Hey, I’m pirateaba, the author of the web serial and now traditionally published fantasy series, The Wandering Inn. It’s about an [Innkeeper], not a [Hero]. And while there are plenty of monsters and amazing people in the story, this is no tale of a protagonist chosen by fate or prophecy. They choose themselves and who they become is a story told over millions of words.

It’s been ten years since I began writing the story while I was working part-time at Costco and yesterday my books reached a new space and are now being sold in book stores as physical copies. I got to see them myself and it was a surreal experience.

It still feels a bit like a fun dream, but it’s because of my amazing readers and community that I got this far (as well as an incredible team, agent, publisher in HarperVoyager, and beta-readers whom I made sure to add in the dedication).

The challenge with bringing the series to print has always been that the online nature of The Wandering Inn hasn’t always meshed well …

After seeing a lot of praise for Red Rising on various reading subs, I finally decided to give it a shot. The first book was fine, and I wasn’t overly impressed with it but it does get better as it goes, at least in terms of entertainment factor. The 2nd and 3rd books are a lot of fun.

I will say though - I don’t know if I actually think the series is still all that good. It feels like a really melodramatic, over the top soap opera, a feeling that just increases as the trilogy goes on. It’s full of ridiculous YA power fantasy tropes and just gets so incredibly cheesy sometimes with all the mottos, last-minute daring escapes, rug pull twists etc. The whole basis of the setting is a nonsense mishmash of “cool factor” stuff like the Roman Empire, warring clans/houses, badass video game style weapons and armor etc.

With that being said - it’s fast-paced, has some great action scenes and kept me reasonably engaged throughout. I can see why it’s so popular on Reddit and BookTok - it’s like …

We all talk about massive things like magic systems or dark lords, but I’m talking about the tiny, hyper-specific beats. For example: When an injured character finally wakes up in a safe bed surrounded by people who care about them, and they don’t have to fight for a minute. Or when a villain who is being really arrogant realizes too late that the quiet background character is actually the most dangerous to them? What are the small, specific beats you never get tired of reading?

I’ve been reading ASOIAF for quite a while, and I love how GRRM keeps you hooked, whether it’s a random character POV or one of the major ones. We all know how well he handles his main characters, but I’ve started noticing how even the random POVs feel like you’re actually living in the world. They give you so much worldbuilding without making it feel like an info dump. And it feels ancient and magical, and I think a lot of that comes from the prose. Martin can make even ordinary things feel fantastical. Like- “The night came with the song of dragons.” “The snow whispered in the night, burying the path of travelers.”

It’s just so damn good. And despite the books being massive, I keep wanting to read not only because of the characters or plot, but because I genuinely want to spend more time in that world and experience the prose.

That’s something I struggled with while reading the third Stormlight Archive book recently. It took me a long time to …

Super happy and impressed that RBJ has a best seller on his hands. Very deserved and hopefully many of those readers will delve into his back catalogue of books.

I’ve been wanting to read a book/series that features a prominent wizard/sorceress and would love to know some of the best options. It doesn’t have to be a wizard per se, but just someone who is more skilled in the “magic” of their world.

I just read The Blade Itself (book 1 of The First Law trilogy) and it seems like Baysz could potentially fit this title but I have no idea where it goes from here.

Obviously Gandalf is up there but let me know who else!

The podcast will be a limited series examining “The Fire Next Time,” by James Baldwin; “Song of Solomon,” by Toni Morrison; “All the Pretty Horses,” by Cormac McCarthy; “Gilead,” by Marilynne Robinson; “All the King’s Men,” by Robert Penn Warren; and “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” by John le Carré.

I feel like anytime I see a post on here about popular romantasy books like Fourth Wing or really popular authors like Colleen Hoover and Frieda McFadden, it’s always with disdain if not utter hostility.

But then series like Dungeon Crawler Carl, Stormlight or books like Project Hail Mary get praised nonstop? It’s really weird because to me, all of these books are basically at the same tier.

I tried reading a bit of Fourth Wing and had to give up pretty fast…but having finished the first DCC book and a couple of Stormlight books, they’re kind of at the same level quality-wise. Same goes for the one Frieda McFadden book I’ve read - other than the genre it’s not any worse than what Matt Dinniman or Andy Weir writes.

The only difference I can see is the demographic they’re being targeted to. Is that the reason for discrepancy in how they’re received? Because otherwise they’re all pretty poorly written with stock characters and minimal substance.

I just wanted to see if anyone else wants to talk about this. I got a kindle unlimited subscription for the first time a couple months ago and have been astounded at the amount of Ai books on there and how many are being fed to me via the sponsored, suggested, and new feeds. More popular than major publications, my kindle would have me believe. I’m decent at spotting them but twice now in two weeks I was fooled and got a chapter into books I was excited about before realizing it was Ai written and putting it down.

I don’t want to read Ai on principle but I also think it’s not very good. The plots might be ok, but the repetitive sentences and algorithmic/formulaic feel puts me off. Once you know the tells, they’re all you see and the story is not compelling anymore. I don’t want to support authors who are using this and I don’t want to feed my mind and waste my time with artificially generated books.

So I thought, I’ll stick to major publishers! I hate that Ai is making me avoid indie …

Another reason I’m happy to live here

Materials can only be removed from a library after a vote by the local school committee or charter school board of trustees following a notice, public hearing and finding by a school personnel review committee “that the material, taken as a whole, based on clear and convincing evidence, is devoid of any educational, literary, artistic, personal or social value or is not age appropriate. Only school employees, parents or guardians or students enrolled in the school can lodge challenges. Students, parents and guardians are able to appeal a decision to remove materials from the library to court.

