Fall 2026 is looking pretty fruitful for fantasy readers. Putting together a list of the bigger releases coming between September and December, what struck me is that this isn't just a season dominated by one corner of the genre. There's romantasy, dark academia, epic fantasy, post-apocalyptic fantasy, the Cosmere and even a Baldur's Gate 3 prequel.

A few that especially jumped out:

Leigh Bardugo — Dead Beat (September 15)

Bardugo is finally concluding the trilogy she began with Ninth House in 2019. Alex Stern has survived her trip to the underworld, but Hell has been breached and demons are making their way into New Haven.

Bardugo doesn't sound like she's playing it safe with the finale: “Dead Beat is kind of bonkers. It is a wildly unhinged book in many ways. I can tell you I loved writing it. Like, I missed these characters. I missed this world.”

She also says the book is “very dense with history, very dense with lore,” with threads from the first two novels finally coming together.

Rebecca Yarros — Threshing Day (September 29)

This isn't Empyrean Book 4. Instead, Yarros is returning to the Fourth Wing universe with 13 stories centered around Threshing, giving us different characters' experiences of the day riders bond—or fail to bond—with their dragons.

Yarros says writing it gave her a way back into the Empyrean world after burnout: “Writing the graphic novels and then this allowed me to step back into Empyrean without anxiety-attack level pressure before walking right into book four.”

She says the stories provide additional backstory and “a couple of reveals,” but stresses that readers won't need the collection to understand Book 4.

V.E. Schwab — Victorious (October 6)

Thirteen years after Vicious, Schwab is bringing Victor Vale and Eli Ever's story to an end. Victorious is the third and final Villains novel, returning to a world where near-death experiences can produce extraordinary abilities—but gaining superpowers certainly doesn't mean somebody suddenly wants to become a superhero.

That moral ambiguity has been there from the beginning. As Schwab has explained: “One of my primary goals when I sat down to write Vicious was to play with the idea of the superhero as social construct, and the fact that if you gave an ordinary person supernatural abilities, they probably wouldn’t feel a sudden imperative to do good deeds.”

Sarah J. Maas — A Court of Thorns and Roses 6 (October 27)

Probably the biggest publishing event on the list. Five years after A Court of Silver Flames, Maas is finally returning to Prythian. Plot details remain closely guarded—and at the moment we're still calling it ACOTAR 6—but what began as another book became a much larger story, with the next installment following in January. Given how much the ACOTAR audience has grown since 2021, it'll be fascinating to see just how enormous this release becomes.

John Gwynne — The Wolves of War (November 3)

This one may be particularly interesting for epic fantasy readers. Gwynne is leaving the Bloodsworn Saga behind and launching The Wolfheart Chronicle, a duology inspired by Slavic mythology and 10th-century Eastern Europe. There are Rusalka, Domovoi, Leshen, Upyr, mercenary Vikings and a witch inspired by Baba Yaga. But Gwynne's elevator pitch is considerably simpler:

“At the heart of it is a family with a disabled daughter, and she can’t speak, but she’s developing unusual powers. I kind of explain it in a sentence as it’s Carrie, Stephen King’s Carrie, meets The Witcher.”

Brandon Sanderson — The Fires of December (December 8)

And Sanderson closes out the year with a standalone Cosmere novel about December, a young woman who has already experienced an entire lifetime before finding herself young again with knowledge of the catastrophes ahead—including a plague that will devastate her kingdom.

What's particularly interesting is how spontaneously the book came to Sanderson: “I got up the next morning and I wrote the first two chapters. They had entered my brain. I kind of was compelled to write them.” He ultimately wrote the first draft in roughly a month.

Those are six of the nine I included, with Rachel Gillig, T. Kingfisher and Danielle L. Jensen rounding out the list.

Of the fall releases, what are you most looking forward to? And is there something coming between now and December that deserves to be getting more attention?

For anyone interested in the full nine-book rundown, including author comments, searching Fantasy Books womansworld should bring it up.

