The Phillip Drayer Duncan Newsletter - August 2025

It's hotter than Devil Baby's buttcrack!

Author

Phillip Drayer Duncan
August 1st, 2025

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It's here!

Both The Blade Mage & Of Song and Shadow are officially live on Audible!

Tell your friends! And tell your friends to tell their friends!

I’ve already finished listening to Of Song and Shadow. What a surreal experience, hearing such a badass narrator read my own book to me. Wild.

Or as Real-life Axel put it… “Yay! Now I’m an Audible!”

Of Song and Shadow audiobook is live!

Actually… It just occurred to me as I was typing that I just learned something really neat. This is less of a hint hint and more about sharing something I found pretty useful. But if you want to use it to my advantage, that won't hurt my feelings!

Did you know you can gift books to people on Audible?

Back in the day, you could gift one free book to a new member, but I didn't realize you could straight up buy a book for someone else. Apparently, you can. One of my friends pointed it out when.... It was quite funny, actually. There was an audiobook he really wanted me to listen to, so he bought it for me. Except… The goofball bought the wrong book. So, now I have the first and fourth book in that series.

Anyway, if you go to the book's page and choose "More Options," there is one called "Give as a Gift." It'll have you put in the recipient's email address and stuff, and then you can buy them a copy of a book. I'm pretty excited about this because even though I'm SURE (Insert Sarcasm) all my friends and family raced out to buy my books, I can still gift them some of my favorite titles. This may take over birthday and Christmas shopping. And you know, guilt-tripping them into listening to my books! Mawhahaha!

On a related note, I’d be happy to share a list of my favorite audiobooks, if anyone is interested.

You can also do this with e-books on Amazon. That one, I did know. I've never used it though, so I'm not sure what the process looks like, but I'm sure it's much the same.

What have I been working on?

The Appalachian Argument (Blade Mage Book 7): My drafts are done! It is off with the editor! Whoopeee! I'm very excited for you to get ahold of this one. There're some familiar characters returning and a lot of shenanigans. Very happy with how it turned out. I mean… Unless my editor says it's garbage… But, then, I'll fix it and still be excited, so, yeah! For realz, I think you're going to love this one!

Fun With Friends! (Tentative Title) (Blade Mage Book 8): I'm currently on chapter 25 and about 30,000 words in. You know, believe it or not, I have a plan… No, that's not quite right. I have a…  Let's call it a roadmap. Or… Let's just say that I know where the Blade Mage series is headed. I have a plan for the big stuff. But the journey there… My roadmap is vague, which gives me the creative space I need. All that to say…

Fun With Friends! is not the book I expected to write as number 8. However, the idea popped into my head and I couldn't resist it. And so far… This one is pretty wild! I am in love with it! Really excited to see where it goes. So much so…

All other projects have been put on hold.

Forgotten. Shoved off the table. Dumped on the floor. Kicked into the corner.

They're sitting in the dirt, sobbing. But do we care? No, we don't! We're doing Blade Mage shizz!

Where are we going to be?

WorldCon: Seattle, WA August 13th - 17th

This will be our third World Con, I believe. The first was in Kanas City and the second was in Dublin, Ireland. Pretty excited to get out to Seattle! If you've never been, World Con is short for The World Science Fiction Convention. Despite the name, it draws in a fantasy crowd as well. It is certainly one of the largest reader/author focused conventions for our genre, if not the largest. You should consider going some year! If it's this year, well, lemme know so we can say hello!

What's going on in life?

Comic writer and artist, Teddy Harvia, sent me a numbered copy of his WingNuts comic In Time And Space.

How cool is that? People never send me stuff! So I was pretty stoked!

Chattanooga, Tennessee:

We kicked off July with a trip to Chattanooga to see some friends and have a little writing getaway. It's a beautiful part of the country, much like our own neck of the woods. Love the lakes and hills. And as far as cities go, I rather liked Chattanooga.

We found a cool little coffee shop called, Sleepyhead, which had the best donut I've ever eaten in my entire life.

Yeah, that’s right… I’m a chunky kid at heart and, well, in flesh. Point is…

This donut is worth talking about!

It was a cake donut with a wonderful imitation buttercream frosting and Oreos on top. When you look at the picture, it doesn't seem like anything special, but… Cotdamn! I went back multiple times. Oh, and the craziest part? It turned out to be vegan! If I lived in Chattanooga, I would be the chunkiest herbivore in the world! It’s all I would eat.

