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Kevin Gabeci's Blog

Writing on software, fiction, and the places they meet.

Latest posts

The World of Strohr: A Primer on the Dark Fantasy Setting of Investigating the Wicked
July 21, 2026Series Primer

The World of Strohr: A Primer on the Dark Fantasy Setting of Investigating the Wicked

A spoiler light primer on Strohr, the dark fantasy world of Investigating the Wicked, where evil is real, wears human faces, and makes a perfect stage for a mystery.
Investigating the Wicked
Dark Fantasy
Worldbuilding
The Body Horror Of The Gig Economy, How Sleep Mode Borrowed From Get Out And Severance
July 17, 2026Themes/Genre Primer

The Body Horror Of The Gig Economy, How Sleep Mode Borrowed From Get Out And Severance

Body horror is having a moment. The most unsettling version of it is not vampiric. It is economic. A primer on the lineage that runs from Get Out into Severance into Sleep Mode.
Body Horror Books Gig Economy
Social Horror Novels
Sleep Mode
Horror About Labor Exploitation
Books Like Get Out
Thriller About Sleep Technology
Investigating the Wicked Book Three: When the Hunt Turns Inward
July 17, 2026Book Spotlight

Investigating the Wicked Book Three: When the Hunt Turns Inward

A spoiler light spotlight on Investigating the Wicked Book Three, the darkest book yet, where Kavel leads the hunt west and starts to become the thing he was raised to destroy.
Investigating the Wicked
Dark Fantasy
Morally Gray
Two Free Browser Games You Can Play In Minutes
July 14, 2026Games

Two Free Browser Games You Can Play In Minutes

A short, honest roundup of two free browser games I made. Orchard Deck is a cozy card collector you can sink an evening into, and World 11 is a competitive World Cup draft roguelike. Both are free, both run instantly in the browser, no install, no purchases.
Free Browser Games
Orchard Deck
World 11
Indie Games
Games You Can Play In Minutes
Investigating the Wicked Book Two: The Order Stops Hiding
July 10, 2026Book Spotlight

Investigating the Wicked Book Two: The Order Stops Hiding

A spoiler light spotlight on Investigating the Wicked Book Two, where the last hunters are pulled back into a team and the order finally goes public against the conspiracy erasing it.
Investigating the Wicked
Dark Fantasy
Book Series
World 11 Lets You Draft Football Legends Across Eras In Your Browser
July 7, 2026Games

World 11 Lets You Draft Football Legends Across Eras In Your Browser

World 11 is my free World Cup draft roguelike. Spin a random nation and year, draft one real player per position from that squad, build chemistry, then send your cross-era team through a fourteen-match gauntlet and chase an unbeaten cup. Plays in the browser, no install.
World 11
Football Games
Free Browser Games
Draft Games
Roguelike
Books Like Arrival And Recursion For Readers Who Want Quiet Literary Sci-Fi About Ordinary People
July 3, 2026Comp Comparison

Books Like Arrival And Recursion For Readers Who Want Quiet Literary Sci-Fi About Ordinary People

Six novels for readers who loved Arrival or Story of Your Life and want literary sci-fi served through one quiet narrator. No space battles, no portals, just the human cost of an enormous truth.
Books Like Arrival
Quiet Literary Science Fiction
Books Like Ted Chiang
Adjacent Novel
Introspective Sci-Fi
Literary Sci-Fi
Investigating the Wicked Book One: The Dark Fantasy Mystery That Starts the Series
July 3, 2026Book Spotlight

Investigating the Wicked Book One: The Dark Fantasy Mystery That Starts the Series

A spoiler light spotlight on Investigating the Wicked Book One, the front door to a dark fantasy mystery series about the last hunters of evil in the world of Strohr.
Investigating the Wicked
Dark Fantasy
Monster Hunter
Orchard Deck Is My Free Cozy Card Game You Can Play In The Browser
June 30, 2026Games

