"The fine art of not getting killed while making impossible things look easy"
When a bard-turned-spy meets a thief from another world, their heist becomes more than either expected!
Fantasy adventure for readers who love clever characters.
Every page filled with clever banter and laugh-out-loud moments. This is fantasy that doesn't take itself too seriously—and that's exactly why it works.
Meet Astara and Sheliak—skilled, confident, and genuinely interesting people you'll want to follow on more adventures. No brooding or self-doubt required.
Beta readers report staying up all night and thinking about the story for days after finishing. This is escapist fiction at its finest.
This story features a developing sapphic romance between two characters: one female-presenting, one non-binary. It contains steamy romantic content, fantasy violence, and characters who communicate attraction through competitive flirtation and absurd situations.
"I feel like I have read the biggest and the best 'You won't believe how we met' story of all time."
"I haven't had this much fun reading a manuscript in a long time."
"It's been half a day since I finished it, and I honestly can't think about anything else. Their playful banter is filled with sexual innuendos, their shameless flirting, and most of all, their undeniable sexual chemistry was a joy to read."
Join the readers who can't stop thinking about this story. Get your free copy now.
GET MY FREE BOOKWhen a talented bard on her very first spy mission meets a thief from another world, can she learn to work together through danger and absurd situations and change her life? It's Adventure Fantasy with some romance, and what sets it apart is that our two protagonists are very competent but a little over their heads, and like each other from the get-go. No enemies-to-lovers here—they recognize something in each other that complements. It's also funny—they're both witty and joyfully sarcastic in the best way, as a love language.
It's part of a series! We'll see more of Astara and Sheliak in the future. I have two series in the same world in the works: one with these two (Astara and Sheliak), and another featuring a spell-sword and a warlock (Grelnor and Lyra)—the "Shadow and Song" series, with our warlock Lyra being 'shadow' and our bard Astara being 'song'.
By joining my newsletter! I'm giving it away for free as a gift for signing up. The e-book is a novella—so it's a great deal for joining.
No, I don't think so, but with a caveat. It's steamy—mildly so, say an R-rating (so to speak) at most. It features a couple, one female-presenting and one non-binary that develops into a sapphic relationship. It depends on the maturity of the young adult. It tackles themes of loneliness, imposter syndrome, and some of the steam scenes take place in the midst of absurdity. I wrote it for an adult reader.
Follow me on Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky. I have a newsletter which you can join at my website: jrredstone.com, and a blog you can get to from the website. I'm also on Goodreads.
I'm working on Astara and Sheliak's new book for 2026! Probably by mid-year, date TBD. And the first book for Lyra and Grelnor is in development as well for 2026.
No plans at the moment! But you never know.
J. R. read Moorcock at an impressionable age and never recovered. Leiber and Vance followed, then his father's collection of Ludlum and Trevanian, and somewhere between sword & sorcery and international thrillers, a writer emerged.
He programmed computers when he wasn't composing music. Several albums made a few dollars, which funded more SFF books. Some tracks landed on television. A reasonable success by any measure except his accountant's. Who says Rock & Roll is dead? He does—he was selling downtempo electronica. The computer science and the composition both made it onto the page—better fantasy world-building through engineering, and prose that's deliberately rhythmic.
His early fiction was D&D fanfic, then Conan fanfic, until he encountered the Conan Purist Society, the Pure Conan Purist Society, the Absolutely Pure Conan Lore Gatekeeper Union, the Purist of the Pure Conan Lore Gatekeeper Consortium, The R.E.H. Canon Or You Will Die in a Fire Society, and a drunkenly-written cease-and-desist from a Norwegian lawyer representing an Oslo gaming company. (Almost none of that is true, but it may as well be. He learned the "fan" part of "fanatic" the hard way.) He now writes in his own world, where math is magic and our heroes are delightfully sarcastic (his main character). Or sarcastically delightful (also his main character, honestly).
He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his partner and 519 tomatoes (May through October only. For the tomatoes—not the partner). His work in tech and music once landed him a job with A Huge Rock Star—one of the best gigs of his life. He can't say who, but the man is enormous. Eighteen feet tall, no kidding. Fine, yes kidding, but rhetorically: huge.
He's not worried about AI writing. It's here to stay, but it can't write worth a damn. Pro tip: you can always tell AI-generated prose. Not by the em-dashes. Not by the ellipses. By the fact that it reads like crap. No, really. It's bad.
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