Update: I Finally Read Kelmin’s Tower (1992): 199 Pages, 47 Chapters, and One Extremely Strange Forgotten Fantasy Novel.

I finally finished Kelmin’s Tower by Thomas Alexander Anthony, the incredibly obscure 1992 fantasy novel I’ve been documenting.

199 pages. 47 chapters.

Now that I’ve reached the end, I can finally give a proper spoiler-free summary and review of what I found. So, what is Kelmin’s Tower about?

At its core, Kelmin’s Tower is a dark fantasy adventure following Emmanuel Slade, an assassin who becomes involved in a resistance movement against the mysterious ruler known as Kelmin.

Slade travels with a small group that includes the elf Arinock and the barbarian Wolvesbane, along with several other companions. Their journey takes them across the fantasy world of Arland and gradually brings them into direct conflict with the political, military, religious, and supernatural forces surrounding Kelmin and his Tower. It begins with the feel of a fairly traditional fantasy …

A few years ago I sold a run of pro-rate science fiction stories. Analog, Nature, some others.

I was an aspiring author at the time. I wasn’t expecting to get rich. I was hoping to build some kind of audience, something I could turn into a novel deal, or an agent, or just a reason to keep going.

Honestly, I’d have settled for a few people saying “nice work, buddy.”

What struck me the whole time I was publishing was that nobody ever seemed to know a story of mine was out unless I told them myself. I’m a marketer by trade, and I deliberately stayed out of the business side of it, because if I’d wanted to be a content marketer, I could have made a lot more doing it for a fintech firm than scribbling short stories. I figured if a magazine is paying eight or twelve cents a word, the work has to be worth at least that much to them, and they’d do something with it.

The audience never materialized. What I concluded at the time was that my work just …

I loved a number of his books, including Little, Big; Engine Summer; and Beasts. Others I bounced off (maybe I will understand ægypt some day). A great and under-appreciated writer.

Grabbed this at Goodwill today for 50 cents because I liked the look of it. I figured I’d get home, search the title, and maybe find a little information about it.
Nope.

The book is Kelmins Tower by Thomas Alexander Anthony, published by Rising Sun Publications in 1992.
ISBN: 0-9630915-1-4
Edited by Suzanne Boire
Cover art by Matthew Pearson and Walt Richardson

I’ve spent way too much time trying to track this thing down now.

I’ve searched the exact title and author, the ISBN, the publisher, the editor, the cover artists, different combinations of all of them, and variations of the title. I’m getting basically nothing useful.

No real book listings. No reviews. No obvious history of the publisher. No discussions I can find about the book. Nothing that tells me how it was published, how widely it circulated, or who Thomas Alexander Anthony even was.

It’s especially strange because it’s clearly a legitimate published book with an ISBN and credited editor and cover artists. It isn’t …

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I haven’t read the Death of the Author or A Drop of Corruption yet. But here are my honest thoughts on the other nominees.

Shroud: Adrian Tchaikovsky’s first “honest” Hugo?

Tchaikovsky publicly disowned his Best Series win in 2024, saying that the selection and voting process was dishonest. He’s been nominated again this year for the excellent Shroud, one of his most philosophically resonant books.

I was amazed by the concept of the Shrouded, and how different they feel from humans. By presenting their perspective of all the Shrouded as “I”, and the drifted beings as “otherlike” of “me”, the book allows us to introspect heavily about the concept of our “self”. This understanding of a universal “I” is not necessarily new. But I think Tchaikovsky really manages to get us to think of separate selves as completely absurd through the Shrouded’s interactions with Juna.

The Raven Scholar: I want to live inside it

The easiest way I can describe this book is: Goblet of Fire …

When There are Wolves Again.

As usual I didn’t read the shortlist yet. Thoughts?

Hollywood loves to wrap things up with a nice bow, uplifting music, and smiling characters to make the audience feel good on their way out of the theater. But sometimes, if you look past the cinematic triumph of the final scene, the actual reality of what the characters are left with is an absolute nightmare.

The Truman Show is a perfect example. The movie ends on this massive, soaring high note as Truman takes a bow and steps through the door into the real world. But when you actually think about his future, it is terrifying. He is stepping into a world he knows absolutely nothing about, with zero real-life survival skills, where millions of strangers are unhealthily obsessed with him. It is a psychological tragedy disguised as a victory.

Shaun of the Dead does this too. The ending plays out like a fun, return-to-normal sitcom wrap-up where he gets his girlfriend back and plays video games. But in reality, the zombie apocalypse actually happened, most of their loved ones were …

Hey reddit! I’m Will Poulter.

You may know me from films/series like WARFARE, WE’RE THE MILLERS, THE BEAR, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3, THE MAZE RUNNER, MIDSOMMAR, THE REVENANT, I LOVE BOOSTERS, DETROIT, THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER, and other things.

My new movie, UNION COUNTY, is out in theaters starting this weekend (!!!) via Oscilloscope Laboratories. It also stars Noah Centineo, Annette Deao, Elise Kibler, and Emily Meade.

Here’s the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uA6Fnr2VXkw

Synopsis:

Assigned to a county-mandated drug court program, Cody Parsons embarks on the tenuous journey toward recovery amidst the opioid epidemic in rural Ohio.

AMA!

Back at 2 PM ET this afternoon (Thursday ⁸⁄₁₃) to answer your questions!