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Wendy Palmer
@wendypalmer@mastodon.au
mastodon 4.7.2I write romantic fantasy fiction (CWs on website) and family-friendly puzzle walk trails while enjoying farm life with goats, alpacas & bees in WA's South West Boojarah region. No “AI” involved in any of it, unless AI stands for Apian Intelligence.
I follow & boost writing, reading, books, knitting, science, history, linguistics, environment, art & Stoicism.
She/her. Avatar AltText: silhouette of a woman in profile, with glasses & bobbed hair.
1827 Followers
692 Following
50 Posts
Joined November 29, 2022
My fiction:
Indie-direct sales:
WA Detective Trails:
Just my toots:
Food photo
My old city library, when people are standing outside waiting for the doors to open: it’s 8.59, we don’t open till 9, but I suppose we’ll open the door a minute early this one time.
(Me: I’m your volunteer for delivering books to people who can’t get here — oh, boy did he look shamefaced when he realised he’d told off a volunteer 😂)
My country library, when people are standing outside waiting: it’s 9.55, so sorry that we don’t open till 10, come in out of the wind
#library
Me: I wish Kobo was better at recommending books I actually want to read.
Also me: I think I’ll make my fictional city’s religion be the worship of a whole bunch of saints.
Kobo, before I’ve done a single search on the topic: you might like this book about Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation, "An indispensable point of departure for anyone interested in the cult of the saints in the Middle Ages."
Me: fucking hell, I didn’t mean creepily-read-my-mind better!
#WritingCommunity
Replying to
And I say this advisedly: my kid’s basketball team just won their annual country-schools tournament. He’d been looking forward to it for a full year. He got the man of the match player award, whatever it’s called. He was their star.
The school goes all December-parenting in the lead up to Country Week, with a three-strikes-no-Christmas “discipline” system.
My kid was on two strikes. Two. The first one was well and truly earned, the second was plainly bullshit from a teacher who’d be all in on the Elf-on-the-Shelf surveillance and punishment system and who was enjoying having a bigger stick than usual.
And if he had got that third strike, he would have been devastated and we would have sucked it up and taken it, because life fucking lessons, people.
(And also…the school’s about to find out what some parents find out in January, because there’s a whole term to go and there ain’t no term-4-senior-year school camp to threaten the loss of this year)
If only she’d given her son a pair of pervert glasses and a spy watch, she’d have been A-OK
(CW: link contains allegations of child abuse in a school setting)
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-19/gippsland-mother-charged-hidden-recording-device/107172332
The dog will literally sulk back to bed with a “fine, I’ll just starve then, shall I?” face rather than look to her left to find her food bowl in a slightly different spot.
Boosted by @trending@homestead.social
“Why I Cried When My Husband Bought Me a Louis Vuitton Bag”
I would cry if my partner bought me a Louis Vuitton bag too, because DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY BOOKS HE COULD HAVE BOUGHT ME WITH THAT MONEY??? 😝
Replying to
I never had a hope in the settlement, since — silly me! — I followed Australian copyright law which says the moment a work exists it’s automatically protected with no need to be registered, so why would I have bothered with a foreign country’s copyright office?
Especially when writing advice sites also said don’t worry about it unless and until you need to launch legal action against infringement…because who knew they’d decide on a retrospective cut-off date for registration, right? A surprising number still had this advice up as this shitshow was going down.
Just got one of those “hi mum, lost my phone, using my friend’s, please text me on this new number” scam texts.
Even putting aside the fact that my kid’s at school with no way to magically get a new mobile, sim and number sorted since 8am this morning…there is no way he would ever have started a text with “hi mum”.
I get “bruh” if I’m lucky 😂
The only thing better than reading a good book with my teen is reading a really bad book and making merciless fun of it with my teen
#books #reading #parenting
We just spent an hour walking up and down a steep and overgrown riverbank with night falling because we could hear our dog barking for help, but every time we began to triangulate his location past the echoes, he’d decide the job was done and go quiet.
He was fine, just stuck on the wrong side of a fence which was apparently A-OK to go through but utterly terrifying to come *back* through…until we showed up, whereupon he squirmed through the tiniest possible gap and merrily ran off without even pausing to say thanks.