Brandon Sanderson has talked quite a bit about his next Cosmere novel, The Fires of December, which arrives December 8, and what I find most interesting is how differently it apparently came together from the way we tend to think of Sanderson working.

The book began as Secret Project Six and is a standalone Cosmere novel about December, a young woman who experiences an entire lifetime—marriage, motherhood, loss and her own death—only to find herself 21 again with knowledge of what lies ahead. That includes a devastating plague that will eventually destroy almost everyone she knows.

Sanderson says the initial inspiration came while lying in bed and wondering what would happen if he woke up in his teenage body during the '80s or '90s with all his current memories intact: But the thought wouldn't leave him alone. What's especially interesting is what happened the next morning. Sanderson is famous for planning his novels, but he says December arrived almost fully formed:

Even the protagonist's name wasn't something he spent weeks working out. From there, apparently, the entire thing poured out of him. Sanderson says he completed the first draft in roughly a month with surprisingly little revision along the way: He's also said that the opening may be "the strongest opening for a book I've ever written," and some of the early fan reaction to his preview reading has been similarly enthusiastic. Cosmere readers are already debating whether December has literally traveled through time or whether something more complicated involving Fortune may be going on.

For anyone wondering where this fits into the Cosmere, Sanderson considers The Fires of December part of a loose, nonlinear group with Tress of the Emerald Sea and Yumi and the Nightmare Painter. They're narrated by Hoid but are standalone stories and can be read in any order. Maybe my favorite thing Sanderson has said about the book, though, is what happened after he finished writing December's life:

He ends his discussion of the book pretty simply: "I am very proud of the book."

For those who heard/read the preview: Did the opening live up to Sanderson's own enthusiasm for it? And where do you rank December among his protagonists based on what we've seen so far?

If you want more, just do a Google search for The Fires of December womansworld

I recently interviewed Lou Ferrigno at a Star Trek convention, and what surprised me was just how personal his connection to the original series is.

Ferrigno grew up in Brooklyn dealing with significant hearing and speech difficulties and says he was bullied as a kid, with other children calling him “Deaf Mute” and “Deaf Louie.” Television became an escape, and Star Trek in particular gave him somewhere else to go.

“Being very depressed growing up as a kid, being bullied, Star Trek would escape my imagination, to be free, to be able to give me some excitement,” he told me. “That's why it had such an effect on me.”

Captain Kirk was a big part of that. “I loved Captain Kirk. I loved the way he conducted himself. I wanted to be like him. He's on the ship commanding, and especially his personality.”

There's something pretty remarkable about what happened next. The bullied kid watching Kirk in Brooklyn grew up to become the Incredible Hulk — and eventually became friends with William Shatner.

Ferrigno told me they'd had dinner together just a couple of weeks before our conversation, and while Kirk was his hero as a kid, today it's Shatner himself he admires.

“I'm amazed at his work ethic, his motivation,” Ferrigno said. “He never really takes lapses of time off. He's always doing something to better himself. It's amazing, because I learned so much from him. He has incredible wisdom.”

What I found most interesting was that Ferrigno sees Star Trek fandom and superhero fandom in much the same way: both give people a world they can escape into and characters they can connect with. “You want to be in space. You wish you could be in space. You could fantasize, you could think about the story and you want to be with those people.... That connection never leaves you.” Sixty years later, that certainly seems to have been true for him.

You can read the full interview at https://www.womansworld.com/entertainment/celebrities/lou-ferrigno-on-how-star-trek-gave-him-hope-and-inspired-his-life

There seems to be another wave of vampire fiction coming this fall, but what struck me looking through the upcoming releases is how little these books actually resemble one another. We're getting YA romance, full-on horror, paranormal romance, romantasy and some of the stranger vampire premises I've encountered in a while.

Here are five that caught my attention:

'Roses & Ruin'

Written by: Hazel Cross
Publishing date: September 1

What it's about: A year after an accident nearly kills Rose, she still remembers the mysterious boy who saved her life before disappearing without a trace. She moves across the country for college hoping for a fresh start, only to encounter him again. His name is Hayden, but he denies being the person who rescued her. Rose's determination to discover the truth eventually reveals what Hayden really is—and that the bond between them goes much deeper than the night of her accident.

