Storytelling is my passion. I have loved writing in the science fiction and fantasy genres since I learned to read as a kid. I’ve won multiple awards, have an optioned screenplay, and am actively working on several paid script projects. I love to swap stories with other writers and dive into new worlds.
I really like that this story doesn’t start with someone who’s already noble and true with a great destiny thrust upon them, it’s about someone who must learn the traits of becoming a hero. It’s got good action and fun characters who will keep you entertained, and set in a world you probably already know well.
From the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender comes the instant USA Today and New York Times bestselling novel starring Avatar Kyoshi-now in paperback
After years of searching for the next Avatar, the four nations have found peace with Avatar Yun-until Kyoshi, Yun's friend and servant, demonstrates remarkable bending abilities herself. With the identity of the true Avatar After nine years of desperate searching for the next Avatar, the discovery of young, charming Avatar Yun has brought stability to the four nations-that is, until Earth Kingdom-born Kyoshi, Yun's unassuming friend and servant, demonstrates remarkable bending during a mission to the…
David Edmonds is a philosopher, podcaster, and curry fanatic. A distinguished research fellow at Oxford’s Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, he is the author of many books including Wittgenstein’s Poker (with John Eidinow), The Murder of Professor Schlick, Would You Kill The Fat Man?, and Undercover Robot (with Bertie Fraser). If you eat at his local restaurant, The Curry Paradise, he recommends you order the Edmonds Biriani.
Perhaps my favourite philosophy book of all time. Humans have the unique ability to take a detached view of our lives and actions. Call this an objective perspective. Thomas Nagel argues that many of our philosophical problems – such as the attempt to understand free will, or consciousness – stem from a clash between the subjective and objective standpoints. For example, we believe (subjectively), that we are free, that we have free will, that we can raise our right arm, or choose whether or not to go to shopping. But from an objective perspective we might reflect that, like everything else in the universe, we are governed by causal laws. A beautiful writer, Nagel can make the most complex issues seem simple. He will make you feel cleverer than you are! The View From Nowhere is my model for how philosophy books should be written.
Much philosophical debate has attempted to reconcile the human capacity to view the world both objectively and subjectively. Thomas Nagel's ambitious and lively book tackles this fundamental issue, arguing that our divided nature is the root of a whole range of philosophical problems, touching, as it does, every aspect of human life. He deals with its manifestations in such fields of philosophy as the mind-body problem, personal identity, knowledge and scepticism, thought and reality, free will, and ethics. From reviews of the hardback:
`Remarkable ... all of his discussions are clear and insightful, but some reach a level of originality…
I’m a writer who has traveled the world in real life and traveled through time in my research and imagination. In the past dozen years, I’ve researched historical women of the Bible for my own novels and have come to realize that women of the ancient world were much like women of today. Biblical women had dreams and fell in love. They worried about their children, politics, and the world around them. They wished for security and happiness just as we do. I have a special regard for historical fiction that brings these ancient women to life—honoring their lives and their struggles.
After reading this imaginative story, I never thought of Eve in the same way again. Havah is a stunning depiction of the first woman—one created, not born. Tosca Lee takes us on an original journey into the life, choices, and emotions of the first woman. It is a story of sin, but more than that, it is a story of creative love and the gift of free will. This story allows us to sympathize with Havah, and even ask ourselves what we might have done in her place. Enthralling and inspiring!
I’m an educator at heart and have been teaching in high schools for over thirty years now. I get a kick out of helping young people see the world anew and think about ideas in ways that at first seem strange and challenging to them, both in the classroom and through my novels. Of course, to be any good at that, I have to be inquisitive and open myself, and there’s nothing like the topic of consciousness to make you feel feeble-minded and ill-informed. It’s such a wondrous topic because it sits at the precise meeting point of so many of our scientific, cultural, artistic, religious, and philosophical traditions.
The issues of free will and consciousness are, to my limited mind, inextricably linked. And so, while Dennett somewhat overpromised and underdelivered with his well-known Consciousness Explained (tremendously hard not to underdeliver with a title like that) here I think he’s much more on the money. I think of all the books that I’ve read which address, either directly or tangentially, the issue of how the mind works, this is the one that gave me the clearest new insight into how we might think about, well, thinking. Dennett is a fine thinker and an excellent communicator but he tends to lose nuance when he goes combative. This is one of his gentler books, and all the better for it.
