Fantasy short story anthology time!

My new book, The Gorgon Incident and Other Stories: A Mage Errant Anthology, is out now on Amazon and Audible!

I absolutely love writing short stories. They push me as an author in ways that novels don't, and each one presents me with a unique, fascinating challenge. And, with this anthology, they allow me to explore parts of Anastis, the world of Mage Errant, in ways I couldn't in the main series. I get to travel to out-of-the-way corners, visit ordinary people to see how they get by in a world of giant monsters and ruthless archmages battling for control of petty territories, to explore secret conspiracies and legendary historical figures, and to flesh out Anastis' ecology, culture, and history.

If you haven't read Mage Errant yet, the first three ebooks are free for the next few days, and books four through six are on sale for $0.99 in the US and UK! Mage Errant is a completed, seven book magic school progression fantasy series, following the adventures of Hugh of Emblin as he goes from being a shy, neurodiversefailure of a student mage who struggles with anxiety and depression to being a shy, neurodiverse terrifying archmage who struggles with anxiety, depression, giant monsters, and magical superweapons. It features found family, giant monsters, a science-inspired hard magic system where you're as liable to run into hair or bismuth mages as fire mages, giant monsters, lots of queer characters, giant monsters (some of whom are also queer characters), kaijucratic systems of government, and sapient living cities. (Did I mention the giant monsters?)

The stories in the Gorgon Incident are written to be legible even to people who haven't read Mage Errant yet- though I think most people will get more out of them after reading the main series. The twenty-four stories, all originally published on my Patreon, span five centuries of history, from the last years of the Ithonian Empire up to the events of the series itself, even visiting another of Anastis' continents for the first time.

I also leaned hard into the science-inspired aspects of the setting with many of the stories, building what I like to call science puzzle stories, where the plot of the story revolves around the real-life behavior of various materials and natural processes, through a magical lens. (I had a lot of fun doing it, and it even let me include a whole additional appendix filled with notes on the science of the short stories- I love appendices.)

(Art by Aaron McConnell and Lee Moyer.)

A fugitive child finds shelter with a monster of legend. A mind-blind scholar outwits the mages who disdain him. A gold mage must secure a bank vault from a monster capable of obliterating entire cities. An aging basketweaver wakes up one morning to find a brand new river in front of her house. A palace-sized octopus seeks to defend his city from a living fortress of bone— if he can get his arms to cooperate.

In these twenty-four short stories set in the world of Mage Errant, John Bierce explores the murky depths of history, forgotten corners of Ithos and beyond, and the strangest reaches of magic itself.

Gorgon Incident US link Gorgon Incident UK link Gorgon Incident CA link Gorgon Incident AU link

Gorgon Incident Audible US link Gorgon Incident Audible UK link Gorgon Incident Audible CA link Gorgon Incident Audible AU link

Amazon US series page Amazon UK series page Amazon CA series page Amazon AU series page

New chapter :) it’s been a longer wait that usual, so in partial compensation this is the longest chapter yet, by a decent margin.

Thanks for 10k hits, and I hope you enjoy :)

books read in 2023

the last echo of the lord of bells by john bierce

4/5⭐

what's that trope where you have a group of adventurers who work in an ancient library going on quests to retrieve overdue grimoires and search for lost knowledge

Based on the Mage Errant series by John Bierce (I have only read till the 70% of the 6th book). I'm just a baby 😇, please go easy on me on the judgements.

Oh while I'm here

LET ME ADVERTISE MAGE ERRANT RQ !!

my favorite book series ever, probably

Apparently the author is on tumblr?!?!?

John bierce

I need to reread it. But it has a KICKASS MAGIC SYSTEM! Love the world so much, so much. I did listen to the audio book, so I will never know how to spell any names other than maybe Hugh, and Talia. But that doesn't matter. They're all I need. Probably. (It's spelled Kanderon right? Kanderon Crux? No alliteration? Canderon Crux? Kanderon Krux? Help?)

I almost learned to draw humans for this goddamn book series! The only thing that's managed to do that is the Mechanisms

(<- still can't draw humans but is trying it just doesn't vibe with my brain)

I used to be able to rant about it for hours so let me go... re-listen to the audio books again. Round 4(?) Let's fucking Go

If you're reading this, go read the Mage Errant series by John Bierce.

Tongue Eater by John Bierce (Mage Errant #6)

I used to frequent a subreddit called Who Would Win, the basic premise being characters are pitted against one another in some form of contest, and commenters make arguments for who would win. One of the in jokes that developed was that Batman, with prep time, was invincible. Tongue Eater is a book solely devoted to prep time.

It’s the lull in battle, between the seige of skyhold and the final fight with the Havathi Dominion. It’s all sides shoring up support and strength and strategy until the momentum of preparing for a war inevitably pushes everyone into a fight. But not yet. Hugh and friends are preparing, even while they mourn. Alustin is doing much the same, although he gives himself less time for the latter. It’s the calm before the storm, and it was great.

That’s not to say the book lacked action or imagination. Far from it, by escaping from the overarching narrative of the fight for the future of the world, Bierce has the opportunity to show us some of the most unique and awe-inspiring environments and non-humans we’ve seen up to this point. We have the leisure of analyzing the mind of a betrayer, and magic unlike anything we started with. It’s a series of vignettes that grow the characters and their abilities, without rush. Also there’s a very cute short story attached to the end, well worth the read and by then you’ve earned some fluff.

On the whole I think I just appreciated spending time with the characters, and exploring the author’s imagination without the threat of societal collapse. It was fun, and I missed it, after my long break from Mage Errant. If you got through Book 5 and felt devastated, you’ll get some deserved catharsis. Well worth the time, and happy reading.

