Sofie Tholin
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sofietholin.bsky.social
Sofie Tholin
@sofietholin.bsky.social
110 followers 140 following 120 posts
S.A. Tholin, writer of the PRIMATERRE series - military science fiction - and PRIMATERRE TALES - space pirates, space detectives, space submariners.

SPSFC winner with IRON TRUTH, book one of the Primaterre!
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sofietholin.bsky.social
Moon Murder Draft 2 progress update: about halfway there. I'm having a lot of fun with it! My characters... maybe not so much, haha*

*and things are about to get worse. Brace for the Moment of Clarity!
A screenshot from Word. The text reads: "The universe is folding in on itself, Grace. Everything is coming undone." It's page 520/982, 265,724 words in total (yes it's a big book)
November 22, 2025 at 4:32 PM
sofietholin.bsky.social
#SFFChat Day 4 - Snippet: Haunting.

A snippet from Summer Empress. A villainess makes her spooky entrance!
The creature Haakon had called his moon goddess descended into the oubliette on steps of whirling glass. Veils covered her masked face, the silks shifting over pearlescent metal. She looked like a dead thing, some poet's sweetheart risen from her grave to haunt opium dreams.
October 5, 2025 at 12:52 AM
sofietholin.bsky.social
First draft finished! Murder, mystery, mayhem - and one rather important Moment - in an asylum seeker camp on Phobos.

Now onto the edits...
A printed out page with so many notes, just... SO MANY NOTES, haha.
September 16, 2025 at 12:32 PM
sofietholin.bsky.social
Captain Flora Lark and the cataphract Sigrid Rokland, exploring an underwater cave system on a planet far more alien than they expected.
At the edge of a bridge that had no railings, for it had been designed for the coiling of sinewy bodies, Lark stared down into the source of the pale light. Her mind recoiled, but her feet stepped forward, because the abyss called to her, sang with the voice of water and pulled with the force of something greater still. Rokland pulled her back from the edge. In the vastness of the city, even the cataphract appeared small. Behind them lay the tunnel, and how comforting those oppressive walls suddenly seemed; how lovely it would be to walk on a red carpet and hear their footfall bounce off old and crumbling, but so very normal, concrete. Ahead, the bridge cut an inky line through the twilight band between the cave dark and the light rising from the deep. The noise, the light, the terror – this was nothing like the cave where a young Lark had once lay dying, but she felt like that girl again. Her hand found Rokland's, their fingers interlacing tightly, and together they approached the edge again. It did not matter how small they were; forward was the only way.
September 9, 2025 at 9:43 PM
sofietholin.bsky.social
A snippet from my WIP (which is 99% complete! Yay!). Still a first draft in pretty rough shape, but as a little teaser, here's a snippet in which our characters are having a bad time in the Big Wet.

#WIPSnips
The fog turned from white to a diffuse orange, lit by enemy encampments along the shore. They skirted them as quietly as they could in their stolen boat, until they were as close to the towermen as it could take them. Back at Exning, the Galateans had drones in the air, spitting missiles like Catherine wheel fireworks. Jackson was grateful for the distraction. Better to focus on the action back there than the mud sucking at his greaves and the splashing, sighing, croaking, bubbling noises of the Big Wet. The ground turned solid under their feet. The fog released its grasp on them, fading to a wispy mist. A dilapidated industrial area to the west, flatlands to the east, the mountain-peak skyline of the city at the horizon, and everywhere the lights of enemies glowed bright. Flashlights, searchlights, headlights, drone lights; the rumble of engines, the footfall of boots, the barking of dogs; there was nowhere to hide, not even for the towermen who came running across the industrial area, their prismatic armour's camouflage flashing off and on. They dragged two crates and one of their own – Haukes, minus one leg – across cracked concrete and collapsed chain-link fences, and hot on their heels a dozen infantry fighting vehicles came bursting through factory walls, a wolf pack of Galatean soldiers loping alongside them. Jackson and Zimmi laid down covering fire, and Jackson had forgotten that sometimes it could be glorious like this, APF-redirected enemy fire bending around him as though he could will himself invincible, his own bullets finding their targets every time as his awareness flowed through the air with them, battling hostile countermeasures. Then he heard the buzzing. Mosquitoes, he thought, but the buzzing grew louder, and with it a strange feeling.
September 7, 2025 at 8:19 PM
sofietholin.bsky.social
#SciFiSeptember Day 7:

