Russell Hasan's Blog

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...