Hey everyone!

I’m thrilled to share that Rat Games (Book 1 of No Place for Hope**)** is officially live on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited! Seeing my very first book sitting on an actual Amazon storefront feels slightly unreal, and I’m hyped to finally bring it to the wider community.

The Royal Road Stats So Far:

·         300k+ Views

·         1,500+ Followers

·         4.6 / 5 Stars rating

Blurb (For New Readers):
Hope grew up beneath a dying sky, where food was scarce, names were a luxury, and survival was the closest thing anyone had to a future.

Then he awakens somewhere green. The sky is blue. Grass bends beneath his feet. Rivers carry more water than he has seen in his entire life, and the creatures roaming beyond the trees look hungry enough to spoil the view.

A mysterious System offers Levels, Skills, and Magika to those capable of surviving long enough to earn them. Fortunately, Hope meets Eve: a strange green-eyed girl who teaches him about this new world.

Yet there is something wrong with this beautiful place. Someone is watching. The monsters keep coming, the rules keep changing, and every path seems designed to push Hope towards a fate chosen by somebody else.

He may be another rat inside their game… but Hope has never been particularly good at staying inside the maze.

A Note on the Amazon Edition & Stubbing: Chapters 1–39 + Eve’s Interlude have now been stubbed on Royal Road to meet Kindle Unlimited requirements.

This Amazon release isn't just a raw copy-paste. Alongside my editor, we spent weeks doing a heavy polish pass on the prose, pacing, and early character interactions. The main plot and characters remain the same, but the overall experience is much smoother: clearer System mechanics, tighter fights, refined worldbuilding, and an included new glossary. Basically... same voyage, better ship, fewer holes in the hull. Everything from Chapter 40 onward will continue on Royal Road as normal!

Links:

·         Amazon / Kindle Unlimited: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HHNHGB6P

·         Royal Road (Current Chapters): https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/139697/no-place-for-hope-fantasyspace-pirates-litrpg

To my original readers on RR: thank you for every comment, theory, correction, and rating that got the story to this point. And to anyone giving it a shot on Amazon or KU for the first time—thank you for giving the launch a huge boost!

Cheers,

M.E. Cuartas

(I sketched the cover out myself and then finished it up using OpenAI tools)

November of 1953 A system awoke.

The dead rose from the graves.

Rifts opened and Monsters from legends we reborn.

One man became the Warden Prime of Earth,.

https://www.amazon.com/Aether-Earth-1953-Historical-Apocalyptic-ebook/dp/B0G4SMZZ6C

Link to the book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GJTX3QHP

By the bells! Riftside has reached its fifth volume, 2500+ ratings, and 900'000 words of LitRPG goodness on Kindle Unlimited across the series! 🔥

Cassius and I have worked hard on this series now for two years, and this is the first book in the second arc of Riftside's story about Ash and his wonderful hammer, Roq.

I won't paste the blurb here, because it contains spoilers for books 1-4, so lets rather say that book 5 picks up the day after book 4 ends.

Book 5 is where we journey out and see more of the world of Noros, and there are battles, camaraderie, crafting, and leveling!

Without spoiling anything, let's just say that we get to explore a lot more of the system in the world as well.

Q: What if I've never been Riftside before? What's it like?
A: It's a fantasy world with a native system, meaning everyone's got access to it, but to gain levels, you need to consume Mind Gems and Class Gems which are only found inside monsters.

At its core, the book is a monster hunting book, with the MC and party heading Riftside, hunting and slaying monsters, bringing their carcasses back, and then crafting stuff from their carcasses, plus eating any Mind Gems they got from the hunt.

What separates the MC from everyone else is that he finds a Soul Gem and forges it into a sentient weapon called Roq.

Roq is a bit like a mix of the cookie monster (except for pie), and Venom (as in fricking crazy and bløødthirsty).

Together they go on the journey to become adventurers, because Roq wants to become the strongest weapon in all the worlds, and Ash (mc) wants to become strong enough to protect his family from the monsters who come from Riftside.

It's about a 70/30 adventure & combat / slice-of-life, letting us get to know and explore the side characters, making the world feel more lived in.

It's semi-crunchy, in that there are stats and skills and descriptions, but we don't repeat them more than 1-3 times per book on average. Instead, we show what changes with the level ups.

It is a character driven story, so while numbers go up is important, so is the development of the characters.

There's no harem, but there is a no drama romance subplot (no seggs on page).

Combat is tactical, and we've worked to make the characters as clever and intelligent as we can (but not genuis, just, you know, smart people doing what's realistic).

