Amanda Helms
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amandaghelms.bsky.social
Amanda Helms
@amandaghelms.bsky.social
Writer of SFF and sometimes H. Fiction in/forthcoming from LIGHTSPEED, Uncanny, FIYAH & elsewhere. Editor at Diabolical Plots. Parent. Biracial. She/her. Rep: Paul Lucas
Pinned
It's new story day! My latest, "Within Dead Dreams," is a horror story set in an extinct majority-Black settlement in Colorado. Generational trauma, racial trauma, and body horror. I'm glad this one found a home. Buy the issue from midnight & indigo here: midnight-indigo.com/products/mid...
midnight & indigo: Sixteen Speculative Stories by Black Women Writers
From underwater cities to outlawed magic, lunar missions to haunted houses, sixteen emerging and established Black women writers conjure strange wonders, eerie encounters, and futures beyond our reach...
midnight-indigo.com
Reposted by Amanda Helms
Well, well, well.
NEW: The first two years of Massachusetts' millionaire tax has raised $3 billion more than expected.

And rather than driving the rich away, IPS researchers found that the number of millionaires has *increased.*

Tax the rich. Greg Ryan in @bloomberg.com:
Millionaire Tax That Inspired Mamdani Fuels $5.7 Billion Haul in Massachusetts
A millionaire levy in Massachusetts that New York City mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani holds up as a model for taxing the rich has generated $3 billion more in revenue than expected without forcing...
www.bloomberg.com
November 14, 2025 at 2:09 AM
Reposted by Amanda Helms
I see the “technically it’s ephebophelia” crowd is out today, so just a reminder that A) this is NOT a case where technically correct is the best kind of correct and B) the minute you say this, the gods dump you in the “irredeemable creeper” basket and wash their hands thoroughly after touching you.
November 13, 2025 at 6:57 PM
Reposted by Amanda Helms
Thinking today how homelessness runs through this story, through Epstein's (Virginia Guiffre had been homeless before meeting him), and even through Gaiman's (his nanny was sleeping on the beach when Palmer recruited her, and he used threats of homelessness against another victim).
The woman whom the House Ethics Committee determined Matt Gaetz paid for sex when she was 17 years old was living in a homeless shelter, working at McDonald's, and needed the money for braces www.nytimes.com/2025/11/13/u...
November 13, 2025 at 6:56 PM
Reposted by Amanda Helms
RE starbucks picket line--the relevant detail is "picket line, do not cross." Pass that along. Proclaiming that you are in no danger of doing so because you are too aesthetically pure to let Starbucks coffee pass your lips is...unhelpful and does not give the impression you perhaps imagine it does.
November 13, 2025 at 1:56 PM
Reposted by Amanda Helms
The Republican president is a pedophile who has doubled my healthcare costs and let scores of violent criminals out of jail. But a Democratic mayor-elect wants to make busses free in a city I don't live in. I have never felt more politically homeless.
November 13, 2025 at 12:47 PM
Reposted by Amanda Helms
2025 Eligibility List

passion is my graphic design. art behind the text for Uncertain Sons by @cdsart.bsky.social. thanks in advance if you read (or have already read) any of these this year. much appreciated. will add links or other details at some point maybe.
November 7, 2025 at 12:41 AM
Reposted by Amanda Helms
See, look, U.S.A., it's this easy

(and should have been done immediately upon the knowledge that these cheats and grifters were STEALING our work)
November 11, 2025 at 12:17 AM
Reposted by Amanda Helms
Dude the NYT is crawling with pedos lmaoo it really makes so much sense now why they love Trump. They are in the fucking files too!
This one stuck out to me from early 2017.

2025: youtu.be/w3LKEvXpWqg?...
November 12, 2025 at 11:54 PM
Oof, another story of the terrible, no-good contracts coming from the new owner of F&SF, Asimov’s, and Analog, Must Read Media.
On August 12, 1971, 16-year-old me mailed the first story I ever wrote off on its first submission to my dream market, F&SF. My tale was quickly rejected. On July 17th, 2025, I finally sold a story to that magazine. Here's why I felt I had to withdraw that story. www.scottedelman.com/wordpress/20...
November 12, 2025 at 11:05 PM
Reposted by Amanda Helms
My 100% no-AI book finally triggered an AI-generated scam. (Spoiler alert to the scammer: you don't need to ask an author if your readers can read and review a published book.) I brushed up the grammar and present to you: AI scam email as book promo! 😂 (Cover photo, graphics, and edits by me.)
November 12, 2025 at 6:12 PM
Reposted by Amanda Helms
Hi writers! I’m looking to assign a couple of features for Slate before the end of the year. If you have anything in mind that you think would be a fit please send me a pitch! Jenée.Desmond- harris@slate.com or dm me.

