Happy Labor Day! May your break from labor be relaxing.

Also… welcome back to my newsletter! If you end up having a good time, please make use of that Subscribe bar at the bottom. Or maybe… you don’t have to wait?

---

Writing and Publishing

As I predicted, most of Inner Demon‘s audiobook work happened in August. As I did not predict, I was unable to finish reviewing the audio and getting it distributed, so the Inner Demon audiobook is not yet live. Bummer. That will definitely happen this month in September, though.

I also did not manage to complete Halfwhisker‘s major revision of Part 2—but I got really dang close. That just means September is the month to finish and start sharing it with test readers, so more updates on that in about a month!

---

The Blog & Etc.

In August I reviewed Coromon, Frieren, and Travel by Star, and I wrote a short article on masculinity and books. Links below if you haven’t seen those blog posts!

• Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End: An anime about an elf mage notably set after a grand adventure has reached its conclusion, Frieren has a lot of interesting meditations on relationships, time, and change. Oh, and some excellent fights where demons get slaughtered. What’s not to love?
• Coromon: A monster-taming turn-based role-playing game—or, in other words, a Pokemon-like. In fact, Coromon wears its Pokemon influence on its sleeves and specifically caters to adults who feel like they’ve grown out of Pokemon. There’s a lot I love about this game… and a few things I can’t stand.
• Travel by Star: A faith-based adventure flintlock fantasy, and a truly ambitious debut from an indie author. Truthfully, Travel by Star did not work for me, and I suspect it wasn’t written with a mainstream audience in mind, but the right reader will find this book enthralling.
• Men (and Books): What does it mean to be a man, anyway? And what relevance does that have to publishing and YA? I have some thoughts.

As for what’s coming… Most likely reviews on the stuff in my “What am I Reading” list, but I have an article idea or two that might see the light of day. We’ll see how much time I have.

---

What am I Reading?

I’m currently reading through the core rulebooks for the Cosmere RPG (Stormlight Setting). Yeah, that’s basically like reading a textbook, but I do enjoy TTRPGs (even if I rarely have time to play them). My current, very summarized, just-based-on-reading-along thoughts: I really like the Plot Die. I really like the rules and mechanics of this game. I’m really, really iffy on Stormlight as a TTRPG setting. And finally, really stupid identity politics don’t ruin the book, but certainly make for pages that would be best blacked out.

As for The Bartimaeus Trilogy, I look forward to closing it out with Ptolemy’s Gate!

---

Anything Else I Recommend?

Monopoly Socialism is a dramatic improvement on the original game in terms of rules and playtime, it’s a fantastic party game, and it’s a hilarious parody on a failed social system that despite millions of deaths refuses to stay in its grave. Unfortunately, predictable leftist backlash led to Hasbro allowing the game to get cancelled, so it’s really hard to get a copy—but if you manage to, you’ll have an excellent time.