Assaph Mehr 📚⚔️🕵️👻🏺🏛️🤖

History department recruiter: You there! Do you like historical fiction? Period dramas? Historically themed films, tv shows, and video games? Prospective student: Yes! History department recruiter: Would you like not to?

It's funny because it's true 🤣🤣

Aussie TV Crimes (fictional and hilarious) As regular readers know, I try to review the lesser known but awesome Aussie crime dramas on TV. I do this as comparative storytelling and as research into Tassie Outback Noir. Today I present you …

Looking at some hilarious and some dramatic crime shows from around Oz, as fun research for my current WIP 😉👻
egretia.com/2026/02/04/a...

What if I told you that one day Latin would die out and everyone will be speaking a weird mongrel language created by barbarians who live on that island where we built a wall

🤣

Deborah (of Twin Rivers, by Jeremy Bender) Dear readers, tonight with us is the antagonist from a city ruled by the Lord of Mercy, an AI god. She is here to speak about the political and moral schisms arising after the robotic Brothers comp…

For those not in the know, @assaph.bsky.social runs many awesome blogs, including one based on interviews with characters from your novels.

Only fair for Deborah, one of my debut's antagonists, to speak. Come take a peek inside the mind of a Keeper.

#WritingCommunity 🪐📚 💙📚 #AmWriting #WriteSky

Ha! Then you'll definitely enjoy it 😀
It's free on my website: egretia.com/novels

Murder In Absentia, by Assaph Mehr - voted #1 on Goodreads' "Indie Books Worth the Read"

Fun times 😀👻🗡️🏛️

Aquae et Ignis: a story of Togas, Daggers, and Magic. Lunacy and Piracy, Exile and Ghosts. Free on egretia.com

That was a fun story to write - I might have gone a bit wild with pop culture references (if you can call Coleridge pop culture 🤣). Free novella, if you haven't read it.

I've been trying to leave Rome for a few weeks now, but all their roads have this weird design flaw

Still funny 🤣🤣 Also, still buy my books 😉

"I worked on my WIP today." "But you only added one sentence." (Picture of Mr Incredible working at his desk) "Progress is Progress."

Fun fact: when I need to (re)build writing habits (happens far too often as I get distracted 😅) I make myself write one sentence every day. For me, it's the act of doing something daily that opens up the gates to more writing and faster progress.

It may be worth a pack of 10.

One thing to note is the price of bulk buying. Here in Australia, buying a pack of 10 is just twice the cost of buying one by one. They often do that to trip starting authors and have them pay too much. Considering you need different ISBNs for ebook and print edition or that you may have more...

Here's a good article on the topic: www.staceycarroll.org/book-publish...

(You can just search for pros/cons of free ISBNs)

Depends on what you plan to do with the book, how you want to appear, and what's your resources.
If you just want to get a first e-book out and see how it works, free might be OK. If you want to treat it more as a business and create an imprint, you'll need to buy.

Exactly. That's why I leave my books DRM free - I care more about my readers than Amazon

Amazon, DRM, Piracy, and a stress-free new year Amazon just made purchased ebooks downloadable as ebook and PDF, and I’ve been hearing a lot of concerns. Here’s why you shouldn’t worry. The two key concepts you have to understa…

Too much buzz recently on something that's not worth the mental anguish: egretia.com/2026/01/07/a...

mockup image of a boxset of books, the complete 9 book novella series The Nexus Season One: Unseen World by Sara Blake

I haven't been hanging around Bluesky much for a while, and my pinned post was wildly out of date!
The Nexus Season One: Unseen World is COMPLETE now!!
And the full season "binge box" is on preorder now!

storyoriginapp.com/universalboo...

Yes, well, there's more than one way to curse a cheese 😜

TYROMANCY is the practice of predicting the future with cheese (Ripley's Believe it or Not)

I got to write that story! Well, close enough 😉 Our next anthology will feature Felix dealing with cursed cheese... 🧀🤣

2025 in Review As usual, here are my reflections on the year just gone. The short version is that I have made progress in writing (multiple shorts), though everything else… leaves a lot to be desired. Let&#…

Looking back on 2025
egretia.com/2025/12/31/2...

what studying languages is like latin: words like 'yes' and 'no' aren't important. memorize these 3000 different ways to talk about killing people though because you will use them greek: hello naughty students it's participle time egyptian: ancient pictionary french: pronouncing every letter is for chumps german: let's combine every other word together to create the U L T I M A T E F R A N K E N W O R D mandarin: lol whats a verb tense spanish: LOL WHAT ISN'T A VERB TENSE english: welcome to hell

😂

I made my editor agree that 90% of commas are a matter of taste an opinion 🤣

German: we have strict language rules French: we have complex language rules Spanish: we have rules, but they're easy English: wait, you have rules for your language?

