Charlotte Francis
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cfranciswrites.bsky.social
Charlotte Francis
@cfranciswrites.bsky.social
1.8K followers 880 following 3K posts
(Charlotte Harris) SFF writer. On submission with my debut novel. Welsh/Dutch Londoner 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🇳🇱. Former teacher. Mum of 3. Rep: @helenlane.bsky.social

My website: https://charlotte-francis.com
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cfranciswrites.bsky.social
Yesterday marked 2 years since I lost the most important woman in my life. Not a day that goes by that I don't wish she was still here, but I'm glad to be past the raw, aching stage of grief. Now, I can remember her not as her awful illness, but as the wonderful woman she was. I miss you, Mum.
A photo of my mum when she was around 20, with beautiful long brown hair and a genuine smile.
November 8, 2025 at 11:55 AM
cfranciswrites.bsky.social
But when the characters also don't know themselves? That's proved much harder than I anticipated. The first chapters will need serious edits.

I've finally got into some sort of groove now, where I'm more familiar with the characters. And they've come to this realisation. (Warning: VERY 1st drafty)
Maybe Trigger was onto something. Folks had responded to this crisis in just about every way possible. Even though no one could remember their own name, they were all still different. Personalities remarkably intact, even without the lifetime of experience to scaffold them. Grey was a leader. Red a problem solver—and quite possibly insane. Fetch was a dick. Aegis an even bigger dick. Trigger defied every label he tried to pin to her. Inappropriate, flirtatious, intriguing, none of them fit quite right. And Bull? He stroked his jaw, the bristles of his beard catching under his nails. He wasn’t sure who Bull was yet. Maybe a murderer. Maybe not.
November 8, 2025 at 11:20 AM
cfranciswrites.bsky.social
#Writevember Week 1 was all about steady progress. I had a crazy busy week, so for the most part, I only got to write from 10pm onwards. I hit my targets, but usually, I'd be further ahead by this point. Hoping for a quieter week next week so I can knuckle down and get a lot more words on the page.
A stylised excel chart I'm using to chart the progress on my book, Dark. The background is black, with a the silhouette of an astronaut floating in front of a faint blue nebula. There's a bright blue light reflected in their helmet visor. The chart has the days in November along the X axis and word count along the Y axis (demarcated in 20Ks). There's an expected progress line in blue cutting diagonal across the chart, aiming for 100k words by the end of the month. Progress has been study. Lightly glowing pale blue bars are keeping pace with the expected progress line, climbing steadily to hit 30k-ish on Day 7.
November 8, 2025 at 11:20 AM
cfranciswrites.bsky.social
FUCK AI.

Show me something you made without the use of AI.

It would be pretty hard to make these with AI, but still. I'm damned proud of them. I spent 70+ hours working on them, turning architectural drawings into vectors and layering the buildings from laser cut mdf+plywood.
A 3D model of a school (a former church building), framed in a black box frame. It's made from many layers of 3mm and 1.5mm pdf and plywood, which I designed in Illustrator, then engraved and cut on my Glowforge. This model took 50 hours. The vectors were the hardest part—trying to figure out how to get all the different layers and features in 3D. A model of another school building, this one a traditional Georgian building. It's a simpler model, but it's got a lot of detail around the windows, which I spent a long time getting right. This model took about 20 hours. A close up on the church-school, not framed The Georgian school building close up. Not framed.
November 5, 2025 at 5:41 PM
cfranciswrites.bsky.social
“What? This is a totally normal way to sleep. Stop laughing!”

(Check out his creepy single open eye—I honestly thought he’d had some sort of cat stroke. But he’s fine.)
My ninny of a cat sleeping on his cat blanket next to my desk. He’s mostly lying on his side, but his head is twisted around so the top of his head is on the blanket and his chin points up at the ceiling. One of his eyes is open, glaring at me.
November 4, 2025 at 7:13 PM
cfranciswrites.bsky.social
Had a lovely time at @worldfantasy2025.bsky.social yesterday. Interesting panels, lovely people, and I had fun spotting some of my favourite authors at the bar! I especially loved spending the day with my agent @helenlane.bsky.social and the talented @jamesbennett.bsky.social.
November 2, 2025 at 4:18 PM
cfranciswrites.bsky.social
My #Writevember challenge is to write the 1st draft of Dark, a sci-fi thriller I've had on the back burner for a while. My aim is 100k, but I'm likely to overshoot that. Got a busy weekend ahead, so I won't be getting too much done until Monday.

