Stefan Mohamed

@stefmowords

Novelist, poet, tutor, DJ and so on. Very polite. My novel 'The House on Utopia Way' is out now New poetry out with Broken Sleep 31st July

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Stefan Mohamed@stefmowords· Jul 10

best one of these I've had yet tbh Dear [Author name] I write to you as 100% human fan of [Book Title] and invite you to consider lucrative partnerships with me, a person

AI author scam email saying:

"Hello Stefan Mohamed,

I hope you're doing well.

My name is Clara Joy Mathew, and I'm part of the Clara Joy team. While exploring books from talented authors, I came across Book 9781913917135, and I was immediately drawn to its unique, surreal, and imaginative approach to storytelling."

Stefan Mohamed@stefmowords· Jul 9

A famous panel from the comic Preacher, written by Garth Ennis and illustrated by Steve Dillon, in which protagonist Jessie Custer faces down a crowd of KKK members. Jessie is shouting at a particularly pathetic one with receding hair and no chin to speak of.

Jessie says: "Why is it the greatest champions of the white race always turn out to be the worst examples of it? YOU!"

The KKK member replies: "Wh-wh-wh-?"

Jessie shouts: "WHERE THE FUCK IS YOUR CHIN?"

Stefan Mohamed@stefmowords· Jul 8

hate to come across as a hatchet faced curmudgeon who can't handle a bit of harmless fun but fuck off

Music website Pitchfork's latest Over/Under feature, in which celebrities, musicians etc rate different things. This features kids' cartoon Peppa Pig rating "pop stars, grown-ups and PinkPantheress"

Stefan Mohamed@stefmowords· Jul 3

famous screenshot from Twin Peaks, with The Fireman standing in front of the red curtain with the caption "It is happening again"

Stefan Mohamed@stefmowords· Jul 1

Delighted, excited, stoked, jazzed, chuffed and semi-levitating to reveal the cover for my forthcoming poetry collection The Revelation Tapes, out at the end of the month with @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social AND you can pre-order it now, from this very link - www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page...

the cover of The Revelation Tapes, the third poetry collection by Stefan Mohamed, from Broken Sleep Books - a vivid purple background with shimmering semi-abstract multi-coloured cosmic imagery

Stefan Mohamed@stefmowords· Jun 28

Pingu sitting on a chair with arms folded, scowling

Stefan Mohamed@stefmowords· Jun 26

The Works of Vermin - Hiron Ennes. I don't often use the word "spellbinding" but this grotesque, intoxicating book deserves it. rarely has the weird, disgusting and tragic been so beautifully brought to life. heady prose, gorgeous world-building, wonderful characters, with a wounded romantic heart

cover of The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes

Stefan Mohamed@stefmowords· Jun 22

imagine if they'd spent the last two years committing to this. obviously we would still be getting this heatwave but it would feel like the government was working to do something about it, rather than shrugging and saying "eh ..... suffer and die I guess"

from Labour's 2024 manifesto - "Make Britain a clean energy superpower"

Stefan Mohamed@stefmowords· Jun 15

these days, if you try to use this helpful behavioural resource on one of these "dot com kids", they will call you a pedo on the local news

serious blue-green emoji wagging a finger, with the caption "That won't do!"

Stefan Mohamed@stefmowords· Jun 12

Wolf Worm - T. Kingfisher. very enjoyable slice of southern gothic body / bug horror. definitely not for the squeamish or entomophobic, takes its time getting to the gross stuff but it's very gross when you get there (and vividly described). characters, time period and setting richly realised too

Stefan Mohamed@stefmowords· Jun 5

amazing that he can't even clear the lowest possible bars at this stage, the stage where you're expected say your most ambitious, persuasive stuff

Burnham declined to describe the catastrophe on the ground in Gaza as a genocide. “I can’t judge things of that enormity from where I am as mayor of Greater Manchester,” he said. “But I do have concerns about the disproportionate nature of what has happened in terms of the destruction, and there has to be a full process of investigation and accountability.”

Stefan Mohamed@stefmowords· Jun 4

here is what the book is like

Booktempt for The House on Utopia Way -

Surreal urban sci-fi

Noir detective mystery

Talking magpies

Gay robots

Collapsing realities

Nazis getting pulverised

Stefan Mohamed@stefmowords· Jun 4

it's taken longer than I would have expected, but I think this might be the week where I finally become the fucking Joker

post from The Times and Sunday Times - "Henry Nowak and the corrosive effect of DEI on policing"

Stefan Mohamed@stefmowords· Jun 1

pleased to be able to finally reveal that I was briefly hired by Sam Mendes to consult on his upcoming Beatles biopics! he didn't like any of my ideas, so I am now free to share them publicly