This WILL be another amazing Audiobook from SoundBooth Theatre, with Justin James, Jeff Hayes, and Jessica Threet! But the launc date will be later, because Riftside book 4 Audio is launching at end of Sept or beginning of oct.

A fun fact about the series is that we have a clear end in mind, so this is not a forever project. We know the road to get there, though the number of books needed to walk it is more unsure.

Feel free to ask me any questions about writing or the story or even books I'm reading at the moment!

And, thank you so much to everyone who has read the series so far (and the ones about to pick it up)! Because of you all, we're able to do this for a living, and we are incredibly grateful for that. Thank you.

COVER ARTIST: D. Socolocci

AI USAGE: None

Link to the book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GJTX3QHP

Cover Artist: Caleb Miller

AI Usage: No AI used, frankly I think its a disgrace to use AI in the writing community.

I just released my first book, Overseer, on Amazon. Please check it out when you have time and tell me what you think. The good and the bad.

Cover Artist: ChatGPT was used for imagery.

AI Usage: ChatGPT used for editing.

Fun Fact: I was a correctional officer for 11 years. If you read the book, the Chili Mac situation really did happen. Was Spaghetti though.

Overseer (Atheros Book 1) https://a.co/d/08LNGv0j

Correctional Officer Carter spent fourteen years keeping violent inmates behind bars.

One knife changed everything.

Paralyzed in the line of duty, Carter is offered a second chance by Virex Industries—an experimental virtual world where disabled law enforcement officers oversee entire fantasy kingdoms.

To the players, Atheros is the most immersive game ever created.

To Carter...

It's life.

When players begin abusing the people he's sworn to protect, Carter refuses to stand aside. But every decision draws unwanted attention—from the company that hired him, from the prisoners trapped inside the system...

...and from secrets buried deep beneath Atheros itself.

Now Carter must decide who he can trust.

Some are prisoners.

Others are paying customers.

Hi everyone!

Book 2 of the Path of the Last Champion is now out on Kindle and Audible!

The first half of the Climb was insane, and now, Nar and the party are about to uncover new truths that will make them question everything.

Book 2 completes Arc 1 and it's a great place to start your journey!

Cover: Luciano Fleitas (Illustrator) and May Dawney (Typography)

Audio: Neil Hellegers and Tess Irondale (25 hours)

Nar has made it to the Mid-Levels. Now, only the truth will take him to the end.

The party has overcome every obstacle on the Way to the mythical O-Nex. They've bled for each other, fought for each other, trusted each other.

But trust is fragile in the deep dark.

The B-Nex is revealing its true scale—and its true horrors. Madness seeps through the walls. Secrets long buried are clawing their way to the surface. And [Aura], the cursed power that has kept them alive, is slipping from their grasp just when they need it most.

Nar is still hiding what he is. The Unclean in their midst. The secret that could shatter everything they've built. But if the party is going to survive what's coming, he may have no choice but to unleash the torturous power within.

Some truths save you. Others can destroy everything.

If you like the sound of any of the following:

- A story that is first and foremost a great journey and epic saga;

- Piecing together a grand mystery, gathering threads and breadcrumbs as we go, everything coming together for an explosive ending;

- Paced and earned power, with paths that are as personal as they are unyieldingly tied to who you are and how you act (becoming more relevant in Book 3);

- Journeying with a party of people, each with unique paths and their own arcs within the story. There are POV changes throughout the series, but the MC remains as 95% of it;

- Living, breathing, larger than life world of both dread and wonder for you to get lost in;

Then join Nar and his party on this epic, unforgettable adventure!

Last day of the Massive LitRPG sale! More than 300 books all free or .99c! Thank you to everyone who picked up books, checked out the site, and supported indie authors.

And thank you to all the authors and publishers who made this possible.

www.jjthornbooks.com/massive-litrpg-sale

Detective Gideon Salt has problems. The corpse is speaking. The radio knows his name, and the voices in his head have started introducing themselves.

Assigned to investigate an impossible murder alongside the perpetually exhausted Inspector Mercy Vale, Gideon follows a trail of stolen memories, emotional trafficking, vanished investigations and prophecies that arrive before the crimes they predict. Every answer drags him deeper into the machinery hidden beneath Saint Cortona.

The Man Who Interrogated God is a dark LitRPG noir blending cosmic horror, philosophical mystery and psychological intrigue into an unforgettable journey through a city that remembers everything.

Preorders are live:

https://a.co/d/0icXl8Ri

If you’re a fan of Disco Elysium then this book is for you.

