Russell Hasan's Blog

 Hello, Readers, I've finished my epic high fantasy novel. It combines epic high fantasy with elements of horror, thriller, YA, and disability fiction. It clocked in at almost exactly 115,000 words. Next step: get it published. My next writing project is to turn my novel The Gratitude Turkey into a screenplay! As promised, here is my new author selfie, with my new beard and mustache:

 Hello readers, I have completed writing the first draft of book one of my epic high fantasy series and am currently editing it. It's 95,000 words but the editing process may take it to 100,000 words. It's an epic high fantasy with flares of thriller, horror, and YA, and it is a series starter, not a standalone, with two main characters, both of whom are cishet young men in their late teens/early twenties. When I finish editing, I will post another update. I've grown a beard, so my author profile picture is no longer up to date. I expect to post a new photo soon. In food blog news, I recently tried a Nutella-filled Italian donut called a bomba. It was delicious! I also tried a cannoli-filling-filled bomba, which was also good, but the Nutella-filled bomba was slightly better. It's like a giant fried donut stuffed with Nutella. I've also had an idea for a pizza: salmon as a pizza topping. I haven't tried this yet and I haven't seen any local pizza places offe...

 So, my "new" author website ran into some technical difficulties, so I have redirected RussellHasan.com to my blog... namely, here. If that's where you're joining me from for the first time, welcome! This is my blog. I blog about being an author, and it's also a food blog. I was a vegetarian for a year and blogged about that, and now I blog about pizza. Thanks for reading!

 Hello friends, I am currently hard at work on book one of my upcoming epic high fantasy trilogy. I have written 70,000 words, which I estimate is about halfway done, more or less. This one is going well. It resembles The Crystal of Light in a lot of ways but set in a different fantasy universe. But, whereas The Crystal of Light was a standalone novel, this one I'm working on now is a true series starter, which won't tell a complete story until the trilogy is complete, but which begins the story in what is shaping up to be a compelling way. I am going to take my shot and try to get this one tradpubed, because I believe it is going to be good enough to belong on bookstore shelves. If I don't get any nibbles on the fishhook for an agent or publisher, then I would indiepub it. I won't say "as a last resort," because there's nothing wrong with indiepub, but for this one, I am resolved to only indiepub if I try my best and tradpub passes on it. Interesting pizz...

Some interesting recent pizzas I've had here in Connecticut: (1) White pizza with Alfredo sauce as pizza sauce/pizza topping. (2) White pizza with Pesto sauce as pizza sauce/pizza topping. (3) Pizza with tuna salad (canned tuna mixed with mayo) as a topping. I've also formed a theory of what is in the Coca-Cola secret formula. I believe it contains vanilla extract, cinnamon, and some combination of licorice and/or annis seed extract. It may also have other ingredients. But it's just a theory; obviously I don't know for sure. I also have a theory of what's in Dr. Pepper. They literally went to a local fruit stand, grabbed twenty fruits at random, and threw them in a blender, and that's how they invented Dr. Pepper. And, I learned the name of my favorite dessert, which I've blogged about before in this blog. It's a chocolate cream pie where the pie crust is made from crushed Oreo cookies, and apparently it wasn't a one-off, it's, like, an actual th...

I have a new author website! Check it out! RussellHasan.com

Hi readers! I just completed the first draft of the screenplay based on my novel The Gospel of Judas. You won't be able to read it, but if I can find some studio or indie filmmaker to buy it, you'll see it on the screen one day! (If you happen to be a filmmaker looking to buy scripts and you're seriously interested, please reach out.) With my work on that screenplay complete, I am now turning my attention to my next project, an epic fantasy trilogy. I haven't begun the first draft yet, but I'm an outliner, so I always begin a novel by writing an outline, and I have most of the outline for all three novels done and I like what I'm seeing so far, so I definitely plan to write these novels. It's looking like I already have a lot of content lined up based on how big my outline is getting, but I want to fit it all into a trilogy (I just like the trilogy as a format, I feel it's an ideal format for epic fantasy novels), so right now I'm thinking it's g...

