If you aren’t aware, every year, the massive r/Fantasy Reddit publishes a reading bingo sheet. https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1bt4iqf/official_rfantasy_2024_book_bingo_challenge/ If you complete the entire card (and turn it in during a form they post the following March) you get a “Reading Champion” flair in the subreddit. If you do this for multiple years, they’ll increment your title to “Reading Champion II”, […]
Author Archive: erinampersand
Writing believable children
A lot of authors find children hard to write well, but most people find the kids I write very believable. In this post, I’ve tried to sum up what I’ve learned as succinctly as possible: a bit over 3,000 words, broken down into sections. Kids are not that different than adults. They just lack an […]
LitRPG and Progression Fantasy I read in 2023
After doing mini-reviews for all the SPSFC3 contestants’ books I read, I felt like I was remiss to not be doing any for my own genre! This list includes only series that I started reading in 2023. So yes, of course I read the next Dungeon Crawler Carl and the conclusion of the Cradle series, […]
SPSFC3 books worth finishing
I read a lot within the genre I write in – LitRPG – but I like to read a number of the entries in the SPSFC each year, partly as a chance to stretch my brain and partly to give indie authors a chance. I review any book I finish! Rather than give a star […]
The one major problem with Dreamlight Valley
Or “Why Mother Gothel lives alone in the swamp forever” Disney went hard with Dreamlight Valley. For the most part I respect the fact that they did not play it safe: an overall story that deals heavily with themes of self-hatred and depression, a questline that got (and deserved) a mental content warning, and the […]
Gamify parenting – Sock Edition
“I’m going to do laundry tomorrow. Please make sure you give me all your socks!”
No matter how many times I’ve said that to my kids, results have been lackluster.
Lord of Cheesecakes
Lord of Cheesecakes Ingredients Directions
Apocalypse Parenting #1: Time to Play will be released on audiobook by Podium Audio on February 21!
Click above to listen to a sample of the amazing performance by Laurie Catherine Winkel! She’s a talented narrator who’s recorded books for New York Times bestselling authors. If you regularly listen to LitRPG audiobooks, you may have heard her before as part of the Life Reset audiobook cast, alongside Jeff Hayes and Annie Ellicott. […]
Great gifts that kids probably won’t ask for
It’s weird, these days. I’m generally grateful that my kids aren’t exposed to much advertising, but it becomes very noticeable around Christmastime. When I was a kid, I wanted lots of toys because advertisements had shown me what they did. Twenty years later, and I can still sing “Crossfire!” like the commercial. I […]
Eight more self-published speculative fiction books worth finishing (From SPSFC 2022)
A bit after the 2022 Self-Published Science Fiction Competition kicked off I made a post about five books from the competition I’d found good enough to finish. I’m back now with eight more! These aren’t selected from all the entrants. I was looking exclusively at books available on Kindle Unlimited and I only gave a book a […]
Five self-published speculative fiction books worth finishing (From SPSFC 2022)
The 2022 Self-Published Science Fiction Competition kicked off recently, and I’ve been reading my way through some of the entrants that both A) appealed to me on some level and B) were available on Kindle Unlimited. I have fairly eclectic tastes, and for your perusal today I present the first five books I liked enough […]
LitRPG and GameLit with great women
As a LitRPG author myself, I read a lot of work from the genre, and I think about it quite a bit too. One weakness of the genre is, sadly, women. It’s actually uncommon for women to be actively treated poorly by popular authors. Most authors – especially the successful ones – are nice people […]
Board games for adults to play (and actually enjoy) with kids under 5
If you’ve read my books, you can probably tell both that I’m a parent and a board gamer. Board games are great. Kids are great. Board games and kids… don’t always go great together, as anyone who has sat through Chutes and Ladders or Candy Land with a young child can tell you. Modern children’s […]