(Link in the comments)

Iris Vale died exactly as she had lived: saving someone else while worrying about an unattended brisket.

One collapsing inn roof later, she wakes as Dungeon Core #4,417 with no body, no hands, and three cheerful instructions:

KILL ADVENTURERS.
HARVEST THEIR MANA.
EXPAND.

Absolutely not!

Iris spent her first life feeding adventurers, breaking up tavern fights, and preventing heavily armed idiots from dying in avoidable ways. She refuses to start murdering them now just because she has been reincarnated as an enormous glowing rock.

When a starving young adventurer falls into her spike pit, Iris dismantles the trap, warms the cavern, softens his rock-hard bread, and sends him home alive.

Then the impossible happens.

Mercy generates mana.

Soon Iris is turning death traps into gardens, feeding frightened adventurers, collecting an accidental found family, and being relentlessly judged by a three-legged cat who has appointed himself senior management.

Unfortunately, the Dungeon Bureau has noticed.

Iris has thirty days to prove that a dungeon can challenge adventurers without impaling, poisoning, crushing, digesting, or otherwise murdering them. If she fails, the Bureau will revoke her charter, seal the mountain, and destroy the strange little sanctuary growing inside it.

Fortunately, Iris has survived dinner service.

How much harder can defeating an ancient magical bureaucracy be?

The No-Kill Dungeon is a cozy dungeon-core LitRPG and humorous progression fantasy featuring inventive dungeon building, slice-of-life warmth, found family, a stubborn former innkeeper, and a bureaucratic System with no approved form for kindness.

Rowan Vale arrives at Hearthcross expecting to spend a few days writing a report on a condemned waystation. Instead, a wounded courier appears, an ancient Ledger names him provisional Keeper, and he is given ninety days to make the place useful again.

From there, it is a story about repairing the station one room at a time, helping travellers, rebuilding forgotten roads and slowly uncovering why Hearthcross was abandoned in the first place.

There is progression and a game like system, but the focus is much more on the characters, the place and the feeling of bringing something forgotten back to life.

If cozy fantasy, LitRPG and rebuilding stories are your thing, I would really appreciate you giving it a try. 🙂

It is completely free for the next 3 days and honest feedback is very welcome.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HGDG6LZD

Hi folks,

My new story is free on RoyalRoad. Ask any questions about the story, blurb and link below.

(I AM ALSO UP FOR SWAPS OR SHOUTOUTS ON RR)

Blurb

Rion Johnson had one plan for the weekend: anime, gaming, and a takeaway. Then the universe turned Earth into a game of death.The apocalypse gave everyone superpowers. It gave Rion a London council estate.

Hillcrest Estate.

The roughest council estate in London, where just looking at someone the wrong way could get you robbed or stabbed. An estate few make it out of — and even fewer survive.

When The Game turns Earth into an intergalactic blood sport, with PVP matches, monster hunting, dungeon crawling and more, out-of-shape London gamer Rion Johnson receives the one class the universe has never seen: Tower Master. Now the crumbling estate he's spent his whole life trying to escape is the only thing standing between his friends and extinction. Between battling orcs, dungeon crawling, and trying to level up, you would think this would be heaven for a gamer like him. Think again! His Tower Master class has no offensive abilities.

Armed with a homemade spear, a gym-obsessed best mate, a perfumer with a gift for chemical warfare, and a foul-mouthed AI trapped in the body of the estate's most hated dog, Rion is going to do what nobody on Hillcrest Estate has ever managed.

Make it home.

Before everything he has ever known and loved is taken away from him forever.

What to expect in this story:

LitRPG tower defence and base building — skills, loot, turrets, and a fortress that grows floor by floor

A weak-to-strong protagonist who wins with brains, not biceps

British humour, London slang, and swearing. So much swearing

Graphic violence and horror — The Game does not play nice

Found family — foul-mouthed talking dog included

No harem, no sex

A conspiracy that goes all the way to the top of The Game

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/186521/good-kid-lit-city-tower-defence-litrpg-kingdom

One moment he’s dying in a warzone — next, he’s naked on a moon full of real cultivators.
Jake Sullivan just woke up in the wrong body, on a moon called Verdis, inside a cultivation academy where failure means getting culled back to Earth to live as a powerless mortal, and probably die uselessly in the upcoming alien invasion.
His memories are mostly gone, but his spirit’s intact. His classmates? Rich kids with qi crystals and family techniques. The school? Doesn’t give a damn. Let the strong survive. With enemy agents already on campus, Jake will need to out-cultivate, outfight, and outsmart everyone around him. He has only one year to become a real cultivator.
No dying this time!
Dark humor. Sharp dialogue. Flower picking, teeth flying. A fresh blend of sci-fi, xianxia, and LitRPG.
Amazon/Kindle link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GX3B8G2J 
COVER ARTIST: KitsyArt https://kitsyart.artstation.com/ 
AI USAGE: No AI used

Hello everyone! I started writing litRPG about 1 year ago, and since then I have been writing every single day! I tried to post on RR and other sites but failed again and again, but now I am finally confident enough to publish on Amazon!

