Merry Christmas! I hope you have an excellent holiday season, filled with friends and cheer and the spirit of Christ.
Welcome back to my monthly newsletter! If you like what you read here, or have liked any of my blog posts, consider subscribing. Subscribing is a great way to keep up with my writing projects (as is following me on X). I have two books self-published (one science fiction, one fantasy) so far and am well on my way to self-publishing a mouse science fantasy epic next year—think Redwall, but with blood mages and set in the ruins of post-apocalyptic humanity.1
Also, only the rodents are intelligent—no talking cats or badgers. (Well, the rabbits are intelligent, and they technically aren’t rodents—that’ll all be relevant later on.)
Writing and Publishing
Looking Back
Inner Demon continues to be available on more audiobook sites. As they become available (and as I get the time) I will continue to share links on the Inner Demon main page.
My goal last month was to finish with revising Halfwhisker Part 3 in the first week or two so that I could get started on Part 4 before the month ended. I almost succeeded in both of those goals; it took longer than initially predicted for me to finish revising Part 3 (up until the week of Thanksgiving, in fact), but I got it done, sent it out to test readers, and got started on part 4. (I’m either doing a good job at setting aggressive goals that make me stretch by virtue of being just out of reach, or I need to try harder.)
December and Beyond
December is likely going to be a light month for me—meaning, if there’s one month where I want to ensure I spend more time with my girls than usual, it’s December. I’m still going to shoot for monthly blog posts and finishing revising Halfwhisker Part 4 before the month’s end but, this month, they aren’t as high a priority as they usually are.
My girls and I are going sledding as often as we can. (Hopefully it starts snowing soon.)
Part 4 is also going to be a lot trickier to update than Parts 1–3 because those sections were pretty well-developed already. Part 4 (and 5, if that ends up being what the book needs) are in a much rougher form and will need more rewriting than the former sections. I would not be surprised if this work takes me well into January, but hopefully not February.
The Blog
You got some good variety in the month of November. Want a book recommendation? Deathbringer, right there, top of the list. Want some philosophy? BAM, Absolute Reality, Absolute Truth. And so on—check out the summaries below see if you missed anything.
- Deathbringer: A young woman is murdered on her wedding day—along with everyone else she knows and loves. After a magic sword returns her to life, she has just a handful of days to reclaim the sword and enact vengeance or die for good.
- Absolute Reality, Absolute Truth: What is the nature of reality? Does absolute truth exist? This is a blog post in response to a friend’s blog post… in response to a philosopher with very bad takes about what’s real and what’s true.
- The Promised Land: Ever read the Mosaic books of the Old Testament and thought to yourself, “But what if this were filmed as an office comedy?”
- Game Demos (Bubsy 4D and Demon Tides): Game demos might seem an odd thing to review, but the whole point of a demo is to give players strong expectations of what they’ll get out of the game—meaning a good demo is a microcosm of what to expect out of the game as a whole. (And, as an added bonus, some demos are long enough and fun enough to nearly be full games themselves). Long story short—I liked these demos, I thought they were worth talking about, and I’m excited for when their full games release.
My Reading List
At the moment, I’m reading my friend Tanner’s book, The Engineer’s Craft. I first read this book three thousand words at a time during our weekly writing group meetings and it’s very interesting to see how the book has changed after he spent a year(?) revising it. Once the book is fully published I plan on doing a proper review—maybe even treat it as an ARC situation, if he has any interest.2 Obviously I’m a much closer party to Tanner than any of the other authors I’ve reviewed, but I figure if I make that fact clear it’s still worth sharing my full thoughts on the final book. (I haven’t had an issue sharing critical comments on books before, even when I really like the authors behind the books, after all.)
Have you ever read the Earthsea novels (Ursula K Le Guin)? Well, Tanner takes some strong inspiration from those books with his archipelago world, along with inspiration from other classic sources, and a few of his own ideas, all blended together into a story that feels much more like traditional fantasy than modern fantasy—and I like it, so far. You’d have a hard time finding a book that feels like this being published today—and, in my mind, that’s a compliment.
(As a side note—rereading a novel that I read as the first draft was being formed is really interesting. I think I know where the book is going and how it’s going to end—technically I’ve read it before—but enough is new, or tweaked, that I keep getting surprised along the way. Theseus had a ship—did he also write, and then revise, a book?)