Someone made a comment about my previous post on commas, which reminded me of this 🤣

if you see a writer frowning intensely as they work, they are probably: a) having an internal struggle over where commas go b) in the midst of killing off a character c) realising they spent four hours of research to write 1 sentence d) not working, they are on twitter

A, B, and C can happen at the same time 😂

kimoramay-deactivated20170907 I was told recently about a school that was shamed into changing its school motto. The motto was "I hear, I see, I learn." Nothing wrong with that per se. Unfortunately the motto was in Latin, and the Latin for "I hear, I see, I learn" is "audio, video, disco". wonderfulworldofmichaelford What the fuck that's the best school motto ever change it back copperbadge Your yearly reminder that "I learn through suffering" can be translated into Latin as "Disco Inferno."

Laughing way too hard at this 🤣

A picture of the cover of Murder In Absentia by Assaph Mehr, quoting the protagonist Felix saying "Calculating people's horoscopes is tedious, but at least cleaner than haruspicy."

Always true 😜🤣

Book Review: Just One Damned Thing After Another, by Jodi Taylor This came up in the comments following me post on historical fashions, and looked like a fun read at a time I didn’t want anything heavy. What to Expect Expect a crazy roller-coaster of crazy…

Short version: A silly read for when you’re in the mood for a thoughtless romp, entertainment without demands.
egretia.com/2025/12/10/b...

One can only hope :)

sandersstudies Every time an English-speaking fantasy writer wants to throw in an umlaut it's like I gotta stop you right there. JRR Tolkien can do that. You are not JRR Tolkien tho. sandersstudies Tolkien did many things for and to the fantasy genre but unfortunately too many people agave taken on his ideas of culture, lore, and language, but executed extremely lazily (compared to him) what-even-is-thiss I think when you're worldbuilding you need to focus on what you're interested in. Because Tolkien is one of the fathers of modern fantasy, people think they need to focus in on what he was interested in, which was linguistics and long lists of historical events. But if you're not into that, it's gonna show. When I'm worldbuilding I tend to focus on political structure and local mythology because that's something I'm interested in irl. If I tried to come up with a million conlangs like Tolkien did I'd be bored and stressed out of my mind and my writing would be worse. If you're interested in economics, focus in on that. If you're really into historical hairstyles, or sports, or transportation, or lost media, focus in on that. Make that interesting. It'll make your world better than throwing in nonsense words you don't care about. sandersstudies ^^^ exactly. Tolkien was extremely knowledgeable in linguistics, which was why he was able to produce languages that were feasibly real (and even claim that the text itself was a translation, which comes with its own quirks, especially in the appendices). But if you're not extremely knowledgeable about linguistics (or willing to become so very quickly) then any fantasy language you try to build is either going to add nothing to the story or be riddled with improbability.

Which is why my novels go deep on Fish Sauce 🤣

[Five yellow stars at top] Mystery, intrigue, supernatural curses, and inevitable violence. The plot is excellent, and the story arc progresses smoothly from cliff-hangers to dead ends to yet more suspenseful scenes, all nicely paced. I found the escape through the sewers particularly enjoyable (for me, though clearly not for the characters involved!). The narrative involves mystery, intrigue, supernatural curses that actually work, interpersonal relationships, and (since this is modeled after Rome) the inevitable violence. I shall also mention both a compelling court scene and a clear sensitivity to the plight of women in this ancient setting. -- Lenny Cavallaro (Abslom) [Book cover shown on right side:] IN VICTRIX [Award seal: "With introduction by Harry Turtledove, grandmaster of alternate history"] A STORY OF TOGAS, DAGGERS, AND MAGIC By ASSAPH MEHR

A year since release, and I still love it 🥰📚

The book cover sits in the center of the image. The cover shows a man with a long brown beard facing to the left. He is wear a gray robe and hood. Behind him is the outside of a Roman-style temple with rough columns with striations of reddish brown. On the top corner of the temple is a griffin with wings out stretched. The background of the image is a stone texture similar to the temple's columns.

Today @kitvaria.bsky.social reviews @assaph.bsky.social's Murder in Absentia - JI 🐉

"The combination of historical inspiration, original fantasy touches, and a wry but capable protagonist makes this a memorable read."

fantasy-faction.com/2025/murder-...

#booksky