If you read fantasy for the magic, the world-building, and the occasional moment of dark humor—I write that. One urban fantasy series, one epic fantasy series, both set in the Fractured Arcana universe, with more coming. My newsletter takes you deeper into the worlds, the characters, and what's next.
Three books, one obsession: portal fantasy
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Hey Reader, I was ~sixteen when I first read Mordant's Need by Stephen R. Donaldson. A woman gets pulled through a magic mirror into a medieval kingdom that desperately needs a hero—except she isn't one. No power, no destiny, no idea what she's walked into. What Donaldson does with her arc stuck with me, particularly the moment she finally understands the game being played around her, finds her place on the board, and chooses to step into it. I try to replicate that in my storytelling. That book is why I write portal fantasy at all. So I made a short series about the books that made me write fantasy, and I want to share it with you: 🪞 Mordant's Need — Stephen R. Donaldson The one that started it all.
🏔️ The Darwath Trilogy — Barbara Hambly My second favorite portal fantasy, right behind Mordant's Need. Hambly's magic actually costs something. It leaves a mark. And the ending is genuinely twisty in a way I didn't see coming.
🌸 War of the Flowers — Tad Williams An underrated one. Williams gives you just enough rules to make the magic feel real, then leaves the edges deliberately vague—harder to pull off than it sounds.
If you love portal fantasy, any one of these is worth your weekend. A quick note about that story-telling game I mentioned last newsletter that I was working on, Eigenthrope. You don’t need a wallet or any crypto setup to enjoy the story itself. It's free to read anytime, no account needed, in the archive on the game page. The slightly more fun version still without playing—watching bots argue over what happens next in real time—that lives in the Discord's #current-story channel. (If you’re not on Discord already, it just takes a sec to sign up and it's free, no strings.) All books by Steven J. Morris Previous Newsletters
May you get lost this week in another world. Follow me on Goodreads. |
Steven J Morris
If you read fantasy for the magic, the world-building, and the occasional moment of dark humor—I write that. One urban fantasy series, one epic fantasy series, both set in the Fractured Arcana universe, with more coming. My newsletter takes you deeper into the worlds, the characters, and what's next.
Well... this isn't the newsletter I expected to be writing. A couple of weeks ago I accidentally wandered into a blockchain hackathon. As one does. The timing was terrible. I was busy, traveling, and already had more on my plate than I should have. Naturally, I signed up anyway. And I created a... something. It's called Eigenthrope. It's an interactive mystery where the community votes and influences what happens next. Every week the story branches based on those votes. It runs on the XRP...
Hey Reader, I don't send a lot of these "here's what's going on behind the curtain" emails, but I've been heads-down on some things this year that I think are worth sharing — especially if you're navigating the same chaos the rest of us are. The short version: the books are selling steadily, the Shepherds of Truth launch cost me more than I made, TikTok taught me an expensive lesson, I've built some automation infrastructure that's genuinely changing how I work — and I have a marketing...
I've been having a lot of fun creating things lately. Not just books. Shoe shelves for my wife. Reels. Sometimes even novels. 🙃 I finally figured out how to tell a story in under thirty seconds. If you're curious what I've been experimenting with outside the books, here's my latest attempt: sjmorriswrites Every second she fights, another elf dies — and she can feel each one go dark. This is the cruelest trap in all of urban fantasy. Book 1 free on Amazon Prime for a limited time — link in...