At a glance, I think people sometimes assume Iron Truth is all grimdark scifi and military action. It is, but it's also... this, haha. :)
Given the choice of an elevator shaft and a perfectly good ladder; the cold, dark, fall-to-your-deathy option wasn't the one Joy would've picked. The flare looked distant enough to be a star and the drop long enough that she'd have time to think about her landing if she fell. She'd thought of it plenty already, a horror-reel of fracturing bone and rupturing skin playing in her mind. "I'm just saying," she complained to Hopewell, "Cato's one silver lining was the lack of heights. Oh sure, it's got tunnels and spiders and more lunatics than you could swing a cat at, but at least I rarely had to worry about plummeting to my death." "Cheer up," said Hopewell and tightened the straps of a harness around her waist. "One way or another, it'll all be over soon."
September 7, 2025 at 1:08 PM
sofietholin.bsky.social
My two year old draws some pretty sweet little guys
A dancing skeleton Just a little guy A mushroom
September 4, 2025 at 4:04 PM
sofietholin.bsky.social
Only between Cascades - massive space stations that fold ships&comms between solar systems. If the Cascade is well-maintained, it's safe, but many are left to rot for budget reasons...

Fold failure isn't pretty. Ships & crews come out mangled, not alive, not dead, captured in a moment for eternity.
Comms specialist Aubrey Lucklaw experiencing what it's like to execute folds from inside the core chamber of a Cascade. It's pretty spooky in there! The text reads: "When the ships fold, it's like the entire universe is flattened - distance, time, all gone - and I'm thinking that those things exist for a reason. That they are shields, protecting us from what's out there. Keeping us safe until we..." He paused. "I don't know how to explain it, but when the ships fold, I can glimpse on the horizon a glittering thing. A promise. Something I can reach one day if I try hard enough. If I do my best." "It's just the fold sickness, kid. Best trip in the galaxy, I hear. Enjoy it while you can; supposedly the mind builds up a tolerance real quick."
September 4, 2025 at 1:56 PM
sofietholin.bsky.social
#SciFiSeptember Day 3: The Phrixus! The core of the ship is one giant coilgun, designed to fire a single projectile into an ocean planet that the ship will then slide onto, transforming into an underwater city...

...the idea came to its captain in a fever dream, so yeah, it's pretty weird! (1/2)
A schematic of the Phrixus, a spaceship built around a massive coilgun. There's a logo that reads Vlachou Vinyls. An illustration of the Phrixus, deployed as an underwater city called Thalassocracy. There are three city domes - Archon, Okeanos and Xenia. A schematic of hab-dome Xenia, showing apartments, submarine pens, and offices.
September 3, 2025 at 8:16 PM
sofietholin.bsky.social
Well now you're just being rude, Word
A screenshot of Word's spelling and grammar checker suggesting the sentence "Bloom wasn't petty." be changed to "Bloom wasn't pretty."
September 2, 2025 at 8:28 PM
sofietholin.bsky.social
The Narratess Sale is here! Get Iron Truth for 0.99!

What's Iron Truth about? See the excerpt below for a taste,

then get books by @akmbeach.bsky.social, @stevewestenra.bsky.social, @timhardieauthor.bsky.social, @tessahastjarjanto.com, @cjdaleywrites.bsky.social + hundreds more at indiebook.sale!
A promotional image. The text reads INDIE BOOK SALE indiebooksale.com FANTASY, SCI FI & HORROR August 23 - 25. The backdrop is made up of several book cover thumbnails. They abandoned the RebEarth vehicle fifteen kilometres from the Ever Onward. In the bone-white mist of twilight, they trekked through a fulgurite forest so fresh that steam rose from the opalescent crust. The soldiers' heavy footsteps shook viscous droplets of molten glass from branches. Spider corpses hung suspended inside knotted trunks, curled or caught mid-skitter. The air was so charged with electricity that it was like breathing static. The storm had passed, but Cato's weather was so capricious there were no guarantees it wouldn't return. Soon it would be dark, and Joy knew well what this part of the planet was like after nightfall. The hissing of sand disturbed by hundreds of skittering spiders; the winds, howling through the mountains as though the jagged peaks had cut them deep. Cato was wilder here than near the farm and Nexus, desolate and untouched.
August 23, 2025 at 11:43 PM
sofietholin.bsky.social
Really happy to take part in this year's Epic Sale of Beloved SFF with Iron Truth, and even happier for the chance to recommend the wonderful Lady Vago's Malediction by A.K.M. Beach!

