If I had to give up just one word it would probably be “suddenly” I know I overuse it and that there are better words but that one just keeps popping up…you know…rather suddenly.
Okay, so I’m gonna be honest. You know that cheugy white girl that likes autumn and pumpkin spice and leggings and fluffy sweaters? It’s me. I’m that girl. I LOVE that beautiful season between the swelter of summer (and since I live within a stone’s throw of a swamp, it does swelter around here) and the deep cold of winter. There is something about that change that is just absolutely refreshing and I cannot get enough.
I think that’s why so many of my stories are based in autumn. I just think it’s a romantic month. Warm drinks and snuggles are pretty much the equation for falling in love, right? I mean, I also have a lot of curses involved in my stories, but I blame Disney for that.
Anywho, for this autumn I have a few writing goals set for myself. So let’s get to it shall we?
I have six, count them SIX stories that are very, very close to being ready to release. My plan is to release at least four of them by the end of the year. I had intended to start with a series, but I decided to go with a bunch of short stories set in the same universe, but not necessarily connected to one another. They are standalones, but they reference one another sometimes? Semi-standalones? I don’t know. Either way. It’s time to release.
I also plan on picking up the reviews. I have dropped the ball there, in part because my brain is like “no one wants to hear your opinion. Hush and drink your pumpkin spiced latte.” But like, even if no one cares what my opinion is, I’m gonna write it anyway. So there.
My third and final goal for this season is to stick to my schedules. I’m so bad at saying I’m going to do something, and then finding excuses to…you know…not do it. So lets fix that. I’m officially 35 years old. Time to grow up. Sorta. Kinda.
The hardest part about being an indie author is establishing and keeping your own goals. I can promise myself every night before bed that I will wake up and do all the things I need to get done when I wake up the next day. I will even mean it. After all, tomorrow is the magical day where I wake up with the energy I had in my twenties and the know-how I earned in my thirties. It is the new, improved me that got a great night of sleep and gained time management skills while I was dreaming about the hot dwarven king from The Hobbit
Anyway, the truth of the matter is that putting everything off until tomorrow is not gonna get anything accomplished. So I am gonna just down my own personal to-do list for the month and see how much we can get accomplished.
There. That doesn’t look so hard. I can do this.
What are your goals for the month? I’d love to hear from you!
Hey everyone! It’s that time again! It’s Indie Book Review time! My name is Rowan, and I am an indie writer who believes that every indie book out there deserve a fair an honest review of the work. I also believe that the terms “bad book” and “good book” are vague and riddled with personal bias, and so I try my best not to use those terms in my reviews. My hope is to match the book to the reader so that everyone gets what they want and to give indie authors what big published authors get: support.
Shall we get started?!?
This week was a weird one so I only got through two books. I know, I know. Shame on me. But I’ve got deadlines too people. And my characters are being difficult about it. So, you know, that’s where I’m at. And, you know, usually this means that I would read more rather than less but that’s not at all what happened this week. So I did what any woman would do. I put on a crown and a fancy dress and I picked up my E-reader.
I super-swear that this is an accurate picture of me:
Yeah….totally me….uh-huh….yup. Anyway….
Book One:
Author: Gabrielle Olexa
Genre: Literary Fiction. Short Fiction. Slice of life. Romantic but not romance.
Cost: $0.99
Synopsis: There are two main characters (three if you wanna count the cat) and this story follows them as they live their lives but, in my less than humble opinion, don’t do a great job at it. It’s hard to say what the story was “about” because it’s more like a series of snapshots as to what happens when two people who are just trying to live their loves crash into one another.
What I liked: Rather than bog a reader down with lots of extras, this short story hits you with a lot of meaning in a fairly short amount of time. It took me about…80 minutes to read, start to finish…and in that time I got to really know the characters, want good things for them, and got my heart all twisted up. Gabrielle has written a truly great story, riff with symbolism and believably. The ending made me go “Wait, there’s no more?” which I think is amazing in and of itself. I wont spoil it for you. But if you are into contemporary stories that show people in situations of “could be” then this is definitely something you should dive into. Also…I was devastated that this is, so far, the only story that Gabrielle has published. I require more.
