fantasy Archives · Page 2 of 4

NEWSBLAST: December 2023

This is a free sample of the update posts I’ll now be uploading to my Patreon monthly. Check it out!!

Running Around in Video Game Levels You’ve Completed Already For No Apparent Reason (and Then Also Looking at Maps)

It’s a time-honored tradition.

A Talking Cat!?! Finally, A LitRPG Heroine We Can Believe In

Meet Taipha, the star of my LitRPG series in progress. She’s a cat. She’s a girl. Will she rule the world???

Read on to learn more about her…and her world!

What Is a LitRPG? A Simple Guide for the Deeply Confused

LitRPGs are like books plus video games. And while most websites defining them will assume you already know a lot about video games, I’ll pretend you’re my mom, who hates them and has no idea what kinds of books I’ve been editing for the past several months.

This explanation will be slow and methodical.

Writing a Small-Scope LitRPG?

I’m striving to create a world that’s small but rich with hidden secrets. We don’t always have to save the world!

Oops! My “Quick Side Project” is Consuming Untold Years

How’d I get here, and what can you do if you’re in my shoes?

Hide No More: The Masquerade Trope in Fantasy Fiction (And How Elatsoe Kills It)

When people recommended the young adult novel Elatsoe to me, it was never as a quirky take on a fantasy world. That’s what it is, though: a modern America with spirit summoners, vicious vampires, and fairy children as its typical citizens. Magic is a known factor that makes travel convenient, complicates crime scenes, causes fantastical global warming.

Rather, the book was introduced to me as a story about grief, healing, and ghosts that features a Native lead. This is also a true statement about what Elatsoe is. What interests me about the discrepancy is how people don’t see a need to mention the setting, bizarre though it may be. Seemingly nobody is saying, “Brace yourselves, because this story has kind of an unusual world…”

That must be because the setting’s not so weird after all. Not since approximately 2005.

First Impressions: Four Against Darkness (A Solo RPG)

Includes narrative-style actual play!

Recently—and with a whirlwind passion—I have gotten interested in solo RPGs. Not video games, but tabletop, pen-and-paper, cards-and-dice affairs. Most of what I’ve done is itch.io browsing and theorizing about what mechanics I’d like to put in my own games.

Until now: yesterday I did my first run of Four Against Darkness (and today I will do another). In the niche world of solo games, this one is quite popular, with multitudes of players and expansions.

Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Pt. 2/2)

Pt. 7.5 of The Harry Potter Readstravaganza

Intro (Pt. 0)
Reviews:
Book 1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 7 (pt. 1 + 2)
Book Covers:
Special Editions · International (pt. 1 + 2)

Thank you for tuning in once more to read my words galore. I have a little something-something to show you before I go on. Something I missed.

Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Pt. 1/2)

Pt. 7 of The Harry Potter Readstravaganza

Intro (Pt. 0)
Reviews:
Book 1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 7 (pt. 1 + 2)
Book Covers:
Special Editions · International (pt. 1 + 2)

When I opened this book, I had a strong feeling that I’d already seen the best this series has to offer. But I was wrong, because this book contains what I believe to be the best joke in the entire series.

This book is the first (and therefore only) one in the series where the characters are allowed to curse. The character who throws the first (and only) “bitch”: none other than Mrs. Weasley.