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Human beings are designed for stories. Stories that inspire, educate, make us laugh, and help us make sense of our place in a chaotic world. Every two weeks, I write a newsletter sharing a story from my writer’s life, as well as some of the most interesting stories in the world of books, culture, and the creative life.
This newsletter is also where I share news about my own books, podcasts, and various creative projects.
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Archives
2025 Newsletters
5/16/2025 – 🌏 Planet Narnia, a new fairy tale retelling, and a live firebird sighting!
5/2/2025 – 🌑 Reading ruts, underworld rites of passage, and how NOT to be a human
4/4/2025 – 🌱Learning to enjoy things again, rooted love of place, and a finalized publishing schedule for 2025
2/7/2025 – 💥The Kotar-verse is about to explode
1/16/2025 – 🐄 Firebirds in Cow Country, Cossacks in Space, and a Three Musketeers retelling
2024 Newsletters
11/15/2024 – 🐉 Fantasy for Our Time is back, custom journals, and new hardcover editions of Raven Son!
10/24/2024 – 😎 Guess who’s getting a mentorship from a World Fantasy Award-winning author?
8/30/2024 – 🐻 Singing planets, bear brides, and… sexy Sauron?!?
7/27/2024 – 🚀Escape to new worlds that welcome you home
6/21/2024 – 🌠When the stars told me stories in shapes and light
5/31/2024 – 🐉 Does Grimdark Belong in the Fantasy Canon?
5/10/2024 – 🌳 Woods between worlds, future Inklings, and cat whisperers
4/5/2024 – ⚡”What, are you assembling the Avengers?”
2/23/2024 – On roads and paths: is this the year of craftsmanship or rugged flexibility?
2/2/2024 – 🌍 Flat-earthers, Inklings, and why prisons are censoring fantasy literature
2023 Newsletters
12/1/2023 – Neil Gaiman’s positive vision for the internet and an end-of-year Q&A with yours truly
11/24/2023 – 🍷Georgian toasting in Florida, Worldbuilding with Jonathan Pageau, and writer webinars!
11/6/2023 – 🎊 Possibly the most beautiful cover ever, a book birthday, and a virtual hearth for storytellers
10/13/2023 – 🏰 Fairy tales are back! And some writerly adventures for you author types
9/8/2023 – Milton as space poet, Tolkien as Modernist (really?), and… wait, is that a cover reveal? 😎
8/25/2023 – 🎁 A surprise gift, the Brits discover Baba Yaga, and how to make a home for humans
8/10/2023 – 🐎 Russian idiots (the story kind), magic horses, and book clubs
7/7/2023 – 📚Story lovers, I’m about to make you very happy 🙂
6/30/2023 – 🎂 A book birthday, a new era of Tolkien, and learning how to feast properly… in Florida!
6/16/2023 – 🌵Succulent colors, writers’ brains, and the freedom of limits
6/6/23 – 🍎 A Gorgeous New Vision of Snow White
6/3/23 – ⚡🔥Electric Firebirds, Newly Rediscovered Fairy Tales, and Bring on the Death of the West!
4/21/23 – ⏰ Two quick updates about future projects
4/11/23 – 🎈 I have a few Son of the Deathless Kickstarter editions left…
3/30/23 – Suicidal deer, Brandon Sanderson and godhood, and the craft mindset
2/17/23 – ✒ That time I wrote a complete novella… then forgot all about it!
1/10/23 – How “fruitfulness” fits into my writing plans for 2023
2022 Newsletters
12/23/22 – 👻 Christmas ghost stories, N.I.C.E. technocrats vs Tolkien and Lewis, and note-taking for novelists
11/29/22 – 🎭 Are all the good stories dead? Nope!!
11/22/22 – 📚 Signed books have been added to the Kickstarter
11/15/22 – 🎁 A Kickstarter goal that you’ve just unlocked…
11/11/22 – 📖 A gorgeous Folio Society hardcover, a chat with mythologists, and the return of Akboritha!
11/08/22 – 🎉🎈 Look… It’s alive! And we’re off to the races…
11/07/22 – ⏰ Shakespeare wrote the best Kickstarter pep talks…
11/04/22 – 📚 So do you prefer physical books or ebooks? Or audiobooks?
11/02/22 – 🌌 Obscure Icelandic words, queens of the night, and Cain and Abel in Germany
10/07/22 – 🚵♂️ Adventure racing like a hobbit? And other strange stories for a strange time…
09/23/22 – 🔥 Tolkien adaptations, idiot publishers, and… is Baba Yaga alive inside the internet?
