John Bierce

I write fantasy novels with over-complicated magic systems and too much geology. So far: the found family progression fantasy series Mage Errant, and the poorly timed plague novel The Wrack. www.johnbierce.com I also write monthly short stories on my Patreon! www.patreon.com/johnbierce

[johnbierce]

Hello good sir Bierce! I was just wondering if there was any chance we would ever find out what that "false ship" from the Gorgon Incident and Other Tales book was, because it has been. Driving me crazy. There's no way it's just a crazy litch, that would be too boring.

(P.S. If it happens to be some kind of mimic, my sister owes me five bucks. If that helps. <3.)

It was a mimic! You actually specifically find out part of its backstory in The City That Would Eat the World!

Now, entirely mimic... well, the mimic certainly didn't have a weird crew member on Ishveos...

[johnbierce]

Hi! Currently reading The Siege of Skyhold, giggling to myself because what do you mean Kanderon has absolutely adopted Hugh? What do you mean she basically went 'This is my Son, he is a PRINCE, look at his CROWN. Do not hurt him, do not look at him. He is competent and precious.'

Having a lot of fun right now. RIGHT NOW I'm having fun. The last book almost gave me nightmares. The Hungry Graffiti?? The Heir?? The Cold mind's plot that the MCs don't know about? I spent a good chunk of The lost city of Ithos scared of that tiger, only for the man-eater to save the world quietly?? I'm not complaining. It was unexpected and amazing. But I was also a little annoyed because it was a bit out of left field yet still worked SO well with the bigger plot. We don't get enough stories where Big plot things happen quietly outside of the MCs knowledge. It made it feel more Real in a way.

Also, love the Autistic Representation with Lorna. I've wondered whether Hugh counts as Autistic Rep, but lack the Lore to decide if his presentation is more a CPTSD case alone or idk.

Anyway, sorry about the #rant and thank you for your writing.

Lu, F23, Autistic, Argentina.

Thank you so much!

And yeah, Hugh is definitely neurodivergent, if in a much more low key way than Loarna. I deliberately kept it a bit more ambiguous what flavor of neurodivergent Hugh is, though.

Good luck!

[johnbierce]

ominous foreshadowing

[johnbierce]

*Mad cackling on the distant, fog-shrouded moors*

[johnbierce]

More Gods Than Stars Book 2, In the Court of the Mimic Queen, is serializing now on my Patreon!

More Gods Than Stars Book 2, In the Court of the Mimic Queen, is now serializing on Patreon! For those who haven't read Book 1, The City That Would Eat the World, the series is a *takes deep breath* sword and sorcery economic progression fantasy trilogy following a washed-up mimic exterminator and an eccentric wandering adventurer as they travel across the habitable moon of a gas giant while dealing with toenail priests, a mimic-based ecosystem, prayer futures markets, uncounted millions of gods, carnivorous public transit, theonomic crises of divine capitalism, and a pseudomedieval megastructure arcology spreading uncontrollably across the landscape.

The trilogy is heavily influenced by China Mieville, Terry Pratchett, and classic sword and sorcery heroes like Conan, Jirel of Joiry, and Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser.

Book 2 Synopsis:

Thea and Aven have escaped the ever-growing expanse of Cambrias' Wall, leaving chaos in their wake, only to find themselves stranded deep in the Scovan Range-- a colossal, heavily populated mountain range, even with much of it already strip-mined for the Wall's expansion. They're still being hunted, though-- until they deliver the ancient godkilling clay tablet to the West Pole, the pursuit will never end.

With the Wall's elites and a mysterious antlered woman that looks remarkably like Aven on their trail, though, stealth and speed are their best allies. Even so, it's not long before they find themselves embroiled in the century-long war between Cambrias' mercenary armies and the giant mobile Gnostic monasteries that seek to resist the Wall's endless expansion, not to mention the resulting refugee crisis.

Still, it could be worse. At least they're not embroiled in the Twelfth Morphic Crusade, the inevitably doomed attempt to purge the uninhabitable Court of the Mimic Queen of its endless swarms of carnivorous mimics. There's surely nothing that could persuade Thea to get tangled in that mess.

Surely.

For those who haven't read book 1 yet, you can find it here!

