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Audiobooks Narrated by Ryan Burke
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Wonderbook has become the definitive guide to writing science fiction and fantasy by offering an accessible, example-rich approach that emphasizes the importance of playfulness as well as pragmatism. The book features sidebars and essays from some of the biggest names working in the field today, including George R. R. Martin, Lev Grossman, Neil Gaiman, Michael Moorcock, and Karen Joy Fowler.
For the fifth anniversary of the original publication, Jeff VanderMeer has added writing exercises, creating the ultimate volume of inspiring advice .
Hello, friend, and welcome to Blade's Rest!
Are you looking for a relaxing LitRPG where the world isn't ending every five minutes? Yes, I know that it's exciting to battle demons and loot swords. But sometimes it's nice to just build a town, drink beer, and end your day with a hearty bowl of stew, isn't it?
Well, if you want a slice of life tale about a guy creating a town from scratch, then you came to the right place.
Blade & Sheath is a fully immersive VRMMORPG game where some folks complete quests, while others develop their magic and battle monsters.
Then there are players like Josh.
He needs to earn some cash, so when he gets a job as a town builder for Blade & Sheath, he can't believe his luck. However, it won't be easy. The land he needs to build on is as untamed as the critters that prowl it. That's not all-he also starts with no skills and no resources.
He does, however, have two fellow builders who will help him. Together they will build Blade's Rest-a place for adventurers to relax after a day of questing. Why not put down your sword, grab yourself a drink, and stay for a while and join them?
Why would a collector of ancient American artifacts hand over his prized pieces to a historian and then shoot himself in the head? And why does an ancient Templar scroll in his possession refer to Jesus as 'The Thief on the Cross?'
The answers place historian Cameron Thorne at the dangerous intersection of secret American history and modern geopolitical intrigue. Following clues contained in ancient American artifacts and medieval European masterpieces, Cameron and his fiancee Amanda Spencer race to uncover the true secrets of early Christianity before a splinter group of religious zealots can silence them forever.
Beyond the third floor!
When Morgan got hit by a car and died on Earth, he never imagined that he would be chosen by a god, little g, to be taken to another planet-a World governed by game-like rules. Especially since said god liked to have people call him the Great Lord, and had basically created an entire World to run experiments in. Nor could Morgan have ever imagined that he would find one thing that he had never really had on Earth: a real family.
It's been years since Morgan started his second chance at life on that world, and both he and his friends have achieved great power as part of a Great Raid: a group of people bent on climbing beyond the third floor of the Tower of Power, to the floors from which no one has ever before returned.
They had lost friends in their climb, but who remain share the same drive to be the first to pass the Great Lord's test. But there are dangers in the Tower beyond what they could even imagine . . . and not all of them even belong there.
Their raid group will need both luck and cunning if they are to survive all that the Tower can throw at them. But, in the end, only one thing is certain-no matter what, all of them will need to pay the Tower's price.
A mysterious race of North American giants.
An ancient Hebrew inscription in a Cherokee burial mound.
A blood oath made by blindfolded Freemasons.
Are these three historical oddities the reason the CIA is trying to brainwash historian Cameron Thorne and his fiancee Amanda Spencer-Gunn? The answer lies buried in the legends of the Knights Templar, within the rituals of the secretive Freemasons and, most significantly of all, inside the bowels of the Smithsonian Institution. The problem for Cam and Amanda? If they go rummaging around the Smithsonian, they may find themselves buried alongside the ancient giants.
In the new edition of this fascinating book, a book that has appeared on MSNBC, CNBC, Slashdot.org, Lifehacker.com and in the New York Times, bestselling author Scott Berkun pulls the best lessons from the history of innovation, including the recent software and web age, to reveal powerful and suprising truths about how ideas become successful innovations-truths people can easily apply to the challenges of today. Through his entertaining and insightful explanations of the inherent patterns in how Einstein's discovered E=mc2 or Tim Berner Lee's developed the idea of the world wide web, you will see how to develop existing knowledge into new innovations.
Each entertaining chapter centers on breaking apart a powerful myth, popular in the business world despite its lack of substance. Through Berkun's extensive research into the truth about innovations in technology, business and science, you'll learn lessons from the expensive failures and dramatic successes of innovations past, and understand how innovators achieved what they did-and what you need to do to be an innovator yourself.
America's first line of defense-Brad McLanahan and the heroes of the Iron Wolf Squadron-must counter a dangerous Russian strike from within the homeland in this cutting-edge tale from the New York Times master of the high-tech military thriller, Dale Brown. On a remote island estate, a billionaire investor sells his air freight company to a mysterious new owner. The purchaser is none other than the President of Russia, Gennadiy Gryzlov. The Russians will use these private planes to secretly transport dangerous cargo into the United States.
