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Text of the page (random words):
irst place fair warning this is most definitely one of mine seriously i sent this off assuming my fairly horrifying story wouldn t be accepted by the judging panel who set such a wholesome sounding prompt but they totally got what i was going for and so will you trigger warnings include but are not limited to references to mass death references to a pandemic graphic descriptions of the handling and disposal of corpses before i put you off entirely yes it is on the horrifying side and it s bleak but it s also strangely heartwarming there are of course other stories in this anthology and they re brilliant some are bleak some are funny some are poignant and just about all of them hold a note of positivity because what is planting a seed if not an act of hope for the future planted can be bought as a paperback or an ebook tagged fiction harriet phoenix ironclad creative news publication short story anthology leave a comment news my author copy of midnight menagerie 17th dec 2025 harriet phoenix it s been a while since i had good news to share on this site so i m hoping to close out the year with some joy for a change my author copy of midnight menagerie by wolf singer productions has arrived i have previously mentioned some issues that i have with this book well one issue after being accepted for this anthology i realised that the cover was designed by ai i of course have many many issues with ai and especially its use in creative fields however i feel like i ve covered that in my previous post so i d like to devote this one to just enjoying having a book out the stories in midnight menagerie explore the world of fairs carnivals and zoos in a variety of science fiction and fantasy settings there s aliens there s goblins there s shapechangers sentient clouds and a retelling of jurassic park where the exhibits may seem just a little familiar my story the menagerie of the milky way obviously leans towards the sci fi end of the scale and features an orbital zoo full of aliens i had a lot of fun writing it at least until i read out parts of it in my writer s group and had to actually pronounce the names i d come up with for all the alien species pro tip consider these things while writing and i hope other people have as much fun reading it tagged anthology harriet phoenix menagerie of the milky way midnight menagerie news publication short fiction short story anthology wolf singer publications leave a comment news planted is available to buy 13th aug 2025 harriet phoenix i m excited to announce my inclusion in planted the latest anthology by ironclad creative in fact my story cleaning house won 1st place 2nd place went to sophie petrie with seedling 12 0 and 3rd to susie s new ears by angelique talbot planted was a lot of fun to write but i was surprised that it won because well it s pretty dark it does also have a hopeful undercurrent of revival but the setting is literally postapocalyptic so trigger warnings for extensive mention of death including mass death on that cheerful note please feel free to rush out digitally and buy yourself a copy planted is available now from amazon to buy in kindle or paperback tagged fiction harriet phoenix ironclad creative news planted publication leave a comment news when facebook summarily executes your account 4th aug 2025 harriet phoenix i have not been having the very best time with technology lately that s not the newest thing but when something i ve been using with no particular problems for i literally can t remember how long suddenly decides i m persona non grata it s hard not to take that personally meta s explanation of account integrity as you can see it explains everything the evening started like any other doomscrolling and sharing the odd funny animal photo while chatting to a friend and browsing my many other open tabs as you do only suddenly facebook developed a problem with me an email and the tab i had open to my account informed me that my account had been suspended the only explanation i was given were two words account integrity by following that hyperlink i got the general impression that something in my account or something that i had shared was deemed harmful facebook declined to inform me what material exactly this might have been the last post i shared was a photo of a tortoise with a baby tortoise on its head it was adorable in terms of understanding how i offended facebook s community standards so badly i was precisely no better off i was offered the chance to appeal at least that s what facebook calls it however i think most of us would imagine an appeal would involve the chance to speak in one s own defence or at least ask a single question what s the problem for example facebook has a different understanding of the concept after requesting an appeal and proving that i wasn t a robot i was told that my appeal was pending the community standards page see those strikes and chances listed up there yeah those didn t happen so i went about my business more tab browsing telling myself everything was fine this was clearly a misunderstanding after all i hadn t done anything i wasn t impersonating anyone else i hadn t posted any content that anyone but a rabid fundamentalist would consider inflammatory i share funny animal photos and cool facts about space for crying out loud an overzealous bot had probably flagged a random word out of context as soon as a human being looked at it this whole thing would be dismissed and i d be back in business an hour later i was told that my appeal had been declined and to kindly quit darkening facebook s doorstep that was it no explanation of what caused this decision no explanation of the appeals process or why my appeal was declined just goodbye i can no longer log in or access anything facebook related the emails i received were from no reply accounts i was given an option to download my information again no explanation of what that means but using that link doesn t appear to actually result in anything downloading the only control i can now access is the language option if rendering the information that my account no longer exists in urdu would be helpful i ve got the goods otherwise nada some checking around reveals that i m far from the only person who s experienced something like this and there doesn t seem to be a way forward plenty of people have been booted off facebook with no idea of why and creating another account will only result in that being deleted too it was from these people that i got the idea that my account may have been hacked the forbidden content may have been in an instagram account that was linked to my facebook without my knowledge but obviously i have no way of verifying that luckily the good people of youtube were there to help me in my hour of need a quick search resulted in a plethora of videos explaining what to do in situations like mine the ones i viewed gave three basic methods to access facebook s customer service two of which don t apply to me as i m not a business just a person trying to use my account and the third of which only led back to the same pages that didn t explain anything before the general takeaway seems to be that the facebook era of my life is over and i ll probably never know why those running facebook do not seem to think they owe the people using their platform anything resembling care a fair hearing or simply not being punished for being the victim of cybercrime perhaps i m