Good luck to everyone doing a challenge!
A chart for tracking the progress of my book Dark. November dates span the x axis, words in the 20ks up to 100k span the y axis. There's a target word count line. And the backdrop is the title DARK in glossy black letters overlaid over the silhouette of an astronaut against the backdrop of space.
October 31, 2025 at 3:00 PM
cfranciswrites.bsky.social
Also, snap. Izzy did the same one
A drawing of a fish from Simply Draw, done by my 8 year old
October 30, 2025 at 10:34 PM
cfranciswrites.bsky.social
1 hour per day? That explains a lot! Amazing perseverance.

She's definitely building good habits. She can't stop drawing. She's always been like that, and has always been very good. Forgive my mummy brag, but she just brought this to show me. It's for a friend.
A drawing my 8-year-old made of a Jack o lantern and a ghost, with the words Happy Halloween.
October 30, 2025 at 9:04 PM
cfranciswrites.bsky.social
Light Mode VS Dark Mode

Which would you choose?
A picture of my laptop from my outlining session at a cafe yesterday. Daylight streaming through the windows. Latte sitting next to the computer. Screen is in light mode, showing Scrivener and my WIP outline blurred out A picture of the same laptop in dark mode. Scrivener still open. This time, it’s in a bar at night, red neon lights give the picture a totally different vibe, and there’s a glass of wine beside the laptop this time. This is from the outlining I did last night at a London-based SFF writing group.
October 30, 2025 at 11:33 AM
cfranciswrites.bsky.social
I’m entrenched in planning madness and scrambling to get this done for Saturday to start #Writevember. Planning this book has been much harder than others. The sheer size of the crew, their amnesia, the technical hard sci-fi elements. It’s a lot. I’ve run out of wall space. This is the overflow.
An oblique view of my craft island in my study. It’s covered in character cards, organised by where they are on the ship at the start of the story. There’s also an A3 sheet with dead crew members, so I can keep track of everyone on the ship. The backdrop is the fireplace wall in my study. One of my maps is framed on the wall, with my TBR books for this month (new October releases). There’s a sword and a flute on the wall, and there’re lots of plants dotted around.
October 28, 2025 at 11:07 AM
cfranciswrites.bsky.social
Dang it. Should have thought more about this before I posted. THIS is much more representative for Skye. She is 99% puppy, and 1% terrifyingly powerful bundle of barely-contained destructive energy.
Same as before, except I've removed the Ciri reference for Sky and added in an adorable, playful puppy. I've shrunk the other three references for Skye to make the puppy the biggest influence.
October 26, 2025 at 4:04 PM
cfranciswrites.bsky.social
Sadly, I don't have any artwork of my characters yet (and my many attempts to find real people who look like the characters in my head always end in failure)

I had to add another box for Isaac (could've added 3 more—and my husband should be in the influences, but the rules disqualified him)
Character influences meme showing the characters from film, TV, and video games who inspired the characters in 'The Last Sky' John Crichton (Farscape) + Sawyer (Lost) + Sam Coe (Starfield) + Mando (Mandalorian) + John Danziger (Earth 2) = Isaac Rhodes Laura, X-23 (Logan) + Eleven (Stranger Things) + Grogu (The Mandalorian) + Ciri, young (The Witcher) = Skye Sylphrena (Stormlight Archive) + Cortana (Halo) + K-2SO (Rogue One) + Holly (Red Dwarf) = Stella
October 26, 2025 at 11:45 AM
cfranciswrites.bsky.social
Pax approves of the new self-heating blanket I got him for my desk. Instant purring and biscuit making.
A fluffy tabby cat relaxes on a cream cat blanket on the counter beside my desk
October 24, 2025 at 9:28 AM
cfranciswrites.bsky.social
Phew! We’re home! He was so brave and managed to do it without general anaesthetic. Two hours instead of who knows how many if he had to go to surgery. His sisters were ready when we got home with the cutest get well soon cards.
My daughter’s showing my son the cards they made him. They’re in the kitchen.
October 23, 2025 at 10:23 AM
cfranciswrites.bsky.social
At the hospital with my poor boy, who’s getting stitches after getting injured at school yesterday. In for a long wait, but at least I have something to read! Just released this morning. I’ve been waiting for this final book in Lyra’s journey for years. I’m hoping it’s less bleak!
Kindle showing the cover of “The Book of Dust: The Rose Field”.
October 23, 2025 at 7:45 AM
cfranciswrites.bsky.social
Woke up with a tiny piece of glass in the ball of my foot, which I can't get out. Painful as hell, and I have no idea how it got there. It's creeping me out.

