65 books like Harmoney & the Empty Piggy Bank

Growing up I noticed that a lot of my friends would avoid conversations about the stock market mainly because a lack of confidence or knowledge around how it works. I also saw a visible gap in financial literacy among kids that I volunteered with. The school system is doing the best they can, but we can’t rely on them to plant every seed within our kids. With the knowledge gained from friends and countless hours of research from taking classes on the stock market, I created a book that focused on teaching kids about all things stock related but also could be used as a tool of learning for all ages.  

Growing up I noticed that a lot of my friends would avoid conversations about the stock market mainly because a lack of confidence or knowledge around how it works. I also saw a visible gap in financial literacy among kids that I volunteered with. The school system is doing the best they can, but we can’t rely on them to plant every seed within our kids. With the knowledge gained from friends and countless hours of research from taking classes on the stock market, I created a book that focused on teaching kids about all things stock related but also could be used as a tool of learning for all ages.  

Growing up I noticed that a lot of my friends would avoid conversations about the stock market mainly because a lack of confidence or knowledge around how it works. I also saw a visible gap in financial literacy among kids that I volunteered with. The school system is doing the best they can, but we can’t rely on them to plant every seed within our kids. With the knowledge gained from friends and countless hours of research from taking classes on the stock market, I created a book that focused on teaching kids about all things stock related but also could be used as a tool of learning for all ages.  

Growing up I noticed that a lot of my friends would avoid conversations about the stock market mainly because a lack of confidence or knowledge around how it works. I also saw a visible gap in financial literacy among kids that I volunteered with. The school system is doing the best they can, but we can’t rely on them to plant every seed within our kids. With the knowledge gained from friends and countless hours of research from taking classes on the stock market, I created a book that focused on teaching kids about all things stock related but also could be used as a tool of learning for all ages.  

Pantheons and worship are elements of culture I’ve always found fascinating, partly from being a mostly secular person with relatives who are very religious. I read a lot of epic fantasy when I was younger that featured gods, like Erikson, and I love finding more recent works that play with how deities might affect a world, and vice versa. But I also picked some of the books below because they inject cli-fi or solarpunk into their worlds – something I’ve been adding to my second-world fantasy lately. Because why not create the same sort of aesthetic in other worlds? 

I’ve never really felt like I belonged in this world. From early childhood independent play to building out entire backstories for my Lego creations, I dreamt of other worlds. As I grew, that developed into a love of history, mythology, philosophy, and the other components of worldbuilding. And being naturally inclined to ask, “What if,” there’s nothing I love more than exploring these alien worlds. What if there was a world with a dozen sentient species? What if humans didn’t even exist in that world? What if that world was overflowing with magic? It’s these sorts of questions I most enjoy pondering.

I’ve loved reading ever since I learned how. Sometimes, that can be inconvenient. I now own over 8000 books, not including ebooks, so storage space is an issue. Fortunately, my heart space is not as constrained as my physical space. Anyway, given my keen interest in reading, it’s no surprise that I began to write. Though my reading tastes are wide, I mostly write in fantasy, my favorite genre. It’s an opportunity to explore new worlds and to use them to reflect upon our own. We may not make literal pacts with demons, but we all face temptation. Figuring out how to navigate our desires is a crucial part of life.

I’ve always been somewhat of an idiot optimist coming up with new and frivolous ideas. Yet, despite trying to inject my last three books with humour representative of myself, I feel a certain sense of seriousness in them. The fantasy genre has helped me shirk that feeling, allowing me to write uninhibited by regular boundaries. Without becoming captivated by George R.R. Martin and Terry Pratchett, I’d probably still be stuck trying to carve out a place in literary fiction—how serious. Fantasy works better for me—I like to make things up, and I like light-hearted books. 

My mum tells me I used to sit with a book of fairytales open on my lap, aged three, and ‘read’ them out loud. Of course, I wasn’t reading them because I couldn’t read yet; I had memorised them all, word for word. Later, having consumed all the traditional tales and still with a hunger for more, I began reading modern fairytales. They opened up a whole new world; a world of light and darkness where anything at all is possible and unusual characters and events cascade from the pages. And then I realised I could actually write my own…

I’m a nerd who fights. Started my professional life as a programmer, then switched to telling stories in advertising and entertainment. But my passion for technology and martial arts have always played a role in my life. Influenced by my father’s stories about judo, I studied a lot of styles of fighting, including kung fu, karate, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and also dabbled with boxing, Muay Thai, capoeira, taichi, bagua, Silat, and judo. Along that journey, one of my favorite ways to learn was by watching my female training partners, and how they had to develop a much more nuanced and sophisticated technique. An experience that would later inspire the birth of The Girl from Wudang.