Tons of great books on sale, right now, right here: talesfromthecircle.com/epicsale2025...
Book cover thumbnails overlaid with the text EPIC SALE OF BELOVED SFF 2025. AUG 7TH-11TH. OVER 100 RECOMMENDED BOOKS ON SALE. FREE OR $0.99. Front and centre is the cover for Iron Truth, by S.A. Tholin, featuring a sun ray adorned stylised symbol for Earth.
August 7, 2025 at 3:30 PM
sofietholin.bsky.social
Offering a tiny distraction from the bleak with a photo of my new living room bookcase. TETK is looking real good up there next to the Stephen Kings!
A white bookcase displaying The Erstwhile Tyler Kyle and The Dark Tower series.
June 30, 2025 at 1:05 PM
sofietholin.bsky.social
the book /// the dialogue
"The achievements that used to make me proud now only make me sick. I told Kyros this, many times, begging him to steer things back to how they used to be. All he ever said was don't worry about it, Josue; life is good, right? As if I should just let the senseless violence slide. For twenty years he's had my back, the only person I ever trusted, but suddenly I can't get through to him. It's like he can't understand why I'm letting this one tiny disagreement ruin everything. Like it's my fault that I'm unhappy." "That's because people like Kyros aren't regular," Mist said. Oh, she knew the type very well, and the damage they left in their wake. "They're magic. Pure energy, so limitless a black hole couldn't contain them – and if you love them, then you can kiss your soul goodbye. Their love is like nothing else. It's got... it's got fucking teeth. They'll chew you right up, and you'll beg for more. But, see, their magic, it needs you to play along. It can't stand anything it perceives as a drag. So the one time that you need them to listen, when life becomes too much to bear, they act like your grief is nothing. Actually, no – like it's an inconvenience." "You understand. I hoped you wouldn't, but I thought you might." "Yeah, well, I told my magic man to fuck off and die. Question is, what did you do
June 29, 2025 at 1:34 AM
sofietholin.bsky.social
Went to Wanås sculpture park today to check out Puruma by Atang Tshikare. I loved it so much - what a magnificent beast!
A photo of Puruma, a golden-yellow, twin-tailed lion with a closed flower bud for a head. It is twice the size of a real lion, perched on an island of branches in a forest pond.
June 13, 2025 at 1:03 AM
sofietholin.bsky.social
me | my books

back row: military SF/horror
front row: tales of pirate valkyries, a Martian cold case detective, and space submariners

links to books and blurbs: satholin.com/books
Sofie (S.A. Tholin) is posing with her SPSFC raygun trophy in front of several bookcases of graphic novels, and a framed poster of the cover of Summer Empress. The Primaterre/Primaterre Tales series in paperback format, posed in front of the SPSFC trophy and a Summer Empress poster. The books are Iron Truth, Lonely Castles, Chaos Terrain, Summer Empress, and in the Primaterre Tales series, Queen of the Corpsepickers, A Killer in Kirkclair, and Brightwork.
June 3, 2025 at 12:38 AM
sofietholin.bsky.social
My music taste? Impeccable
A photo of the soundtracks for Resident Evil 3, Final Fantasy VII&VII, and Silent Hill 2, against the backdrop of more cds and a pine crabs print by Ze Burnay.
May 27, 2025 at 3:50 PM
sofietholin.bsky.social
Very excited to discover one of my books has a page on doesthedogdie.com! Feels like an achievement!