This book might be for you if: You are more about characters than plot. If you want to get invested in a moment. If you have been having a hard time reading long form literature lately and really want to get lost in something. If you like incredibly well done descriptions that make your heart ache…please pick this book up.
Book Two:
Behind Blue Eyes: A Cyberpunk Noir Thriller
Author: Anna Mocikat
Genre: Cyberpunk. Gritty Thriller. A dash of Romance.
Cost: $2.99
Reviewers Note: I’m gonna tell you right now, that this kind of book is my BIAS. I like gritty, dark stories. I like romance. I am absolutely the target audience that this book was intended for. So if I seem especially enthusiastic…it’s because I am and I feel like I should be really upfront with that.
Synopsis: Nephilim (who I am gonna call Neph because I keep spelling the dang name wrong) is a cybernetic bad-ass lady who has been constructed to be the best bamf that ever bamf’ed on the planet. She is part of a perfect strike team of bamf’s that take down those who would attempt to harm a the perfect society that they dwell in…or so she thinks. I mean, if you know anything about cyberpunk you are gonna be like…”Oh sweetie” before chapter one is even done with. Fricken corpos. Anyway. A thing happens (I’m going to encourage you to go read, because she describes the glitch better than I do) and Neph ends up separate from everything she knew and…well…believed. She runs into Jake who is as organic homegrown human as ever there was. Hijinks ensue. And if I could heart eyes the hijinks…I would. This is action driven technothriller romance with a “fuck the megacoprs” vibe and I am here for it.
This book might be for you if: You are a fan of Richard K. Dick. If you like great descriptions and worldbuilding and you have a deep seeded desire to maybe blow up Wall Street someday. If you like powerful female characters and want the name Metatron tattooed on your neck for fun-sies. If you are a nerdy girl with a goth vibe who wanted to be a little more Faith than Buffy…get this.
That’s all folks! Now get out there and go read!
Hey there fellow book lovers! Rowan here with my very first Indie Book Review.
I’ve been a writer since I was a teenager. I’ve been a professional ghostwriter for almost five years. As a ghostwriter, I’ve worked for indie authors, for small press publishers, and even the Big Five (or Big Six depending on how you wanna break that down). I’ve loved my work, but recently I’ve decided that I really want to strike out on my own and get my own stuff published.
But I don’t want to work with the Big Five. I’ve got a lot of personal reasons why I made that decision but ultimately it comes down to the fact that I wanted to have control over my work. The Big Five are guilty of over-focusing on market trends and giving themselves a pat on the back for the bare minimum of diverse publications. There’s more to it than that, but you get the idea.
However, I also know that Indie Writing isn’t something that can accomplish all by themselves. The reason the Big Five and even small publishing have the power that they do is because they have numbers. Indie writers need to stick together. We need to lift each other up. We need to support one another. I need to support y’all.
So I decided that I was going to review one indie book a week. I am a full time, work-from-home writer. I average reading around 60 books a year as it is. I decided to jump on twitter and make a little tweet letting people know that I was going to do this.
And good gracious. Y’all were enthusiastic. There were so many notifications. Not just from people pushing their own work (love that hustle) but also from those who were like “Hey my friend published a book!” (love the support). I was so, so happy to see all these awesome lifts. But I also knew that having just one book a week was not going to cut it. So every Thursday is just going to be Indie Review Day, and that means whatever books I managed to get through are the ones that I will be reviewing. Minimum of one. Who knows what the maximum will be.
Now, here’s the thing. If you are coming here to hear me trash-talk Indie novels, you have come to the wrong place. I’ve heard all the nay-saying, and I’m not here for that. “The grammar is bad!” Well, this person may not have had access to a top tier editor. “The plot was confusing” Well, that may be true, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t something great about it. “The characters were too diverse/stereotypical/unbelievable/whatever.” Maybe so, but that doesn’t invalidate them. I think it’s become too easy to tear people down than build them up.
