#Portal To Fantasy

[author-a-holmes]

Portal To Fantasy Free Books

This month I'm taking part in a Portal Fantasy Free Book promotion via Bookfunnel.

There's over 120 authors taking part, offering over 180 free books. So, if you want something to round out your TBR pile for the end of the year, this particular promotion is well worth checking out.

And at no cost to you, bar the few minutes you might spend browsing your options.

I know I've certainly grabbed a couple of these to read in the new year, but if you're interested check it out quickly. These freebies are only available via this link until December 31st.

You can use the QR code in the image above, or CLICK HERE.

(Reblogs Welcome)

[constantlyfalling]

Wait, which way do we go now?

[prokopetz]

"But if this other world has always operated according to video game logic, why is the isekai protagonist literally the first person to figure out all these basic mechanical exploints" well, largely because litRPG isekai is merely the latest flavour of I've Been Transported To Another World Where Everyone Is Stupid Except For Me, a venerable genre that's been a going concern at least since Mark Twain.

When I was a kid, it was American sci-fi authors writing stories about shitass engineering majors getting portal-fantasied to alien planets and single-handedly saving civilisation on the strength of being the only person in the world who knows what a flowchart is, and very little has changed – right down to the weirdly inverted character arcs where the loser protagonist discovers that they don't actually need to engage in any self-reflection at all because the very traits that rendered them odious in their native society are what make them God here.

[weavile]

sorry to say i didn't get the reference but at least adaine looked cool

[malcolmschmitz]

Read about DWARVES! IN! SPAAAAAAAAACE! (And help a trans guy finish transitioning!)

Mining's a rough job-- you have to leave the safety of the Shiphall's air bubble, and travel through the floating rocks in the Void. Tor's trained as a cook- he's more comfortable with a pan than a pickaxe. But all dwarves can mine, if push comes to shove, and Tor's been pushed into the job. The real problem is Kholan, Tor's assigned partner. In the Void, one misstep can send you spinning into nothingness forever. You need someone to watch your back. Kholan thinks Tor's incompetent, for nonsensical reasons. Kholan doesn't trust Tor. And because Kholan's a flaming loon, the feeling's mutual. Can Tor make it back to the Shiphall in one piece? And can he do it without strangling Kholan?

So I have a new short story for sale! I'm trying to cover my misc gender confirmation surgery expenses- stuff like "ice packs" and "copious amounts of tylenol"-- and so I'm trying to get at least 50 pre-orders to help cover that stuff.

I'm excited about this one, because it's in a different universe than any of the stuff I've written about-- and it's one I want to write middle grade fiction in one of these days.

[rosieandthemoon]

Haunt me

[letmeinimafairy]

A commission on moss agate, gateway in the fog

[elucubrare]

got a book about a 1940s detective getting portal fantasied, which is objectively better than a normal guy (gender neutral) from the writer's period getting portal fantasied

[fhtagn-and-tentacles]

ALL-SEEING ABYSS

by Erskine

[madcat-world]

Art Journey #3 (3 of 11) - Jocelin Carmes

[your-stranger-halfblood-things]

Edwin, coming back from Hell: Is this the real life?

Charles, dying in the corner:

Charles, also a Queen fan: Is this just fantasy?

[constantlyfalling]

Shortcut to the Seaside

[sarahreesbrennan]

Thank you for writing Long Live Evil.

I'm no cancer survivor, so I haven't been through the horror that that must've been, congratulations to enduring and surviving, and my sincere condolences that you had to go through it.

But I am chronically ill (cystic fibrosis, genetic defect) and have so far lived for 5 years longer than my prognosis allowed. My health's been good and stabile for a long time now, but I remember times where I couldn't walk alone, had a 18/6 nasal cannula and a 24-hour IV drip instead of school or a future.

Now I'm working at university, an archaeologist, chipping away at writing stories for years and years, and incredibly glad and privileged to see the world. All this to say that seeing how hurt Rae was in the beginning (and again throughout the story, while also never truly forgetting her true roots and motives) and how she grew around it like a gnarled tree, was like catharsis for me. Having miraculously given a second chance, no matter how hard the fight to keep it will be; I haven't ever read any story talking about this in a way that made me feel seen and understood like this. Thank you also lots and lots for taking the time to mention Rae's appreciation for Rahela's curves — it's been the same for me, since I've managed to get out of the underweight-trap. It means a lot to me, and I guess to many others in similar situations, including you of course. Thank you for sharing this with us, it must've been hard to touch on a deeply personal experience like this in writing that's simultaneously removed from oneself through fiction (at least that's what I'm imagining).