I've started listening to the Mage Errant series and I need to study these fucking books under a microscope!

If you catch me posting about them I apologise but i get the feeling I'm not going to be normal about these books

Something honest

I was flying back from Chicago last night and the flight had The Whale (2022 movie) available. I didn’t catch many of the “award movies” this year, so I ended up watching it and I liked what it had to offer. I had just spent the weekend promoting my Ancient Futures graphic novel series at the Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo (C2E2) with my collaborator author Steven White and his circle of…

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Wanted to draw Hugh Stormward from The Mage Errant series by John Bierce I’ve been listening to the books and rlly like the stormwards crown concept. I also have some other doodles based around the beginning of the books.

Magic school book sale

Into the Labyrinth, the first novel in my YA magic school series, Mage Errant, is a Kindle Daily Deal today! (November 15th.) Books 2&3 will be on sale as well for the next couple of days. Mage Errant follows the adventures of Hugh of Emblin, a young student mage whose magic doesn't want to work right- though his anxiety works just fine. Mage Errant features found family, a convoluted science-inspired magic system, a non-neurotypical protagonist, a queernormative setting, Machiavellian politics, lots of explosions, and more kaiju than you can shake a stick at. (Though, uh... I highly recommend against shaking sticks at kaiju in general.)

Mage Errant is heavily inspired by Diane Duane, Dianna Wynne Jones, Will Wight's Cradle, Andrew Rowe's Arcane Ascension, and a bunch of cheesy shonen anime. It's part of the new(ish) genre of progression fantasy, which is much more heavily focused on training and growing in power than average in fantasy. (I like to call the genre "books for people who like movie training montages way too much.")

The whole series is complete now, sans a short story anthology coming out in February. It's also getting a webtoon comic adaptation, which is super exciting! Oh, and whenever I got a bad review for having queer characters (of which I got MANY), I hit a mental button reading "make it gayer."

This chapter brings the total word count past 100k, definitely the longest thing I’ve ever written at this point. I was hoping to sync that up with the next chapter so we could cross 100k words and 200 kudos at the same time. Ah well. At least we got to name Zorian’s pet snake 🐍

This chapter is the first time I’ve written ‘downtime/slice-of-life’ things for my characters, turns out I enjoy it a lot :)

I think I might have a playable army

Adventure: A Draft Through the Door

An unnatural gloom creeps over the countryside, the shadows grow long and the dawn seems slow to rise. The townsfolk grow increasingly listless, and have asked your party to investigate the mage's manor across the lake, which seems to be the origin of this miasmic melancholia. Your journey will not be an easy one, as the landscape grows ever more eerie, and things are seen to move in the drifting banks of mist.

Of the many reasons that wizards take on apprentices (passing down knowledge, having a sounding board for new theories, an extra pair of hands to prepare spell components and do the sweeping up) one of the less discussed ones is how vital it is to have a second pair of eyes on lookout for when something magical inevitably goes wrong.

It makes sense when you think about it, a proper wizard's mind is too full of brilliance to bother with things like making sure that week's batch of potions don't boil over in the cauldron or that the stacked tomes of lore present a firehazard if they're not put away.

So it was with the mage Milghram Brightstaff and his precocious apprentice Adaline, who lived a quaint existence in the manor by the edge of the lake filling their days with scholarship, experiments, and attending to the problems brought to them by locals visiting from across the countryside. That was until mage Milghram decided to pop off to his extra-dimensional storage unit by way of a shadowfell portal in the manor's basement. He thought he'd only been gone a few hours, but neglected to apply the protective charm required to spare himself from the memory-sapping defences guarding his vault. now Milghram wanders the land of shades in a perpetual state of "why did I come into this room?" while the essence of that dread dimension leak back through his unclosed portal.

Adventure Hooks:

The party might've been sent to seek out the wizard, or visit town on their own buisness. Either way nothing's getting done so long as the countyside is blanketed in memory erroding fog and creatures from the shadow realm stalk through the murk. After several nights worth of exposure the town's defenders have had the wost of it, having forgotten what they're guarding or why they've established barricades.. it'll take some guile or calm negoitation for them to let the heroes past the gate.

When the party eventually gets to the manor they'll not only find the place locked, shuttered, and in many cases barricaded, but also protected by a slew of arcane defences ranging from animated objects to teleportation traps that will hurl them out into the lake. Two thirds of the way through their magical B&E and likely expecting a mad wizard to emerge from the shadows and begin a villain monolog, they'll instead find an exhausted teen running through the manor hurling heedless spells at a fleeing bug-thing demanding they help catch it before it gets too big.

For a girl of only fourteen winters beset on all sides by living nightmares Adaline is handling herself marvellously. She's activated the manor's wards sealing the worst of the cursed mist in the basement (or atleast she had until the party chopped their way in) and has been using a borrowed wand to hunt down most of the shadow creatures that have begun to infest the manor grounds. She's deeply worried about her teacher however, and blames herself for the series of distractions that led the old man to forgetting to throw on his protective charm. Depending on how they play it, they can either have her charm them and venture into the portal looking for the errant mage, or attempt to distract her long enough to close the portal themselves and leave the old wizard for dead.

Art

I can't see 'my parents own(ed) a brewery/vineyard/etc' from characters anymore without IMMEDIATELY thinking of Alustin Haber from Mage Errant and more specifically, his last bottle.

And the Fucking Tragedy of 'this is all I have left after parents died/vineyard was destroyed/both' and it's the last one..ever. forever. It's the end of that. The very last. God.