Fang facts: Putnam is pretty openly embracing the old-school paranormal YA connection, pitching this for "a new generation of Twilight and Vampire Academy readers." Author Hazel Cross says her fascination with vampires goes back to childhood: "They show us what we could do if we have forever."

'Crown of Crimson and Crows'

Written by: Tessa Hale
Publishing date: September 8

What it's about: A young woman has been hidden in the human world, unaware of the magical power bound inside her. When those bindings begin breaking, she discovers fate has connected her to four powerful vampires: the King of Fire, the Prince of Starlight, the King of Ice and the King of Earth and Blood.

That's complicated enough before you add demons hunting her, an approaching war and the possibility that her newly awakened power could determine the fate of their entire world.

Fang facts: This launches Hale's Blood Bound series, a vampire-romance spin-off of Wolves of Crescent Creek. Sourcebooks boils down the situation pretty effectively: "Four ruthless vampires. Enemies by history. Allies by necessity."

'Milkteeth'

Written by: Caitlin Starling
Publishing date: October 20

What it's about: This may be the strangest premise of the bunch. Beatrice is a vampire "broodmother" responsible for nursing newly made vampires through their first years of unlife. She's already raising two difficult fledglings when she takes on a third, the product of a botched siring who exists somewhere between vampire and ghoul.

Then Beatrice's own body begins changing. She develops a craving for flesh that vampires aren't supposed to have and ultimately seeks help from perhaps the last person you'd expect a vampire to visit: a mortal OB-GYN.

Fang facts: Starling, who wrote The Death of Jane Lawrence, is essentially approaching vampire mythology through motherhood and child-rearing. Her young vampires are "fledglings," while the dependent vampires Beatrice cares for are called "nurslings."

'Alma Vampires'

Written by: Elena Armas
Publishing date: November 17

What it's about: College student Valle Cepeda unexpectedly inherits Alma, a coveted fashion empire, from the mother she never knew—which gives her both a fortune and a target on her back.

Hadrian Cruz seems to be another player trying to seize control of Alma, but he's actually connected to Valle through a century-old blood debt. He can offer her protection and answers about her increasingly strange inheritance. There's also the small matter of Hadrian being a vampire.

Fang facts: This is a pretty significant genre change for Elena Armas, the bestselling author of The Spanish Love Deception, and launches a new paranormal romance series. Bride author Ali Hazelwood says "the world is not ready for her vampire era," while My Roommate Is a Vampire author Jenna Levine calls it the "vampire romance of my dreams."

'Vampire Menstrual Syndrome'

Written by: S.C. Hunter
Publishing date: December 8

What it's about: University student Vanessa "Ness" is making a late-night cake delivery when she's sacrificed to a dark god by a cult of entitled teenagers. She wakes up six feet underground with new powers, a craving for blood—and wicked cramps.

Ness has become a vampire on the first day of her period.

With her paranormal-obsessed best friend helping her figure out her new existence, Ness has to deal with increasingly powerful vampiric symptoms while her maker closes in to finish her off.

Fang facts: Gallery describes this one as a "feminist horror-comedy." S.C. Hunter is also a scientist with a background in interdisciplinary health research, which adds an interesting wrinkle to a book combining bodily horror, menstruation and vampirism.

Of these, Milkteeth is probably the one I'm most curious about simply because I don't think I've ever encountered vampire mythology approached quite that way.

But I'm curious what r/horror thinks: Are vampires interesting again when writers move away from the traditional Dracula model, or has the romance/romantasy side of the genre pretty much killed them for you?

With Dungeon Crawler Carl becoming such a phenomenon, I've been spending some time digging through Matt Dinniman's entire bibliography—and one of the most interesting things is seeing how many pieces of the writer we know today were already there long before Carl walked into the dungeon.