just naïve but in my little world if you don t ask for someone s point of view you didn t give them an appeal and if you can t be bothered to tell someone why you re mad at them you don t have a reason this all leads me to consider a question that came up more than once in my search for information do i at this stage even want my account back why would i want to frequent a community online or otherwise that treats me this way there s a pretty simple answer to that unfortunately it isn t that easy like most people whole swathes of my life rest upon technology because we ve built a world where it s just about impossible to get anything done otherwise and just now the technology on which it all rests is looking a little shaky is wordpress likely to delete this website if someone leaves a rude comment will youtube kick me out if it doesn t like the lyric video i look up for a song that s stuck in my head am i going to log into ao3 one day to find my account gone and never understand why don t get me wrong i am all for tech companies taking responsibility for the content that is posted on their platform however draconian is not the same as better and penalising the victims of hacking is not the same as taking responsibility while facebook s account control people pat themselves on the back for their grand victory the actual perpetrator will shrug and go hack someone else and facebook will probably delete them too tagged anecdote deleted account facebook hacking harriet phoenix meta news social media leave a comment news science fiction when cover art sends you into a tailspin 8th jun 2025 harriet phoenix after something of a hiatus from the world of having news i ve been looking forward to announcing my inclusion in the upcoming anthology from wolf singer publications i was particularly excited to receive that cover art which is absolutely gorgeous but something about it set off an alarm bell for me so i checked the copyright page of the e book which confirmed my worst suspicions this cover art was generated using ai yeah so instead of doing my usual gushy post about the new anthology i get to be a part of and how much fun i had writing the menagerie of the milky way i ended up in a massive emotional tailspin because i am of course ethically opposed to the use of ai in creative work at the very least it needs a lot more regulation than it has or seems likely to have any time soon so what s a person to do well what i did is discuss the situation with a friend who shares my concerns and then contact the editor and calmly ask her some questions and i m glad i did because she was able to reassure me that the use of ai in more than pre publication placeholder covers is not usual practice for wolf singer this one came about as a writing prompt that turned into more in other words the anthology itself came from this image so work wasn t taken from a human artist the editor also assures me that she would never use ai to copy an existing artist s style that s all nice and reassuring there are a lot of complex issues surrounding use of ai and people feel a lot of different ways about it however what i m feeling right now is that i ve accidentally sorta kinda endorsed something i really don t agree with and that makes me pretty uncomfortable instead of celebrating i m reaching for the headache tablets so where do we go from here i guess my next step is to continue as normal but try to pay more attention in future i guess not my strong suit there are still many things to be happy about there are many many excellent stories in menagerie and it s an excellent anthology don t judge a book by the ai that generated its cover right midnight menagerie is out now tagged ai concerns anthology ethical dilemmas harriet phoenix midnight menagerie news publication science fiction wolf singer publications 1 comment writing advice writing advice on definitely using the right word 5th jun 2024 harriet phoenix spell checkers are excellent things but i think we can all agree that over relying on them is a mistake like anything else they have their limitations the one i m talking about today is wrong word usage i posted a column a while back about beta readers and why we need them one thing i discussed in that column is that spellcheckers for some reason don t always notice when you ve used the wrong word i used to have a weird habit of using reign it in instead of rein it in a small but glaring malapropism that my spellchecker completely missed but my beta readers wonderful human beings that they are didn t that s the great thing about humans over spellcheckers spellcheckers only know if your writing matches the rules they re programmed with humans are able to think and thus realise what you meant to say and where you ve gone wrong we humans have our own internal spellchecker that we ve been reprogramming every time we ve read anything our whole lives it s not infallible however especially when it comes to our own work which is one reason we need beta readers where it gets fun is when a person s spellchecker ends up with a bit of programming that is just plain wrong a girl i knew at school once got shouting angry over the word hasty she was convinced it meant slow and was absolutely ready to die on that hill we english nerds attract each other alright we finally called over an english teacher who thought it over and concluded that she d misunderstood the phrase more speed less haste another girl was absolutely sure that magenta was a shade of blue and smugly insisted that i the author of a book i cited as evidence and friggin crayola were idiots for thinking it was actually pink that girl and i were not on the kind of terms that allowed for a lot of unpacking and so the mystery of how she came to this conclusion remains unsolved so yeah humans can think but our programming is as able to be wrong as a spellchecker that s why as with most things it s best to use a variety of methods to give yourself the most opportunities to catch mistakes throw words you re not sure about into a search engine before you use them use your spellchecker use beta readers sneak in quick rereads at odd moments and one last one before you his send just to be safe finally just accept that no matter how many times you read your brain baby through or how many beta readers check it over for you after sending it off you will find a glaring mistake that somehow got missed before and it will be embarrassing that s just how it works tagged anecdote beta readers beta reading editing harriet phoenix malapropisms publishing spellchecker writing writing advice leave a comment uncategorized swindon writing iii launch party and author copy 14th may 2024 harriet phoenix the books are unveiled by zoe and katie two of swindon writing s editors and contributors i m happy to announce that as part of this year s swindon festival of literature the third edition of swindon writing has now been launched yes i know fair to say swindon has the kind of reputation that might make some people surprised that we have a festival of literature never mind enough local writers to fill one anthology let alone three as matt holland the festival s founder is fond of telling people when trying to launch the festival in the first place he had to struggle against the attitude that most swindonians were unable to spell literature festival founder matt holland is honoured in a speech by editor and contributor elliot well just to prove how wrong preconceptions can be the swindon writing project picks...