09/09/22 – 🌋 In a few hours, there will be an earthquake in cow country…
08/19/22 – 📚 Introducing… my first new book in almost two years!
08/12/22 – 🎂 Happy Book Birthday to… ALL of us!
07/29/22 – 🏰 The stubborn fairy tale that finally told itself the way it wanted…
07/08/22 – 📚 The Son of the Deathless . . . is almost here!
06/24/22 – Tolkien art as medieval manuscript, an anarchist Pinocchio, and the moron writer
06/10/22 – The Cow Ate My Homework . . . Wait . . . What?
05/13/22 – A Massive Series of Updates from Cow Country
03/24/22 – Over Forty Hours of Slavic Epic Fantasy Goodness
03/18/22 – Gorgeous character illustrations from an award-willing illustrator
03/14/22 – 🎁 A new fantasy podcast, Raven Son in audiobook, and beautiful artwork
03/12/22 – 🔥Don’t forget to set your clock on fire…
02/07/22 – [New Video Series] Why are people afraid of the perfect story?
01/31/22 – 📚[New Video Series] Fun with the hero’s journey… or is it heroine’s journey?
01/24/22 – 🐌 [New Series] Video 4: Reading Good Stories is Like… A Bucket of Dirt?
01/17/22 – 📚[New Series] Video 3: A Literary Invention that Changed the World
01/05/22 – 🏰 [New Series] Video 2: More mushrooms, trauma plots, and fairy tales
01/01/22 – 🌱 New Series: Stories that Unite During Dark Times
2021 Newsletters
12/03/21 – 🎍 Hobbitty birthday presents, audiobook codes, and Celtic fantasy
10/29/21 – ❤ The answer to everything is heart
10/12/21 – 🐯 Fantastical consolations, running while introverted, and adventure lessons from Hobbes (and Calvin…)
09/01/21 – 🎁 A mathom for you, or LOTR-themed memes from “The Office”
08/27/21 – 🐰 Compass navigation on a bike, fighting digital rootlessness, and communing with rabbits
08/06/21 – 🌱 Green knights, sandworms, and… baby pictures?
06/30/21 – 🌍 Relocating darlings, anti-traveling hobbits, and the earth’s heartbeat
06/14/21 – 🍆 Humming web engineers, earthwormy soil, and Russian epic heroic poetry
05/21/21 – ⚡ Have you read the story about Vikings and Moslems banding together against a monster from nightmares?
04/20/21 – 🐋 The story of the largest living creature… and it’s not a blue whale
03/12/21 – ❄ Now is NOT the winter of our discontent?
02/26/21 – 🎂 Happy Book Birthday!
02/16/21 – 🍎 These are not your grandmother’s fairy tales…
02/01/21 – 📕 [SNEAK PEEK] New book cover, plus how to spruce up your reading nook
01/14/21 – 🚴♂️ How the “Zone 2 Training” Principle is Keeping Me Sane Right Now
01/04/21 – 🎄 “What about Second Christmas? He knows about that, doesn’t he?”
2020 Newsletters
11/27/20 – 😷 Are you sick of deal emails? Fine, let’s come up with something better…
11/19/20 – [NEW SERIES] If I told you to accept your quest, would you do it?
11/10/20 – [NEW SERIES] From the pit of despair to the mastery of a craft: Part 4 of Resilience and Courage Through Story
10/27/20 – [NEW SERIES] Can Dangerous Ideas Actually Hurt You? : part 3 of Resilience and Courage Through Story
10/20/20 – [NEW SERIES] The Secret of Solitude: part 2 of “Resilience and Courage Through Story”
10/12/20 – [NEW SERIES] Resilience and Courage Through Story: Finding Your Mentor
10/05/20 – 📚 What if the one thing that we need right now is better stories?
09/18/20 – 🚵♂️ What a 400-mile adventure race taught this author about embracing discomfort
07/13/20 – 🎭 “If we were created by an evil power, can we be anything but evil?”
07/10/20 – 😳 “When I read book 1, I considered stopping. I gave the next book a chance. Boy, am I glad I did!”
07/03/20 – 🎉 How about a launch party? With giveaways and gifts! And secrets spilled…
06/25/20 – 📚 Would you like a chance to read book 5 for free?
06/23/20 – 🎥 The time when I was on a three-hour podcast…that didn’t record!
06/19/20 – 🌷 “Happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life” –William Morris
06/05/20 – 🖋 How would you like an inside look into the writer’s life and process?
05/15/20 – 😱 Wait… is the Raven Son series going to be finished in…10 DAYS???!?