Dominion of Blades may be the clearest example. Readers who go backward from DCC often describe the first book as rougher around the edges, but many also say the series improves considerably with The Hobgoblin Riot. More interestingly, longtime Dinniman readers have pointed out ideas, themes and storytelling devices in Dominion of Blades that feel like early versions of things he would eventually refine in DCC.

The Shivered Sky is almost the opposite experience. Fans regularly warn DCC readers that this isn't remotely the same kind of story. There's no LitRPG framework and considerably less humor. Instead, it's dark, violent and surprisingly philosophical, with religion, mythology and war playing major roles. Reader reactions are mixed about some of the rough edges of Dinniman's early writing, but that's also what makes the trilogy fascinating now: you're essentially seeing a writer develop in public.

Kaiju: Battlefield Surgeon may be the book with the funniest disparity between "people who love it" and "people willing to recommend it." Fans describe it as everything from brilliant to "mentally aggressive," usually followed by some variation of: Read it, but you've been warned. Even Dinniman's own description doesn't exactly reassure anyone: “This book is unnecessarily gross, pointlessly violent, probably blasphemous, and it contains gratuitous torture.”

Yet Kaiju may also contain some of the clearest DNA of what eventually became DCC. There's the game structure, escalating absurdity, psychological manipulation and a protagonist being subjected to increasingly horrific situations—but without the humor and optimism that give Carl and Donut some breathing room.

The Grinding takes another route entirely. Readers describe it as fast, deeply unsettling traditional horror, with an ending that apparently leaves quite a few people staring into space afterward. It's also become harder to experience outside the Soundbooth Theater production, while physical copies have turned into collector's items.

And speaking of collector's items, there's Trailer Park Fairy Tales. At this point, finding a physical copy seems less like buying a Matt Dinniman book and more like completing a side quest. Fans have called it one of the "holy grails" of Dinniman collecting. Interestingly, one of its stories apparently won an award—even though Matt himself has reportedly described the overall book as "really bad."

Then you get to Operation Bounce House, where the evolution comes almost full circle. It's not LitRPG, but readers immediately recognized the Dinniman voice: absurdity sitting alongside some genuinely dark ideas, corporate power, propaganda, violence and people caught inside systems much larger than themselves.

And apparently we're going even darker next. Dinniman has already talked about an untitled horror novel set at a petting zoo where the animals turn on the humans. Fans have understandably latched onto the description "completely unhinged," because apparently Kaiju: Battlefield Surgeon wasn't sufficient evidence that Matt shouldn't be allowed near innocent fictional creatures.

Looking across all of these books, what interests me most isn't simply how different they are, but how recognizable the ingredients become. Horror, absurdity, characters trapped inside systems designed to exploit them, humor appearing where it probably shouldn't, escalating stakes and protagonists who keep moving forward even after the world gives them every reason not to. DCC didn't come out of nowhere.

So for the people here who've gone deep into the pre-DCC catalog: which Matt Dinniman book do you think tells us the most about the writer he eventually became—and which one would you most recommend to someone who's only read Dungeon Crawler Carl? If you want to read more on the subject, just do a search for Matt Dinniman womansworld .com.

The classic television career of Elinor Donahue spans everything from Father Knows Best to The Andy Griffith Show, Star Trek and The Odd Couple. In her own words, she offers her thoughts on each of those series and more.

The classic television career of Elinor Donahue spans everything from Father Knows Best to The Andy Griffith Show, Star Trek and The Odd Couple. In her own words, she offers her thoughts on each of those series and more.

When Pierce Brown published Red Rising in 2014, few could have predicted that it would grow into one of modern science fiction’s most passionately recommended series.

The story begins with Darrow, a young Red miner living beneath the surface of Mars. He believes his people are sacrificing everything to prepare the planet for future generations—until he discovers that Mars was colonized long ago and the Reds have been deliberately kept in poverty. Darrow then undergoes an extraordinary transformation that allows him to infiltrate the ruling Gold class and attack the system from within.