In other news, if y'all haven't seen it yet, Mage Errant is relaunching in bookstores through Simon and Schuster! Volume 1, which contains both Into the Labyrinth and Jewel of the Endless Erg, will be out on September 29th! If you're at all interested, please give it a pre-order- stores, especially Barnes and Noble, use pre-orders as the single biggest metric for how many copies to stock on shelves! *recedes back into the mists* *clearly trips on a rock before vanishing fully from sight* *muffled cursing fades into the distance*

[johnbierce]

ominous foreshadowing

[johnbierce]

*Mad cackling on the distant, fog-shrouded moors*

[johnbierce]

When writing A City That Would Eat The World, as well as the upcoming sequels, was cyberpunk, the IP or the genre, an inspiration at all?

Cuz when you look at it sideways, The Wall is pretty much a cyberpunk megacity painted to look fantasy, and powdered in religious studies.

Oh, absolutely! The best cyberpunk, the cyberpunk that isn't just a hollow shell of aesthetic, is all deeply anti-capitalist, fascinated with interrogating how normal people, and more especially weirdos, survive hyper-capitalism. Which is obviously pretty sympatico with More Gods Than Stars! Also, though, both cyberpunk and The City That Would Eat the World are colossally inspired (pun intended) by the megastructure architectural movement-- partially as a fantastic allegory for capitalism itself, partially just because they're really neat, hah. I haven't interacted much with Cyberpunk the IP, though.

[johnbierce]

ominous foreshadowing

[aquilacalvitium]

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Write it badly or it'll never be written

[aquilacalvitium]

Please keep interacting with this post because when I come to tumblr to procrastinate, this shows up again in my notifications and guilts me into writing again

[thedaddycomplex]

I’ve seen this post cross my dash a few times and I think it needs to be reframed…

Write it badly or it’ll never be written.

Write it badly or it’ll never be written.

Write it badly or it’ll never be written.

Write it badly or it’ll never be written.

Write it badly or it’ll never be written.

[johnbierce]

have you ever thought about writing litrpg? also do you plan for all of your work to be in the same multiverse?

I've considered LitRPG, but if I wanted to keep track of numbers, I would probably have gone into another line of work, hah! Not an absolutely never, but... pretty unlikely. And the vast majority of my work for the near future will be in the same multiverse, yeah! I've got a few short stories on my Patreon that aren't a part of that multiverse, but the bulk of my output will be in the Aetheriad.

[johnbierce]

points.

when i'm done with dungeon crawler carl, watch out! i'm gonna read your books!!!!

When you're done with Dungeon Crawler Carl, or when Dungeon Crawler Carl is done with you?

[doodleoo]

what you learn from hobbies:

consistent practice opens up whole worlds of skill that you couldn't imagine

making mistakes in the process of learning is not only natural, it is also essential

activities that you enjoy can give you more energy back than you spent on them

wow everything is so expensive

[doodleoo]

my hands hurt

[johnbierce]

Ayuuuuuuuup. No matter what skill you're pursuing, the answer is always, always consistent practice and embracing fuckups as learning opportunities. It's astonishingly consistent across countless fields of skill.

"What's the secret to your success?"

"Put in the work."

"No but really."

"Put in the fucking work."

[johnbierce]

Small cats purr. Big cats chuff.

Does Kanderon Crux purr because it's relatively small to a larger breed of sphinx like cats?

[Redacted], though you'll find out many answers about sphinx biology- and a lot of other mysteries- in the next Aetheriad series after More Gods Than Stars, codenamed Project PROTEAN MIRROR.

[bardic-tales]

The Death of the Digital Ecosystem: Why Decoupling Notes Destroys Tumblr

@staff

For years, the total note count on a post served as a universal metric of a piece of content's impact. Whether a user liked the original post or a reblog fifteen branches deep, that engagement flowed back to the source. This ensured that the original artist, writer, or editor received the full credit for the viral success of their work.

Under this new system, engagement is trapped within the specific reblog a user happens to see on their dashboard. If a massive, high-traffic blog reblogs a piece of art from a small creator, every like and reblog that occurs through that larger account stays with them. The original creator is left with a stagnant note count on their own dashboard while their work generates thousands of interactions for someone else.

Erasure of Creator Visibility

Instead of seeing one post with 10,000 notes, a creator may now have to hunt through dozens of different reblog chains to find where the conversation is actually happening.

