Jacob Baugher

We had bitter cold last week

Now there's thunder.

Go home, Ohio, you're drunk.

BREAKING: The Department of Education has ended its directive that attempted to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in schools nationwide.

This is a victory for academic freedom and education equity.

Just two weeks left on Nebula nominations and a few days for the BSFAs. If you’re still reading short stories for these awards, I’d be honoured if you’d consider this one.

Goooooood morning BosKone

#boskone2026

The March for Life bringing measles to DC feels like another thing that would be written for a satire but since satire is dead it's reality.

BIG DENTISTRY is keeping us down

The shaman flings a handful of powder into the fire. The flames pulse, casting a weird, #lambent glow across the cave walls. The crude renderings of animals shift and writhe, and the clan gasps as new images form. Vast herds of prey, a clear direction, an end to hunger.

#vss365 #microfiction

The Dream Waterfall casts its own light, #lambent, and full of rainbows. Each refraction offers a potential tomorrow, ephemeral as ripples.

I spent hours there in my cloudy youth, drunk deeply from fancy, until we met.

Not dreams, I realized, but future memories of you.

#vss365 #microfiction 💙📚

❤️

Your #vss365 #prompt for Feb 4 is #ghost

"But that isn’t all.
Some of my ghosts are planets.
Not bright. Not young.
Spiraling deep in the dusk of my body
as saucers or moons
pleased with their belts of colored dust
& hailing no others."

'Ghosts', Kiki Petrosino

#4

God: "and this one will be good at micro fiction, which no one really pays for"

Gabriel: "make him want to publish a novel with a trad publisher, lol"

Pinned lizzie johnson @lizziejohnsonnn · Aug 19, 2021 Almost three years ago, my editor called me early one November morning. A wildfire had sparked near a town called Paradise, he said. Could I go? (1/13) 0:02 / 0:10 lizzie johnson @lizziejohnsonnn · 47m I was just laid off by The Washington Post in the middle of a warzone. I have no words. I'm devastated. Quote lizzie johnson @lizziejohnsonnn · Jan 25 Waking up without power, heat, or running water. (Again.) But the work here in Kyiv continues. Warming up in the car, writing in pencil — pen ink freezes — by headlamp.

A publisher who lays off a reporter whose pen is freezing because she's covering a frigid war zone while dodging missiles is not an editor you want to work for, in a more perfect world

AerynCore hitman story right here

The contract gig is a messy one. There’re no guarantees, no absolutes. I don’t promise my clients I'll get their man. What I like to say is every target has a #ghost of a chance, even if, most of the time, that just means they’re gonna get every opportunity to BE a ghost.

#vss365 #microfiction

Bits of your soul leak into the screen, transmuted into ones and zeroes. Far-flung in undersea ley lines.

After you're gone, I open the dull machine in the dark morning, read your remnants circling the singularity.

An accretion disk, regurgitating the #ghosts of who we are
#vss365 #microfiction 🪐📚

And we talk about #pain on a scale from one to ten and point to a drawing of a face that's meant to show how much we're breaking behind the mask we don't admit to wearing and everything is fine we're fine it's fine it's one long run-on sentence and we hide our bitten nails in our sleeves

🏷️ #vss365

I *knew* it

Hi, did you rip this directly from my unpublished novel that only I've read? 🤣

Dying hurts. No one tells you that. There’s #pain from whatever killed you, sure. Cancer, car wreck, a hail of bullets, but it’s getting ripped out of one state of being and shoved into the next that’s the real agony. In other words, ghosts don’t moan because they’re sad.

#vss365 #microfiction

Tomato soup simmers on the stove. Basil, sugar, acid.

We'd go on lunch dates. Me, 7, you 70. Grilled cheese and BLTs. I can't remember your crooked smile, our checkers games in April.

Just you on the hospice bed. Purple veins, paper skin.

Nothing behind your eyes but #pain
#vss365 #microfiction

Thank you, flash king

Little Junie had the #soul sight. She’d point to nice Mr. Hayward at the grocery and yell, “Cupcake!” When she saw Mrs. Patel at the daycare, she’d clap and coo, “Ice cream!” But when Ms. Ash, the landlord, came around, she’d hide her face, crying, “Broccoli! Broccoli!”

#vss365 #microfiction

The valkyrie descends from the heavens, gathers the dead in her longship. Infantry, officers, bodies gaping open. Blood soaks the deck like rain.

I approach, but she bars my way.

"Are you not the #soul - gatherer?"

"Yes," she replies, "But you must have one to come aboard."
#vss365 #microfiction

My first serious proper book, coming soooooon!

I still can't get over that cover

Did you hear that flame tree is having a vampire call??

When it comes to documenting ICE activity, remember what Eisenhower said at the end of WWII.
"Get it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses - because somewhere down the track of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened."

Please could the whole world stop exploding

Stand With Minnesota Donation Directory Stand With Minnesota is a hub for supporting, learning, and taking action to support Minnesotans impacted by ICE and federal enforcement.

Now is really good time to pick any org or fund from this list and give what you can. www.standwithminnesota.com

*deep breath*

Fuck I.C.E.