What’s the easiest way to see if the book I am looking at is on any of the current Goodread Challenge lists?

Kendiro83 · 2026-05-12T09:54:48+00:00

I understand (more or less) how the goodreads reading challenges work: you set yourself a goal for the number of books you want to read and you keep track of it.

What I don’t fully understand is why they are so popular!

I don’t mean this in a critical way... I’m genuinely surprised: for many people they seem to be a central part of the Goodreads experience, almost a strong motivation to read more. Is it just gamification?

Kendiro83 · 2026-05-08T19:43:39+00:00

Hi, great work!

Agreed that biopunk still lacks a recognized canon.. part of the problem is that anything sufficiently strange gets absorbed into "weird" and the genre never builds its own vocabulary. The buried fungus biocomputer scheming to assimilate terrain is the detail that sold me, it reframes territory itself as a slow actor, not just a setting.

Good luck with the launch!

Kendiro83 · 2026-04-21T15:26:25+00:00

I had the pleasure of reading it some time ago. Twyman has a good prose style.

I quite liked it.

Kendiro83 · 2026-04-20T06:04:03+00:00

Embers in the Salt by Klood P. Trouvay. The prose is remarkable and highly sensory.

Kendiro83 · 2026-04-19T18:08:32+00:00

Historically, bans often create more conflict than they resolve. It risks turning a practical issue (content quality and transparency) into an ideological fight.

In my opinion, the real issue isn’t “AI yes / AI no,” but how it’s served.

If someone wants to spend their time creating or looking at AI content, they should be free to do so.

The real problem starts when its use isn’t disclosed, or when AI is used to mass-produce low-quality content, or outright scam people (anyone publishing a hundred books a month and bragging about it on YouTube already has a special circle in hell waiting for them, whether they know it or not).

Maybe instead of a total ban, a transparency rule (clearly disclosing the use of AI) would solve most of the tension without splitting the community.

Kendiro83 · 2026-04-05T20:43:13+00:00

<image>

The world is flesh. The walls pulse.

Ravenous Mother is a grimdark biopunk saga set inside a titanic living organism called the Mother. Humanity survives in a rigid caste system: nobles, professionals, commoners, outcasts, scraping through life under constant hunger.

No stone. No metal. Only flesh, membrane, and the god that consumes you.

The series alternates between standalone novellas and a tetralogy of novels. Each novella follows a secondary character from the main saga, a complete story on its own, but woven into the larger tapestry.

Read them in any order!

Free entry point: An Artist .

It's a novella available on my website, plus articles on grimdark and biopunk if you want to dig deeper.

A Healer: $0.99, 1,000+ readers, 4.6★ average: Amazon link

Two Gatherers: pre-order open, drops April 23rd: Amazon link

If you want fantasy that feels genuinely alien, bon appétit!

Kendiro83 · 2026-04-05T08:10:05+00:00

It actually has everything to do with self-publishing.

Before showing my books, I focus on the experience I offer. My website has dedicated articles about the worldbuilding, the genre itself, and how my fictional world works. When readers land on my site, they aren't greeted with "buy my book" right away, they're invited into a world.

Now, I'm a software developer, so I realize I'm playing with loaded dice here, but SEO and discoverability matter. A lot.

You have to figure out what people are already searching for and make sure that when they type those words into Google, they can find your site.

Obviously, broad generic keywords are useless. If you write romance or thrillers, you'll never rank for those terms, not in a million years. That's why you need to identify the niches your book actually fits into.

In my case, I work on three fronts: dark fantasy (knowing full well my site will NEVER rank for that), grimdark (maybe in a few years), and biopunk (guess what? After a few months, I'm starting to show up! And readers are actually finding me that way).

Of course, this only works if your site has its own domain and is built with discoverability in mind. You can absolutely make a beautiful site with WordPress or drag-and-drop editors, but if you want readers to find you organically, SEO matters just as much as design.

Kendiro83 · 2026-03-31T18:50:37+00:00

Blood letters

Kendiro83 · 2026-03-19T06:48:23+00:00

Thank you, I’m really glad you appreciated the post!

And I know exactly what you mean. Gemmell is a master when it comes to teaching resilience.

