From the City/Town Encounters Table, Dungeon Master's Guide 1st Edition. We learned a lot. #tagyourself #ad&d #beastmode

reported to me “I’m at the Harvard Yale game and and the Yale fans are interspersing, ‘Harvard sucks’ with ‘Larry Summers!’” a pretty sick burn, we admit

The Secret History: MAGA ur-text, or merely a prescient allegory?

This ad from World Without Exploitation featuring the Epstein Survivors will absolutely stop you in your tracks. www.worldwithoutexploitation.org/

I can't have been more than ten when I opened a book of Sophocles in father's study and read this passage. "Sir," I thought to myself, "I like the cut of your jib."

George Elliot’s prose has this bulldozer quality that drives forward slowly but with inexorable force and thoroughness

In other scientific literature news, a quantitative linguist published a study comparing the literary output of identical twins. My brother Austin and I were part of the dataset www.tandfonline.com/eprint/YFIRR...

David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)

a short history of the word "spooktacular" books.google.com/ngrams/graph...

Call it "The Meta." It's...I don't know man just try it.

leaving this up for a bit

“Be careful what you wish for, is the moral of the story, except when the moral is something more like: unless, what if, if only.” Short fiction by @lytagold.bsky.social, now online from our Summer issue.

Announcement: my new book is BEAST MODE

Ironically, dodging the wrath of the richest man in the world is an extremely Deus Ex thing to do. www.timeextension.com/news/2025/09...

👀

Capsule review: Stephen Schottenfeld's Bluff City Pawn. Like Balzac, tells us exactly how every one of his characters makes money, how they navigate a world of petty slights and inequities, and how those things are inseparable from character and fate. www.bloomsbury.com/us/bluff-cit...

Please send this person to a small-venue staging of a Harold Pinter play ASAP it is clearly an emergency. www.rollingstone.com/culture-coun...

bravo

The Broken Road, Patrick Leigh Fermor’s memoir of tramping across Bulgaria and Greece in 1933.

It's iconic, but is it good?

I stand corrected: someone actually did have fun playing Monopoly. www.washingtonpost.com/books/2025/0...

i signed this! thank you to the organizers 🫧 writers with published books & people who work in publishing, including agents, librarians, booksellers, illustrators, & more, y’all can also sign the letter here: lithub.com/against-ai-a...

The NPC barks in Deathloop are a masterclass youtu.be/216Qzkw_5Og?...

We shipped a Mixed Reality game on Thursday, where a magical animal shows up at your house and needs a place to stay. It doesn't have any guns, or even any murders, except about a thousand years ago in the backstory that hasn't been revealed. www.meta.com/en-gb/experi...

Time to get some answers! www.eventbrite.com/e/the-bright...

On April 7, Lev and I will be talking about his newest book The Bright Sword and my opinions about it and probably his as well if we get to it. www.eventbrite.com/e/the-bright...

Thank you! And yes it’s paperback pub day for FIGHT ME. The new bright red and gold cover signifies both deliciousness and danger. www.penguin.co.uk/books/446205...

Friendships, betrayals. High school crushes. Long-delayed reunions. Superpowers. And now it’s in paperback. #superheroes #fiction #fightme

I'll be at GDC talking XR design and product development with a bunch of very smart experienced people as we work out case studies in real time in what may be the best combination of practical takeaways and messy drama available at #GDC2025 . schedule.gdconf.com/session/futu...

I hope you enjoy it! It’s like Invincible but also different. I think of them as DC and Marvel books, respectively

‘tis the damn season 🎄❄️ 🛻

I have a real actual substack that has short focused takes on things, and then also explanations of why I have failed ot post on it.

Thing I am working on nowadays.

This week I found out that @grossman.bsky.social has mapped out a potential sequel, and even could deliver a TV adaptation if it were green-lit. And honestly, the next four years would be perfect timing for a political/supernatural thriller. Hope someone at FX or Netflix is paying attention!

CIA just gave me the CROOKED sequel what am i bid

Come to Brooklyn tomorrow! This one's going to be fun.

Top five game titles from this years Indie Games Festival #5 Good Lord! Everyone at the Reunion For My Religious All-Girls School Is a Trans Man... And They're Hot?!

This list (a set of breadcrumbs trying to lead you to the place where you disable the Copilot AI in Microsoft Word) is incredible in that each successive part is an even sweatier and more desperate obfuscation than the one that came before.

Cory Doctorow wrote a wonderfully generous review of Fight Me! With some fun ideas of his own included. pluralistic.net/2024/07/01/t...

Check out my interview with @grossman.bsky.social, whose intriguing new novel FIGHT ME comes out on the 23rd of May! We chatted about why superhero stories are so interesting, what makes a great villain and more...including the crucial question: cape or no cape? www.trackofwords.com/2024/05/21/a...

Tonight at 6pm central time - podcast interview with Austin Grossman @grossman.bsky.social ! Come ask your own questions live on multiple streaming platforms. Or listen to the podcast Tuesday! linktr.ee/Epic_Realms

Hardcover reveal for Fight Me. Endpaper art by Actual Legend Bryan Hitch! Preorder at www.penguin.co.uk/books/446205...

My new novel is called Fight Me! Former teen superheroes are reunited after twenty years to face unfinished business, old grudges and missed chances. www.penguin.co.uk/books/446205...

re-reading Anthony Powell it's like if Evelyn Waugh didn't have to tell you when he's being funny