First off, a necessary clarification, to any returning readers who remember this blog as being about “Eurasia, geopolitics and peak oil”: It’s gone. It no longer exists.

Well, not gone, precisely. What actually happened is that all that material you’d have seen around here has been migrated. I now blog about Russia at Da Russophile, while AKarlin hosts all-the-other-things-that-interest-me type of stuff.

Writing a fantasy series has been one of my greatest ambitions since childhood, when, inspired by Tolkien and the DOS video game “Loom,” I began to sketch fantasy maps and build plot arcs of great heroism and tragedy. Well, what I took to be “great”, anyway: My idea of a good finale back then was to have the baddie die by getting impaled on a giant cactus called “Spikey” which he lugged about with his army. More corny than cathartic, to be honest.

But I have continued reading and learning, and I now have a much better idea of what constitutes truly epic and immersive speculative fiction. And the day draws nearer when I begin realizing it into being. When that day comes, so will this blog begin to flower.

If you want to stick around to observe the process, I’ll be glad to have you on board. If however you were, and are, only interested in the old Sublime Oblivion stuff, then you know where to go.