dorianhart.bsky.social
Connoisseur of fine dad jokes.
Author of the Heroes of Spira epic fantasy series, starting with The Ventifact Colossus.
www.amazon.com/dp/B077LBHV92
Game designer: System Shock 1 & 2, Thief, BioShock
Dad, husband, board gamer, RPG player, hiker. He/him
526 posts
1,799 followers
4,127 following
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How does that definition square with Chess and Go, which have no random elements (I guess unless you count deciding who goes first) or hidden information?
I don't think of puzzles as games either, but the more I think about it, the less certain I become!
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New employees should pick up their lanyards and horse armor at the front desk!
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Nothing but fantasy. Thanks!
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In other words, odd and paradoxical as it seems, I can be in a state where I *have* visualized a thing, but not one where I *am* visualizing it.
It took me a long while to really nail down what was happening, since my first answer to "Can you hold images in your head" was "Of course!" 🤷♂️ (2/2)
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I think we have more of shared frame of reference than that. In fact, I *can* imagine a red apple for a microsecond. What I *can't* do is hold that image in my mind and examine it. It's a flash that immediately vanishes. (1/2)
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Yeah, brains are weird, no doubt about it!
Just FYI: I can imagine action e.g. scenes as I read them, including colors! But there's a subtle difference between "I can imagine a red apple" and "I can hold an image of a red apple in my head." It's hard for me to explain, and I've tried many times!
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Aphantasiatic here! I both read and write genre fiction with no difficulty and plenty of enjoyment. I think the key to your misunderstanding is conflating visualization with imagination, which (for some of us at least) are two entirely different things.
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From that article:
Dr. Céline Gounder...said lower vaccination rates allow measles to spread, noting that even a slight dip in coverage can lead to outbreaks.
"...unfortunately, we have seen vaccination rates exemptions ... really soar in Texas in recent years," she said.
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I think it's that RFK and his anti-science ilk have been increasingly vocal for a long time now, and the (mostly) right-wing noise machine really kicked into high gear around when COVID hit in 2020. So it's been a few years now that vax rates have been decreasing to where herd immunity is waning.
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She would certainly agree with you!
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Twizel was the town near which the Battle of the Pelennor Fields was filmed. My wife and I managed to walk out a bit onto the field where the battle took place! We also met the town's tourism director, who played an orc in all three films and whose mom lent Peter Jackson a picnic table.
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(Whitby is a girl, but yes, adorable is a word that gets thrown around our house a lot regarding our cat!)
She was named after one of our family's favorite vacation spots; Whitby is a town on the east coast of England. Our previous cat was similarly named: Twizel, after a town in New Zealand.
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Ooooh, I'm also reading an eArc of Saint Death's Herald, though I'm only a couple of chapters into it. So far it's been more of the wonderful same, so I'm delighted and not surprised to hear your opinion. :-)
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Yes! Cooney's prose is without peer. What a beautiful book that was. (I was moved to write a whole review of it, which I seldom have time for these days.)
Have you read Desdemona and the Deep? Or her Bone Swans short story collection? I'd give up a kidney to be able to write so well.
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Joron Twiner has one of the great character arcs of all time. These were just amazing books to listen to, and I like finding other people who also love them!
"Give me your hat."
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I can only listen to audiobooks if I'm doing something else, like driving, or laundry, or yard work. If I just sit and listen, I fall asleep no matter how much I like the book! (And that's a large part of why it took me FOUR YEARS to get through the first nine Shadows of the Apt books. 😜)
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If you like audiobooks, I highly recommend listening to Shadows of the Apt. Ben Allen is *such* a good narrator.
Hard to pick my fave of his books. Final Architecture was brilliant space opera, so maybe those? Ooooh, actually, One Day All This Will Be Yours might be it. Narrated by the author!
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Fellow Tchaikovsky fan here! I've recently started House of Open Wounds (the sequel to CoLC) and it's predictably great. Also listening to the 10th and final book of Shadows of the Apt, one of my favorite fantasy series. Recently finished Expert System's Brother.
23 down, 19 to go from his catalog!
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I think you'd still need some differentiator to set your blog apart from other book clubs, though. Like "Astoundingly Astute Bookclub," or "Tremble Before The Might Of My Unassailable Taste Bookclub." Something like that. 😁
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Be excited!
(Also: in our interactions, I've generally found you more witty than sarcastic *per se*, so it makes sense to me that that's what someone would have remembered...)
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If it helps, I consider you a success story, and I love your writing. And I know I’m not the only one!
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I feel you! I’ve found my books mentioned on three different “name a fantasy book you liked that no one’s ever heard of” lists, and … 🫤
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Very similar to my experience: about $6k in, $11K out. But on the bright side, if I look at sell rates and actuarial tables, there's a decent chance my series will break even before I die of old age!
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My answer is 7.
(Though I think if I could erase my memory of 5 and then heard it for the first time, I might pick that one.)
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My favorite indie fantasy series is the Iconoclasts trilogy by Mike Shel:
Aching God
Sin Eater
Idols Fall
Dark, super-atmospheric fantasy with brilliant writing. Just amazing.
www.amazon.com/dp/B07RB34CZN
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And here's a Pizza Box Cat photo, as promised:
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(Ack! Forgot the alt-text for the image! Here's the image again with a description)
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🎩 an unflappable butler
🐸 a 9' tall oracular toad
💭 dream warriors
💎 sentient gemstones
🐉 multiple unusually large reptiles, one of which may be a dragon
🔥 a side trip to hell
⚔️ enough magic, quests, and adventures to fill an infinitely large tower
♾️ an infinitely large tower
I hope you like them!
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I feel you! A weird trick: find some 2-star reviews of that book you're reading. They will you remind that you that there's no objective, universal scale of quality when it comes to pleasing readers. There are people out there for whom your books, specifically, are exactly what they want to read.
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Fair warning: It's books 3 and 4 that have most of the math-based sorcery going on. If you someday read the first book, I don't want you to feel like I've sold you a bill of goods!
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Ha! Yes, actual math, and the practitioners are right bastards. 😈 Most of it is hand-wavy, and readers don't need to know any math to understand what's going on, but I *did* sneak the Fibonacci Sequence into one of the books, as well as references to the 3rd and 4th derivatives of position.
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That's very kind!
I've finished a 5-book epic fantasy series that includes, among other stuff: flawed-but-lovable characters, evil math-priests, an enchanted tower, a 9'-tall oracular toad, an unflappable butler, a snarky cat, sentient gems, and a ghostly spy grandma.
www.amazon.com/dp/B077LBHV92