Erika Swyler

@erikaswyler.bsky.social

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Novelist. Garden variety weirdo. Unrepentant typo queen.
Books: We Lived On the Horizon (Atria, 1/14/25), Light From Other Stars, The Book of Speculation.
She/her (all pronouns are fine)
https://linktr.ee/erikaswyler

Posts Replies Media

Mochi finally realized she she's allowed to jump into the hay box. She's trying to eat her way to the bottom. I'm so proud. 🥹

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Erika Swyler

Also: Get off your arse and vote. My constituency was won for Labour by 15 votes. A high turnout from the French sorted this. You don't vote? Well, the fash do. If you're replying to this with why it's ideologically impure for a truly left wing person to vote, please just block yourself, I'm tired.

Ok. The UK and France have lowered my base level of panic, like, half a notch. Well done, good people. Well done.

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Erika Swyler

!!!!

JUST IN: Polls closed in France. Exit polls show surprise: —Left coalition (New Popular Front) projected first. (!) —Far-right (RN) has lost its bid to take power. Anti-RN front appears to have worked very well. —No bloc close to majority. Follow this 🧵 for results and more:

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Erika Swyler

We’ve returned to the olden days, when word-of-mouth was the only real way to advertise. As an author, if you enjoy a book, please: tell your friends. Your group chat, your sewing circle, your family WhatsApp, your work Slack, the voice channel of your MMORPG guild, anything.

Hey, so. I understand that this is anecdotal and not research, but. It is WILD how useless social media has become for promo. It's a fucking disgrace, really.

I genuinely enjoy Goldfinger's cover of 99 Red Balloons (Punk covers are delightful more often than not.)

Other than Hurt by Johnny Cash and any version of The Sound of Silence, what are your favorite cover versions of famous songs?

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Erika Swyler

How the women who ran libraries during the Harlem Renaissance built collections and, just as important, communities of writers and readers. www.nytimes.com/2024/06/19/a...

New York’s First Black Librarians Changed the Way We Readwww.nytimes.com How the women who ran libraries during the Harlem Renaissance built collections and, just as important, communities of writers and readers.

Everybody going off about who the candidate should be. I'll just sit here knowing that I, personally, would vote for a literal box of instant mashed potatoes over that spray-tanned bag of pork rinds.

I have a nice thing to share next week. That's a strange and unusual thing these days.

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Erika Swyler

This is pretty great. No subscription required for this article; gift link. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

A Visual History of the Harlem Renaissancewww.nytimes.com The Harlem Renaissance changed the world. We’ve gathered dozens of images, many that we’ve never published, showing the people and the art that they created.

Attention: The AKC Diving Dog Challenge is on ESPN right now. Maybe you need some happy dogs.

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Erika Swyler

Anyway, if anyone wants book recommendations right now, tell me 2 writers you love & what you’re in the mood for.

Finally read S. A. Cosby’s Blacktop Wasteland and it’s so fucking good. Oyeyemi’s Parasol Against the Axe is weird & gorgeous. Spufford’s Light Perpetual is everything I wanted it to be. Buehlman’s The Daughter’s War broke my heart. Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil by Lima is a wicked delight.

Moving on: I just steam cleaned under the stove. I've seen things no human should.

Man. I feel so much for the actual good humans who work for that paper. There are no jobs in journalism now, no other places to go, and we all gotta eat to live.

Woe! To need a weighted blanket to sleep while summer exists so cruelly. No human suffers more than I! Alack! Alas!

I told Instagram about my toast lamp. You should probably know about it too.

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Erika Swyler

Hamstring has got to be the funniest name for a body part. "I don't know what's going on with your leg. It's like pork twine in there."

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Erika Swyler

I’ve been dying to show you my cover for weeks. Cannot think of a better face for this book! electricliterature.com/exclusive-co...

Exclusive Cover Reveal: “Song So Wild and Blue” by Paul Lisicky - Electric Literatureelectricliterature.com What are the costs of living with a drive you can’t say ‘no’ to?

So, I guess I'm in whatever phase of life it is that your emotional wellbeing is entirely dependent on how your garden tomatoes are doing.

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Erika Swyler

FRONT PAGE BANNER BABYYYY I am infrastructure boi at Lit Hub (and the podcast guy) but I'm also... the house SFFH geek. And so I bring you 21 awesome SFFH books to be excited about! (altho there are SO MANY MORE coming this year too) lithub.com/our-21-most-...

Got 6,000 words down to 2,922. Need to get it down to 1,500. The worst part of writing is when it's numbers focused. No one told me there would be math.

I'm well and truly word stuck. Back in my cubicle days I'd spend my 8 hours pretending I'm busy while playing solitaire on my PalmPilot (it's been a while). Now I just get to sit and berate myself because essays are not my chosen form.

I had to explain the pronatalist movement to my shrink. Now we both need therapy and brain bleach.

I just realized there's a bunnies feed. This is now the only viable platform.

Ahhh, I wound up in the pen feed. Wondering how/why people actualy saw that post. Anyway, yes, writes well and I like it.

New pen day.

Alas, I always forget that when you post an article, a high % of people only read the headline before firing off a comment, a high % of those who read it miss the points then fire off a comment. Everyone else just nods in silence. (Another site I'm on doesn't allow you to shut off comments.)

Plant shop reveals itself as Gen X/Elder Millennial.

My phone screen is broken. There's also a big scratch on my glasses. My me screen is broken.

Here. Some shore for what ails you.