Orchard Deck Is My Free Cozy Card Game You Can Play In The Browser

Orchard Deck is a free cozy card-collection game about a line of apple folk. Spin a slot machine for chibi cards, plant them for idle coins, donate sets to a museum, breed new ones, and play through a three-act story. No purchases, no install, runs in your browser.
Orchard Deck
Cozy Games
Free Browser Games
Card Games
Idle Games
Books Like Tana French If You Want Atmospheric Detective Novels With Small Town Secrets
June 26, 2026Comp Comparison

Books Like Tana French If You Want Atmospheric Detective Novels With Small Town Secrets

Five novels for Tana French fans between Dublin Murder Squad releases. The same heavy atmosphere, the same returning detective with personal history, the same slow-burn investigation that lets the place do half the work.
Books Like Tana French
Atmospheric Detective Novels
Small Town Murder Mystery Books
Shadows of Ravenshore
Books Like In The Woods
Island Murder Mystery
Investigating the Wicked: The Comic (Arc One, The Silent Village)
June 26, 2026Comic

Investigating the Wicked: The Comic (Arc One, The Silent Village)

Arc One of Investigating the Wicked, retold as a full color graphic novel. A spoiler light look at The Silent Village and why the comic is the gentlest door into the world of Strohr.
Investigating the Wicked
Comic
Graphic Novel
Dark Fantasy
Investigating the Wicked: Where to Start the Dark Fantasy Series
June 23, 2026Series Primer

Investigating the Wicked: Where to Start the Dark Fantasy Series

A spoiler free guide to the Investigating the Wicked dark fantasy mystery series, the reading order, and where a new reader should begin.
Investigating the Wicked
Dark Fantasy
Book Series
Reading Order
June 21, 2026Engineering

How I Migrated Production To Kubernetes With Zero Downtime

The real story of moving a production app from Docker Compose to K3s Kubernetes without a single minute of downtime, and why running both environments in parallel is the only sane way to do it.
Kubernetes
K3s
DevOps
Zero Downtime Deployment
Docker
June 20, 2026Engineering

How I Made An API Three Times Faster Without A Rewrite

A slow API almost never needs a rewrite. It needs you to find the handful of places where the time actually goes. Here is the order I work in, and how it added up to a 3x speedup across more than a hundred endpoints.
API Performance
Database Optimization
Redis Caching
PostgreSQL
Backend Engineering
Theron Of The Investigators, A Character Profile Of The Mentor Who Was Made Not Born
June 19, 2026Character Profile

Theron Of The Investigators, A Character Profile Of The Mentor Who Was Made Not Born

A character profile of Theron, the elder Investigator in the dark fantasy saga Investigating the Wicked. The mentor who broke the order's rules to exist, and the rules he keeps breaking to stay alive.
Fantasy Mentor Characters
Investigating the Wicked
Dark Fantasy Character Profiles
Mentor Archetype Fantasy
Made Not Born Magic
Forbidden Magic Fantasy
June 18, 2026Engineering

How I Built Tool Index, A Real SaaS, Solo In Under A Month

Tool Index is a working directory product with instant search, payments, and an admin queue, built by one person in under a month. Here is what made that pace possible, and what I would tell a founder who wants the same.
SaaS Development
Solo Founder
MVP Development
SvelteKit
Meilisearch
June 17, 2026Engineering

How I Train Realistic LoRA Models For Products And Brands

Generic AI does not know your product, your founder, or your mascot, so it guesses differently every time. A trained LoRA fixes that. Here is what actually decides whether the output looks right, and it is mostly the part people skip.
LoRA Training
AI Image Generation
Fine Tuning
Generative AI
Brand Assets
June 16, 2026Engineering