RTs are appreciated so this can reach more people. Thanks!
November 10, 2025 at 6:06 PM
Some good news, at least.
BREAKING: The Supreme Court DENIES former county clerk Kim Davis's request for the justices to take up her longshot bid to overturn 2015's Obergefell v. Hodges marriage equality decision. No justice even writes about the request.
November 10, 2025 at 3:41 PM
Reposted by Amanda Helms
Note them well
Dems who voted with GOP on ending shutdown:
DURBIN
SHAHEEN
HASSAN
FETTERMAN
ROSEN
CORTEZ MASTO
KAINE

And KING (I)

On track for 60-40 vote
November 10, 2025 at 2:21 AM
Reposted by Amanda Helms
The average SNAP benefit per month is $177 a person.

The average ACA benefit per month is up to $550 a person.

People want us to hold the line for a reason. This is not a matter of appealing to a base. It’s about people’s lives.

And working people want leaders whose word means something to them.
November 10, 2025 at 1:49 AM
Getting real sick of the “let’s turn it around in the midterms!” lines when Dems repeatedly fail to give any indication they’ll fight for us to still HAVE midterms.

Shame on @schumer.senate.gov for not shutting this down, shame on all the cavers
November 10, 2025 at 1:53 AM
Reposted by Amanda Helms
Anyway a great way to radicalize people is for them to realize that you just abandoned their chance at being able to access and afford health care because you didn’t like waiting in line at the airport.
November 10, 2025 at 1:17 AM
Reposted by Amanda Helms
After tonight, I've seen enough; he won't change. @justicedemocrats.com is right: it's time to primary Chuck.

The right and obvious choice is AOC.

@aoc.bsky.social, the people are ready to rally around you. The time to run for US Senate has now arrived.

go.justicedemocrats.com/signup/jd-em...
It’s time to primary Chuck Schumer
After spending years lecturing progressives for criticizing or refusing to support corporate Democrats, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer failed to endorse Zohran Mamdani, the official Democratic n...
go.justicedemocrats.com
November 10, 2025 at 1:29 AM
👇 👇👇
November 10, 2025 at 12:20 AM
Reposted by Amanda Helms
You hear that @ossoff.senate.gov
November 9, 2025 at 10:23 PM
Reposted by Amanda Helms
Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.)
Maggie Hassan (N.H.)
Sens. Jacky Rosen (Nev.),
Tammy Baldwin (Wis.), Mark Kelly (Ariz.),
Jon Ossoff (Ga.),
Gary Peters (Mich.) Dick Durbin (Ill.)

the Democrats who are are considered by R's as possible “yes” votes for the deal.
Call the United States Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and they will connect you with your senator's office.

If you're represented by one of the squishier centrists, be sure to make a call. Now.
Sounds like the squishes in the senate caucus are ready to pull the plug with no ACA changes. This is real. If you want to register your opinion you shld call yr senator in the next hour. They not only want to reopen w/nothing. They want cover from their colleagues who still want to hold out.
November 9, 2025 at 9:51 PM
Reposted by Amanda Helms
Dear Democratic Senators: if you vote for this selling out of the ACA it will be the end of your careers. Depend upon it. You are there to defend this country against Trump and the fascists, not collude with them. If you become Quislings, you will forever REMAIN Quislings
November 9, 2025 at 8:26 PM
Reposted by Amanda Helms
“A promise of a vote on healthcare” is nothing
November 9, 2025 at 8:10 PM
Reposted by Amanda Helms
40 years ago we’d have congressional hearings falsely accusing metal bands of putting backwards messages in their songs that told kids to kill themselves & now we have a planet-killing chatbot that’s all like “bet you won’t commit suicide chickenshit bitch” & the government is like here’s $5 billion
November 8, 2025 at 4:23 AM
Reposted by Amanda Helms
I feel like we have the opportunity to turn David Lynch's quote into this moment's "Keep Calm and Carry On" and it's a far better rallying cry too.
November 7, 2025 at 1:15 PM