(There are three dogs in my books: the military canines Runner Bean and Butcher, and Lionel, an overexcitable border collie - and despite plenty of horror and mayhem, they all make it out alive :)
Black bulkhead concertinaed in waves, blown inwards by internal chain explosions travelling through the station's ducts. Gravity failed, and suddenly everything was falling, tumbling, as vents spat spherical orbs of fire. The flames floated like little suns in the thrashing corridor. One burnt the cuirass of a towerman and ate through his hands as he tried to stop it. The final escape pod rose into the air as the hull peeled away. An external emergency force field shimmered blue, keeping the oxygen in, but it flickered and sparked. Hopewell made it there first, kicking her way up the walls to slam her fist against the manual release. The pod's airlock hissed open, and she climbed inside, holding out a hand to Rearcross. The three remaining towermen followed, and then Athens and Lucklaw, but Aurillac was nowhere to be seen, and somewhere, Runner Bean was barking.
May 25, 2025 at 12:05 AM
sofietholin.bsky.social
A snippet from my current WIP (first draft, still very rough!), in which Detective Protector Bloom goes slightly rogue on a foreign planet which may or may not be the home of eldritch horrors.

#WIPSnips #WriteSky
Finbarr's Frozen Fish was nothing but a metallic shell, with walls that sang with cold and a ceiling from which a forest of icicles grew around hundreds of high-tensile wires. A natural fissure in the ground had been expanded into a meticulous rectangle that took up most of the floor space, leaving narrow metal-tiled ledges on all four sides. The sound of the ocean below was like a reverberation in the air, a white noise that trembled in Bloom's teeth and skin and bones. He welcomed it in, the dread and the awe, the sheer power of nature that was not of Earth but shared Earth's might, and listened to its rhythm, so that his ears would more easily pick out what did not belong. The faint buzzing of the lightstrip above the door was an annoying gnat-like intrusion; the creak of metal hinted at construction inside the fissure, and there, was that a footstep? Furtive, alerted. "These places are usually lit up brighter than a pleasure avenue," Perzik murmured behind him. "Lights down in the water, too, beaming up, so bright looking at the ceiling will blind you as surely as staring into twin suns. For health and safety reasons, they say, and I suppose not wanting to get eaten by alien sea monsters does fall under that umbrella." "There's no evidence there were ever any sea monsters here." "And nobody wants to become the evidence that oops, turns out there are."
May 16, 2025 at 2:27 PM
sofietholin.bsky.social
In other news, I am about 90% finished with the first draft of the second Telluride novel (see the sneak peek snippet below :) and I also started a fun Joy side project...

(...it's supposed to be a short story, but then again, so was Iron Truth, so we'll see where it takes me!)
The ground was thin in the eastern sector of Paloma Zenith, and the unseen ocean underneath rose high enough to lap at its underside. Ancient seismic activity had left crinkles and fissures in the rock. A chill escaped those fissures, as bitter as a Kirkclair winter gale, and a smell of salt and sulphur and ambergris. Perzik pressed a corner of his cloak to his face. "Smells like something died down there; something as large as a city block. That's what they hope for, you know, the prospectors of Paloma Nadir." "More fossils?" Bloom sidled between the corrugated walls of two warehouses. The predator was about five hundred meters ahead and fifty to the west, just about to step out of view of a security camera to which Bloom had connected his visual. "A body. They're shit-scared of finding something living, or something living finding them. Something dead, though, something huge and old and fully preserved by the cold water, that's the gold they hope to strike."
April 4, 2025 at 8:37 PM
sofietholin.bsky.social
If you liked Iron Truth but thought it didn't have enough submarines, or if SF/horror in an abyssal alien ocean is your cup of tea, BRIGHTWORK is part of the Narratess Indie Book Sale this weekend, along with hundreds of other great books!
Promo image for Brightwork. The text reads: The X-Files meets The Abyss - in space! BRIGHTWORK, a standalone novel in the Primaterre universe. Promo image for the Indie Booksale. Fantasy, Sci Fi and Horror, April 5-7. The image features purple skulls, a planet and a dragon, along with book cover thumbnails of dozens of participating books.
April 4, 2025 at 3:35 PM
sofietholin.bsky.social
Brightwork will be in the Narratess Indie Sale this weekend (thanks @endalia.bsky.social !) - and so will Lady Vago's Malediction and The Wings of Ashtaroth, two books that I absolutely adore! Unique, voicey, immersive, they are brilliant book gems. 💛 Highly recommend checking them out!
An Indie Book Sale promo image for Lady Vago's Malediction by A.K.M. Beach. The text reads: In this gothic fantasy horror, a baroness-turned-banshee relives her rise and fall by communing with the ruins of the castle she haunts. Promo image for The Wings of Ashtaroth by Steve Hugh Westenra. The text reads: A desperate mother enlists a demon to curse the priest responsible for her son's death, & unwittingly dooms the family she sought to protect. Game of Thrones x ancient world. Promo image for the Indie Book Sale. Fantasy, Sci Fi & Horror, April 5 - 7. The image is a purple dragon, skulls and ringed planet against a blue backdrop, surrounded by dozens of book cover thumbnails.
April 3, 2025 at 12:37 AM
sofietholin.bsky.social
No skating in my current WIP, but Queen of the Corpsepickers has a little bit of everything in it - including interplanetary pond hockey leagues!

