We ran 5 miles this morning, 2 more than a typical Tuesday, and it just caught up with us
#running #dogsofmastodon
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KristenHG
@kristenhg@mastodon.social
mastodon 4.8.0-nightly.2026-10-06Hedge scholar, book editor
I write about literature at wingbackworkshop.com, and I run with my dog Mabel. I just earned my master's in English, and I'm working on a book about how a guide for anchoresses, who lived alone in cells for life, became one of the most popular books in medieval England.
Posts about #literature, #books, #music, #ActuallyAutistic, and #MastodonFC. I have my posts set to automatically delete after 90 days.
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Joined November 14, 2017
Website:
The Wingback Workshop:
wingbackworkshop.com
Buy Her Books:
Inquire about Editing:
editing@kristenhallgeisler.com
I'm not exaggerating when I say this interview with Sylvester Stallone might be the best interview I've ever read.
🎁 link
There's a new candidate for loudest bird, and the bellbird in the photo accompanying this article is giving it his all. You can do it, buddy!
I have heard the advice to make slow runs truly slow and hard runs truly hard, but I hadn't really run slowly enough. So I set my watch to heart rate instead of pace this morning and tried to stay in Zone 2. It was so hard! And boring as hell! Even the dog was bored and looking for squirrels to harass.
Runners, how do you endure Zone 2 slow (not medium-paced) runs? Podcasts? Music? Zen states? Or did you just get used to going slow after a while? Or give up on it? Advice welcome!
My own work doesn't have a lot of libel or defamation risk, but occasionally I edit books that toe that line. This is a very good intro to US libel and defamation law for authors and editors.
The cherry tree is literally buzzing with bees over my head 🐝🐝🐝
Someone on the #running hashtag this morning requested more tales of mediocre or worse runs. Happy to oblige!
It was cool and damp this morning after a storm blew through overnight, so my joints were sore and pollen was bonkers. It took forever to warm up, and I never really hit a good stride. I don't wear a watch on runs anymore, so I don't know exactly how mediocre this 3 miles was. But this emoji seems accurate: 😑
The dog had fun, and I saw my neighbors, so I'm glad we went out anyway.
I had been meaning to get more library cards in the hope of finding shorter wait times for some ebooks. This handy site finds libraries that have reciprocal agreements with your home-base library.
Shout out to Camas! Thanks for approving my new card!
The Morgan Library is embarking on a new project to digitize 300 illuminated medieval manuscripts. The hi-res collection will be available online in 2029.
#histodons #medieval #books
https://actualitte.com/article/133181/bibliophilie/la-morgan-library-ouvrira-120-000-pages-de-manuscrits-enlumines
If you'd like some proof of hope, take a look at the independent publishers' nonfiction best-seller list. It's all either books about surviving or changing our current political situation or books for when you're like "I need to think about literally anything else right now."
No self-help, just others-help. No business books, no books about learning to love our AI overlords.
https://lithub.com/the-independent-press-top-40-bestsellers-nonfiction-13/
Note for book editors:
This is obvious, but the AI summaries at the top of search results are not reliable when fact checking. I cleared cookies and forgot to turn off the AI in DuckDuckGo, and it provided an initialism for a US Army course that does not use an initialism. The army uses another phrase for that course; AI made up the initialism because it kind of made sense.
Stay on your toes out there, fact checkers.
I read 50-60 books a year for fun (this doesn't count books I edit, since that's a different kind of reading, or books I read for research, which I usually don't read cover to cover). I have no goals, I have no plans, I have no reading schedule. I like to enter what I'm reading in the StoryGraph, but I don't care too much about the stats. Interesting to see that's how a lot of "super readers" do it too.
https://lithub.com/what-are-the-routines-of-so-called-super-readers/
Writers of Mastodon! I'll be presenting at the Terroir Writing Festival in Oregon wine country May 2. My session is "Sci-Fi in Reverse: Writing Relevant Historical Fiction from Any Era, for Any Era," but there's a full day of sessions on all kinds of writing topics.
Laughing and crying, which I think is the point of satire.
"In 2028, heeding the advice of an ad he saw on Instagram, Joseph traded in his family’s cows for his first server rack. That’s when Hillsbrook Servers was born."
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/13/our-mom-and-pop-data-center
An editing project I had penciled in for March has fallen through. If you have a book manuscript that's almost ready for developmental or copy editing by a human, hit me up!
My areas of expertise (though I have wide genre experience):
- historical fiction, any period
- narrative nonfiction
- academic books and proposals
Send me a message here on the fediverse, or visit my website: kristenhallgeisler.com
Boosts welcome!
If you're in #PDX next Wednesday, March 25, come listen to performers read from my translations of Mogador's memoirs! In costume! They'll do a way better job than I would. A good time that still gets you home at a reasonable hour on a work night.
I got married almost 30 years ago in the most '90s way possible: a dozen guests, a French restaurant, and a Wiccan priestess as officiant. The wedding industry was confined to magazines, and that was bad enough. The social media hellscape around getting married sounds awful.
https://www.404media.co/wedding-planning-algorithm-weddingtok/
It turns out, if you want people to buy books you have translated, you have to tell people that you have translated books.
I translated the complete four-volume set of Mogador's memoirs, telling the story of her life as a courtesan in 19th c. Paris. They're all available wherever you buy books, even indie bookstores.
Replying to
Also, eagle-eyed readers of the Fedi, please note that the Onion first published Béatrice's story 30 years ago.
It's notable to me that the winning photo in this competition is of a human, and that it was taken by a wedding photographer dragged into the competition by his scientist sister. He says that he likes to tell stories with his work.
Also, science is beautiful.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/global-physics-photowalk-2025-winners-revealed-20260401/
Disclaimer: I don't use AI, and I would like chatbots in particular to go away.
But at least there is some good news: ChatGPT and Claude have been adjusted to direct delusional users in crisis away from dangerous behavior and even toward logging off and talking to someone. (Grok and Gemini continue to be terrible.)
Something I did not know about filters and wildfires:
"When this mess is all done, make sure you change your AC filter. Many filters rely on electrostatic charge, and because wildfire smoke is charged, it can reduce the filter’s effectiveness significantly because it ‘depletes’ the charge."
I've been through the smoke/heatwave combo (haven't we all by now?), and I have nothing but sympathy.
#wildfires #smoke #airquality
https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/bad-air-bad-lettuce
I bet you didn't know that October 1 had a theme song. It's particularly aimed at cynical publishing types.
Some interesting ideas to bring up during your next discussion on Medicare for All in the US with someone who's a bit skeptical but not set against it:
* would likely lead to more small clinics thriving rather than consolidation and buyouts
* better access to healthcare in rural areas
https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/medicare-for-all-separating-the-slogan