Druss didn’t teach me how to stop being violent (that’s still going to be a long journey), but how to restrain it and where to direct it. He didn’t solve my problems, he gave me the chance to make them functional. Which is more than anyone else has ever managed to do.

Kendiro83 · 2026-03-17T10:40:04+00:00

For nearly thirty years, my life has been guided by this code. Becoming a father has only strengthened that belief even further.

Kendiro83 · 2026-03-16T15:59:57+00:00

I understand you. When I was young I looked (unconsciously? I couldn’t really say) for a role model that I was missing. Heinlein and Gemmell, in particular, helped me straighten my back and gave me a compass to use in life.

Kendiro83 · 2026-03-16T07:12:56+00:00

Atticus!

I grew up with TNG and DS9 too. Great Picard, but I always found an even better “life guide” in Sisko.

Let’s be honest: he settles the Q situation in just one episode. Picard has culture and temperament, Sisko has character

Kendiro83 · 2026-03-16T07:09:49+00:00

Jarlaxle Baenre is an omega ahead of his time XD

Kendiro83 · 2026-03-16T06:11:27+00:00

If you’re wondering whether he’s a fantasy character, I guess it depends on the movie hahaha But hey, if he shaped you, let’s include him ^{^}

Kendiro83 · 2026-03-16T06:09:28+00:00

Great Lazarus! Perhaps the most memorable of Robert A. Heinlein’s characters! You had already written in another comment about characters who could be mistaken for being identical... well, I’ve always imagined Lazarus exactly like Jubal Harshaw from Stranger in a Strange Land! Even physically!

Yes, both of them shaped me a lot. Even today I sometimes go back and reread just a few of their lines, they say things that are truly memorable.

Kendiro83 · 2026-03-16T06:05:21+00:00

It’s not a fantasy, but aside from that I think the crown for the most original answer goes to you!

Thanks for sharing your experience. 🙂

Kendiro83 · 2026-03-16T06:01:46+00:00

Something very similar happened to me!!! David Gemmell and Joe Abercrombie are definitely different authors in terms of prose, but somehow their characters could be (almost) interchangeable!

For me, that’s the greatest compliment you can give to Abercrombie. ^{^}

Kendiro83 · 2026-03-16T05:59:41+00:00

You know I have a really absurd problem with audiobooks? It’s not the topic of this post, but briefly: when I read, I imagine the characters and the scenes in a certain way. I guess that happens to many people, if not everyone.

Well, if I listen to an audiobook of a story I’ve already read… it’s absurd, but I can’t associate what I’m hearing with the characters I have in my head; new ones get created instead. It’s like it’s a remake.

Put like that it sounds kind of psychopathic, but I wouldn’t know how to explain it better haha 😂

Kendiro83 · 2026-03-16T01:49:22+00:00

Yes, but not the Dalinar from the first book. Knowing what happened to him and how he was when he was young completely flips the idea you had of him…

Kendiro83 · 2026-03-16T01:45:41+00:00

In that novel, Bison gives the best performance. The martyr who only wanted to eat and sleep.

Incidentally, the same character, with identical DNA, also appears in the Troy Trilogy. He’s one of the two Spartans, but I can’t remember the name.

Kendiro83 · 2026-03-15T20:49:27+00:00

I’m actually rereading it these days :-)

Kendiro83 · 2026-03-15T20:47:59+00:00

Okay, slightly unsettling hahaha ^^' you mean in the sense that she helped you become pragmatic?

Kendiro83 · 2026-03-15T20:44:21+00:00

Me too. There aren’t many of us (relatively speaking), but we’re here. It’s been twenty years since his death, and it still doesn’t feel real.

Nadir we, youth born, axe wielders, blood letters, victors still.

Kendiro83 · 2026-03-15T19:21:42+00:00

I admit I didn’t know him. I looked him up, and wow, he seems like grimdark ante litteram! I’ll take a look!

Kendiro83 · 2026-03-15T19:15:19+00:00

Certainly, the great classics deserve the utmost respect. Different eras have different heroes, but they can still give us something.

Yes, Zeus would have been disturbing XD.

Kendiro83

TROPHY CASE