He was home waiting for dinner by the time we’d trekked back covered in scratches from blackberry and barbed wire 😂
#dogs #CountryLife #SomeSwearingOccurred
Cracker of a sunset the other day
Just broke a lifelong rule and gave a hitchhiker a lift — the most non-threatening-looking young Japanese girl standing on the side of the road with a backpack and a shopping bag 😂
She’s been hitchhiking around Australia from Cairns and has made it to Southwest WA like an absolute champion.
Had to drop her at my turn-off about halfway to the next town, but I gave her my phone number in case she gets stuck. Not the first, I imagine!
10/10 non-murdery hitchhiker experience
Hmm, so I’ll give my fictional city’s noble houses Adjective-Noun names but medieval-Spanish-sounding, so my main family will be Torresangrado, like Bleeding Bull, or less poetically Red Bu— GODDAMNIT
#WritingCommunity #GivesYouWingsMyArse
Replying to
@aspeed@lgbtqia.space so many publishers failed in their duty of care, they deserve a class action suit of their own.
But it is infuriating that copyright is supposedly automatically granted (even for the US) but there is extra “optional” step of registering it for that copyright to mean anything at all. Then it’s not actually “automatically granted” is it, and they should stop saying it is.
Replying to
@vfrmedia@social.tchncs.de oh, interesting! Some similar update to the law here might be in order
Tossing up names for my next MC, I looked up the Spanish version of Miles. After a brief detour to the 90%-crap portion of the internet (Kilometres!), I found out it’s Milo, which I like.
And it derives from the Latin for soldier, which is appropriate!
Only one problem: a fair proportion of my readers are Australian and there’s only one association we have with that name.
I just went an entire week without a single error on Clues by Sam and I am so ridiculously proud of myself
Replying to
@AdaraAstin@supervolcano.angryshark.eu I’m sorry. Love the extra fuck-you of not paying out any earnings because you weren’t magically in compliance with an erratic change of rules that has nothing to do with you.
New* library rules announced.
“Anyone intoxicated was not allowed to borrow a book, and anyone behaving in a disorderly manner would be fined at least five shillings per offence.
Book loans were restricted to one volume per person, but exceptions could be made to increase that if a household had six members who could prove they could read.”
*150 year old
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-30/library-book-returned-after-150-years-kiama-library/106970186
#libraries
The lingering effect of Untitled Goose Game: when I read a book blurb that begins “It’s a stunning summer evening in the Lake District”, my brain autocompletes.
And you are a horrible goose.
On the drive into town, I enjoy seeing a pig happily wandering around its field. It gets bigger and bigger, and then it goes away for a while. But then it comes back, smaller!
La-la-la it’s the same pig every time I can’t hear you la-la-la
I highly recommend This is Fascism by Rosan Smits: short and to the point, and mostly importantly gives a starting point for what politicians, journalists and the everyday person can and should be doing to hold the line.
(I don’t pretend this can’t happen in Australia, but I take some bitter comfort in theorising that, since both our current proto-fascist and her billionaire backer are women, the inherent misogyny of fascism should cause fatal implosion-by-paradox relatively soon)
#books #fascism #antifa
There’s a craft fair on today in town. Lots of local artisans. Handmade and unique products.
AIslop all over the poster.
I don’t think it’s their fault, I think they grabbed a default template from Canva without looking too closely, but it’s incredibly jarring to have that alongside professions of “handmade, heartfelt, homegrown”.
https://bsky.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:vcmpg73bt2wudku3nqgx33yx/post/3msj74o3wds2f
RE: https://eigenmagic.net/@vampiress/116859241032699772
“sharted out of the maw of an ethically fucked averaging machine”
Too good
Quoting
Blog post: Inspired by the video I just boosted - some honest thoughts on my AI remorse from my experiments earlier in the year.
It was bad, and I have SERIOUS regrets.
https://goodnameforablog.com/posts/very-average-prototypes/
Open quoted postThe mindset around electric cars is a bit slow to change.
