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Ridley Park
@ridleypark.bsky.social
58 followers 53 following 83 posts
Speculative Fiction Author. http://RidleyPark.blog
Hemo Sapiens: Awakening • Propensity • Sustenance • Temporal Babel
Posts Replies Media Videos
ridleypark.bsky.social
Keyboards have feelings, too.
ridleypark.blog/2025/12/03/a...

#writingcommunity #technologyy #riskmanagement #impermanence #lettinggo #writing #amwriting #amwritingfiction #writinglife #keyboards #fragile #AuthorLife #author #satire #humour #diy #acceptance #blog
Authorial Risk in the Modern Age
Most readers labour under the charming delusion that authorial life involves quills, cafés, slow drips of genius, and perhaps the occasional tragic sigh toward the window. This fiction, alas, is fa…
ridleypark.blog
December 3, 2025 at 10:07 PM
ridleypark.bsky.social
I also publish nonfiction.
December 2, 2025 at 12:50 AM
ridleypark.bsky.social
Part 3 of 3 of a series of Gemini reviewing Propensity. Also, a #podcast summary.
ridleypark.blog/2025/11/28/p...
#blog #books #bookreview #dystopian #novel #amwriting #entropy #gemini #audiobook #kindle #paperback #hardcover #specualtivefiction #future
Propensity Meets Google Gemini – 3 of 3
ENTROPIC completes the trilogy of collapse – linguistic, civic, and humane. It does not whimper. It corrodes. In the end, form breaks down not because the author lost control, but because control i…
ridleypark.blog
November 28, 2025 at 6:06 AM
ridleypark.bsky.social
Part 2 of 3 in a series of Gemini reviews of Propensity, a speculative fiction novel about when peace goes too far.
ridleypark.blog/2025/11/27/p...
#amwriting #bookreview #reviews #books #amreading #gemniai #propensity #blog #podcast #audiobook #kindle #ebook #hardcover #paperback #kdp #ingramspark
Propensity audiobook cover
November 27, 2025 at 11:28 PM
ridleypark.bsky.social
The first of three in a series of reviews by Gemini, as it dissects Propensity by section.
👉 ridleypark.blog/2025/11/27/p...
#amwriting #books #propensity #books #bookreview #fiction #writingfiction #dystopian #science #control #freewill #identity #novel #audiobook #kindle #ebook #blog
Propensity Meets Google Gemini 3.1
I keep saying it’s nearly impossible to get book reviews, and because the universe enjoys mocking me, I decided to outsource the job to an entity that doesn’t even have a pulse. So I asked Gemini t…
ridleypark.blog
November 27, 2025 at 6:58 AM
ridleypark.bsky.social
Just starting There Is No Antimemetics Division

ridleypark.blog/2025/11/26/i...

#amreading #books #audiobook #audible #amlistening #scifi #hardsciencefiction #horror #authorlife
I Return From My Fictional Sabbatical (With Antimemes in Tow)
Ridley Park has not been dead, merely sleeping like a hungover deity ignoring its worshippers. As has become my regrettable habit, most of my creative energy has been siphoned into non-fiction proj…
ridleypark.blog
November 26, 2025 at 11:42 PM
ridleypark.bsky.social
Writing isn’t a 100-metre dash—but it’s being treated like one. Why does the hint of AI get the craft accused of crime? 👉 ridleypark.blog/2025/11/12/c...
#WritingLife #AI #AuthorLife #AmWriting #Blog #Philosophy #Psychology #Art #Creativity #Books #Society #Madness #technology #robots
November 13, 2025 at 3:33 AM
ridleypark.bsky.social
ridleypark.blog/2025/11/08/w...

#books #amwriting #editing #fiction #indyauthor #cowboys #starwars
Working with an Editor
Working with an editor shouldn’t be scary. Unless, of course, you frighten easily. Let’s begin with the great paranoia of writers everywhere: They’ll steal my idea! Relax. No one’s skulking through…
ridleypark.blog
November 9, 2025 at 2:50 AM
ridleypark.bsky.social
🎥Propensity now has a book trailer. Check it out. 🎬
www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K0w...