Hello, If you read fantasy, you have probably heard of Royal Road, the premier LitRPG web fiction site. Royal Road is mainly a platform for serials, and I don't write serials, I write novels, so most of my works are ill suited for it; however, my novel " Knight in a Strange Realm " is exactly the type of hardcore "crunchy" LitRPG that Royal Road is notorious for hosting and which their fans seem to like, so I published " Knight in a Strange Realm " on Royal Road, and we'll see what happens. If you use Royal Road, please feel free to find me there. Thanks!

Hello friends, As promised, I have released several of my ebooks for iBookstore iPad, B&N Nook and Kobo reader, and I made most of the ones in this wave permafree, so now you can download several of my ebooks for free! I have pushed them to the platforms, although the platforms take up to two weeks to make them available to their patrons. The next wave will be the rest of my back catalog, but I am planning to price those at paid, somewhere between 99 cents or $2.99. Read and be happy! Why am I giving some of my books away for free? I wish I could say it was all part of my evil scheme to use loss leaders to drive sales, but... no, it's just that these are good books and someone should read them. That person could be you!

It has come to my attention that I must clarify a certain point with respect to my nonfiction books. Some of my recent books have focused on religion and have mentioned the fact that I advocate for it. I am, of course, noted as a highly successful Objectivist philosopher. (This is a low bar to meet, since there aren't very many of us, so being near the top is not that difficult.) The question, then, is whether I have renounced Objectivism as a result of my religion, given that Objectivism is widely regarded as an atheistic philosophy. But, to this, I reply: why should I renounce Objectivism, when it is true? I did not, do not, and never will, renounce Objectivism. That having been said, yes, it is true, I believe in God. So, let me present my thoughts on why this is not a contradiction, in greater detail. First, Objectivism is, at its core, nothing other than a belief that objective truth exists. Therefore, weird though this may sound at first, if it is objectively true that God ex...

I took Brandon Sanderson's free online class on how to write fantasy novels in 2023, and he's offering it again this year and I'm taking it again in 2025. One of the striking things I have noticed is that Ayn Rand has a reputation as a horrible novelist whose success is the result of pure random luck, but she does a lot of things in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged which are absolutely best practices for a novelist according to Brandon Sanderson. He teaches that readers like characters who are proactive. Ayn Rand's protagonists are nothing but proactive. The first scene in Atlas Shrugged is Dagny proactively fixing the train, which, as Sanderson would teach it, is exactly what a novelist should do to make the reader like the protagonist. The Fountainhead begins with a scene that contrasts Roark to his antipode in Keating, and using contrast that way is another thing which Sanderson teaches. One final interesting thought is that, structurally, in terms of the craft of...

Hello Readers, I have exciting updates to share with you! (1) I have been hard at work on two fantasy novels, and, by some unplanned coincidence, I have finished them both at the same time, namely, right now. So, later this month, I will be publishing, not one, but two brand-new never-before-released novels! Look forward to them. One is a historical fantasy romance, and the other is an urban fantasy magical realism holiday novel. (2) I had kept my books exclusive to Amazon, which gave me certain perks when selling on Amazon, but I have made the decision to "go wide." This will enable me to do something I have never done before: set some of my books' prices to permafree. So, later this month, tell your friends to take a look at my books, because some of them will be priced at free. Amazon sets a minimum price of 99 cents, but, if my understanding is correct, once my books are in Barnes & Noble and Apple iBookstore, those ones in those online stores I can set to free, a...

Everyone knew Trump was going to do tariffs and everyone knew Trump was going to lower taxes, but everyone expected him to cut taxes first and then do tariffs. Instead, he decided to do the tariffs first. That was a mistake. Why? In my blog post where I predicted a Trump win long before anyone else, I said that Trump would be elected for one reason and one reason alone: to lower prices. You lower prices by cutting taxes, and the argument for the tariffs was that the tariffs would fund the government once the taxes were gone. I know Trump and his "DOGE" are firing federal employees at a rapid pace to try to lower the government's costs, but he needed to do a massive tax cut before going all in on the tariffs. If he fails to lower prices, he will find that the Trump show will get a short leash from the American public, and every month that prices don't go down, that leash will get shorter. Don't forget that Trump won the popular vote by a narrow margin, and the Demo...

Hello Readers and Fans, I have completed and published my latest book, Lord of the Right. The link is here:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DS95ZT3G . If you like history, politics, or current events, this is the book for you! As one final author update, I am still hard at work on my urban fantasy novel, but that one might take a few more months to complete.