And after I finish The Engineer’s Craft, a lot of options have my attention.
Evensong, the final After Moses novel, is at the top of my list, but it’s getting published early next year; I’ll need something to read before it comes out, as I’ll certainly finish The Engineer’s Craft well before then. But once Evensong is out… It will be hard not to set aside (or rush) my current read so that I don’t have to wait too long to get back to Matthew Cole & Co.
(Edit: After I wrote this post, Michael F Kane announced that Evensong would be released before this post went live—11/28, to be exact. So, there’s no wishy-washiness or flip-flopping anymore. Evensong is next, followed by one of these other delightful options.)
Other than Evensong, I have a handful of options that all are roughly as interesting to me at the moment, so we’ll see what I’m feeling when I get there.
I want to read Deathbringer‘s sequel, Lifebinder, and I might even give The Way of Mortals a try (all Blake Carpenter). (I’m a little less interested in Indian-inspired stories than Russian-inspired, for some reason.3)
Shad M Brooks published an indie novel called Shadow of the Conqueror a while back. The premise is, essentially, “What if the worst human being to ever exist—a mortal who unequivocally deserves death, who himself believes he deserves to die—were forced to keep living and attempt to atone for his sins?” I don’t think I’ve ever read anything like that. Under other circumstances such a premise might leave me leery, but I’ve watched a lot of Shad’s stuff on YouTube; I’m confident that the book won’t be an exercise in hedonism or sadism, but rather a meaningful exploration of redemption. He just doesn’t seem like the kind of person to go full George RR Martin on his viewers (and readers).
Finally, I’ve been following Alyssa Hazel on X for ages—her Moo Deng content is peak—but haven’t yet tried one of her novels, which is a real shame. So she’s on my radar—The Third Test if I’m feeling sci-fi, Among the Juniper Trees fantasy.
And Et Cetera
I mentioned this previously, but I expect December to be a lighter month from me—not just in progress on Halfwhisker, but also in blog posts. Usually I shoot for a post a week (including newsletters), but I’ll be happy if I have two in December (not including newsletters). Or one really meaty post.
Finally—What do I Recommend This Month?
Windswept is an independently published video game that gives me really strong Donkey Kong Country vibes—and, for me, that’s a really, really positive comparison.
🦆 Marbles and 🐢 Checkers need your help finding their way home after being swept away in a storm. In this 90s buddy-platformer there’s a ton of stuff to do and even more to collect!
The creator of this game has also described it as a “hard-as-nails collectathon platformer” elsewhere—and, boy howdy, even the opening levels this game can be incredibly difficult, but that just made it all the more fun for me. Combine that with cutesy pixel art and catchy music and I almost couldn’t put the game down. I was also impressed with how… in my hands the difficulty was, so to speak. Each of the levels (in the beginning area, anyway) really aren’t that difficult if you go straight through them—the real difficulty comes with hunting down optional side objectives, or optional levels, which will chew you up and spit you out if you aren’t ready. The controls are so tight and responsive, though, that I very rarely ever felt like failure was anything other than my fault.
I haven’t finished Windswept yet, but I’m already quite impressed with it.
- Which, given the size of the buildings, Redwall might be, for all I know. I’ve only read Martin the Warrior so far. ↩︎
- Tanner’s uncertain whether he’ll give self-publishing a try with this book or pursue traditional publication. Given the nature of my books, I think you know where I think the future is, and I’ll keep subtly encouraging him in that direction—we’ll see if he reads this footnote or not.
TANNER, TAKE YOUR DESTINY INTO YOUR OWN HANDS THIS IS YOUR CONSCIOUS SPEAKING SUBTLY TO YOU JUST DO IT NIKE THAT NOVEL ↩︎ - Have you ever heard of Kill Six Billion Demons? That was the last time I tried—granted, it was a webcomic, not a novel, but still. Art was stylized, often gorgeous. Some of the content was questionable. The weirdness of it all ultimately threw me off.
I would be extremely surprised if Blake’s work is much like Kill Six Billion Demons, though. And if it is, the dude has range. ↩︎
Boo Ludlow 
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