Resistance Reads and Literatura Obscura

Greetings all,

I’ve been a bit silent since I launched Shades & Shapes in the Dark. That’s largely because I’m busy working on both the Audiobook edition (it’s an enormous amount of work but about 3/4ths done) and the sequel Through and Endless Darkness Gleaming!

But there’s something else I’ve been working on. Some of you may already know about my podcast with Matt Wellstrom, Resistance Reads (the link will take you to past episodes on all your favorite services) but, at a party recently I was asked to do another book based podcast. The name that Athena Huff-Sandstrom and I came up with was Literatura Obscura. This podcast focuses on strange, unusual, or lesser known fiction.

We will be launching the first episode live on YouTube on July 9th with the book, The House of Leaves, an horror novel about… well… it’s a bit difficult to describe but it’s definitely unusual.


Episode 5 of Resistance Reads airs live on YouTube on July 6th and will cover the classic John Steinbeck novel, The Grapes of Wrath. We love it when people join us for the live stream.

Author Copies Have Arrived and Resistance Reads Episode 2 Goes Live May 4th

There really is nothing quite like holding something that you spent many hours on in your hands. Shades & Shapes in the Dark has arrived and I’m so excited. The cover, the formatting, the content all came out even better than I hoped. You can preorder the book from all your favorite stores https://books2read.com/u/4NEqGo

Not only that, this weekend our second episode of Resistance Reads goes live on May 4th at 10am Denver time. Matt Wellstrom and I will be discussing V for Vendetta. If you like this book, or have even seen the movie we’d love to answer your questions and engage in dialogue through our livestream comment section on YouTube.

A New Podcast and Preorder for Shades & Shapes in the Dark!

Hey everybody,

I have two pieces of news for you. The first is that the preorder for Shades & Shapes in the Dark has launched! You can preorder the ebook version from your favorite online store or you can preorder the paperback from Barnes & Noble at this link.

Want to get the book early and for free? I’m looking for 17 more Advanced Review Copy (ARC) readers. Basically, you let me know you want a copy by commenting below or shooting me an email and I’ll send you a copy in exchange for an honest review (yes even if you hate it).

The second piece of news is that me and my good friend Matt Wellstrom are launching a brand new podcast called, Resistance Reads. The podcast will explore the concepts of power and resistances through literature. Our inaugural episode will cover George Orwell’s classic novel 1984.

You can join us at the livestream here on April 19th at 11am MDT out of Denver. https://youtube.com/live/AqlLzQvCBBU?feature=share You can also watch the replay at the same link. Come join our discussion and ask your questions!

Is Your Culture Stopping You From Seeing Reality? (Guest on the Trueman Show Podcast)

Hey everyone,

This last fall I was a guest on three podcasts. Two of those podcasts have gone live already. The final one just came out yesterday and is live on YouTube. I had a lot of fun on this episode. We talked about a whole host of different topics on life, culture, anthropology, art, AI, change, and the future. Check out our conversation at the link below

Is Your Culture Stopping You From Seeing Reality?

Launching the ‘Re-Weaving’ Podcast

For a while now I’ve been really focusing on thinking about alternatives to our current, political, economic, and social systems. In that vein, I’ve been reading a lot of books and articles that challenge the apparent inevitability of our current global system. The more I’ve read, the more I realized there are a lot of people in the past and present who are spending time looking at other ways of approaching social organization in this world. There is also a ton of archeological evidence out there now that increasingly demonstrates that the classic story of how humans organized in the early days of our species is nothing more than modern mythology, and that things were, and are, a lot more complicated than historians, economists, political scientists, and others would have us believe.

Some of these ideas are radical and game-changing, some of these ideas are experiments of the imagination. But, I wanted to create a space for people to engage with them, that’s accessible and public. Because everything humans do is complex, and what we imagine matters. So, I’ve decided to launch a new podcast. The podcast is called Re-Weaving. I wanted people to think about how this world is woven together, and how, if we choose, we can unravel some of the toxic systems and approaches and, as communities, weave things back together.

For now, it will be a once-a-month thing that starts as a live stream on YouTube and then will be uploaded to other podcast services after we have recorded. This allows for public engagement and questions during the live stream for anyone who is participating.

My first episode will go live this coming Monday, June 26th at 7 pm. I will be speaking with the Author and Game Designer Joshua L. Stelling for his unique book called The Organomic Manifesto and discuss his ideas for a radically different approach to economics. You can join us live, or watch the replay on YouTube or other podcast sites (I am working on getting other sites set up at the moment).

Here is the link to the very first episode

Guest on Indie Book Talk Podcast

A few weeks ago, my co-author Kyra Wellstrom and I recorded an episode with Indie Book Talk. The podcast episode was a lot of fun. We talked about worldbuilding, anthropology, and writing more generally. The episode is on the shorter side (only 24 minutes) so it’s a great discussion of the lot of the things we do in a quick and interesting episode. The episode came out this morning!

Check it out here!

Guest Spot on Beyond the Pen Podcast

Yesterday I went on the Beyond the Pen Podcast to talk about my co-written book Build Better Worlds: An Introduction to Anthropology for Game Designers, Fiction Writers and Filmmakers. I had fun talking to the two wonderful and dynamic hosts about our worldbuilding model, Orcs, and a little about my own writing process.