Can there be freedom and free will in a deterministic world? Renowned philosopher Daniel Dennett emphatically answers "yes!" Using an array of provocative formulations, Dennett sets out to show how we alone among the animals have evolved minds that give us free will and morality. Weaving a richly detailed narrative, Dennett explains in a series of strikingly original arguments-drawing upon evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, economics, and philosophy-that far from being an enemy of traditional explorations of freedom, morality, and meaning, the evolutionary perspective can be an indispensable ally. In Freedom Evolves, Dennett seeks to place ethics on the foundation it…
I loved every gripping minute of this action-filled female-focused science fiction fantasy story. I was blown away by the unique worldbuilding of the militaristic knights versus dark magic tale.
The story focuses on Larissa’s training to become a knight and her battle not to be drawn in and corrupted by the very magic she must fight. I loved the juxtaposition of destiny versus desire.
This story kept me thinking long after I finished reading. Is destiny a choice or a drive? Do our choices create our destiny or does destiny drive our choices… is it really a choice we are making of our own free will, or are we making it because destiny is forcing us in that direction? Ooooo delicious.
There are so many betrayals and monster battles in this tale. It’s everything I enjoy, and I couldn’t put the book down. It’s an epic story that is very…
Larissa's inability to kill is a disgrace to her absent mother, Sword Matriarch of the Fair Lady's order, a sisterhood whose purpose is to hunt down sorcerers corrupted by the Evercry and slay them. But Larissa hides an even more sinful secret: she is drawn toward magic, and it grows stronger in her every day.
Larissa keeps a stranglehold on her gift until the day of her graduation test, when her misuse of magic leads her to failure. Prepared to be cast out of the sisterhood, she is instead brought into the…
I am an academic at the University of Queensland whose research areas include horror films, screen trauma theory, the cinematic representation of urban spaces, and the collision of romanticism and postmodernism in fantasy literature. My first book, POV Horror: The Trauma Aesthetic of the Found Footage Subgenre, was adapted from my PhD thesis. I am an avid member of the A Song of Ice and Fire fandom, and my second book represents over a decade of talking and writing about George R. R. Martin’s epic fantasy series, having grown out of conversations in forums, podcasts, symposiums, and fan conventions, as well as my own background in literary analysis and research.
The first installment in Erikson’s magnum opus introduces readers to the voracious Malazan Empire and focuses on a military, political, and supernatural battle for the free city of Darujhistan.
It boasts a vast, strange cast of characters and an even vaster, stranger world. However, Erikson demonstrates how every element, from the lowest trader to the mightiest god, can shape the outcomes of events. The free will of each character is shown to be in constant tension with the free wills of others, as well as the wrenching currents of history.
The antagonist of Erikson’s story is not a dark lord, but nihilism—the prospect that there is no moral order or higher meaning to existence—and every one of his characters must face this threat and figure out how to survive it.
When the last of the free cities of the Malazan Empire is targeted by the forces of the Empress Laseen, Bridgeburner squad leader Sergeant Whiskeyjack and the mage Tattersall confront dark gods to protect the citadel of Darujhistan.
I read quite a few non-fiction books in any
given year, and this book had me totally gripped (this is SS O’Connor’s fourth and final book in his Secrets of Life series).
Referencing back to the arching themes of the first
three books: the gene’s challenges with the second law of thermodynamics, Game
Theory, and many other theories of how we got to where we are all the way from
the Big Bang, the author highlights how human behavior and the concepts of
free will, trust, and cooperation are natural processes in the future evolution
of humankind… and how things mightn’t
be as black as they’re painted.
Yes, there is
some pretty heady stuff in here. Still, the writing never gets stodgy, and O’Connor’s use of humor and well-placed anecdotes always makes for an
entertaining and definitely interesting read.
I thoroughly
enjoyed the collection and look forward to…
Why are humans neither 'good' nor 'bad'? How can so much chaos and confusion in the world actually lead to order? Why are we so often wrong when we're asked if the world's getting better?
