Cirrus@Austlit

'Sam hates his office job, but at least every night he can delve into Alterwhere and forget about stupid teamwork for a while. The world’s hottest new cerebral reality game is a fully immersive mash-up of the retro fantasy RPGs he used to play on his dad’s steam account, back in the early 2030s – the kind where you can eat a bowl of stew in the middle of a battle, fire crossbows underwater, and steal all the plates from an NPC’s kitchen as long as they’re looking away at the time.

'As Sam sets out to solo champion monsters and drink mind-altering potions, he realises the greedy devs are working hard to monetise their free-to-play model. On top of morally questionable microtransactions, he must also contend with a mob-thieving elf, the unexpected success of his alchemical experimentations, a mind-bending crossover of game life and reality, and worst of all – if he’s not very careful, he might even be in danger of making some real friends.

'Old Man Gamer is a fresh and comedic LitRPG which pokes fun at tropes both new and old. A standalone story, it is primarily concerned with gaming, and contains some violence, a fair whack of drug and alcohol use, mild romantic interludes, and surprisingly little cursing (not sure why that happened).' (Publication summary)

'Ever since Scharlette’s parents gave her a name no one can really pronounce, she’s been stuck in a bit of a rut.

'She hates her job in airport security, making people take their belts off before they fly away to exotic locations she can only dream about. She owns a small apartment with large repayments, drinks bargain bin red while she watches Star Trek, and misses her beloved sister, Jenelope, lost to an exploding sandwich press, ten years ago.

'Scharlette fears she might live out her entire existence without doing anything important or mattering to anyone. It still comes as quite a surprise when a handsome time traveller named Tomothy appears out of nowhere and verifies she is correct – that, according to his records, she doesn’t matter at all.

'Scharlette isn’t sure this news is as wonderful as Tomothy seems to think but, as he explains, since her life was to have no impact on the timeline whatsoever, Scharlette is free to travel time and space, and have amazing adventures with heedless abandon.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.