If the notes no longer flow back to the original post, the creator loses the ability to see who is enjoying their work, what the tags say, and how the community is responding.

On a platform where engagement often dictates visibility, splitting that engagement into tiny, unlinked fractions makes it significantly harder for original works to gain momentum compared to the high-reach blogs that reblog them.

Incentivizing the "Big Blog" Monopoly

This system rewards accounts that have already established a large following at the direct expense of the smaller accounts that actually produce the content. It transforms reblogging from a method of sharing into a method of acquisition.

When a reblog functions as its own independent post with its own note count, the incentive to click through to the original source disappears. The platform is transitioning from a collaborative ecosystem into a standard social media feed where the person who posts the content last—not the person who made it—reaps the rewards.

Impact on Collaborative Conversations

Tumblr’s unique culture is built on the reblog chain: a chronological, evolving conversation. By allowing users to like or reblog "any part" of the chain as an independent entity, the platform is breaking the narrative thread.

If engagement is siloed into specific branches, the incentive to add to a conversation is replaced by an incentive to simply own a piece of the engagement. This change doesn't encourage conversation. It encourages the commodification of individual posts within a chain, making it harder for the original voice to ever be heard over the noise of the rebloggers.

The Disincentive to Create

Perhaps the most damaging aspect of this update is the psychological toll on the creative community. When the platform actively diverts credit and engagement away from the source, it destroys the motivation to share original work at all.

For many, the reward for posting is seeing how far their work travels. If that travel is now invisible or attributed to others, the labor of creating becomes thankless.

This system makes creators want to share nothing. If the platform is built to harvest a creator's effort for the benefit of curator blogs, the logical response is to stop providing the raw material. I am one leaning into this category. Without us creators, the curator blogs have nothing to curate.

By making it harder to protect and track one's own work, the platform is effectively telling creators that their presence is secondary to the conversations happening around their work: conversations they may no longer even be able to find.

[zigraves]

Thanks to some very eager fellow citizen scientists, I have now tested the new features pretty thoroughly and can summarise the new system as follows: wow this is dogshit.

Now, as to how it works and the specific implementations of the dogshiticity, here is what I have observed from initial experimentation:

OP will get notified of all reblogs, so far as initial testing has gone. This includes tagged reblogs, commented reblogs, and uncommented-untagged "silent" reblogs. This also continues to include reblogs-of-reblogs. The only place OP will be able to see this is in their activity feed, because there is no longer any single location to see all notes/ reblogs on a post. Nobody else will be able to see ALL reblogs.

OP will get notified of any replies directly to their original post. So if you chatter in the notes of the original, OP will see that.

OP will get notified of any likes directly to their original post.

OP will NOT get notified of any likes to commented subsequent reblogs, as those now form a "new" post. Anyone wishing to leave a like should click the like button on OP's section of a reblogged post, otherwise OP will not know.

OP will NOT get notified of any discussion in the notes on comment-reblogs, as those are discussions on a "new" post.

OP will NOT be able to find any specific reblog chain, because for OP the notes on their post will only ever show the direct-from-OP reblogs and never any subsequent ones.

OP will NOT be able to find anything in their notes, and the Activity Feed is not a reliable place to be able to go hunting for other people's previous reblogs.

OP will NOT be able to turn off reblogging on a post, so there is no way to keep a post contained if it takes off in a way you don't want it to.

Every chain effectively becomes a complete silo, unconnected to any other reblog and only barely connected to the original post.

We will NOT be able to scroll through the notes of a post and look for funny tags or interesting comments, because the notes are now wildly fragmented and there is no central reference point. So it will not be possible to look through the notes and see if a hundred other people have already said that thing you were about to say.

OP will NOT be able to do anything to stop a harassment campaign that fills their activity feed, but also will not be able to find any of it in the notes of their post unless the harassers reblog directly from OP every time. This is a feature which will absolutely be used to harass people.

It is also VERY unhelpful that we don't have language to easily disambiguate "comments" (as in, a reblog that someone added something to, thus creating a new post) and "comments" (non-reblgo chatter that happens in the notes). Not that we can reliably see either of those any more.