PAUL

Traditional biopic structure, with Paul looking back on his whole life and career with present day framing device, but the framing device is him anxiously awaiting the world premiere of ‘The Frog Chorus’ in 1984

RINGO

Following the dire reception of Ringo the 4th in 1977, Ringo and Harry Nilsson (idk Glen Powell maybe?) go on such a humongous bender that they accidentally travel back in time, popping in and out of the other three movies Back to the Future II style as they try to find a way to salvage Ringo’s solo career

GEORGE

Ticking clock structure - we follow George in real time as he writes ‘Piggies’. Second hour TBD

JOHN

While zonked on acid in front of the TV during his ‘fat Elvis’ period, John starts changing channels and finds himself tuning in to episodes from his own past, present and future. Each period is animated in a different style. At the end he finds and kills 10-year-old Mark David Chapman

Stefan Mohamed@stefmowords· May 29

Necrosmologies - Anthony Cartwright. really interesting mini collection of speculative / horror prose, rooted in a very tactile and lived-in working class British milieu. striking, sometimes poetic, often grim vignettes relayed in an almost matter-of-fact register, with an edge of deadpan humour

cover of Necrosmologies by Anthony Cartwright

Stefan Mohamed@stefmowords· May 29

if you need encouragement, here are some nice things that the likes of @starkholborn.bsky.social, @thebrainofchris.bsky.social, @thefantasyhive.bsky.social, @runalongwomble.bsky.social, @booksbonesbuffy.bsky.social and @jamreads.com have said about the book

“Crackling with energy, wit and pathos, The House on Utopia Way is a wildly imaginative ride and one of the best cyberpunk books I've read in years” - Stark Holborn, author of Nunslinger and The Factus Sequence

"Noir is a genre where people often find their reality coming apart at the seams, but Stefan Mohamed takes that conceit to dizzyingly literal levels." - Chris Farnell, author of Fermi's Progress

"An elegantly written and thought provoking read that mixes the fantastically absurd with the sharply observational" - The Fantasy Hive

"Extremely creative and fascinating ... a unique experience" - Runalong The Shelves

"A weird cabinet of wonders ... readers who appreciate stellar writing and inventive world-building won’t want to miss this book" - Books, Bones & Buffy

"A subversive take on the noir genre that will delight any reader that wants a novel that will stay with you even after the ending" - JamReads

Stefan Mohamed@stefmowords· May 28

writing tips - experimental fiction edition. you might think that experimental fiction is the type of writing that needs the fewest rules. you'd be dead wrong

WRITING TIPS (EXPERIMENTAL FICTION)

1) If the sentence feels long, make it longer. If it feels short, make it shorter. If it feels normal length, delete it and start again

2) TELL DON’T SHOW

3) Your characters are not people. They do not have ‘arcs’, they do not go on ‘journeys’. They are vessels through which you elucidate the type of communist you would like to have sex with

4) Punctuation is fascist. Grammar is petit bourgeois. NOT THE OTHER WAY ROUND. (Plot is both btw)

5) The goal is for everybody to argue about what your book is supposed to mean. But if any of them get it right, you’ve fucked it

Stefan Mohamed@stefmowords· May 25

interesting, unsettling piece about a few strains of AI video slop currently doing the rounds. found this passage particularly resonant with regard to the uncanny emptiness of this stuff. there's no *there* there. but it's still having an effect. zombie content open.substack.com/pub/tiktokti...

The artifact operates on familiarity rather than evidence. It sidesteps the entire logic of truth and falsehood because it makes no definitive claims. Because nothing is being asserted, nothing can be debunked. The viewer is left to supply the meaning - which is exactly why visual contradictions don't ruin the clip. The video cannot be contradicted if it never made a promise to be real in the first place.

Stefan Mohamed@stefmowords· May 22

writing tips - crime edition!

WRITING TIPS (CRIME)

1) However troubled you've made your protagonist, it's not enough. Just the one dead spouse? Try three or four. Estranged family? Dead family! Alcohol addiction? Chuck some pills in too. Coke, glue, sex, Beanie Babies, anything you can think of.

2) Osman did the cosy thing. It’s played out. If you’re going to introduce some plucky pensioners, it had better just be to have them minced by a maniac with a strimmer as the inciting incident.