In this, the last book in The Secrets of Life quartet, SS O'Connor pulls together the threads of genetic and cultural evolution, and then adds to these the conclusions of evolutionary game theory. As he does this, he ends with an intertwined narrative that explains why so many of the phenomena of our existence may not be the mysteries we think they are, but could…
I'm a philosopher and psychotherapist, with a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Princeton. From the beginning of my work in philosophy, I have been interested in the nature of agency: what is it to be an agent, and how is agency even possible in the first place? These questions naturally drew me to the metaphysics of free will, as well as related topics in the logic and semantics of agentive modality (that is, the kind of possibility and necessity that is characteristic of agents). Much of my recent work has been on more clinical issues, especially on understanding addiction. I continue to be fascinated by fundamental topics in metaphysics, and especially the question of free will.
Ismael is one of our leading philosophers of physics, and of fundamental questions more generally.
This book is a comprehensive exploration of the intersection of physics and free will, with the surprising moral signaled by her title. Properly understood, contemporary physics, even if it is deterministic, does not threaten free will. On the contrary, it helps to explain how free beings like us are possible in the first place.
In 1687 Isaac Newton ushered in a new scientific era in which laws of nature could be used to predict the movements of matter with almost perfect precision. Newton's physics also posed a profound challenge to our self-understanding, however, for the very same laws that keep airplanes in the air and rivers flowing downhill tell us that it is in principle possible to predict what each of us will do every second of our entire lives, given the early conditions of the universe.
Can it really be that even while you toss and turn late at night in the throes…
I was born on Halloween, so I’m officially a card-carrying member of all things creepy, right? However, I’m definitely drawn to books with mood and atmosphere over outright horror and gore. I find the subtle aspects of fear so much more interesting—how is it that one person’s reality can be so different than another’s? I write domestic suspense because I think the people we are closest to and the places we think are safest are often the ones that can hurt us the most. Where a story takes place is so very important. I need to know the geography, the feel, the history of a place—then I can put people in it and make bad things happen.
Before it was a Netflix movie (psst! The book is way better), this slim little book creeped me the hell out. It’s a simple premise: A woman is driving with her boyfriend to meet his parents for the first time, only she’s not really sure the relationship is going to work out. However, this psychological thriller will have you on the edge of your seat from the very beginning—only you won’t know why until the very end. I’m shivering just thinking about it.
NOW A NETFLIX ORIGINAL FILM DIRECTED BY CHARLIE KAUFMAN AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2016
“I’m Thinking of Ending Things is one of the best debut novels I’ve ever read. Iain Reid has crafted a tight, ferocious little book, with a persistent tenor of suspense that tightens and mounts toward its visionary, harrowing final pages” (Scott Heim, award-winning author of Mysterious Skin and We Disappear).
I’m thinking of ending things. Once this thought arrives, it stays. It sticks. It lingers. It’s always there. Always.
Jake once said, “Sometimes a thought is closer to truth, to reality, than an…
Tina Proffitt is a former educator in love with writing romance novels, who believes there’s nothing more romantic than reincarnating with those she loves. After her first one-on-one past life reading with Dr. Doris E. Cohen, she was hooked and has never looked back. (Pun intended) She wants to share her passion for living a life free from fear and full of love. She writes reincarnation romance novels in the genres of mystery, science fiction, contemporary, and YA.
Finally, Repetition: Past Lives, Life, and Rebirth written by clinical psychologist and psychotherapist, Doris Eliana Cohen, Ph.D. is a book focused on healing. Whether the reader is interested in learning how to heal from past-life traumas that are hindering their growth or move on from dysfunctional relationships, this book offers professional help and support. It also illuminates the nuts and bolts of different ways a soul can reincarnate. Most surprising of all may be how much free will is involved in the process, not at all the never-ending cycle of death and rebirth or the mislabeled karma of punishment for previous wrong-doings. This book offers the hope of taking responsibility for one’s life and the possibility of healing many past lives in one’s own current lifetime.
This fascinating book by Doris Eliana Cohen was written to help us create a shift in our own consciousness as well as that of humanity. In order to heal from traumas, we unknowingly repeat the stories of our lives again and again, reliving them in different scenarios in this life as well as in other lifetimes. This repetition of our behaviour patterns is neither neurotic nor pathological. It is absolutely necessary, because painful though it may be, repetition offers us multiple opportunities for facing our issues, making new choices, and healing ourselves at last. All of us have a God-given…