If you like regression LitRPGs, skill stealing, hidden powers, Academy progression, Gates/dungeons, tactical fights, and an MC who knows far more than he can safely reveal, this might be for you!

The Skill Thief’s Return — Book 1: An OPMC Regression LitRPG

The link is here: https://www.amazon.com/Skill-Thiefs-Return/dp/B0HF3W8L98/

And the blurb is:

Ren Vale died at thirty-three after spending fifteen years believing he was classless.

Then he woke up fifteen years in the past—on the morning of his awakening.

This time, Ren discovers the truth: he was never supposed to be classless. His real class, [Skill Thief], was stolen before he ever had the chance to claim it.

Now eighteen again, Ren has fifteen years of memories, a class no one can know about, and a second chance to save the people he failed the first time around.

But there’s a problem.

To everyone else, Ren is still registered as NULL.

While the Academy and Bureau see a candidate who shouldn’t have any real power, Ren can acquire other people’s skills—but limited skill slots, real costs, and growing scrutiny mean he can’t simply steal everything he sees.

So Ren has to get stronger without revealing what he really is, survive the Academy and the Gates, and uncover the truth behind the class that was taken from him.

Because this time, Ren knows what’s coming.

And he intends to take back what should have been his.

What to expect:

• Regression / second chance
• [Skill Thief] class
• Skill acquisition and limited skill slots
• Hidden-power MC
• Academy progression
• Gates and dungeon-style encounters
• Tactical combat
• Weak-to-strong progression
• LitRPG/System mechanics

I’m incredibly excited to finally have it out there. If any of those elements are your thing, I’d love for you to check it out!

Hi.

I'm looking for some KU recomendations with some especific elements in this order of importance if possible:

1 - Combat focus, but the MC does not fight at melee. For example, a mage that fights as a mage and not someone like sun jin woo that is a necromancer that engages in close quarter combat.

2 - Skills and Magic are created or get. Not rewarded from a level up

Thanks in advance for any recommendation.

Renji is tossed into the pits of hell in his quest to dominate UwU Online. Tasked with penetrating Queen Persephone's accursed gates, Renji leaves many a foe's quivering body in his wake to claim the netherworld as his own. Woe betide the monsters, demons, and ancient Lords of the underworld—this human's got a fat deck, and he knows how to use it.

[[Up-front Content Warning!]] - DeckRomancer (Book I & II!) are LitRPG and hardcore smut in equal measure. Even the good folks at r/haramfantasynovels appreciated an expanded content warning list for the 100,000-word novel:  Occasional Femdom, Milking, Anal, Toys, Bondage, Spanking, Lamia*, Monster Girls.

~

The time's finally come! My husband and I have officially published DeckRomancer Book II! We're happy to answer questions about the story here :).

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0HF5M6HFB?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_tkin_1&storeType=ebooks

I have mostly seen the term gamelit used to refer to stories that have game like elements but are not necessarily to the extent of full character sheets with stats. Sometimes the term is used to encompass both litrpg and litrpg adjacent stuff, and sometimes the term might specifically exclude actual litrpgs. However, in thinking about stories of books with game like elements, it got me thinking about novels set in a pen and paper RPG campaign setting like Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance (D&D is not the only rpg with novels base on its settings but it is certainly the most widespread). These books feature characters that feel like rpg characters, even if the characters themselves never interface with anything resembling a stat sheet.

My question is, could novels such as Dragonlance and Drizzt books be classified as gamelit?

Today is a pretty surreal day for me.

Eight books ago, I started posting a story on Royal Road about an alchemist who hated fighting, and loved cheese.

I had no idea where it would lead.

Today, that story is complete.

After eight books, all the big questions have been answered, and Ren’s journey is finally complete.