I believe that pretty much every novel out there has an audience. Even if a book isn’t my speed, that doesn’t mean that its not someone’s exact cup of tea. I’m not here to gatekeep what makes a good or bad novel. There are plenty of super popular novels out there that I DNF’ed because I didn’t like it. But what I like is just an opinion. So I will be striving to give a fair and honest review in the hopes that a book, no matter how niche, finds the person who loves it.
All that being said, this is the first round, and I’ll probably fiddle with the format in the upcoming weeks. That being said, I only have two reviews for y’all this week because I only had two days to read. He you go!
So let’s do this:
Book 1:
Reflections: A RIFT IN THE VEIL
Author: Kima Blaze
Genre: Urban Fantasy, Occult Horror, Magical Modernism
Cost: $0.99
Synopsis: Sara Hearth is a witch. As a witch, she has to keep the world from going sideways. When she wakes up from what is possibly the most amusing prophecy dream I have ever read, she is worried that her job is about to get a lot harder. And, without spoiling anything, she isn’t wrong. Things get CRAZY. Between dead neighbors, vanishing friends, and sharks in tutus, Sara has to deal with a lot. She’s lucky that she has pretty much the sweetest, most supportive partner ever (honestly my favorite part of this story) and that she’s fighting for those she cares about.
What I liked: Super supportive spouse. The descriptions of the ritual spell casting. Puppy friends. And magically powered ladies. The magic was the best thought out part of this series, hands down. Salt and Iron, calling the Four Quarters, utilizing elements and besoms and all kinds of neat stuff.
This book might be for you if: You are into fast paced, straight-forward stories that has more heart than polish. It is inexpensive and I read it in just a little over an hour. It is the prequel to a trilogy if you are the kind of person who wants more.
Book 2:
One Step From Extinction: Stories
Author: Jon Sauve
Genre: Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction (Anthology of short stories)
Cost: $3.99
Synopsis: This is a series of short stories with science-fiction themes. But I honestly feel like it’s more than that. There are some really incredible lines that make you think. The stories are bite sized pieces of questions about the universe and what it might be like to see a whole universe at once. It layers the idea of watching the birth of a sun with the realness of a home movie. Also there was this line in the first story: “with a few thousand years of advanced warning, the skin of the universe burst” and isn’t that just fantastic?
What I liked: I could sit there for ten or fifteen minutes and just get a whole story read. Each story was it’s own thing, and didn’t spoon feed what was going on to you. Good grammar and great use of language in general. There was no wasted time with purple prose or massive, unnecessary descriptions. Succinct and cerebral. Also, one of the stories was a mini murder mystery…and like…I can’t say no to murder mysteries in science fiction settings.
This Book Might be for You if: You just want to read a little sci fi before clocking in for work. Or you want to think about the complexity of the universe. Or if you just want some sci fi that doesn’t spend twenty pages explaining how a setting got to be what it was but rather asks you to infer on character conversations what happened and what the universe is like now. Or clone bases murder mystery thrillers. Or…you get the idea. If you wanna speculate about the social ideas of letting clones interact with one another, and how they might develop individually.
I hate waking up.
0/10. I don’t like it.
It doesn’t seem to matter what time I go to bed. What I do before I go to sleep. What time I set an alarm for, if I bother to set one at all. I absolutely, 100%, hate waking up in the morning. Every single morning the actual act of getting out of bed is a Herculean act because what I’d really rather do is snuggle back into my pillow, pull up an audiobook, and snooze while some dulcet toned narrator works their magic through my headphones.
This is what happens when you have depression. The night before I spent thirty minutes mentally planning all the things I’m going to do the following day and when I wake up all of those goals have suddenly become burdens. What’s the point of getting up when I know very well that I’m not actually going to clean out that closet. That there will be emails from work that I don’t want to answer. That big, healthy breakfast I’d been dreaming about only eight hours before is nothing but the dishes that I don’t want to do.