#Propensity #RidleyPark #BookTrailer #SpeculativeFiction #Philosophy #PostmodernFiction #Amwriting #fiction #amreading
Propensity Trailer 1
YouTube video by Ridley Park
www.youtube.com
November 8, 2025 at 7:35 AM
ridleypark.bsky.social
Gave away 100 copies of Sustenance. Got 4 reviews.
One was a glorious 1-star hate read. The rest? Lost in the digital abyss. Still, I’d rather have a bad review than no readers.
ridleypark.blog/2025/11/06/r...
#Writing #Books #IndieAuthor #Readers #Fiction #WritingLife #IndieAuthor #AmWriting #blog
Rave Reviews
“I’d rather get reviews than sales.” “I’d rather get reviews than sales.” Yes, I actually said that. Possibly whilst caffeinated. I was chatting with a mate about book sales, and …
ridleypark.blog
November 7, 2025 at 2:46 AM
ridleypark.bsky.social
In this post, I question the idea of making an audiobook. One size does not fit all.

👉 ridleypark.blog/.../02/shoul...

#books #fictionbooks #audiobooks #blogpost #amwriting #listening #fiction #Listen
November 2, 2025 at 7:49 PM
ridleypark.bsky.social
In Simulacra (Ch 26 of Propensity), the copy replaces the real. A scene written as script, a morality performed for a camera no one controls.
ridleypark.blog/2025/11/01/s...
#LiteraryFiction #Simulacra #RidleyPark #Baudrillard #SpeculativeFiction #Books #AmWriting #Script #Manuscript #Fiction #crows
Simulacra – When the Camera Becomes the Conscience
“The room smells like a tin of low tide.” That’s the first line of Chapter 26, ‘Simulacra’, in Propensity. A small, airless room. A flickering light. Three teenagers – Teddy, Lena, Jama…
ridleypark.blog
November 1, 2025 at 11:18 PM
ridleypark.bsky.social
A pair of Aces

philosophics.blog/2025/10/31/p...

#books #printing #publishing #amwriting #enlightenment #propensity #proof #fiction #nonfiction #philosophy #blogs #bookclub #paperback #clothbound #fancy
Propensity of the Illusion of Light
I just received two proof copies in the post this afternoon. Propensity I created a “Book Club Edition” of Propensity, a Ridley Park book of fiction primarily for the European market – …
philosophics.blog
October 31, 2025 at 9:11 PM
ridleypark.bsky.social
New post: On accidental kinship with Stanisław Lem and the limits of originality.

Turns out my 'unique' story about alien consciousness and dual suns? Lem did it in 1961. Before the moon landing.

So what now?

ridleypark.blog/2025/10/22/o...

#WritingCommunity #SpecFic #Solaris #AmWriting
On Accidental Kinship and the Limits of Originality
I don’t read sci-fi. It rarely resonates with me. I’ve read many classics, but I don’t get the hype. As a speculative fiction author, I sometimes operate in an adjacent space – cl…
ridleypark.blog
October 22, 2025 at 4:35 PM
ridleypark.bsky.social
Sharing a review of my novel, Propensity, on my blog. Check it out. 👀📚 Leave your own review on Amazon or Goodreads – or comment on my blog. I'm not picky.

ridleypark.blog/2025/10/19/r...

#books #amwriting #AmWritingFiction #amreading #bookreview #bookreviewerswanted #blog
Review: Propensity
A stranger read Propensity—and understood it. That alone makes the review worth sharing. What follows is her take, my thoughts, and a small reminder that readers, like experiments, never behave as …
ridleypark.blog
October 19, 2025 at 4:55 AM
ridleypark.bsky.social
I recommend Zamyatin's We. Written in 1921, it's a precursor to dystopian classics such as 1984 and Brave New World – better, at least relative to the depth of its political narrative.

ridleypark.blog/2025/10/15/r...

#books #classics #reading #AmReading #novels #dystopian #fiction #Literature
Reaching the Finish Line with Zamyatin, Le Guin, and Foucault Still in My Head
The book ends, as these things always do, with a sigh and a stack of annotated pages. I’ve just closed the cover on Zamyatin’s We, and, like a cigarette slipped into the afterword, there sat Ursula…
ridleypark.blog
October 15, 2025 at 3:47 PM
ridleypark.bsky.social
Stop quoting Orwell memes. Forget 1984 and Brave New World. The real mirror of our times is Zamyatin’s We: a world where we happily surrender ourselves to the algorithm.

ridleypark.blog/2025/09/17/t...

#Dystopia #Orwell #CriticalTheory #Books #booksuggestions #Philosophy #Surveillance
The Wrong Dystopias: Why ‘We’ May Be the Book for Now
Every time the news cycle coughs up another surveillance scandal, someone posts an Orwell meme. When pharmaceutical companies peddle happy pills, a Huxley meme pops up. 1984 and Brave New World hav…
ridleypark.blog
September 17, 2025 at 6:11 PM
ridleypark.bsky.social
Octavia Butler’s Lilith in Dawn is meant as radical, but she ends up repeating archetypes of Western femininity. Judith Butler would see her as pure performativity.

