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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…

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…

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 …

Time Travel Books Where Knowing the Future Doesn't Help

You finished one of these and went straight to a search bar. I've done it twice. What you're after is specific: the book where somebody gets the second run we've all privately wished for, walks in carrying everything they know, and finds out the knowing is the problem. Watching t…

The Diplomat Who Walked Around the Horses

On the evening of 25 November 1809, a British diplomat named Benjamin Bathurst stood in the yard of an inn called the White Swan, in the Prussian town of Perleberg, and stepped around the heads of his carriage horses. He didn't come out the other side. Bathurst was going home. He…

The Unfinished Problem

I stopped after book one on purpose I read A Game of Thrones around the time the second book came out. Call it 1998. I liked it a great deal, and then I put the series down and walked away from it for good. I'd already been burned by series that sprawled out past their author's a…

21 Books, Free, Including 7 You've Never Heard Of

Episodes 1 through 7 of Book Battles are now open to everyone. No account, no paywall. That's 21 books and series argued over across 7 episodes. 8 of them have dropped out of the conversation, and those are the ones I'd start with. What Book Battles is Each episode does 3 things …

The Character You Shouldn't Like

Walter White. Amy Dunne. Tyrion at his worst. The Jackal from Red Rising, who I have no business rooting for and root for anyway. You have your own list. And you know the feeling on it: the small private embarrassment of being on someone's side while some other part of you files …

Earning the Proposal

Earning the Proposal Romance writers have it easy in one specific way. The proposal is allowed to land. It can be the spine of the book. Everyone bought the book for it. The whole genre is a delivery mechanism for the moment one person asks another person a question and gets the …

When the Bullets Are Real

Here’s a problem every writer in deep first person eventually runs into. Your narrator gets ambushed. Or jumped. Or shot at. Suddenly the camera is locked inside a person who can’t pull back, can’t pan, can’t see around the corner — and who, if we’re being honest, can barely see …

The Quiet Apocalypse

Welcome to “An Author’s Voice” where I’ll discuss the craft behind writing and illustrate the points with my own work or discuss other well known examples. Episode Three : The Quiet Apocalypse This post accompanies Episode 3 of An Author’s Voice. If you haven’t listened yet, the …

The Dirty Secret of First Person

Welcome to “An Author’s Voice” where I’ll discuss the craft behind writing and illustrate the points with my own work or discuss other well known examples. Episode Two : The Dirty Secret of First Person: Your Narrator Is Lying You know that feeling — three chapters into a novel, …