AI Agents That Work In Production Need Evaluators, Not Bigger Prompts

Every AI agent demo looks great and most fall apart on the second real input. The thing that separates a toy from a system you can leave running is not a cleverer prompt. It is evaluators and quality gates. Here is what that means in practice.
AI Agents
LLM
Production AI
Multi Agent Systems
Automation
How I Built Orchard Deck, A Cozy Card Collectathon, In Godot
June 15, 2026Devlog

How I Built Orchard Deck, A Cozy Card Collectathon, In Godot

A devlog on Orchard Deck, a free cozy collectathon about a line of apple folk. Spin a slot machine for chibi cards, plant them for idle income, donate sets to a museum, breed new ones, and fight a three-act campaign. One currency, earned entirely in game.
Orchard Deck
Godot Game Devlog
Indie Game Development
Cozy Games
Collectathon
How I Built World 11, A World Cup Draft Roguelike, In Godot
June 15, 2026Devlog

How I Built World 11, A World Cup Draft Roguelike, In Godot

The full devlog behind World 11, a free browser game where you draft real football legends from every era and run them through a World Cup gauntlet. The draft loop, the seeded match engine, free-licensed player faces, and how I tuned it so winning actually means something.
World 11
Godot Game Devlog
Indie Game Development
Football Game
Roguelike
June 15, 2026Engineering

How I Build Multi-Tenant SaaS On Postgres Schema Isolation

Every SaaS eventually has to answer one question. How do you keep one customer's data completely separate from another's. Here is the approach I use in production for 150+ organizations, and the tradeoffs behind it.
Multi-Tenant
SaaS Architecture
PostgreSQL
Database Design
Backend Engineering
June 14, 2026Engineering

How I Add Payments To A Product Without The Leaks

The checkout button is the easy 10% of payments. The other 90% is webhooks and edge cases, and it is where products quietly leak money or hand out access for free. Here is how I keep the money landing correctly.
Payments Integration
Stripe
Subscriptions
Webhooks
SaaS
June 13, 2026Engineering

How I Built An Affiliate Platform From Scratch

An affiliate program lets partners grow your product on channels you could never run ads on. But it only works if the attribution holds up. Here is how I built a full platform, and why tracking is the part that makes or breaks it.
Affiliate Marketing
Referral Systems
SaaS
Growth
Full Stack
Books Like Dark Matter By Blake Crouch For Readers Who Want The Identity Question Without The Multiverse
June 12, 2026Comp Comparison

Books Like Dark Matter By Blake Crouch For Readers Who Want The Identity Question Without The Multiverse

Five thrillers for readers who finished Dark Matter and Recursion and want the same propulsive who-am-I question, without necessarily another multiverse.
Books Like Dark Matter
Books Like Blake Crouch
Identity Thriller Books
Recall
Thrillers Like Dark Matter
Memory Thriller Books
June 12, 2026Engineering

How I Build Web Scrapers That Survive Real Sites

The dangerous failure in scraping is not the scraper that breaks. It is the one that reports success while being silently rejected, so you trust data that was never collected. Here is how I build scrapers that tell the truth.
Web Scraping
Data Extraction
Playwright
Automation
Data Pipelines
June 11, 2026Engineering

What Should It Cost To Build An MVP In 2026

Most quotes start with it depends, which helps nobody. Here is an honest breakdown of what an MVP, a SaaS, or an AI feature actually costs to build with a solo developer in 2026, and what drives the number up or down.
MVP Cost
Software Development Cost
Startup
SaaS
Hiring a Developer
June 10, 2026Engineering

How I Add AI To An Existing Product Without A Rebuild

You do not need to rebuild your product to add AI to it. You need to find the one place AI earns its keep and wire it in cleanly. Here is how I add AI features to products that already exist.
AI Integration
LLM
Product
Generative AI
Backend Engineering
June 9, 2026Working Together

Why A Solo Developer Often Ships Faster Than An Agency

Hiring an agency feels safer than hiring one person. Often it is slower and more expensive for the same result. Here is the honest case for a solo developer, and the honest case against, so you can tell which one your project needs.
Hiring a Developer
Freelance Development
Agency vs Freelancer
Startup
Working Together
June 8, 2026Engineering