My reflection → philosophics.blog/2025/09/08/b...

#Philosophy #CriticalTheory #OctaviaButler #JudithButler #Postmodernism #AmReading
women looking in mirror with fractured reflections
September 11, 2025 at 4:08 AM
ridleypark.bsky.social
Aliens don’t breathe, but authors live off reviews. 💜
Thank you for reading Sustenance and sharing your words.

📝 New post: ridleypark.blog/2025/09/09/t...

#IndieAuthor #SciFiBooks #SpecFic #LiterarySciFi #WeirdLit #AlienFiction #BookTwitter #BookReview #KindleUnlimited #KindleBook #SciFi #Iowa
September 9, 2025 at 9:46 PM
ridleypark.bsky.social
👽 Literary sci-fi meets cornfields and confusion.
Sustenance explores alien encounters, human projection, and awkward rural intimacy—with a healthy dose of crop-circle weirdness.
📕 Out now in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle:
www.amazon.com/dp/B0F9VGH8FP

#SpecFic #SciFi #IndieAuthor #WeirdFiction
September 8, 2025 at 5:52 AM
ridleypark.bsky.social
What’s with the violet aliens on the cover of Sustenance? Midwest barns. Crop circles. American Gothic.

ridleypark.blog/2025/09/08/w...

📚 Kindle edition is FREE
www.amazon.com/dp/B0F9BDWKFD

#kindlebooks #SciFiBooks #bookcoverdesign #Books #America #IndieAuthors #coverart #KindleUnlimited
What’s With the Violet Aliens?
🛸 A Closer Look at the Cover of Sustenance 👽 People ask me: What’s with the aliens on the front cover of Sustenance? Fair enough. Let’s talk about it. Sustenance is set in Iowa – real, dusty, soybe…
ridleypark.blog
September 8, 2025 at 4:40 AM
ridleypark.bsky.social
Sartre: “Inaction is a choice.”
Zinn: “You can’t be neutral on a moving train.”
Butler’s alien: “You committed mass suicide.”
Maybe agency is just a Modernist myth we don’t actually need.
👉 philosophics.blog/2025/09/07/o...

#Philosophy #Postmodernism #Agency #ScienceFiction #Books #AmReading
On Agency, Suicide, and the Moving Train
Octavia Butler’s Dawn opens with aliens who claim humanity “committed mass suicide.” But who really tips the apple cart of history? Sartre, Zinn, and the Stabilisers, Survivors, and Sycophants all …
philosophics.blog
September 7, 2025 at 8:58 PM
ridleypark.bsky.social
🚨 Free for 2 days! 🚨
My novella Sustenance – small-town Iowa meets the uncanny – is free on Kindle Sept 7–8. Always free with KU, but free for everyone with this promo. 📚
www.amazon.com/dp/B0F9PTK9N2

#FreeBook #KindleFree #SpecFic #LiteraryFiction #IndieAuthor #BookTwitter #AmReading #Book #Books
Sustenance
Amazon.com: Sustenance: 9798284521380: Park, Ridley: Books
www.amazon.com
September 6, 2025 at 4:00 PM
ridleypark.bsky.social
⭐⭐⭐ I finished Anna Kavan’s Ice. tl;dr: I gave it a 3 of 5 stars. Fuller review on blog or Goodreads.

ridleypark.blog/2025/09/03/i...

#AmReading #AnnaKavan #Slipstream #SpeculativeFiction #LiteraryFiction #ModernistFiction #WeirdLit #ExistentialFiction #BookBlog #BookReview #Book #Review #Books
Ice by Anna Kavan – Five Chapters In
Five chapters down, and Anna Kavan’s Ice is already proving itself to be less a novel than a feverish novelette-length hallucination. It hits differently than the sprawling sagas I’ve been chewing …
ridleypark.blog
September 4, 2025 at 6:53 PM
ridleypark.bsky.social
Five chapters into Anna Kavan’s Ice, and it’s less spree than seizure. A frozen hallucination where compulsion outpaces logic—dive in.
ridleypark.blog/2025/09/03/i...

#AmReading #AnnaKavan #Slipstream #SpeculativeFiction #LiteraryFiction #ModernistFiction #WeirdLit #ExistentialFiction #BookBlog
Ice by Anna Kavan – Five Chapters In
Five chapters down, and Anna Kavan’s Ice is already proving itself to be less a novel than a feverish novelette-length hallucination. It hits differently than the sprawling sagas I’ve been chewing …
ridleypark.blog
September 3, 2025 at 4:40 AM