.

[John Rickards @Nameless_Horror]

@RusseldMcLean This is the second Londo meme I’ve seen today and now I’m really tempted to try rewatching B5…

[Scott Collette @ScottJCollette]

Sudowrite asked novelists to submit full manuscripts in exchange for free outlines, and then spent four months reverse engineering it for yesterday’s launch.

Were the aspiring writers who used it made aware that their unpublished works would be used as data collection?

[Eric Idle @EricIdle]

Terrific advice.

[Laura Shepherd-Robinson @LauraSRobinson]

Signing off all emails like this from now on

[John Rickards @Nameless_Horror]

@Pulpcurry My god, that’s amazing. Particularly love the dire PS job to swap the arm but leave the tourniquet in the guy’s teeth, so now he just looks like a walrus for absolutely no reason.

[John Rickards @Nameless_Horror]

Apropos of definitely nothing: speaking grammatically, singular “they” has been considered just fine for more than two thirds of its 700+ years in continuous use. It has considerably longer history as a singular pronoun than “you” does. Just, y’know, FYI. https://t.co/YtbVdzI09V

[John Rickards @Nameless_Horror]

Also good, on the other issue of the day.

[John Rickards @Nameless_Horror]

Excellent piece by Abir here, on freedom of expression, empathy, and not being an arsehole.

[Abir Mukherjee @radiomukhers]

Freedom of Expression?
My thoughts on some (though not all) of the issues arising from certain book events in the last week.
Up now on the Criminal Minds Blog.
https://t.co/fRH70WN5AX

[Sarah Hilary @sarah_hilary]

I’d like to take a moment to celebrate Finn’s achievement and this book which sounds brilliant. Finn, please know that the overwhelming majority of the crime community celebrates diversity and welcomes new writers and new books that bring freshness to the genre 🦋🙏

[𝘾𝙀𝙀𝙁𝘼𝙐𝙓 @ceefaux]

Bonus #CEEFAUXclassicrepeat for #masterchef fans

[John Rickards @Nameless_Horror]

Convenient shortening to "Nat C", though.

[John Rickards @Nameless_Horror]

To be fair, I suppose "National Socialism" was already taken as a brand name.