How I Ship Fast With AI Tooling Without Shipping Garbage

AI tooling makes a developer faster, and it makes a careless developer faster at producing garbage. The speed is real, but only if the judgment and the checks are real too. Here is how I actually use it.
AI Tooling
Developer Productivity
Software Quality
AI Assisted Development
Engineering
June 7, 2026Engineering

How I Set Up CI/CD So Deploying Is Just A Push

When deploying is a manual ritual, you deploy less, which means bigger and scarier releases. When deploying is a push, you ship small and often. Here is how I set up CI/CD to get there, and why it changes how a team works.
CI/CD
DevOps
Deployment Automation
GitHub Actions
Engineering
June 6, 2026Working Together

How To Scope An MVP So It Actually Ships

Most MVPs do not fail in the building. They fail in the scoping, where every feature feels essential and the thing grows too big to finish. Here is how I cut an idea down to the version that actually ships and proves something.
MVP
Startup
Product Scope
Shipping
Working Together
A Reading Guide To Dark Fantasy Where The Hunter Is The Hunted
June 5, 2026Themes/Genre Primer

A Reading Guide To Dark Fantasy Where The Hunter Is The Hunted

A reading guide to dark fantasy where the hidden enemy has been hunting the heroes for generations. Four series that nail the conspiracy-against-the-hunters shape.
Dark Fantasy Books With Conspiracies
Fantasy Books About Secret Societies
Fantasy Conspiracy Thriller Books
Investigating the Wicked
Dark Fantasy Hidden Enemy
Fantasy Hunter Hunted
Books Like Severance Apple TV If You Want The Quiet Corporate Body Horror
May 29, 2026Comp Comparison

Books Like Severance Apple TV If You Want The Quiet Corporate Body Horror

Five novels for Severance fans between seasons. The same consent-and-identity questions, the same banal corporate horror, the same body that does things its mind never agreed to.
Books Like Severance
Books Like Severance Apple TV
Corporate Body Horror Books
Sleep Mode
Novels Like Severance
Literary Horror
The Locked Room Mystery In A Fantasy Inn, A Five Suspect Breakdown
May 22, 2026Worldbuilding Deep-Dive

The Locked Room Mystery In A Fantasy Inn, A Five Suspect Breakdown

Why the locked room mystery rarely shows up in fantasy, what the genre has to solve to make it work, and how the Antler & Hearth arc in Investigating the Wicked builds a sealed-room puzzle in a magic-having world.
Locked Room Mystery Fantasy
Fantasy Detective Novel
Fantasy Murder Mystery Books
Investigating the Wicked
Fantasy Whodunit
Mystery Craft
Books Like The Witcher Series If You Want A Veteran Monster Hunter Working Cases One At A Time
May 15, 2026Comp Comparison

Books Like The Witcher Series If You Want A Veteran Monster Hunter Working Cases One At A Time

Five book series for Witcher fans who want a stoic monster hunter, episodic cases, and a morally grey medieval world that earns the dark in dark fantasy.
Books Like The Witcher
Dark Fantasy
Monster Hunter Fantasy
Investigating the Wicked
Witcher Alternative Books
Books Like Geralt
Investigating the Wicked: A Dark Fantasy Saga About the Last Monster Hunters of a Dying Order
April 22, 2026Series Spotlight

Investigating the Wicked: A Dark Fantasy Saga About the Last Monster Hunters of a Dying Order

Why I wrote Investigating the Wicked: the world of Strohr, the Investigators' dwindling order, the hidden conspiracy hunting them, and where to start reading for free.
Dark Fantasy
Investigating the Wicked
Monster Hunter Fantasy
Worldbuilding
Medieval Fantasy
Indie Fantasy
Dark Fantasy Series
Kevin Gabeci's Blog