A multitude of jasmine flowers blooming on a pergola.

The jasmine kept its promise.

I wish I could share the scent with you; it's heavenly.

A handful of jasmine flowers blooming on a vine that's riddled with unopened buds.

We're seeing flowers blooming on the trees. Soon this jasmine is going to riot its way into spring.

This is a reasonable response to almost anything disturbing, provoking, or irritating in some way.

Smiling man w/gray mustache & goatee holds a cake frosted like his book cover. Cake: orange frosting, title: Eight: Saint of Water; huge gray egg w/hieroglyphics & warriors. 2nd book cover: Fate's Attendant, Japanese warrior & badger.

THIS GUY. 🤩 Not one but TWO books published on the same day. Well done, Samer, VERY well done. And what’s a book birthday w/o cake? 🎂 😋
Check out THE SAINT OF WATER, Book 5 in the EIGHT series; & FATE’S ATTENDANT, Book 1 in @samerrabadi.bsky.social's new series, both on Amazon.
Write on, friend! 🎉👏😍

Cover of Eight 5 featuring an archer facing off against a ghostly enemy.

The cover of Fate's Attendant featuring a swordsman and a giant badger.

If two books from an author publish on the same day, does that make them twins?

Both Eight 5: The Saint of Water and Fate's Attendant are now out. 😊

www.amazon.com/Eight-Saint-...

www.amazon.com/Fates-Attend...

Fate's Attendant: A Cultivation Fantasy Amazon.com: Fate's Attendant: A Cultivation Fantasy eBook : Rabadi, Samer: Kindle Store

To order the paperback, you'll have to wait until February 23, since only e-book is available for pre-order.

www.amazon.com/Fates-Attend...

(Those are Amazon's rules; I'm not sure why.)

A proof copy of the Fate's Attendant paperback edition. A swordsman and giant badger are featured on the cover.

All this is to say, I have a proof copy of Fate's Attendant in hand, even though Eight is a bestselling series, it's not he same as holding a real book in your hand. 😁

The actual bulk of formatting the paperback version didn't take long (thank you style sheets), but the details... my god, all the little details.

For example, did you know that Garamond doesn't have the character ǎ included, but EB Garamond does? Well, now you do, and so do I.

Fate's Attendant will publish on February 23. There'll be an e-book, of course, and for the first time also a paperback.

Formatting the print version is taking me back to my first days of getting Eight ready. Cue another sweat emoji... 😅

That was then. Now, it only takes me a single afternoon to format an e-book, tables included. Templates help, as does being consistent about using style sheets.

Seriously, styles sheets are your friend. If you're a writer, use them.

When I published my first book (Eight), formatting the e-book took a week, working from about six in the evening to midnight every night. There were tools that could have sped up the process, but they didn't work for stories with embedded tables. 😅

The novel's cover, featuring a swordsman and a giant badger.

And there's also Fate's Attendant: www.amazon.com/Fates-Attend...

The novel kicks off a cultivation fantasy series with LitRPG and deck-building elements. The story's done very well at Royal Road (★★★★★), and I'm excited to bring it to Kindle and print.

It also publishes on Monday, February 23.

The novel's cover, featuring an archer battling a ghost-like figure in front of a magical sculpture.

I've been away from social media for months, but it's been for a good reason... later in February, I'm publishing two new novels. 😊

Eight 5: The Saint of the Water is the final chapter in the bestselling series: www.amazon.com/Eight-Saint-...

It comes out on Monday, February 23, 2026.

View of a pathway next to a river. A mill is visible in the far background.

View from a walkway alongside a river's turning basin. A mill and a boat is visible across the way.

View of the shore along a river. A boat and buildings are visible on the other side.

We've had some beautiful days this past week.

A clay sculpture of C3PO and Luke Skywalker in a land speeder.

This delightful sculpture is "Luke & CP30" by Patrick Amiot. Spotted at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts.

Mary and I stopped by the gallery yesterday to check out the exhibition of artists participating in this year's ArtTrails. The work on display was absolutely fabulous. I was so impressed.

A collection of pine cones still on their branches. The color palette is washed out; they are stark against the sky behind them.

I passed under these branches and their pine cones, lost in my thoughts while walking, then realized that I'd seen something beautiful and ran back to admire them.

I'm also working on the final book of the Eight series, which I just handed off to my developmental editor.

So, yeah—there are multiple pots on the stove cooking!

Fate's Attendant isn't complete yet. The announcement was to let people know it's in the process of being published serially on Royal Road (3 chapters a week). Once the first book is done, it'll get edited and then published as an e-book on Kindle. 😊

Love is buying two donuts, and the second one survives until your wife comes home. 🍩🤸‍♀️

Close-up photograph of a mushroom among a tangle of other plants.

Life at the scale of a mushroom... It's a jungle out there!

When you take long strides, remember to also watch for the small steps needed along the way.

This morning, I made good progress on Fate's Attendant, but then realized I'd made a mistake with power progression. It was an easy fix, but I had to go back to recheck all the other numbers.

82 pages of Fate's Attendant are now available according to Royal Road's stats. 😊

As with everything else on that site, everything is free to read.

www.royalroad.com/fiction/1287...

An old car rusting in a field. Looks like it might be from the twenties or thirties.

You find the most interesting things when driving the back roads of Sonoma County.

It's official—I'm working on a new serial!

Hong Fei is a broken soldier whose cultivation has been shattered, yet fate deals him (literal) cards that might change everything.

The first chapters are here: www.royalroad.com/fiction/1287....

#Xianxia #LitRPG #DeckBuilder #GiantBadgerForTheWin

we have both computers and science fiction because Byron was so insufferable it inspired all the women around him to come up with elaborate reasons to get away

Someone once told me that you know you're a writer when you find it difficult to write.

I just felt so seen in that moment.

For a while, I had a scratch pad doc that only had an em dash in it for ease of copy and paste. 😂

I give similar advice to writers. Get the story out, that first draft needs to be on paper before the magic of revisions and editing can even happen. 

#WritingTips #FirstDraft #CreativeWriting #WritersLife #Storytelling #WriteYourStory #EditingProcess #WritersCommunity #Inspiration #WritingAdvice

ALT-0151 is my best friend.

I hate that I have to think about this whenever I want to use an em dash.

I didn't know there was a "racking" version, which tells me that I see "wracking" used more often, too.