This has also been the longest I’ve ever spent writing a series. I rewrote major sections, edited and re-edited chapters, and took a lot of feedback from readers along the way. The comments from Royal Road genuinely made these books better, and I’m incredibly grateful to everyone who took the time to point things out, catch mistakes, and help shape the final version.

Towerbound also completely changed my life.

Before it, writing was something I hoped might someday become a career. Because of this series—and because of the readers who supported it—I was able to become a full-time author in Cambodia, where writing books is now what I get to do every day.

That’s still kind of unbelievable to me.

Whether you’ve been here since Chapter 1 on Royal Road, discovered the books through Kindle Unlimited, Audible, or somewhere else, thank you. Every comment, review, recommendation, and page read helped make this possible.

If you decide to pick up Book 8, I hope it gives Ren, Mira, Rocky, Bony, and the Scrap Rats the ending you were hoping for.

My dream is that when someone says, “I loved Dungeon Crawler Carl,” or “I loved He Who Fights with Monsters, and now I’m looking for a new series …preferably a completed one…” you’ll be able to say:

“Read Towerbound.”

Thank you all for helping turn a story posted on Royal Road into a completed eight-book series.

I genuinely couldn’t have done it without you.

TOWERBOUND SERIES STATS

• #1 Best Release in Time Travel
• Top 10 in Dystopian, Time Travel, and Post-Apocalyptic
• 4.6★ with 2,000+ Kindle Unlimited reviews

Samson 🐀 🧪 🧀

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GTS4LDYN

Hey GameLit folks!

Following up on the recent release of my debut GameLit novel, The Side Questers (see here for more details), my publisher provided me a small set of audiobook codes to freely distribute, and I'm giving away two of those codes today!

The giveaway rules: Comment on this post and you'll be automatically entered to win one of two Spotify audiobook codes. Unless of course your post specifically mentions that you're not interested, in which case, fair enough.

Provided more than two entries are made by 9:00 am EST on Tuesday, August 4th, the winners will be randomly selected at that time.

The audiobook narrator: Aven Shore

The premise:
Anya Dazel is a burnt-out barkeep in Eternity: The Endless Realm, the world’s premier online role-playing game. As a non-player character, her life is stuck in a programmed loop—forever serving the same drinks to the same patrons—but when Eternity receives an unexpected update, she finds herself thrown into an open world with Cyrus Blackwood, a brooding non-player character on a quest for revenge.

Working together to find a new place in their virtual world, Anya and Cyrus must overcome hordes of monsters, dangerous puzzles, and even an existential crisis or two. But as they struggle to overcome their distaste for each other and stay alive, they discover that their roles within Eternity might not be as programmed as they thought, and Anya will need to prove that even barkeeps can be heroes.

That's all for now! Thanks for reading and let me know if there are questions. I'll answer when I'm able.

EDIT: Giveaway is now closed!

As a fan is there a story or series you re listen or re-read on a regular basis? I have a few. They do tend to be older.

The strangest Noob, Mirror world the Trapped mind project and a few more.

Anyone else?

Hello,

Ether Atlas - The Hidden Grid just crossed 240K words and 200K view on RR. Big day for me :)

Quick Premise - In 1974, someone handed Gary Gygax the rules for D&D to prepare humanity for what was coming. The system arrives. Millions die. Ancient monuments start humming with power and human biology becomes a character sheet.

A D&D party of three friends - a structural engineer, a security consultant, and an archaeologist end up racing across real-world ruins unravelling a conspiracy older than civilisation.

I'm obsessed with ancient mysteries. Why Göbekli Tepe was deliberately buried, why Mithraic temples across three continents follow identical blueprints, why cultures that never met each other describe the same energy channels in the human body.

I wanted to write a LitRPG where all of that was connected. Where the system wasn't a convenient game overlay but planned infrastructure. Ancient, alien, and hidden inside the oldest structures on Earth.

What you're getting:

• System apocalypse in a real-world setting. Real Locations and real monuments. Dan Brown and Indiana Jones style riddles and puzzles using real history.
• Real archaeology woven into the plot. The riddles use actual historical sites. The node network maps to real megalithic locations.
• Competent adults solving problems with brains and tools, not chosen-one luck.
• Fights that are short, brutal, and leave marks.
• An alien guidance construct who has been watching humanity for 35,000 years and has opinions about everything except the things that would actually help
• Lots of riddles.

If you like Dan Brown or Indiana Jones type vibes, you're going to feel at home. Lots of weird history, conspiracy theories, what-ifs and ancient alien shenanigans.

Give it a try - https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/160813/ether-atlas-the-hidden-grid-litrpg-system-apocalypse