At first, the novel can feel like The Hunger Games crossed with Ender’s Game and Gladiator. But that comparison only describes the opening act. As the books continue, the story expands into a sweeping space opera filled with political maneuvering, enormous battles, fractured alliances and increasingly difficult questions about revolution, power and the cost of changing society.

PIERCE BROWN: “I think that Red Rising’s growth has been the most surprising thing and how long its legs have proven nine years after its initial release. People are still reading it. People are still gossiping about it on Reddit and Discord and gathering and creating communities around it. The marketing push can’t sustain a book. That has to be readers. That has to be grassroots enthusiasm. So I think that staying power has been much more impressive and startling to me.”

That enthusiasm seems to come back repeatedly to the characters. Darrow is brave and relentlessly driven, but he’s also angry, reckless and capable of making devastating mistakes. His friends, enemies and allies change just as dramatically, and almost every relationship is tested as the stakes grow.

BookTuber Dan’s Books described that emotional investment this way:

DAN’S BOOKS: “As you go through these books, you fall in love with the characters, man. You just absolutely love multiple characters. You hate multiple characters. Pierce does an incredible job of making you despise multiple characters. And that, for me, is the epitome of good writing. When you can make me feel hatred for a fictional character, when you make me feel sadness for losing a fictional character, that’s peak.”

That may be the clearest explanation for why fans don’t simply enjoy Red Rising—they recruit new readers. The spaceships, futuristic weapons and Roman-inspired society provide the spectacle, but the friendships, betrayals and impossible choices are what people remember.

With Red God expected to conclude Darrow’s saga and a television adaptation still being developed, the series continues to attract readers more than a decade after the first book appeared.

To read much more on the subject, head over to https://www.womansworld.com/entertainment/books/what-is-red-rising-why-pierce-brown-sci-fi-series-is-so-popular

The classic television career of Elinor Donahue spans everything from Father Knows Best to The Andy Griffith Show, Star Trek and The Odd Couple. In an exclusive interview, she offers her thoughts on each of those series and more.

The classic television career of Elinor Donahue spans everything from Father Knows Best to The Andy Griffith Show, Star Trek and The Odd Couple. In her own words, she offers her thoughts on each of those series and more.

Since 1965, Neil Simon's The Odd Couple has entertained audiences in different mediums, ranging from the Broadway stage to the big screen, the small and all over again. Take a trip back in time to relive the comic adventures of Oscar Madison and Felix Unger. And if you'd like to read more about it all, just head over to https://www.womansworld.com/entertainment/classic-tv/memories-of-the-odd-couple

Neil Simon's The Odd Couple made its debut on Broadway in 1965, with Walter Matthau as Oscar Madison and Art Carney as Felix Unger, the greatest mismatched roommates in entertainment history. Three years later, the show made the leap to the big screen with Matthau reprising the role of Oscar and Jack Lemmon as Felix.

From 1970 to 1975, ABC aired the classic television series with Jack Klugman as Oscar and Tony Randall as Felix. As that series ended, we got the Saturday morning cartoon The Oddball Couple with Fleabag (Oscar) and Spiffy (Felix). Demond Wilson (Sanford and Son) as Oscar and Ron Glass (Barney Miller) as Felix were featured in 1982 to 1983's The New Odd Couple, followed in 1985 by the female version of the premise on Broadway starring Rita Moreno as Olive Madison and Sally Struthers as Florence Unger. Flash forward to 2005, and yet another Broadway revival took place, with Nathan Lane as Oscar and Matthew Broderick as Felix. Most recently, Matthew Perry played Oscar with Thomas Lennon as Felix in the 2015 to 2017 television series The Odd Couple.

Given that it's been almost a decade since the last incarnation, one would imagine that it's only a matter of time before we're faced with the inevitable question: can two divorced men share an apartment without driving each other crazy?