But sooner or later it happens. I’ll be there, mindlessly scrolling TikTok or pushing past last nights water bottle to find whatever book I’ve been meaning to read and there will be a pat pat pat on my bedroom door.
Is it a goblin? Is it a ghost? Is it Publisher’s Clearing House with a check for half a million dollars?
Answer? No.
It’s Rhiannon.
I didn’t actually mean to adopt Rhiannon. I went to the cat shelter sometime last year with the intention of adopting a completely different cat. But she was sprawled out on the very top shelf in the kitten room, one silver paw dangling, looking like a miniature work of art. The love, on my part, was instant. She was so dang cute. A tiny silver feline princess with little gray stripes. I went to pet her. She sprang up, crawled under a toy chest, and hid.
Pretty much how I respond when someone goes to touch me.
I adopted Rhiannon and her brother Odin. Rhiannon wanted nothing to do with me. Odin wanted to be in everything. Sadly, Odin didn’t stay with us, which is a post for another time. Rhiannon, however, stuck around. For the first nine weeks she was in my house she stayed tucked away in whatever hidey spot that she could find, absolutely unwilling to be sociable. Being unsociable myself, I didn’t push. The cat center had made it clear that Rhiannon and her liter had been found taped up in a box. She didn’t trust humans. It was going to take a lot of time.
Same, little girl.
Last winter was a cold one. And I spent a good deal of it parked in front of the fireplace, trying to figure out which half-finished novel I was going to dedicate myself to so that I could start publishing. I have a love of fireplaces. The house my semi-nomadic family had stayed in the longest had come with a wood burning stove as a means of central heat. There is something about the crackle of fire and the pop of logs that has always soothed me. Imagine my surprise when, after digging through two different thumbdrives of unfinished work, I felt a small nudge against my toes.
There she was, this pint sized beauty, not looking at me, but starring into the fire. She’d been ignoring me for weeks save for peering around the fridge when I filled her food dishes, but there she was.
The next morning she was sitting outside my bedroom door, waiting for me to go about my morning routine of coffee, some form of breakfast, and totting my laptop to whatever space I wanted to write in. As encouragement, I opened a treat box and tossed a few for her to chase after. Together we curled up in front of a new fire, and I picked a novel to work on.
This became a habit for the pair of us. An amusing way to wake up for me. I open the door and there she would be, starring up at me with big green eyes, and scurrying off to the kitchen so that she could chase treats while my coffee brewed. It made waking up easier, for a while. Something to look forward too.
But, as anyone with depression knows, just because something works for a while, doesn’t mean that it works forever. A few weeks after establishing our rhythm I had a bad morning. One of those mornings where everything just falls on you. A long, ugly morning where your worst thoughts become your only thoughts and no matter how hard you try to pull yourself out of it, you just get sucked in deeper.
That’s when I heard it for the first time. pat pat pat. A rustle at my door. I’ll be honest, at first I ignored it. My apartment is the mother in law suite over a well used garage. The rent is cheap but the garage is well used. I assumed that it was someone puttering around below and pulled a blanket up. The sound came again, and again. I started to get annoyed. Didn’t anyone realize I was having a mental break down? Couldn’t they just leave me and my bitter, black coffee thoughts alone? All my ugly thoughts were over ridden with aggrieved curiosity. Finally, I got up. I yanked open the bedroom door and there she was, starring up at me with the international look of an annoyed cat.
For about 0.003 seconds I was pissed. Who did this cat think she was? I was the lady of the house, not her. And yet, as I contemplated shutting the door and returning to my den of self-loathing, I had to come to terms with the fact that I was out of bed. That I could start my day. And also that my cat was pretty sure that it was time to chase some treats.
I’m not saying that everyone with depression should get a cat. But like…maybe just stop by your local SPCA and see if anything jumps out at you.
Drables of an Indie Author 