05/01/20 – Ancient Faith Ministries goes… boating? With hobbits?!
04/27/20 – 😰 Quarantine test: are you a Bilbo or a Frodo?
04/01/20 – 🎈 Two gifts from me in a trying time.
03/23/20 – 😷 How to make the best of your “free time” during Coronavirus…
03/13/20 – 🌋 “Things fall apart… the center cannot hold…” or maybe we can do something about it?
02/27/20 – 🏰 Can ancient wisdom help us with modern problems?
02/24/20 – 🎉 Not one, but TWO exclusive sneak peeks…
02/14/20 – 💦 Wait… does water have memories?
01/18/20 – 🎯 Have you heard the one about the guy who photographed his foot and became an Amazon bestseller?
01/15/20 – 🌅 The election is coming… time to load up on inspiring stories of heroism
01/13/20 – 😬 How Jordan Peterson can inspire epic science fiction… wait, really?
2019 Newsletters
12/22/19 – 🎁🎉🎊 The biggest book sale I’ve ever had. Plus, a new free book, just for you guys!
12/19/19 – 🎁 Happy St Nicholas Day! You know what that means, right? Presents!
12/14/19 – Do you have a word of the year? Mine is…
11/27/19 – So why did C. S. Lewis make the devil a model storyteller?
11/01/19 – 😳So the producer of That 70’s show is interested in reading my pilot…
10/04/19 – 🐉 What are the greatest fantasy books of all time?
09/06/19 – ✈ Stranded in the wilds of Sheremetevo!!!!
08/20/19 – 🌄 Do you ever wonder how an author’s brain works?
07/17/19 – 🐲 There are only two kinds of stories in the world. And they are?
05/28/19 – So I ran into David Tennant last week… 😬
05/10/19 – 😳 Hollywood, here we come!!
04/19/19 – What do Palm Springs, Rome, and Glasgow all have in common? (hint…)
03/29/19 – How would you feel if your home, or a place that defines you, was suddenly taken from you?
03/19/19 – ✈ From the wilds of cow country to the even more wilds of Vegas…
02/22/19 – 🐉 And our hero, battling through sickness, hoards of enemies, and his own weakness…
01/25/19 – 💌 Using a map to address your letters, Historical novels with bad history, and a giant Helm’s Deep… made of legos?
01/11/19 – 💪 Russian supermen-warriors, sea Kings, and Byronic heroes…
2018 Newsletters
12/31/18 – 💻 Your Favorite Posts and Articles from 2018. And a special book sale! 📚
12/20/18 – 🎼 Long-lost medieval music, the incredible career of Christopher Tolkien, and an early Christmas gift from me
11/16/18 – Why on earth are Russian mermaids called… Pharaohs? 🐬🏊♂️🏄♂️
11/02/18 – If you’d like to help support a writer who’s dying of leukemia…
10/19/18 – Russian winter cometh! ❄⛄ Find out how you can stay cozy and “hygge” this winter
10/05/18 – Don’t open this email if you want to avoid all bad news… 😭💥👎
09/24/18 – Medieval cat doodles, fake Islamic miniatures, and Narnia’s secret code.
08/30/18 – And… we have a cover for book 4! (oh, and did I mention the baby picture?)👣
08/10/18 – Unicorns in Iceland! (Well, maybe)
07/27/18 – What is it about water that fascinates people? 🏄♂️
07/16/18 – Oops… I made a mistake in the last email… but it’s worth it for you.
07/13/18 – Phone disasters 📞, caves of reclusive genius 😬, and a new contest! 🎁
06/27/18 – The time when a big Russian TV production company comes calling…☎📺
06/01/18 – What does a hero for our time look like?
05/18/18 – Lilacs in bloom, a modern-day Aragorn, and a 🌟 complete chapter of an audiobook! 🌟
05/04/18 – Survey results, good hospitality, and flash sale on book 2!
04/27/18 – Will winter never end?
03/25/18 – One of the great romances of literary history…
03/02/18 – Emotional infectiousness, U-V flowers, and French farm life. Oh, and an audiobook narrator!
2017 Newsletters
12/15/17 – Moving house, arctic expedition survivors, and mini beef wellingtons…
11/24/17 – Happy (American) Thanksgiving!
11/10/17 – I met the prince of Serbia! (Well, almost…)
10/28/17 – Amish sci-fi, Nanowrimo, and opera librettos
10/13/17 – Why I chose the strenuous life, and how the strenuous life then smacked me down…
09/15/17 – mind maps, Russian double agents, and museum doppelgängers
05/30/17 – Two things to ensure you live a long life? Old books and coffee.