To read much more about the various versions of The Odd Couple, just go to https://www.womansworld.com/entertainment/classic-tv/memories-of-the-odd-couple

Since 1965, Neil Simon's The Odd Couple has entertained audiences in different mediums, ranging from the Broadway stage to the big screen, the small and all over again. Take a trip back in time to relive the comic adventures of Oscar Madison and Felix Unger. And if you'd like to read more about it all, just head over to https://www.womansworld.com/entertainment/classic-tv/memories-of-the-odd-couple

Hey there. I’m Michael Greco, also known by my friends as MG or Media Geek. For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved classic TV, sci-fi, comics and pop culture. Some people collect memories. I collect moments—favorite shows, unforgettable characters and the stories that simply stay with us. Then everything changed.

What began with a mysterious 1959 Predicta Philco television set became something far stranger than I ever could have imagined. Suddenly, the worlds I had spent a lifetime watching, reading about and obsessing over no longer felt safely confined to screens, pages or imagination.

They became real. Because of the Glass Onion.

Now, alongside Eileen, Roddy, Fleischer, Timmy Tribble and a growing circle of friends, I find myself caught up in adventures where the worlds of classic TV, sci-fi, comics and pop culture collide in ways that are thrilling, unpredictable, hilarious and sometimes dangerous.

Welcome to Media Geek & The Glass Onion. Things are about to get very interesting.

When Matt Dinniman eventually wraps up Dungeon Crawler Carl, he already knows what comes next—and it couldn't be more different. During a recent interview with Maude Garrett, Dinniman revealed that his next standalone novel will be a horror story set at a petting zoo. He joked at first that it was a "cozy fantasy," before clarifying that it's actually a much darker project in which the animals turn on the humans.

It's an intriguing direction for an author best known for combining outrageous comedy with brutal violence and genuine emotional moments in Dungeon Crawler Carl. While Carl has featured plenty of monsters, aliens and apocalyptic mayhem, this new novel appears to draw from a much older horror tradition: ordinary animals becoming terrifying threats.

That subgenre has produced some memorable books over the years, from Peter Benchley's Jaws to Stephen Gilbert's Ratman's Notebooks (adapted into the film Willard), James Herbert's The Rats, and T. C. Boyle's When the Killing's Done. But it's been years since it has had a major mainstream breakout.

Knowing Dinniman, though, this probably won't be a straightforward creature feature. His work often balances absurd humor with real emotional stakes, and he's shown in books like Kaiju: Battlefield Surgeon that he has no problem venturing into genuinely disturbing territory.

It's also interesting that he's choosing to write something completely outside the Dungeon Crawler Carl universe before returning to other long-running projects. Assuming the premise stays the same, this could end up being one of the more unusual horror releases in recent years. If you'd like to read more on this, you can search for Matt Dinniman womansworld .com.

Today it's almost impossible to imagine The Andy Griffith Show without Barney Fife, but Don Knotts actually left the series at the height of its popularity. The decision wasn't because he wanted out of Mayberry. According to his daughter, Karen Knotts, Don and Andy Griffith had always planned to leave after five seasons. When that time came, Universal offered Don a five-picture contract, while Andy decided to remain after the network made it financially worthwhile.

Karen says the choice wasn't easy. She remembers her father being completely consumed with anxiety before making The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, the first major comedy he carried as a movie star. Without The Andy Griffith Show as a safety net, he suddenly had to oversee scripts, work directly with writers, and shoulder the pressure of headlining a feature film.

One fascinating revelation is that Andy Griffith quietly served as a story consultant on The Ghost and Mr. Chicken after the first draft wasn't working. According to Karen, Griffith had an extraordinary instinct for story structure—something she believes helped make The Andy Griffith Show so consistently strong. She also discusses how playing Ralph Furley on Three's Company regenerated his career. You can find out more at https://www.womansworld.com/entertainment/classic-tv/don-knotts-daughter-karen-recalls-his-most-memorable-roles

Brandon Sanderson has reached a major milestone on the long-awaited Mistborn movie adaptation, announcing that he has completed the first draft of the screenplay. He stressed that it's still "an early step in a long process," but said he's "quite proud" of how the script turned out. That update got me digging into some of Sanderson's recent comments about how Mistborn came into existence, and I was surprised by just how many real-world experiences helped shape the series.