Did I step on it 5 years ago and it's finally grown out? Did I sleep-smash things and walk through the debris? Am I just producing glass now?
The maths lady meme
October 22, 2025 at 9:17 AM
cfranciswrites.bsky.social
This tree is ridiculous. I can’t get over the way the colour melts from maroon to yellow. This autumn has been absurd so far. I can’t stop staring at trees.
A maple tree on a residential street. It’s autumn leaves form a gradient from deep maroon at the top, moving down through lots of reds, down to greeny-yellow at the bottom
October 21, 2025 at 11:18 AM
cfranciswrites.bsky.social
I can't wait 😂

This really reminds me of a picture book series my kids were into: Shifty McGifty and Slippery Sam. Scruffy would fit right in.
Front cover of the first book in the Shifty McGifty and Slippery Sam series, featuring two dogs dressed as robbers with a night city-scape behind them.
October 19, 2025 at 7:26 PM
cfranciswrites.bsky.social
Today has been enormously successful:
- 7500 words added to the plan—hashing out the overarching plot at the moment, then back to detailed chapters
- Made a deck plan of the ship to send over to my ESA-dad to check for realism
- Made a tracker for Nov's writeathon
- Got crazy excited about this book
A basic deck plan diagram made in Illustrator and extra annotations done by hand. It shows 'The Theseus', a tug vessel, and the cargo train 'Lethe', which is full of gas canisters. It's a hard sci-fi set up, with the drive cone at the rear of the ship, then the rest of the ship rising like a tower above it, so the ship has gravity under thrust. A screenshot of an interactive tracker chart in Excel, customised with a background of an astronaut all in black against a pale blue nebula (but generally dark stylings). The title 'DARK' overlays the image in chunky, glossy letters. There's an expected progress line in blue, showing a hopeful 100k words added in November (yup, crazy ambition, but I've done it a few times before). Along the x-axis are the days in November, and along the Y are numbers of words My desk as I write this message—my plan for the ship alongside instax mini photos of my characters/crew (about 20 of them). Trying to place everyone for the start of the book—who needs to be where. Trying to get my head around plotting now I have the ship's plan more sorted in my head.
October 18, 2025 at 11:40 PM
cfranciswrites.bsky.social
The central theme in the book I've been outlining. Except in my book, the ship is literally called Theseus, and the thought experiment is about the people themselves.
The Ship of Theseus If you replace every piece of a ship, one by one, until nothing original remains, is it still the same ship?
October 18, 2025 at 1:21 PM
cfranciswrites.bsky.social
Outlining a new project this afternoon at the recently renovated cafe at my local park—nestled inside a former stately home. Hoping to get the whole 1st draft written in November for the Kronkers Writeathon. Today's outlining has got me super excited to dive in straight away. Is it November yet?
The dregs of my pumpkin spiced late with some teeny pumpkins and squashes on the table. My laptop is open on Scrivener. And in the background is a window through which you can see trees and a moody sky. The lighting is moody (thank you photoshop). Close up on the pumpkin spiced latte (it was soooooo good!) and the teeny squashes/pumpkins. The edge of my laptop is peeking into view. Got that New Scrivener feel going on in the binder. Barely anything in there yet. The hall where the cafe is situated in the middle of the park. It's not enormous, with a Georgian double fronted section, complete with pillared entranceway, and extra wings out to the side. There's a large lawn in the foreground, and the sky is looking sulky as it squats overhead.
October 17, 2025 at 4:57 PM
cfranciswrites.bsky.social
My little corner of London is autumning hard. Love it.
A wide avenue with parked cars either side of the road. Trees stretch out into the distance in shade of brown and red under an overcast sky.
October 14, 2025 at 1:18 PM
cfranciswrites.bsky.social
Favourite line from yesterday's editing. Ess decided I hadn't written her feisty enough, so she escalated things.
Ess glared at Caladon. The impatient oaf still stood by the door, his expression guarded, either unable or unwilling to meet her gaze. If she had to stick her hand in scalding water again, she would be doing so with his face firmly locked in her grip.
October 14, 2025 at 5:31 AM
cfranciswrites.bsky.social
Ha! Good choice! I still remember getting Beethoven Second from the video rental place in town (I can't even remember what we used to call it - being Brit expats in Holland, Video Store or Blockbuster are out).

For me, the video we had kicking around I watched the most was:
Photo (not mine) of a Free Willy VHS box, with the iconic image of the whale jumping over the boy on the breaker wall with the sunset behind them.
October 11, 2025 at 9:27 AM