Welcome to Fantastic Realms

Over the holidays a few months ago, I got hooked reading fantasy short story collections that I subscribed to with my new Kindle.

I’ve always loved reading fiction, especially short story fiction, but I’ve never written any. I’ve worked at Google for the past half decade and other Silicon Valley companies for the past couple of decades – I write code, not prose – but for the first time I found myself interested in writing.

This all started a few gears turning in my head, and the more I thought about things, the more I started noticing gaps in the experience both as a fan and as a wannabe amateur writer.

I could subscribe to a digital collection on my Kindle, but unlike for books, I couldn’t leave a rating or a review for individual short stories. Even if that were possible, the interface didn’t support engaging in conversations with other readers.

There were other sites that provided more of what I was looking for, but nothing scratched my itch. My search for something that unified the experience for writing, reading, logging, and interacting had left me disappointed.

What I really wanted was something modeled more like the YouTube experience for connecting content creators to consumers, but with short story text instead of video.

I wanted to find a platform that provided an integrated experience for creators as well as for subscribers – something that offered writers and artists more tools and more monetization opportunities (income streams from views, purchases, sponsors, and patrons) as well as richer experiences for readers and fans.

Working with AI at Google also helped me to see opportunities for tools to enhance writer productivity and to automate some of the traditional publisher role for marketing content to an audience, as well as opportunities to enhance the discovery and even the visual experience for readers as well.

Over the next couple of months, we’ll elaborate on this in much more detail and we’ll make a private preview available to writers and readers who join the waitlist. The preview will give you an early opportunity to get hands-on with the platform and your feedback will help us shape and prioritize features you want.

We’d be thrilled to have you join us!

Tony

If you’re curious

This was the original concept two months ago. Things are really starting to take shape now, but we’re staying true to the original concept.

The traveler gazed at the array of portals looming ahead.

“Behold,” said the whispering breeze, “gateways to planes unknown, wherein lie fantastic realms.”

Without a glance and only a slight nod, the traveler chose and, stepping forward, vanished through a portal.

This evolved to the following theme while we worked on the current one that we’re launching today.