Ben Shahon
@beansbaker5.bsky.social
470 followers 470 following 680 posts
Author of SHORT RELIEF, a chapbook (out now!) from https://bsky.app/profile/406press.bsky.social Fiction editor @ bsky.app/profile/publishedbyJAKE.bsky.social Writing at benshahon.com (He/Him/His) Occasional (Frequent) posts about other nerdy shit.
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Release day is today! My new chapbook "Short Relief" is out now from @406press.bsky.social! Huge thanks go out to @fbereaud.bsky.social and @thetwinbill.bsky.social for their work in editing the final version together into a collection I'm especially proud of!
406press.com/product/shor...
I got one yesterday asking me to discuss one of the magazines I was in. The scammer was unaware it was a mag. 😆
There are things I like about it (music's good, it's well shot, the acting's pretty good), but the whole thing just feels a bit pointless beyond "rich people suck"?
Belated hot take, but I think Severance might be majorly overrated guys. I'm like a season and a half in and wondering why everyone likes this show so much
As someone with a personal axe to grind against Bari Weiss & The Free Press, this was pretty cathartic to watch.
Here’s last night’s story about Bari Weiss, CBS News, Paramount Skydance, and why the Upper West Side is a lot more than just “Seinfeld territory.” youtu.be/gieTx_P6INQ
Bari Weiss: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
YouTube video by LastWeekTonight
youtu.be
Reposted by Ben Shahon
LA people!

We’ve got copies of SILK & SINEW at @vromansbookstore.bsky.social in Pasadena and @barnesandnoble.com in Glendale! Get em while they’re hot off the @badhandbooks.bsky.social press.
Reposted by Ben Shahon
My hot take is that none of these are structure. These are all recipes that describe structure.

Structure is the Salt, Fat, Acid Heat of writing.

3-Act/Hero's Journey etc are recipes.

You can make great meals without using a recipe if you understand the principles of structure.
So #WritingCommunity how do we feel about structure?

Do you use the 3 act structure? The 5 act?

Hero's Journey? Save the Cat? Super Structure Method? Story Genius Method?

Something else?

What have you got?
Reposted by Ben Shahon
Look at it 🙂

Preorder it 🙂
Good morning. Here is the cover, designed by @johnchrostek.com, for @trentbwrites.bsky.social’s forthcoming novel, The Walls Are Closing In On Us, which you can, which you should because it’s good, preorder now! malarkeybooks.com/store/thewal...
Book cover for The Walls Are Closing In On Us by Joshua Trent Brown. Features a winding snake over a river. Blurb by Austin Ross, author of Gloria Patri: “a book that examines not only the soul of a man but—perhaps—the soul of a nation."
Reposted by Ben Shahon
Good morning. Here is the cover, designed by @johnchrostek.com, for @trentbwrites.bsky.social’s forthcoming novel, The Walls Are Closing In On Us, which you can, which you should because it’s good, preorder now! malarkeybooks.com/store/thewal...
Book cover for The Walls Are Closing In On Us by Joshua Trent Brown. Features a winding snake over a river. Blurb by Austin Ross, author of Gloria Patri: “a book that examines not only the soul of a man but—perhaps—the soul of a nation."
God, our redzone offense is ASS!
Reposted by Ben Shahon
Thank you so much @haydensferryreview.bsky.social for this BOTN nom! This story went through many iterations, much like my own coming out story, and though it is fiction, it holds a special place in my heart 🌈. Congrats fellow nominees! read it here: haydensferryreview.com/sumitra-singam
Blue background, text "Hayden's Ferry Review. Fiction. "The Evolutionary Biology of the Human Hand" by Sumitra Singam, "Reputations" by Lauren Barbato" referring to their Best of the Net noms
Reposted by Ben Shahon
As one of the countless people *actually* cancelled by Bari Weiss, via her vast favor-trading networks of fellow nepotistic gatekeepers in media and publishing, I think both of these asinine dipshits should go fuck themselves.
Matt Yglesias QT'ing Corey Walker

I didn’t rejoice at her cancellation and got cancelled myself at roughly the same time, but I am sincerely jealous that no regime-aligned billionaire has even fit to curry favor with the Trump administration by giving me a huge sum of money.
https://x.com/mattyglesias/status/1975375120123478491
Quote
Corey Walker
@CoreyWriting
·
16h
The vitriol against Bari Weiss is just thinly-veiled jealousy by people who rejoiced at "cancelling" her in 2020 and are furious she managed to get fabulously wealthy in an infamously brutal and low-paying industry.
Well, I guess I'm done considering CBS a credible news source 🫤
Breaking News: Paramount is buying The Free Press for $150 million and appointing Bari Weiss, the news site's co-founder, as the editor in chief of CBS News. nyti.ms/4gUnu5D
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Who's ready to send JAKE some weird shit? General subs open 8/20
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● EXCITING NEWS ●

The debut novel by your friend and mine, @fbereaud.bsky.social (author of the sublime San Diego Stories from @CowboyJamboree), is now available to pre-order and is on sale for $2 off in the Stanchion shop.

www.stanchionzine.com/product-page...
Reposted by Ben Shahon
This short story has everything:
✨ transmasc MC
✨ Pills, baby!
✨ ACAB
✨ sex work is work
✨ high speed car chase!
✨ fuckboi representation
And more!
Excited for your poem too!
I got a stack of edits on an essay I submitted in my inbox this morning. Cannot wait to get home and look them over. Such a delight in the process!
Reposted by Ben Shahon
It’s publication day!!
Shane just wants to go home. Stranded in L.A., he must somehow make it back to Georgia. As he hitchhikes his way across America, he encounters transphobia, crooked cops, swindlers, kindly folks, drugs, tragedy, and a high speed chase.

Only 99 cents!
ko-fi.com/s/781b0b9855
Outrun the Devil - Ly Faulk's Ko-fi Shop
Shane just wants to go home. Stranded in L.A., he must somehow make it back to Georgia. As he hitchhikes his way across America, he encounters transph...
ko-fi.com
The only good kind of LLM!
We are thrilled to announce that our NEW Large Language Model will be released on 11.18.25.
Might celebrate by buying a last minute ticket to tomorrow night's Jeff Rosenstock/PUP show!
Jam packing my publishing schedule with dope venues I don't think I can mention I'm in yet (1 fiction, 2 CNF) 🥳
Just realized it's been like five years since I first started seriously publishing, and my first of those stories has still never made it online? Not sure what I should do about that, if anything, but it feels weird as a writer whose work is mostly on the web.
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You didn't think JAKE forgot about BOTN, did you?😉