About CJ

Since reading Lloyd Alexander’s Book of Three as a kid, author CJ Parmenter has been a fan of all things sword & sorcery.

Greetings, I’m CJ, author of the Protectors of Xil and now the LitRPG saga Rogue Soul Academy.

I’m an old-school Gen-X TTRPG guy—which I should probably explain stands for Tabletop Role Playing Games. I started with the original D&D box set by Gary Gygax, Gamma World, and later ran a galaxy-spanning Star Frontiers campaign for some college buddies. I’ve been rolling twenty-sided dice and reading fantasy since elementary school, starting with Lloyd Alexander’s Book of Three.

Yes, I write (and talk) like someone who spent too much time reading classic pulp fantasy. My teenage daughters don’t know what I’m saying half the time. The feeling is mutual.

I indie published my first epic fantasy on KU in 2016, and ultimately expanded the story into a trilogy. After that closed a chapter that needed closing, I turned to LitRPG in 2025 because it called to my roots. I discovered I love the genre, and have never had more fun writing anything in my life. I hope you enjoy the results.

I welcome you to join me on the journey, starting with Chapter 1. —CJ

More about

Frequently Asked Questions

Not at all. LitRPG stands for Literary Role-Playing Game—it’s a fantasy subgenre where the characters exist inside a world governed by game-like rules. Think stats, skills, and leveling up, but woven into a real story with real heart and real consequences.

If you’ve ever played a video game RPG and thought, I wish this story were deeper, or if you’ve read epic fantasy and thought, I wish I could see the numbers go up, this is where those two worlds collide and explode in a shower of blinding sparks.

Rogue Soul Academy is designed so the system mechanics enhance the story rather than replace it. You don’t need to know what a d20 is. You don’t need to have played Dungeons & Dragons. If you can root for an underdog, you’re qualified.

A dead thief with a talent for stealing things that don’t belong to him—including other people’s bodies.

In life, Ronan was nobody. A starving kid from the worst slum in the city, with a dying sister and a debt he couldn’t pay. He died badly, in an alley, with a knife in his chest. That should have been the end of his story.

It wasn’t.

Now he’s a Rogue Soul—a rare spirit conscripted into an ancient war between gods—and the only weapon he has is the one skill that kept him alive on the streets: the ability to take what isn’t his and make it work for him. He’s underleveled, outmatched, and absolutely refusing to die… again.

I get them from the same place everyone does… from the Holy Mistress, the Goddess Fate. (She’s very particular about receiving credit.)