Weekly Roundup: September 18th - September 23rd
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. For the month of September, I’m offering steep discounts on subscriptions.
This Week’s Posts
This is the last week to take advantage of my Pay What You Want subscription offer. So if you want free ebooks, early access to Emrys the Fool, and monthly subscriber only posts, take a good look!
With the release of Sleeping Giants, there were a lot of posts this week! Most of them from my Shattered Stars cowriter, Kyle Muntz.
Tuesday: Kyle Muntz wrote about the TV shows that inspired The Shattered Stars.
Wednesday: Kyle wrote about the writers who influenced The Shattered Stars.
Additionally, paying subscribers received Chapter Twenty of Emrys the Fool and free subscribers received Chapter Eighteen. If you received neither, there are instructions here on how to get these in your email.
Chapter Twenty wraps up this second mini-arc, and it is a doozy of a chapter! But it’s also a real fun chapter. Now’s a good time to hop in and catch up!
Thursday: Kyle wrote about what it’s like to cowrite a science fiction series.
Along with that, the Dadpod Gamescast released its eighth episode! It’s about Beatemups and Kyle Muntz is a guest, so you know it’s good.
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.
I’ve decided to discontinue the children’s story podcast since they’re wanting to charge me $12/month to host it from here on out. I enjoyed it but very few people hopped in to listen so I don’t imagine many will miss it. And so these audio stories will remain just for my son, for now.
From the Archives
On Tuesday, my big boisterous essay on The Deathly Hallows comes out, which ends my series on Harry Potter. It’s the first essay I’m paywalling so you can go back to where this series of essays began.
It’s been an interesting project for me since I never loved this series and the first two books filled me with a bit of dread! But the series becomes better and more interesting as we went, and I’ve grown especially attached to Molly Weasley, of all people.
Anyway, a reminder that I’ll be collecting all these Harry Potter reviews/essays, along with a few more things into a book available on Halloween.
This will only be available in paperback and it’ll be the only place to read my essays on the Harry Potter movies.
Listening
Icelandic blues? What could be better?
Also, The Great Courses, which is something I should write more about someday because they really are, well, great. This week I mostly listened to ancient history, which is what I mostly learn.
Reading
Was sick all week so I didn’t really get any reading done, unless you count boardgame rules. Or the fact that I played a bunch of Dragon Quest II and V this week, which includes a not insignificant amount of reading.
Oh wait, I did read this essay about Myst by Cameron Kunzelman.
Watching
That Interview with the Vampire show is real good! One of my favorite adaptations, despite it being mostly different in every way from the novel. Just great though.
We’re also watching Hook while I write this, which is the best Peter Pan movie.
Also also, we’re back to watching Veep.
What Else?
As a reminder, I’m offering a Pay what you want or Pay what you can subscription discount! This deal is only available until the end of the month.
Iron Wolf and Sleeping Giants are still newly out and could use reviews!
You can still sample the RPG ruleset I made a few weeks ago:
Gonna make a One-shot for it soonishgly. Possibly this week.
Also because I guess I’m not doing enough random projects, I’m also working on designing a deckbuilder game inspired by Pokemon. It was originally going to be more like a the Pokemon card game (I made rules for this already!) but playing Arctic Scavengers last weekend gave me a better idea that I’m working on now.
My real life job will dominate most of my week as I need to fly to and from Cleveland this week. This will possibly give me the time to work on various projects like the ones I just mentioned. But I also started a new novel on Thursday and should be about 10,000 words into it by the time you read this.
If I can work in the airport and on the plane, I may even be able to finish by the end of next week, which would be ideal.
That’s it from me.
Anyway, read my books that are currently out. Then review them.
Thank you.
Read the first three chapter of Sleeping Giants.
Check out the Pay What You Want offer for paying subscriptions
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.
Sleeping Giants - Standalone sequel to Colony Collapse and The Blood Dancers
Some free books for your trouble:
Wolf.
Howl.