3) Subvert expectations. Flip it. Have a sex worker discover the mutilated corpse of a troubled detective. But also make sure it’s familiar and formulaic

4) Cities - grotesque perma-raining dens of sin and murder. Rural villages - sunny friendly dens of sin and murder. But we know where we’d rather live eh? Wink

5) Use the medium! Actors cost £££££, but in a book, you can just say “he looked and sounded exactly like Tom Hiddleston”. Easy! And probably legal

Stefan Mohamed@stefmowords· May 20

screenshot from the movie Oppenheimer with the quote "Until somebody builds a bigger bomb" changed to "Until somebody builds a bigger slop"

Stefan Mohamed@stefmowords· May 20

writing tips - sci-fi edition! parts I and II, because I honestly have too much expertise here to contain to a single image

WRITING TIPS (SCI-FI)

1) "Chekhov's Space Gun" - if you have a gun hanging on a spaceship wall in Act 1, it should be three times as big as a normal gun, the bullets should be miniature black holes, and it should be called something like "The Exfoliator"

2) IDGAF about your protagonist's generational trauma. How does the economy of this backwater mining planet work

3) Big boobs? Eh, I can read about those in any genre. *Six* big boobs? With psychic nipples? Now we're talking

4) DON'T FORGET THE SCIENCE. Unless it's getting in the way, in which case, f**k it, who cares

5) If your book is called Murder Planet or Ray Gun Holiday or Special Agent Robot and the Plasma Nymphs or similar, it's sci-fi. If it's called something like The Moon Rose Quizzical O'er the Nightmare Forest, or We Found Each Other in the Singularity, it's literature pretending to be sci-fi. (n.b. if Special Agent Robot has an affair with his student, it's sci-fi pretending to be literature)

WRITING TIPS (SCI-FI)

6) Spaceship go FAST

7) Space peace? My reading will case
Space war? Give me more!

8) You can chuck any old shit in as long as you give it the right name. Want your characters to do magic? Fine, just refer to their "psionic capability". Want them to have swords? No problem! Call them "plasma blades". Cows? Bovians. Babies? Offspring. Money? Paycreds. Etc and so on

9) It's not racism if they're aliens

Stefan Mohamed@stefmowords· May 20

I'm always saying this tbf

Stefan Mohamed@stefmowords· May 19

writing tips - poetry edition. supercharge your stanzas, enchant your enjambment, iambic on your pentameter til you rhyming couplet

WRITING TIPS (POETRY)

1) The best, purest poetry goes unwritten and unspoken. So obviously do your best when writing and performing, but know that it is inherently inferior, compromised, impure

2) Poetry that rhymes is rap. "Prose poetry" is autofiction. Villanelles aren't real

3) If I can understand what you're on about, you have already failed

4) Poets are the unsexy kind of sexy, so conduct yourself accordingly

5) Every poem should contain at least one line where you compare something to the moon

6) Poetry London, Simon Armitage, the Forward Prize committee etc don't want you to know this, but a real sonnet has 119 lines, and every one *must* begin with the letter 'Q'

7) Finger clicking at poetry nights is out. Air horns are in

Stefan Mohamed@stefmowords· May 18

Guardian article 'Luke Kennard wins Forward poetry prize'

Stefan Mohamed@stefmowords· May 18

Looking Glass Sound - Catriona Ward. first I've read of hers, keen to read more, even if this didn't fully work for me. elegantly written, atmospheric and a nice sense of creeping dread, though I found that slightly undercut by a series of slightly rushed twists and reversals. intriguing though!

Stefan Mohamed@stefmowords· May 18

tfw you are Aspasia of Miletus:

Bluesky notification saying "Socrates followed you", with an invitation to +Follow back

Stefan Mohamed@stefmowords· May 18

good morning. thought I would share some writing advice that I've found useful over the years. hopefully it will resonate 🙏

WRITING TIPS (GENERAL)

1) Costume is Key - optimal writing outfits are: boiler suit (green); wedding dress (any colour); nude

2) *Never* Kill Your Darlings - maiming them will do

3) "Write every day" - INSUFFICIENT!! Write every second or don't waste my f***ing time

4) "Only misery can inspire great art" - CORRECT! Cut personal ties, sack off hobbies, treats are forbidden. There is only The Work

5) Make sure your formatting is uniform

6) If someone rejects your work, they are also rejecting you. They think that you, personally, suck. And do you know what? They're right

7) Have fun with it!

Stefan Mohamed@stefmowords· May 17

thinking about this again

Bluesky post by Stefan Mohamed from 29 April 2026 saying: "there's a moment in the final series of 24 where Jack Bauer, traumatised and exhausted from years of rogue nukes, deadly viruses, terrorist masterminds and ignoring due process, says of the latest villain "I just hate these people", with this bone deep weariness that I found genuinely haunting"

Stefan Mohamed@stefmowords· May 14

💥 Poetry folks 💥 Is there a regular poetry night in your town / city that you enjoy? If so, please can you tell me what it's called so I can pester the organisers about the book tour I'm putting together? Bonus points if you know them by name and can put me in touch 😊 Thanks! Please re-sbleet

Shutterstock image - "Excited funny young male poet in white shirt with bow tie and suspenders and eyeglasses reading poem written in notebook against gray background"

Stefan Mohamed@stefmowords· May 12