The inept American President Stacy Anne Barbeau has failed to account for the Russian threat. But others have been vigilant and will not leave America defenseless. Brad McLanahan and the Iron Wolf Squadron have joined forces with the newly formed Alliance of Free Nations in Eastern Europe, to prepare for the attack they know is imminent. Working with the most cutting-edge technology, the team will deploy CIDs-Cybernetic Infantry Devices-twelve-foot-tall humanoid combat robots, each armed with more firepower than a conventional platoon. But their state-of-the-art weapons may not be enough to combat the threat. The Russians have managed to reverse engineer their own combat robots nearly decimated in a previous attack, and have slowly begun smuggling them across America's borders.
Dealing with an unprecedented danger and a feckless president and congress, McLanahan and the Iron Wolf Squadron will once again put their own lives on the line to check this new Russian peril and keep the home of the brave and the free world safe.
While rooting around in the mysterious stone chambers of New England, historian Cameron Thorne and his fiancee Amanda Spencer-Gunn stumble upon a reinterpretation of the Biblical passage calling on Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. It is a revelation-long suppressed by the medieval Knights Templar-that threatens to destabilize the Middle East forever. It is also a secret Cam and Amanda want nothing to do with.
Not that a rogue faction of puppeteering Freemasons gives a damn what Cam and Amanda want.
A new threat arrives!
Years ago, Morgan and his team entered the Tower of Power, by the time they left, their raid group was reduced to only a handful of its members. They had faced the Tower and forces that they were never supposed to know about, and they had paid a high price to survive, but they had prevailed. They faced the enemy of the Great Lord, Oxylus, and they had defeated them.
Within the Tower they had learned the secrets and achieved great power. But now, they were longer in the Tower, and the world on the outside was different than what they had faced in the Tower. Morgan had been given a choice, to stay in the Tower or to leave the World and join his father-Oxylus. He had chosen to stay with his friends, to try and inspire the world to achieve the same power that he had. The power that the Great Lord had created this entire World to find.
Now, a new threat comes for the Guilds, and Morgan and his friends are thrown straight into it. Morgan might not have been able to find a way to achieve his goal, but with a new threat on the horizon, perhaps there would be more opportunities for him to show them what all of them could achieve.
Morgan and his friends won the right to be a part of an expedition to the Tower of Power. Part of a raid group that was led by two Great Guilds, and had the intention of conquering the Tower. But, no one who had ventured beyond the third floor had ever returned. Adventuring might be a dangerous profession, and ascended might encounter death at every turn, but there is a reason why most do not attempt to climb the Tower. For most ascended going into the Tower is a risk not worth taking, in opinions of some, it was equal to suicide. But there were a few who still dreamed of something more than pointless living.
Preparations for the attempt to climb the Tower begin, led by some of the most powerful ascended in the world. But Morgan and his friends still had a lot to learn before they were strong enough to survive the first floor.
Attempting to climb the Tower took more than just will, it required training and planning. And Morgan and his friends needed to learn how to work with the rest of the ascended in the raid group if they were to have a chance to survive. In the end, there was only one truth, and the Tower revealed who an ascended truly was. The Tower would show them if they were worthy of gaining greater power.
Who knew that getting a second chance for life on another world-after you died-could turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to you? Morgan has been living on this new world for quite some time. He has made friends, found love, been betrayed, formed a guild, fought off a goblin horde, and become an adventurer. His life is perhaps a bit strange now compared to what he had been used to on Earth, but hey, he has an energy sword now.
But as much as a life of adventuring might seem like a good idea, it is a dangerous profession, with the threat of death on a daily basis. So when an opportunity arrives in the form of a tournament where the winners get the chance to climb the Tower of Power, the most dangerous place in this world, Morgan is obviously interested-so he and his team decide to join the tournament.
With teams from all over the world competing in everything from dungeon diving to monster hunting and, of course, single combat, there are plenty of opportunities for success, but also failure. Now, old enemies appear, and new friends are pitted against each other, all for the promise of a chance for them to die in the Tower-because no one has ever come back from beyond the fourth floor, and the organizers of the tournament intend to be the first.
A new life on another world!
Morgan used to be a pretty chill dude, until he got hit by a car, died, and then got sent to another world by a god-not-god. A world where the only way to survive was to level and grow strong enough to survive all the monsters that wanted to eat your face. If he was being completely honest with himself, Morgan quite liked this world, even with all the monsters and the lack of electricity. Sure, there were people that were technically gods, running around and interfering with his life, but who didn't have problems?
Things weren't all that bad; Morgan found friends, who included bad-ass elven twins, an orc, and a descendant of a Roman General from an alternate version of Earth, and together with them he founded a Guild, got some followers, and basically became a ruler.
So yeah, not all too bad-except that he now had several towns and villages of people looking to him for guidance and protection. And to make matters worse, a new Goblin King had risen and united the tribes in the mountains. Now they had a goblin horde on the way, and Morgan and his friends had to figure out a way to protect them all. Should be easy, right?