Well… Actually, no, that isn’t true. I couldn’t become a herbivore because… The ice cream.

The Big Oatty from Scoop Around Ice Cream Bar

We also went to the Scoop Around Ice Cream Bar, which was just as amazing. The sign on the door read, "Scoop Around and find out!" And so we did. Look at that ridiculous Oatmeal Cream pie-inspired nonsense! J.H. got ice cream nachos, which doesn’t sound as good as it is, but… Cotdamn! Basically you get waffle cone “chips” that you use to dip into your ice cream, which of course is drizzled in all kinds of deliciousness.

We also made a trip through the Tennessee Aquarium. Picture flood incoming. If you go to Chattanooga, you can't skip the aquarium. It was brilliant. Both sides. There's one building focused on ocean fish, and another focused on river fish. Both were amazing. The river fish side was the better of the two, in my humble opinion, but both were worth the effort. I'd certainly like to go through both again.

Ever seen an alligator with its toenails painted?

Holy Teenage Mutant Massive Ninja Turtle Shell!!!

Oh, wait… That wasn’t the aquarium. That’s a fishy I caught at home!

Reader Con in Boston, Massachusetts:

On our way to Boston, good ole DFW changed our a gate a few times. But once we landed on D20, we were confident they’d rolled us a good gate. And we were right… It was a critical success!

We made it Boston for the first time in our lives, and then skipped town immediately, because Reader Con was actually just a hair north in Burlington. It's becoming rarer and rarer for us to go to a convention where we don't know many people. In this case, there were a whole five people we knew there upon arrival. So it was a lot of fun getting to meet new people.

Anniversary:

J.H. Fleming has put up with me for nine years! Can you believe that? Our anniversary actually landed during Reader Con, so we jokingly thanked our lunch and dinner mates for joining our anniversary celebration. We tried to do gifts before we left for the convention, but they didn't arrive on time. J.H. got me a smart watch for tracking my terrible sleep and also, this very amazing Dungeon Crawler Carl shirt… Which you don’t get to see because I am sitting at a coffee shop in Fort Smith, Arkansas and I wasn’t smart enough to take a picture before I started putting this together. Maybe I can find a pic online? Standby…

Found it! This one…

What have I been reading?

Speaking of DCC…

Damn, Matt can write!

Every installment has been absolutely brilliant, hilarious, wild, and still punched me right in the feelers!

I'm just bummed I'm caught up now. Seriously, if you haven't read them, give it a go. Highly recommend the audiobooks. And Matt is a cool guy, too.

The Tower of Fools by Andrzej Sapkowski

All right, so I’ve finished this one since last month’s newsletter.

As I called out then, I shall call out again. It is not The Witcher.

Still pretty decent, but whereas I loved The Witcher books, I just liked this one.

I don’t have anything disparaging to say. Just didn’t enjoy it as much as his flagship series. But again, if you like his style, you’ll probably enjoy it. If you’ve never read his work, though, I would recommend the other first.

What games have I been playing?

Uh… Nothing.

I don’t think I’ve even touched Baldur’s Gate since I was here last month. I probably should make more time for that, but I’ve really just been focused on working. I know, I’m boring.

What shows have we been watching?

Ted Lasso:

Never thought I’d like a show about a soccer team, but here we are. It was fun and unique. Often seemed like it was going one direction, then kind of turned and went another. I enjoyed it. Lots of laughs. Plenty of good story. I hear it's coming back for a fourth season, but I also hear season 4 won't have him coaching Richmond, so… I don't know. Maybe they should have just ended it. I can't imagine it without the team, especially after all the development they did with those characters in Season 3. I guess we'll see.

Oh, and Roy Kent is the best character. Fight me.

And to go a completely different direction than the whimsical world of Ted Lasso…

Squid Games Season 3:

Oh, Squid Game…

Sad face.

That's all I have to say.

Actually, scratch that. There is one thing I want to say…

Lee Jung-jae, who plays the main character—Seong Gi-hun, or player 456—is an incredible actor. Unbelievable. You can see the transformation on his face from the beginning to the end. You can feel the haunt in his expressions. Wild. Dude deserves all the awards.

Also, one more thing… Squid Game rocked. All of it. But also… Sad face.

Final Thoughts

Hope you are staying cool in these puppy dog days of summer, but still punching life in the fun button! I’m certainly trying to! See you next month!