#WIPSnips
"Pond hockey," she said. "It's played outdoors, right?" "On any ice-covered pond, lake or ocean. Civilised worlds or uncolonised – I've played on moons, Susannah Soon. I've skated across ice embedded with diamonds and through snow every colour of the rainbow. I was the first to ever score a goal on Tuonela's planetoid twin. There's a plaque with my name on it." "It sounds beautiful." "It is." "This is how you skate, yeah?" She bent her knees into a deliberately terrible hockey stance. "And you hold the stick like this?" With a condescending sigh, he closed the cabinet he was searching. "Like this," he said, and she had to admit, for a middle-aged guy who hadn't played in decades, he looked like he was ready to smash some teeth in. But he definitely leaned harder on his right leg than on his left, and when he straightened his left knee, he groaned. "Tell me," she said. "What's it like to play?" "The sky is a sea of stars and camera drones. Sprayed lines of chemiluminescent artificial snow delineate the field of play, shining so brightly that the light reflects on the underbellies of the bleacher ships. Crowds gather on the open-top decks, and you can hear their roar over the ship engines, can hear them chanting your name over the polar winds. The ice is deep-scanned before the game, and you've analysed the thickness, charted the currents sweeping below. You know which areas to avoid – but still, nature is unpredictable, and once the game starts, you hardly care anyway, so focused on winning that you'll chase that puck over leaf-thin black ice. Sometimes you lose team mates – not often, the rescue divers are very good, but it does happen, and somehow it just makes you want to go back out there. For them, you'll tell yourself, but really, it's for you. I once said to Zotic, it's funny how my life used to be about staying out of the water, but these days it's all about deep diving. You never wanted the ice, he said; it was always the deep that drew you."
March 17, 2025 at 8:29 PM
sofietholin.bsky.social
Finally completed my collection of author copies! I love how we've been getting more adventurous with the back covers.
Paperbacks of Iron Truth, Lonely Castles, Chaos Terrain, Summer Empress, A Killer in Kirkclair and Brightwork. The covers feature variations of the Primaterre sun (the symbol for Earth, adorned with sun rays), except Queen of the Corpsepickers, which has a phoenix instead of the sun. The back covers of the Primaterre/Primaterre Tales novels. Iron Truth: a design of blue triangles. Lonely Castles: red blood spatter. Chaos Terrain: green blocks. Summer Empress: an orange triangle, ornate black and white vines. Queen of the Corpsepickers: a stylised portrait of a woman, surrounded by black circles. A Killer in Kirkclair: a woman against the blood-spattered backdrop of a wireframe city, all in a tourmaline gradient. Brightwork: the face of a female diver, framed by stylised coral, seaweed and tentacles.
March 17, 2025 at 12:57 AM
sofietholin.bsky.social
This weekend I'll be reading Cheer the Sick by @verityholloway.bsky.social !

I've been coveting this book for ages, really happy to finally have got my hands on a copy! 📚💙 #booksky
A copy of the book Cheer the Sick by Verity Holloway, placed on a bookshelf filled with graphic novels.
March 15, 2025 at 1:10 AM