“I just don’t want to have to think about charging when I drive to Perth”
I’m sorry, are you telling me you do a 500km round trip + city driving, and never once have to think about getting fuel?
If anything, charging is more convenient — once your mindset has changed — since you don’t have to stand there actively pumping the electrons in, you can plug in and go do other things.
Listening to Why Q needs U by Danny Bates, about the development of each letter of the English alphabet but with lots of wider linguistic and language detail. Highly recommended if you’re into that sort of thing 😊
So, English pronounces L two different ways, tongue right behind the teeth is Clear L, tongue a bit further back on the roof of the mouth is Dark L.
Clear L tends to be for L followed by a vowel, Dark L tends to be for L after a vowel. If you pay attention when you say “loll” you might notice the difference — depending where you’re from…
Danny: northerners [in England] tend to use Dark L for both sounds.
Me saying a bunch of words starting with L consciously using the Dark L: doesn’t sound any different.
Danny: so do Australians.
WELL OK THEN.
RE: https://raggedfeathers.com/@lilithsaintcrow/116881837475926686
“It is time to tell the AI industry to go fuck itself, because it’s effectively done the same to the rest of society."
This quote rings particularly loud for me today in light of this story from Bona Books, about coming within a whisker of contaminating an anthology with extruded mediocre:
https://www.bona-books.com/news/we-bought-an-ai-story
While they’re relatively philosophical about the new challenges of this type of fraud, the toll taken on a group of volunteers trying to do something good in the world must have been, and will continue to be, extensive.
#WritingCommunity
RE: https://mastodon.au/@wendypalmer/116844162472760771
Final weekend (and indeed final week) of the #Smashwords July sale. Lots of #indieAuthors on sale, including #MastoAuthors, including me 😊
#books #readingCommunity
Replying to
@aspeed@lgbtqia.space I was quite impressed, given that we know how Hamish’s story ends, that it wasn’t as depressing as it might have been.
My favourite reads for March, all of which ended up being queer in one way or another.
#books #fiction #QueerRomanceClub
http://wendypalmer.au/2026/04/05/books-favourite-reads-march26/
Replying to
@RantingCanuck funding the creation and maintenance of social infrastructure - libraries, community centres, parks and green spaces etc. Relatively cheap, measurably beneficial, the first in line for cuts because “poor people don’t deserve free stuff”
Replying to
@tallandtrue@aus.social I came across the June prompt when I was searching for writing contests for my teen (he’s very proud of short story he wrote; every suitable contest I found had already closed, however) — though I normally can’t write to word count, deadline, or theme, an idea did occur to me, so I entered for the very first time. It was fun!
Replying to
@tallandtrue@aus.social same as mine 😊 (and it would have been my starting word, too, if I’d gone with my first idea, which is at least better than it being today’s actual Wordle)
Replying to
@hayesstw@c.im I’m not sure. Maybe it’s an extra layer to try to avoid suspicion by asking for money straight away but once you naively text the new number, they know they’ve got a ready mark on their hands 🤷♀️
Fanfiction fans, I need an image to illustrate the blurb for a fanfiction writing workshop for teens, and am having trouble thinking of one
Is there a particular image or motif that you could suggest? (I’ll be using Pixabay or depositphotos, no AI)
Title is Familiar Worlds, New Stories if that helps
#fanFiction #imagery
Replying to
@hayesstw@c.im seems very likely. I’m just not sure what the extra step of getting you to text them on a different number is for.
Replying to
@QuokkaMocha@mastodon.world it’s just not a good look. I do tend to avoid anything advertised with AI, but I went anyway, and most of the stalls were very genuinely handmade and local. And one of my kid’s favourite picture-book artists from when he was younger was there, “live-streaming” drawing his newest book 🥰
But one stall had, among more authentic items, tea towels printed with AI kitten images (as if there’s not a whole world of cute human made kitten images available…), so a wide wide berth to that one.
(I’m going to email the organisers and give very polite feedback)
Replying to
@bodhipaksa@mastodon.scot @bks@mastodon.social I corrected it in the alt text because I couldn’t bear to repeat the error 😂