When Sanderson first conceived Mistborn, he wanted to move away from what he saw as fantasy's tendency to revisit medieval Europe. His goal was to create a world that felt immediately alien—a place where stepping outside meant seeing something that simply couldn't exist on Earth. One of the earliest sparks came while driving through a fog bank at highway speed. Instead of feeling static, the fog seemed alive, flowing around him like a current. That experience became the foundation for the living mists that define the world of Scadrial.

Another major influence came during a nighttime visit to Washington National Cathedral. The illuminated stained-glass windows glowing against the darkness inspired the noble keeps of the Final Empire, their light shining out over swirling mist. Then there was the ash. Sanderson has said that the constant ashfall covering the world drew inspiration from both the eruption of Mount St. Helens and the buried city of Pompeii, creating the oppressive landscape that makes Mistborn so visually distinctive. Perhaps the most interesting inspiration, though, came from The Lord of the Rings. He asked himself a simple question: What if Frodo made it all the way to Mordor... and Sauron was waiting for him?

That thought experiment became one of the central ideas behind Mistborn: a fantasy world where the Dark Lord had already won, and the heroes were trying to overthrow a thousand-year-old immortal empire instead of preventing its rise. Sanderson has also said that Mistborn was never built around a single idea. Instead, it was "an intersection of ideas"—fog, ash, glowing cathedrals, and the concept of beginning a fantasy story after evil had already triumphed.

With Apple now developing Mistborn as the first major Cosmere film, finishing the screenplay is another important step toward finally bringing that world to the screen, even if there are still plenty of drafts, revisions and production hurdles ahead. If you want to read more, just search for Mistborn womansworld .com.

Over the course of my 45 years as an entertainment journalist, I've spoken to William Shatner a number of times, from which I'm reflecting on three of them that I refer to as 'the good, the bad and the eh.' You'll see why.

Hi. My name is Ed Gross and I'm an entertainment journalist as well as the author of the DK Book Rocky: The Ultimate Guide. For the past 50 years, fans have believed Sylvester Stallone had to hold the 'Rocky' screenplay hostage before United Artists would let him play Rocky Balboa. But producer Robert Chartoff—who made the movie with Irwin Winkler—told me something very different during an interview marking the film's 20th anniversary when I spoke to a variety of people making the occasion. His recollection challenges one of the most famous stories in movie history. Part of what Chartoff said was, "Getting Sly to star in the film was not difficult, despite anything you might have heard over the years." https://www.womansworld.com/entertainment/movies/sylvester-stallone-and-the-true-story-behind-the-rocky-casting-myth

Five years ago, almost no one outside the LitRPG community had heard of Dungeon Crawler Carl. Today, Matt Dinniman's book series has sold more than six million copies, become one of sci-fi/fantasy publishing's biggest breakout success stories and is headed to Peacock as a live-action television series.

One of the things that surprised me while researching the book series is just how modest its beginnings were. Rather than setting out to create a blockbuster franchise, Dinniman was simply looking for a change of pace after finishing another novel.

"I just finished writing a book called Kaiju: Battlefield Surgeon. I was about to move into the third book in my Dominion of Blades series, and I wanted to give myself a break. I thought, 'I'm going to write something real simple, real fast, kind of like a palate cleanser.' That's when I started Dungeon Crawler Carl, not expecting it to take off in the way it did."

That "palate cleanser" has since evolved from a self-published novel into a multimedia franchise spanning a variety of mediums.

My beginner's guide explores the books, the characters, the rise of LitRPG and how Dungeon Crawler Carl became one of fantasy's most unlikely success stories. For longtime fans: What was the moment that convinced you this series was something special?

If you're interested, you can check out the full article at https://www.womansworld.com/entertainment/books/a-beginners-guide-to-the-dungeon-crawler-carl-fantasy-book-series