military theorists emphasise that even the best strategy will fall apart if the soldiers on the ground are not motivated to fight. that's because no plan survives contact with the anomie

The Night-Bird's Feather by Jenna Moran. would need to be a cartoon though

I really like the line in Aladdin when Robin Williams sings "who sent those goons to their lords? Why, Prince Ali" because it implies the film is set in a polytheistic universe where a range of different deities can take charge of the souls of the dead

easy... I'll simply attach a cage to my drone that releases a small pigeon, diverting the eagle's attention

Archives w BCS #432: "Another Tide" @gnipahellir.bsky.social, BCS #420, Aurealis Award winner. "situating myself in another’s cultural viewpoint. Yet, presented with a real enemy of the empire, I found myself sinking into the role of bourgeois scold." www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/anot...

Great deal! This book is awesome if you didn't already know!

You can read this award winning story for free, right now, on the internet? what a time to be alive! www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/anot...

My story "Another Tide" won the Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Novella! It's my first award win! I'm totally chuffed! aurealisawards.org/2025/05/04/2...

Reading 'Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City'. Buckets of fun

make a TV series out of Dancers at the End of Time you cowards

finished this the other night and it was an incredible read: beautiful, evocative (particularly if you like birds) and high stakes on a small enough scale that you can feel what the events are doing to everyone involved - especially as it becomes clear what's going on and the choices thereby forced

My novella "Another Tide" got nominated for an Aurealis Award! aurealisawards.org/2025/04/15/2... (you can read it here if you haven't already: www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/anot... )

Just finished the excellent #HouseOfTheRainKing by @gnipahellir.bsky.social. What an amazing debut novel. Anyone with an interest in mythology or #OSR #TTRPGs should go read it ASAP. Thanks for the recommendation @throneofsalt.bsky.social

I read House of the Rain King over the weekend. Wonderful book. Feels like Gormenghast and The Black Company had a love child nannied by Name of the Rose, but it's also wholly its own thing. Tells a self-contained story well but left me wanting to hear more about the people and the world.

y'all this is one of the best books i've read in a long time, please check it out. stayed up until midnight finishing it out, it's that good.

Did an interview with Melbourne writers' collective Meridian Australis about House of the Rain King and my short stories: meridianaustralis.au/an-interview...

Made a little graphic to show what's in my novel. Some writers I know think these graphics are cringe, but I kind of like them. However, I wasn't keen on listing a bunch of tropes, so instead I listed some significant Objects that appear in the book. All Objects' significance is guaranteed.

lovely review of House of the Rain King from RPG blogger Throne of Salt: throneofsalt.blogspot.com/2025/03/book... "it’s D&D as fuck without being married to the trade dress of D&D... it feels like a book that a D&D adventure would be based on, rather than a book that is based on a D&D adventure."

House of the Rain King has been out for a bit over a week. The response has been way better than I'd hoped for. One reader called it a "tremendous first novel". Someone else told me they stayed up till 3am to finish it. I'm very happy.

Linocut from 2021

Just got an email from Apple Books saying they can turn my novel into an audiobook, for free, with "digital narration". Interesting thing is the email doesn't use the term "AI" anywhere. Almost like they know we fucking hate it!

afaik Saunders has never done any marketing for his books and only the bare minimum in terms of blurb and cover design. Yet the books still sell for one reason: the people who have read them never fucking shut up about them.

Leftist fantasy author Graydon Saunders is taking down his Commonweal novels, as a principled stance against US companies. These are some of the most original fantasy novels of the past decade. Huge opportunity for a non-US indie press to pick them up dubiousprospects.blogspot.com/2025/03/come...

HOUSE OF THE RAIN KING is here! You can get the ebook from all the major retailers: books2read.com/houseofthera... or buy direct from my website: willgreatwich.com/house-of-the... Print edition is coming in the next couple of days.

RAIN IN THE DESERT, the free prequel to my novel, is now available. The mercenaries of Sparrow Company are trapped in the desert, bound by honour to serve a cruel master. But when a rain cloud appears in the distance, their luck might be about to change... Get it here: willgreatwich.com/subscribe/

Dying Earth covers thru the ages

We need a Plex for ebooks, something that syncs to all your devices easily. Having DRM free books is better, but honestly it's a pain in the ass to load them onto my Kobo every time

It's my pleasure to help reveal the cover of House of the Rain King, a standalone literary fantasy written by @gnipahellir.bsky.social. Release date: 28th February Cover by Miblart. Full info: jamreads.com/reveals/cove...

My fantasy novel HOUSE OF THE RAIN KING is now available for preorder! It's got: 🔔 scheming monks 🗡️ deadbeat mercenaries 🌊 floodwaters 🦘 Australian landscapes 🦜 birds. so many birds Sounds interesting? Get it here: books2read.com/houseofthera...

Thanks Delilah for this wonderful first review!

I can finally show off the cover of my novel! HOUSE OF THE RAIN KING is a standalone fantasy novel about a young monk who comes face to face with his god amidst the rising waters of a mythic flood. It's available for pre-order now, publishing on the 28th of Feb: books2read.com/u/mekdKR

amgalant.com/mongols-rape... absolutely fascinating article

"The American celebrity Audubon’s important travel documents that he had been copying and gave to relatives for safekeeping were eaten by mice. He was extremely sad but tried again, and after just three years, his boxes were once more full of paper." Another hit from @publicdomainrev.bsky.social

look at what they took from you

part 3 in my ongoing quest to read every Clark Ashton Smith story: paperback-picnic.ghost.io/the-mystic-s...

A Voyage to Arcturus (1920)

When I write about classic sci-fi and fantasy, it isn't to indulge in nostalgia for a lost golden age, but to explore what the past can teach us and what we have lost along the way.

It's not about highbrow vs lowbrow, but about curiosity vs predictability. Do you want to read books that surprise you? Or that comfort you through repetition?

related: I wrote a little about reviewers who fear their own taste and the checkbox-style approach to evaluating fiction jomc.substack.com/p/where-do-m...

If the reason you read fiction is that you have a list of your "favourite tropes" and your aim is to find books that reuse these tropes over and over, then I think there is an unbridgeable gulf between us. Though we are both "reading", we're really doing different things for different purposes.

A1151 Theft of the seasons.

Watched YES, MADAM (1985) last night. Absolutely insane fight scenes and amazing outfits for Yeoh and Rothrock. Adding this to the canon of "live action movies where people act like Looney Tunes characters", alongside Lemonade Joe and Hundreds of Beavers

Holy shit. Charles Fort was right after all

time to read some real literature

One of my favourite Australian etymologies: "shotty not" - a phrase meaning "I claim the right to not do that task" is derived circuitously from "riding shotgun".

Additional evidence for my essay on the surprisingly recent origin of "secondary world" as a concept (paperback-picnic.ghost.io/the-first-se...) - when Moby-Dick was first published in England, the printer accidentally left out the last chapter, making it seem...

le Wankh

look at these three beauties

This week's Transmission has also gone out, featuring @vintage-sf.bsky.social, @gnipahellir.bsky.social, and @scifiscavenger.bsky.social in the "Classic SF around the web" section.