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What to Read After Dungeon Crawler Carl

Three weeks ago I said Dungeon Crawler Carl is the reason I started writing LitRPG of my own. This is the list I'd hand you once you've caught up, and it's short on purpose: only books I've read. First, what you liked It changes the recommendation, so it's worth pinning down. Som…

Witch's Brew

The Witch's Brew The shop wasn't there yesterday. Ethan has walked past that stretch of sidewalk a hundred times: the vape store, the dead Blockbuster, the empty gap between them. Tonight the gap has a door, and the door is open, warm light spilling onto the concrete. A hand-pain…

The numbers I don't control

I don't need this to pay for anything. People are curious about it, and it changes almost nothing about the work. Would I like to have more income? Of course. I've worked my entire life and been modestly successful. I've been ready for opportunity when it knocked, but I realized …

Your Phoenix App Has Two Trust Stores

What happened eMudhra, a certificate authority, generated the private keys for 8 of its intermediate certificates badly, and the news broke on October 20. They aren't secret anymore. One of them was reportedly the number 4. Anyone can now issue a certificate for any domain that c…

Lord of Light: The Hugo Novel Behind the Argo Cover Story

The Novel Behind the CIA's Fake Movie In 1979, Jack Kirby, the man who drew Captain America and the Fantastic Four, was hired to design the sets for a $50 million science fiction movie. The sets were supposed to become a theme park in Colorado afterward. The movie never got made.…

Can a Stoic be a hero?

Can a Stoic be a hero you actually root for? Paul Atreides is fifteen when an old woman makes him put his hand in a box. She holds a poisoned needle at his neck. The box fills his hand with pain, the kind that feels like the skin is burning off, and if he pulls the hand out, the …

How to Spot Fake Beta Reader Applications

Every beta reader application gave the same answer On Wednesday I posted a reel that asked, "Is this thing on?" I'd spent 2 weeks recruiting 12 beta readers for Technomancer: The Awakened Mage, and the application form had been quiet. By the deadline, applications had come in. I …

Vor Game vs Ender's Game

Two Boy Geniuses and an Unlawful Order Put Ender's Game and The Vor Game side by side and the resemblance is almost silly. Both won the Hugo, and both hand military command to an undersized boy years before anyone should. Then they give opposite answers to the same question: what…

The Worldbuilding Template: Sketch a World in 10 Minutes, Then Dig

Worldbuilding is where a lot of us either freeze or drown. We freeze because a blank "describe your world" page gives us nowhere to start. We drown because once we do start, there's no bottom, and you can spend a year on tax law for a country that never appears on the page. The S…

Subscription Bombing Hit My Phoenix LiveView App

Bots used my newsletter form to bomb strangers' inboxes On September 29, the login page on integrationera.com went from 2 to 6 views a day to 60 to 80. The sign-up page climbed to about 40, and total traffic roughly tripled. The bots behind it were typing strangers' email address…

Is Dungeon Crawler Carl Worth the Hype?

Dungeon Crawler Carl has sold more than 10 million copies across its first 8 books. The first one spent 19 straight weeks on the New York Times list, book 7 won a Dragon Award, and Peacock has a live-action series in development. That's a lot of weight for a book about a man and …

The weather doesn't negotiate

The hay was cut and lying in the field when the rain came in. Months of waiting, days of work, and not enough time to bale it. My father stood at the kitchen window after breakfast and watched it happen. I waited for him to say something. I was fourteen, and I thought a loss that…