Obligatory Promotional Bit #1 - Merryshire Detective Club is crowdfunding on backerkit today, and you can sign up to the launch here. I’m gratified to hear all the reports from play testing of people playing this with family and friends who aren’t regular gamers - apparently, the Venn diagram intersection of “murderous halflings” and “grandmothers who’ve never gamed before” is far from non-zero. I still need to do some polishing and tweaking to the core rules, and finish my bits for The Dreadful Hare, but my main job now is waving my virtual arms and going “hey, wanna murder some halflings?”

Wanna murder some halflings? Click here!

https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/pelgrane-press/merryshire-detective-club/launch_party?ref=GRHNEWS

Merryshire, as the tale goes, began in Simon Rogers’ kitchen. Pelgrane’s far-flung staff gather for Dragonmeet, and we try to play a game on the Friday before the con. Simon cooks dinner followed by sticky toffee pudding. It irritated me that we had to pause the game each year, putting aside Cthuluhoid horrors or intrigue or whatever so we could all eat dessert.

When it was my turn to run the game, I thought “what if there was a game in which eating sticky toffee pudding was an action undertaken wholly in character?” Of such bolts of inspiration are games made. And I had all these halfling jokes I couldn’t use in a proper One Ring context, and GUMSHOE makes murder mysteries sing, so it all came together very nicely.

Obligatory Promotional Bit #2 - The Dungeon Book is out on August 11th. There’ll be a special edition from the Broken Binding, signed copies from Goldsboro Books, and… another one. Or two. I’ve seen one, and it’s… well, it’s the nicest novel I’ve ever had my name on.

If you’ve preordered it, then tag me over on bluesky or instagram - Edel make some nice cards with the internal art on them, and I’ll send a set or two out to those who’ve preordered.

I’ll also be sending out a physical copy of the book to some lucky subscriber to this very newsletter. If you are reading this, YOU HAVE ALREADY ENTERED.
(Or you’re reading this on the web archive, in which case, wipe your nose print off the window, my child, and enter through the door of subscription instead.)

Promo 2a: And on August 11th I’ll be in London, at Forbidden Planet with Thomas Lee, and if you’re in London you should get tickets and come along.

Promo 2b: The following day, August 12, I’m in Waterstones Liverpool, where we’ll be joined by Sarah Rees Brennan.

Promo 2c: And on August 14th, I’m doing an AMA over on reddit’s /r/fantasy.

Promo 2d: And there’ll be a thing in Cork at some point.

Promo 2e: Oh, and I’m doing a Panel on the difference between magic and superpowers at TBR Con. Actually, this should technically be item 1, as it’s the soonest. July 28th, 8pm GMT, coming to a YouTube near you.

TBRCon2026 | FanFiAddict

TBRCon returns with TBRCon2026, an all-virtual sci-fi/fantasy/horror convention, streaming LIVE from July 26th-August 1st, 2026. Join us as we wel ...

The writing deathmarch continues despite the heat. I’ve just finished a full draft of the current fantasy novel, which was pitched as ‘Breaking Bad meets Earthsea’, and has ended up as something vaguely like that. You’ve got an island with a wizard’s school that’s cut off from the mainland for most of the year, and trespassing’s forbidden - but our protagonist - a humble scribe of spell books - spots a young man drowning just off shore. She rescues him, and… well, then things get messy.

I’m delivering it slightly late, because I wrote the openings of four other novels before going back to this one. And I’m not going to charge straight into another novel when this one’s done, as I need to step back and have a think about what I want out of fiction. Since selling Gutter Prayer, I’ve written a novel a year, more or less, which isn’t a huge number, but they’ve been pretty chunky, complex books and it’s been on top of all the rpg writing. I’ve been hewing my way through a tangled forest without looking at the map.

(Of course, it’s entirely possible I’ll look at the map, and go “right, back into the tangled forest with me.”)

Work update:

BREAKING GED: About to start polishing.

MERRYSHIRE DETECTIVE CLUB: Still tapping away on the last bits of Dreadful Hare and tweaking the core book.

DIE: METADUNGEON: A somewhat more detailed outline let to a wonderfully pointless meeting, where Chant & Kieron and I went “right, we’ve got an hour budgeted to kick this outline around… any obvious gaps? Any problems? Any brilliant insights…? Nope. All good, let’s finish 50 minutes early.”

TERRAFORMING MARS: Waiting on feedback.

TUNNELS & TROLLS: Next up after…

FISH STEW: I’ve been racing to get this into shape, and it’s nearly there, at least in first draft.

Wait what’s this oh my god it’s Francesco and he’s running in with a steel chair marked ‘the Gondor/Rohan book that Gar wrote last year’ and HE’S UNOFFICIALLY ANNOUNCING IT OFF THE TOP ROPE!!!

Non-obligatory Promo Bit: The kickstarter for Seven Part Pact just launched. That and Hollows are two of the games I most want to run next year. They share with Merryshire and Terraforming Mars the idea of having a semi-abstract central focus on the table, which I really like. Plus, obviously, Earthsea and Wizard’s Schools are always fun. I never did get to run that Glantri-based campaign, lo these many years ago.

eta: Wait, I just reread the pdf of His Majesty the Worm, so that’s on the pile too.

At the end of the writing deathmarch is a lot more gaming. And also wonderfully dull stuff like house painting.

And… https://garhanrahan.com/2026/07/20/demon-of-knives/

Recent reading: I finished Pagans, which I very much enjoyed. I pushed through Lud Heat, which is one of those books that I’ve seen referenced so many times it could never live up to what it was in my head - although having it finished it, I now want to go back and reread it. Zoomed through Hookland Fragments vol 1 and M. John Harrison’s The End of Everything. Currently reading The Inklings Detective Agency.

Recent watching: Star City, the Soviet parallel show to For All Mankind. Obviously, paranoia and surveillance coupled with space shenanigans are great fun; in this case, I think the space shenanigans went a bit over the top. The joy of the first two seasons of For All Mankind is now they made questions of logistics compelling and interesting; there’s a lot of handwaving in parts of Star City.

Off to see The Odyssey with the kids now.

Edited to add: Enjoyed Odyssey, was not blown away. I think it would have been a stronger movie if you removed a lot of, er, the odyssey part. Concentrate on Troy and Ithaca, cut the monster islands down to very brief flashbacks. I really enjoyed the Cyclops and Circe (less so the other islands), but I can imagine a much shorter, tighter movie that’s more about the homecoming than the journey.

We got solar panels for the house a few weeks ago, just in time for the sky to go on fire. Little shards of the future, embedded in the troubles of the present.

Gar