Weekly Roundup: July 31st - August 5th
I’m e rathke, the author of a number of books. Learn more about what you signed up for here. Go here to manage your email notifications.
This Week’s Posts
Tuesday: My guide on where to begin with the oeuvre of the late, great Cormac McCarthy. This has proved slightly controversial, but what’s the point in recommending a titan of american letters if you’re not going to make some people angry, yeah?
Wednesday: Last week, I accidentally just copied the previous week, so I’ll include what happened over the last two weeks.
Paying subscribers received Chapter Twelve and Thirteen of Emrys the Fool and free subscribers received Chapter Ten and Eleven. If you received neither, there are instructions here on how to get these in your email.
Friday: Not posted at this here substack, but my children’s storytime podcast continues with Chapter Three of A Pirate’s Life. This is the story I’ve been telling my son for a few months and began recording for him on his Yoto Player. With that in mind, this is a story meant for children and so share it with a child.
A young boy named Carrot who wants to become a pirate. Chapter Five involves meeting Glasseye, who takes him up to the crow’s nest.
Music by my good friend Bart Larsen.
From the Archives
This is one of my favorite pieces. Working on a follow up, of sorts, to this.
Listening
Reading
Shigeru Miyamoto talking to Toshihiro Nagoshi in 1999.
Miyamoto: Oh no, if we talk about our games this will turn into a bragging session. (laughs) Another example would be Dragon Quest… the media talked a lot about how good the story and scenario were in Dragon Quest, and ever since then, I think there's been a tendency to equate good story==good game. It's not really Yuji Horii's fault. Dragon Quest took all these numbers and expressed them via language. What I really like about it is the rhythm and how the story is paced. It's extremely well-done. No matter how good your story is, if the rhythm of the game feels bad, no one will play it. But this is an aspect that the media never writes about.
Feel like this is what I’m always talking about.
Reading more translations of Middle and Old English junk because I’ve rewired my brain. This will eventually pay off in some way, beyond just my enjoyment. One thing I’ve already done is write an Old English inspired cyberpunk novelette, which will be part of something that you can crowdfund in probably a month or so.
Also, I guess this is as good a place as any for a cover reveal for what’s coming at you in October.
Cover by the one, the only
. I’ll have a lot more to say about this novel as we get closer to Halloween, but it’s something I never thought I’d actually publish. Wrote it in 2017, I think, and just had no idea what to do with this weird, wild, grotesque philosophical novel about two illiterate former slaves turned mystic cannibals fighting monsters.But when I hooked up with
I just dumped all my completed novels into a shared folder and David Simmons picked up this one and read it twice. His enthusiasm for it made me think that maybe I have something real here. And so you can expect this for Halloween. Though, if you’re at Voidcon in West Virginia or the Twin Cities Book Festival in October, you can pick it up early there.Too, as always, paying subscribers will get the ebook early. Probably the end of this month because why not.
Anyway—more coming soon.
Watching
We’re rewatching VEEP, which is, maybe, one of the funniest shows of the last decade. Also, I maybe saw Oppenheimer. I won’t know for sure until after you read this.
What Else?
Forgot to mention that I was interviewed last week about my publishing journey.
An interesting follow up to HC Newton’s interview series, which my interview was part of.
Iron Wolf came out last week! I’ve been pleased with the fact that people are buying it! It’s one of the most fun books I’ve ever written.
You can view it here. I’m sharing it as an image because embedding it caused the picture to not show up. Anyway. This is the coolest thing to happen to anything I’ve written lately as well. Thanks to
! I love this sort of thing.Gonna plug Dadpod Gamescast again!
Each episode, we focus on a single game, which often leads us to books, movies, other games, our childhoods, and this strange act of parenting.
We released four episodes last week. Now we’re on a bimonthly (did you know that people say biweekly so often to mean bimonthly that now biweekly just means bimonthly?) schedule
I hope you give us a listen. Like and subscribe and review and all that. You can subscribe here at substack or at wherever you like to listen to podcasts, like Spotify and Apple.
That’s it from me.
Anyway, read my books that are currently out. Then review them.
Thank you.
My novels:
Glossolalia - A Le Guinian fantasy novel about an anarchic community dealing with a disaster
Sing, Behemoth, Sing - Deadwood meets Neon Genesis Evangelion
Howl - Vampire Hunter D meets The Book of the New Sun in this lofi cyberpunk/solarpunk monster hunting adventure
Colony Collapse - Star Trek meets Firefly in the opening episode of this space opera
The Blood Dancers - The standalone sequel to Colony Collapse.
Iron Wolf - Sequel to Howl.
Some free books for your trouble:
Wolf.
Howl.
So stoked to dive into the Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI episodes of Dadpod GamesCast!
I have heard from Washington insiders that Veep is the most realistic picture of "how the sausage is made" in Washington; it was quite a departure from the idealized West Wing and similar other works.
Not to mention: the cast is amazing.