So! Now you and I are armed with this valuable knowledge about how the new system works, please go to tumblr's feedback form and explain why this is a series of bad problems that you would like them to stop doing.

The feedback form is available here: https://www.tumblr.com/support

[johnbierce]

Monthly Short Story

I just posted this month's short story on Patreon! Did you know I post a monthly short story on my Patreon? Most are set in the worlds of my books- this month's story, They Don't Make Enchanted Forests Like They Used To, is set on Ishveos, the world of More Gods Than Stars! https://www.patreon.com/posts/153043629

[johnbierce]

My favorite author has a blog and recently achieved seven whole notes in a post that just contained "moon's venemous"

God I love Tumblr.

(in all seriousness your books are amazing!!!! The magic system(s) is just the RIGHT amount of complicated actually!!!! Also the magic trans rep makes me warm and cackly inside. Muahahahahahah trans tree city man. 10/10.)

Thank you so much, I really appreciate you reading! And I need to start being more active on Tumblr again, it's a lot more fun than other social media. My new series, More Gods Than Stars, actually has a trans deuteragonist, if you haven't checked it out!

And never trust the moon

[johnbierce]

Big news, everyone! Mage Errant is being released in hardcover in bookstores for the first time this September 29th via Aethon Books through Simon and Schuster! This is incredibly exciting for me- seeing my books on bookstore shelves is a lifelong dream!

Not to mention new cover art, too- and I am always, always excited for new cover art, hah. (It's one of my favorite parts of the job, hah!)

Art by Fernando Granea.

Pre-orders make a HUGE difference when it comes to how many copies stores put on shelves, so if you're thinking of getting a copy, preorders, especially from Barnes & Noble, make a huge difference! Or, if you'd like to order from somewhere else, you can find links here!

If you haven't read Mage Errant before, it's a complete (seven books and a short story collection) wizard school progression fantasy series featuring a complex science-inspired elemental magic system, found family, Machiavellian politics, tons of queer characters, kaijucratic systems of governance, sentient cities, and anime-inspired battles. Synopsis for Mage Errant Book 1, Into the Labyrinth:

Hugh of Emblin is, so far as he's concerned, the worst student that the Academy at Skyhold has ever seen. He can barely cast any spells at all, and those he does cast tend to fail explosively.

If that wasn't bad enough, he's also managed to attract the ire of the most promising student of his year, who also happens to be the nephew of a king. Hugh has no friends, no talent, and does not expect any mage to choose him as an apprentice during the upcoming Choosing.

When a very unusual mage does choose him as apprentice, however, his life starts to take a sharp turn for the better. Now, all he has to worry about is the final test for the first years- being sent into the terrifying labyrinth below Skyhold.

“Starts strong with a fantastic cast of colorful characters with unique and engaging magic, then swiftly grows into a unique exploration of how that same magic might shape a beautiful, diverse, and dangerous world.” –Andrew Rowe, author of How to Defeat a Demon King in Ten Easy Steps

“Wonderful characters, compelling and interesting magic system, and an underdog story that inspires you to binge read every book just to find out what happens next.” –J.R. Mathews, author of Jake’s Magical Market and Portal to Nova Roma

“A masterclass on writing in all its forms: characters that demonstrate both realism and depth, a vibrantly lived-in world, and a diverse cast with their own goals, all capped by a detailed yet approachable magic system worthy of titans like Brandon Sanderson.” –Tobias Begley, author of Mana Mirror and The Enchanter

“A fantastic exploration of magic as a cultural and political force. The series grows with every book, providing enough detail to satisfy any taxonomist while steadily deepening the fundamental themes.” –Sarah Lin, author of The Weirkey Chronicles and Street Cultivation

“Mage Errant’s world-building and magic system stand out above the pack, with fascinating evolutions and battle scenes that will satisfy any anime fan. It’s an academy story with a bite and fascinating characters who grow and learn as they progress through the series. Well worth the read.” –Tao Wong, author of the A Thousand Li and the System Apocalypse series

“Highly imaginative, heartfelt, action packed, and utterly addictive. I could not put these books down and went immediately from one to the next, right up through the totally epic conclusion.” –Dyrk Ashton, author of The Paternus Trilogy and Kraken Rider Z

Barnes and Noble Other Retailers

[johnbierce]

Moon's venomous