Reading Report: January 2026

How's it snowing folks? As I write this NYC is still up to its ankles in slush at the intersections and there are snowburgs on every streetcorner. Any inconvenience rightly considered, amiright? Or is it more fire and ice?

Speaking of Frost, I do think I am beginning to know enough of hate. Which is why I've chosen joy as my theme for this year. Joy is subversive, it erodes fear, it connects people, it kindles hope. When we write we create and connect to emotions in our readers. In this moment I've decided to write for joy. I hope you will join me. Happy writing. ~EM

Putting the Janus in January

• For Scale - Appreciate Transitions - For Scale is a decor blog with an excellent voice. The application of their commentary, here on the aesthetics of transitions, to writing is left as an exercise for the reader.

As arbitrary as a “NEW YEAR” may seem, we (as in us all) must all find some reason to celebrate, and it may as well be this. The “TRANSITION” from one year to the next, by cultural construction, is TOTALLY CRUCIAL because it is a litmus test of our general mood. Do you seek DISRUPTION and A TON OF CHANGE, or to you seek THE SMOOTH and SEAMLESS?

Year of Joy

• Waging Nonviolence - Send in the Clowns - "White Flower?" "Tight Shower!"

Using humor and irony to undermine white supremacy dates back to the days of the Third Reich, from jokes and cartoons employed by Norwegians against the Nazi occupation to “The Great Dictator” speech by Charlie Chaplin. In recent years, humor has continued to be used as a tactic to undermine Nazi ideology, particularly in the unlikely form of clowns — troupes of brightly-dressed activists who show up to neo-Nazi gatherings and make a public mockery of the messages these groups promote. It puts white supremacists in a dilemma in which their own use of violence will seem unwarranted, and their machismo image is tainted by the comedic performance by their opponent. Humor de-escalates their rallies, turning what could become a violent confrontation into a big joke.

• Now Gaming - The Planet Crafter - Start with an airless, barren planet and build your own blue sky, fields of flowers, and forests filled with creatures great and small. I cried when it rained the first time.

Some Important Thoughts on AI (No really)

I promise not to post that ofen about AI, but I do think these two essays are important for writers to read. Jason and Chuck both make excellent points you can steal for the next time you are ambushed by the AI crowd.

• Genre Grapevine on Two Secrets about LLM Usage Every Writer Must Remember

But during these conversations, writers should also never forget these two secrets of using LLMs to help your writing: - First drafts are where the thinking begins. - If you become dependent upon a tool, that tool can be taken away.

• TerribleMinds - Chuck Wendig - My open letter to that open letter about ai in writing and publishing

Of course, in typical fashion, usually these sort of reasonable questions are a Trojan horse to allow a lot of other exceptions in through the city gates. To continue to mix metaphors, if you give a mouse an AI cookie, well, he’s gonna want the AI milk, the AI straw, until eventually you’ve given him an AI nuclear bomb where he kills all the human beings and can feast on our smoldering corpses at his rodenty leisure.

Longread

• Medium - Doc Burfurd - Using Chat GPT and other AI tools to write makes you unhireable. This one has more to say about writing that it seems at first. Worth working your way to the end.

No part of a story comes out of nowhere. Every single word, every single thing that you ever say or do when you are telling a story comes from somewhere. You put it there because it needs to be there. Stories are not formed out of the ether, and the only time that story just seems to happen without intent is when the writer hasn’t internalized this simple fact.

Writing Bytes and Bobbles

• Writers Write - 31 Writing Prompts for January 2026
• We Contain Multitudes Podcast - new podcast featuring famous people and their obscure hobbies. Author Premee Mohammed gushes about her fountain pen collection.
• Dream Foundry - New, monthly Short Story Market report - Listing new short story markets opening, closing, and market changes
• Scientist Sees Squirrel - How to lead a journal club you won't be embarrased by later. Journal clubs are like book clubs for scientists. I think the commentary here works well for any critique or book group though.

Shortreads

• Transfer Orbit - January Table of Contents - Short stories published in January with links

January Books Read/Reading

• Inside Threat - K.B. Spangler’s Blind Cyborg Detective Rachel Peng tackles a trip to New Orleans at the call of a fellow cyborg in hiding. 
• Nine Goblins - How did I miss a T. Kingfisher book coming out? This was a delight, just the right mix of funny and practical and proof that you can take the author out of the horror section but you can't take the horror out of the author. 
• Shadow of Mars - Glynn stewart continues his Starships Mage series with his main protagonist stuck on an occupied planet. 
• Revisionaries (review forthcoming) - a quick jaunt through some of the 20th century's great unfinished manuscripts. Part pop-history, part writing book. 
• Wardtown, Blood Ward, Blood Adept, Adept’s Path - Glynn stewart’s Teer and Kard series, a steampunk western with elves and magic and guns and trains…

Acountability

• 5 Chapters revised on "Lich"
• Fantabulosa! submission still pending.