Thank you, and I wish you nothing but the best, health, and lots of good days to come. Deeply curious to see how Rae's story will continue!

Thank you so much for this.

I am so glad you are alive. Thank you for that, too - for living on even when you couldn’t see a way forward and everything was helpless despair.

I haven’t been through what you’ve been through, either, but it’s a privilege to have shared adjoining experiences trapped in darkness, and to share gladness and the wide world with you now. I’m so sorry it happened, and so happy you have archaeology and stories, and the world has you.

I will be totally honest and say it has been hard sharing Long Live Evil with the world, and I’m so grateful to you for knowing that, and for sending this message because you knew. This book is highly personal to me, but it’s also meant to be a wild celebration of messiness, escapism, and finding humour in art and darkness. And that means to some it’s just a joke, and in the words of Joanna Russ, ‘she’s not really an artist and it’s not really art.’ And so it gets dismissed, and it does hurt to see my most important story dismissed sometimes.

I was with other writers in a public space at one point and they were talking about how their books were about serious issues while ‘Sarah’s book is just for fun, and that’s fine too!’ (I had to take a minute before I could lean into my microphone and say ‘My book is about cancer’ in a cheery tone.) I’ve seen readers saying ‘this book’s just fluff, just silly, I’m ashamed of myself for reading it, there’s nothing to it’ about the book I wrote about almost dying.

My Rae, while of course she has bits of me in her (every character I’ve ever written does), and evil queens I’ve loved, and characters with wild hubris going on in the Greek plays I mention often in the book, and readers I’ve seen and I’ve been who are blithely confident they know what’s going on without doing more than surface reading and while forgetting key details… she’s also bits of women and girls I’ve mentored, been mentored by, befriended. And some of them are dead. So seeing the bits that were them particularly scorned or judged, seeing her pain dismissed or the discussion of her body sneered at…

That has been hard.

But.

In the end I believe I am really an artist and this book is really art, and art is there for the wide world to judge - to be mocked and dismissed, yes, as a price that comes with the opportunity to also be truly seen and appreciated, to get to influence real people’s real lives. Art is the gold that comes from the crucible in which we put all our pain and all our love and all our joys. I believe it deepens and transforms.

I wrote this book about how deeply unsympathetic people actually are to sufferers of illness, chronic or otherwise, and especially to women expressing pain. How the world villainises imperfect victims—which means all victims. How the world villainises bodies, and robs us of our joy in them—even when there’s horror in a body, too. I did know that by putting this book out into this world, that attitude would be reflected back by the world onto the book. And that attitude has hurt me in the past, and hurts me when I see it now.

I still think it’s worth calling out that attitude, even if it means getting more of that attitude reflected back onto me - because it means readers like you see it, and know others have been through this, and it was never okay, and you were never alone. While I know there will also be readers with chronic illnesses and/or cancer whose experience doesn’t overlap with mine at all, that only means there need to be more stories. So everyone who needs it gets the map into fantasy lands.

And I do hope some able-bodied readers read it, and think twice about adopting the world’s attitude to the people in their lives who are already going through enough. Some readers have told me the book helped them sympathise with and understand the cancer sufferers in their family and friend circles, and that’s meant a great deal. What do we write for, if not to learn to love each other better?

Long Live Evil has also given me my life back, as truly as chemo did, in a way that makes the pain worthwhile - I think I would have kept telling stories in some form, but Long Live Evil was my last throw, for as far ahead as I could see. Now since the book’s done well so far I’m hoping I can write more books, and my life can be the storytelling shape I always wanted it to be.

I read your message and I regretted nothing. I remember the pain and the way so many of us laughed or tried to laugh our way through it, and I know this was my way. Jokes, like stories, are the golden thread we follow through the dark labyrinth of our own agony and incomprehension.

It really has been hard, and it’ll stay hard. But like living, it’s worth it.

Please know two things.

I am so happy I wrote this book. Ultimately more than any other feeling I had so, so much fun writing it, and I’m having even more fun seeing the book be read by the people it was meant for.

2. This book was written for you.

[beauty-funny-trippy]

[sephirthoughts]

shinra scientists: he looks kind of lonely in there

shinra scientists: