Tag: Spreading the Self-Pub Love Page 2 of 4

I had so much fun with this last year (and grew my TBR–plus a few others’), that I’m bringing it back. In the spirit of “a rising tide lifts all boats,” for Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week I wanted to give some Self-Published authors a chance to spread some love.

(They also get to do a bit of self-promotion, I mean, c’mon, it’s hard out here…)
Spreading the Self-Pub Love in 20205 with JCM Berne (A returning guest!)

An Elevator Pitch for Something You Love

Time-Marked Warlock by Shami Stovall

A warlock can create his own Groundhog Day. What will he do when, for him, time is no object? Solve murders, heal souls, and take as many runs as he needs to craft a perfect day. Bill Murray not included.

My Elevator Pitch by JCM Berne

After waking up from a dreamless death with a knife in his eye and no memory of his previous life, a cursed dwarf, a water witch, and his very good dog Blink fight anyone they come across. She’s seeking vengeance and he’s just hoping one of their enemies finds a way to kill him for good.

About this Author
Joe (JCM) Berne writes in a vain attempt to retrocon the tens thousands of hours and dollars he’s spent on comic books, genre fiction, and B movies into job training instead of ‘just a useless hobby.’ And to make his mother proud: results forthcoming.

Website ~ Bluesky ~ Twitter ~ Facebook ~ Instagram ~ YouTube

Be sure to check out Time-Marked Warlock and Grimdwarf, Vol 1: Cursed (admittedly difficult since he hasn’t released it yet, but keep looking!), let’s show them both some love!

Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week Footer

Image by Dawn Hudson/Prawny from PublicDomainPictures.net
The 2025 Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week Logo was made by Witty and Sarcastic Book Club

Spreading the Self-Pub Love in 2025 with Livia J. Elliot

By HCNewton

On July 22, 2025

In Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week

(They also get to do a bit of self-promotion, I mean, c’mon, it’s hard out here…)
Spreading the Self-Pub Love in 20205 with Livia J. Elliot

An Elevator Pitch for Something You Love

The Scroungers by Thomas J. Devens

The Lords have fallen. It was the war to end all wars. Violence had plagued the Fractured Kingdoms since the fall of the Old Empire. But as the generals and the lords died in the Valley of Torglen, the folk looked beyond their allegiances. Beyond their nations.

Dark, grim, and written in a concise, no-nonsense prose that’s both moody and mood-setting. Perfect for fans of Abercrombie.

My Elevator Pitches by Livia J. Elliot

The Genesis of Change: Two alchemists, each sent on a mission by the leader of The Orders—The Rector. Élan must shatter their mentee’s humanity to train her as an alchemist, while Verve must define the unexplainable existing within a respected healer. When their missions reveal clues that could reformulate alchemy, they’ll edge closer to fathom The Rector’s goal while facing an endless conundrum—to remain as is, or to learn and adapt. The genesis of change is near.

Dance With Me: In a world of beauty, a ceramic-made ballerina awakens atop her music box. She must dance for her elven owners, and so her ballet goes on and on. They praise her elegance, her poise and balance, until one day she falls and her ceramic fractures—but the ballerina dances again, ignoring her ever-increasing fissures. The music plays, captivating and demanding… but should she dance? Even when what she once loved becomes a trap?

About this Author
Livia J. Elliot writes dark fantasy with themes centred around struggle, control, identity, and bias. She’s the lead writer of Unearthed Stories, an app publishing interactive fantasy and sci-fi for adult readers. Livia also hosts the podcast Books Undone, featuring literary analyses of speculative fiction. She’s based in Australia, and currently releasing two series: Records of the Order (philosophical dark fantasy) and Tales of the Bookshelves (literary fantasy).

Twitter ~ Substack

Be sure to check out The Scroungers, The Genesis of Change and Dance with Me, let’s show them all some love!

Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week Footer

Image by Dawn Hudson/Prawny from PublicDomainPictures.net
The 2025 Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week Logo was made by Witty and Sarcastic Book Club

Spreading the Self-Pub Love in 2025 with Tom Bookbeard

By HCNewton

On July 21, 2025

In Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week

(They also get to do a bit of self-promotion, I mean, c’mon, it’s hard out here…)
Spreading the Self-Pub Love in 20205 with Tom Bookbeard (A returning guest!)

An Elevator Pitch for Something You Love

Where Blood Runs Gold by A.C. Cross

Red Dead Redemption meets Bone Tomahawk, starring the Punisher.

A.C. Cross always takes me on a wild ride no matter what genre he’s writing in. But Where Blood Runs Gold feels like his highlight reel book. I reviewed this book for FanFiAddict in January this year after criminally allowing it to sit on my TBR for ages. Reviewing the Weird Western “Where Blood Runs Gold” by A.C. Cross.

My Elevator Pitch by Tom Bookbeard

Cover to be Revealed
The Corsair: Jim Hawkins sides with the pirates instead. And the ships can fly.

My debut novel is coming soon …

About this Author
I like books, I have a beard; I’m Tom Bookbeard. Former chef, now a podcast host, a writer of fantasy stories about sky pirates and TTRPG nerd.

Secret Scribes ~ Tom Bookbeard | FanFiAddict ~ The Four Beardsmen of the Bookpocalypse

Be sure to check out Tom Bookbeard’s activities and Where Blood Runs Gold, let’s show them both some love!

Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week Footer

Image by Dawn Hudson/Prawny from PublicDomainPictures.net
The 2025 Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week Logo was made by Witty and Sarcastic Book Club

Spreading the Self-Pub Love in 2025 with K. Q. Watson

By HCNewton

On July 21, 2025

In Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week

(They also get to do a bit of self-promotion, I mean, c’mon, it’s hard out here…)
Spreading the Self-Pub Love in 20205 with K. Q. Watson
I’m bending the rules a little bit here, Watson describes herself as “unfamiliar with other self published works.” Which makes her a great person to start the week with–Self-Published Author Appreciation Week’s purpose is to celebrate and spread the word about self-published authors, right? So here’s a chance to get her familiar with some–either from her inclusion in this series (and I hope she checks out later installments) or through comments here.

My Elevator Pitch by K. Q. Watson

Clipped is the story of Zak, an engineer up in the Heavens, where the Exalted reign over Earth. After his son is born without wings, and cast from the Heavens, Zak chooses to sacrifice his own wings and fall to earth.

There, he must live as a mortal among mortals in a world ruined by corruption and sin. As he fights to find his place in this new existence, he is confronted by deadly angel hunters, false prophets, and cities of hedonism and blasphemy.

In his travels he comes across a conspiracy that could bring down the Heavens and make every exalted Angel above fall to the hell on earth below.

About this Author
K. Q. Watson is the cyborg that you don’t take home to meet your parents. She looks innocuous and gentle, but there are oodles of satanic death metal songs continually playing in her head. Sometimes, when she’s all alone, she thinks back to some of her favourite episodes of Intervention and the best scenes from The People Under the Stairs.

She writes because what else is she going to do, let’s be real here.

One legged Canadian who likes The Dark Crystal more than she will ever like you.

The characters in her head keep her sane.

Website ~ Kit.com ~ Bluesky ~ TikTok

Be sure to check out Clipped and show it some love!

Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week Footer

Image by Dawn Hudson/Prawny from PublicDomainPictures.net
The 2025 Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week Logo was made by Witty and Sarcastic Book Club

Spreading the Self-Pub Love This Week

By HCNewton

On July 21, 2025

In Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week

(updated and modified 7/21/25)

Once again, it’s Self-Published Author Appreciation Week. This year, I’m all about spreading the love for self-published works…

This is our annual tribute to those authors who take it all on themselves–all the work, all the risks, all the costs, and all the (too small) rewards. They’re the independents, the mavericks, the risk-takers, those who won’t let their creative vision be reined in by others, they’re out there doing things on their own (with a small group of others they’ve teamed up with on their own). These are the Mal Reynoldses of the Literary World.

Really, every week on this blog is Author Appreciation Week, but you can see why we’re eager to take one week to focus on the Self-Pub warriors among them, right? I want to throw out my appreciation as well to Jodie of Witty & Sarcastic Book Club who started this some time back, and keeps it going.

How am I going to show my appreciation/love this year? Well, hopefully, I’ll be able to find the time to write posts about some recent self-published reads of mine and some great lists of Self-Published books I’ve read already for you to check out (this honestly doesn’t seem likely, but here’s hoping!). I will, of course, have my annually updated lists of Self-Published works by Genre that I’ve talked about on this site. I will also have four quick(ish) videos talking with some Self-Published Authors about the Business-side of Self-Publishing (more on that later today)

But the big focus this year is on Spreading the Self-Pub Love (see the title of this post). I enjoyed doing it last year, and wanted to do it again. The Number One thing that Self-Published Authors need are readers to appreciate them–and who better to recommend some than other self-published authors? So I’ve asked some to drop by and recommend a self-published book that deserves more eyeballs. (you’ll note that some of these authors couldn’t/wouldn’t limit themselves to one…such mavericks).

The featured posts this week will come from some names familiar to readers of this blog, and a good number of new names (hopefully they’ll pop up enough to be familiar to you soon):

JCM Berne
Tom Bookbeard
A.J. Calvin
Thomas J Devens
Livia J. Elliot
Shannon Knight
James T. Lambert

David T. List
Vanessa Ricci-Thode
Michael Michel
DB Rook
Ben Schenkman
K. Q. Watson

Stick around and see what they recommend, and have to offer themselves!

Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week Footer

The 2025 Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week Logo was made by Witty and Sarcastic Book Club

Looking Back at a Week of Spreading the Self-Pub Love

By HCNewton

On July 27, 2024

In Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week

Here we are at the end of Self-Published Author Appreciation Week, and wow, there’ve been a lot of great posts this year. I hope you all have spent time on the SPAAW Hub to read it all. This year, in case you didn’t notice was all about spreading the love for self-published works…
Spreading the Self-Pub Love This year, I asked a number of Self-Published authors to plug their newest–or their soon-to-be-released–book and to talk about a self-published work they wanted to get extra eye-balls on.

We heard from:

Anca Antoci
JCM Berne
Tom Bookbeard
A.J. Calvin
Andi Ewington
Karl Forshaw
Shannon Knight
David T List

Rebecca Carey Lyles
H.C. Newell
Nathan Ogloff
Paul Regnier
DB Rook
Marie Sinadjan
D.H. Willison
Tao Wong

I want to thank them for their time and contributions, yet one more time. Each of you have increased by TBR.

So, what was mentioned by these august writers (in July)? Thirty-nine titles from all sorts of genres. Renia by Karl Forshaw, with three mentions, was the most popular. Coming in second was The Crew by Sadir S. Samir and Callus & Crow by DB Rook. But if we took away mentions by the authors themselves, Renia and The Crew tied for first, and everything else tied for second. But this wasn’t a popularity contest…this was a sharing the love-fest, and there’s a lot of stuff to love.

(Still, Forshaw and Rook–pat yourselves on the back.)

Cover to be Revealed

Thanks again to all who participated. Thanks to all who read. And thank you to all of those Self-Published Authors out there. I hope you felt appreciated this week.

Image by Monika from Pixabay
The 2024 Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week Logo was made by Witty and Sarcastic Book Club

Spreading the Self-Pub Love with Tao Wong

By HCNewton

On July 26, 2024

In Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week

Self-Published Author Appreciation Week '24 Banner
In the spirit of “a rising tide lifts all boats,” this year for Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week I wanted to give some Self-Published authors a chance to spread some love (while also indulging in a bit of self-promotion, I mean, c’mon, it’s hard out here…)
Spreading the Self-Pub Love with Tao Wong

An Elevator Pitch for Something You Love

Card Mage: Slumdog Deckbuilder by Benedict Patrick

It’s a LitRPG based on card games, with a slower buildup than most progression fantasy books, but with fascinating mechanics that are as much a consequence of the main characters social standing as it is the rules of the game itself. It leaves a ton of space to grow the world while also hinting at deeper mysteries.

My Elevator Pitch by Tao Wong

Food, magic and trouble all collide in the Nameless Restaurant as we return to the world’s most delightfully chaotic dining establishment. Chaotic Aperitifs is the second work in the Hidden Dishes series, a cozy cooking fantasy that features powerful retired wizards, sassy servers and supernatural guests in equal parts.

About this Author
Tao Wong is a full-time author in the scifi and fantasy genres, writing predominantly in the LitRPG and xianxia sub-genres. A multiple times international Amazon bestseller, he is best known for the System Apocalypse and A Thousand Li universes, with over 40 full-length novels and numerous shorter works published. Tao was a finalist for the Kindle Storyteller UK Award in 2021.

Threads ~ Twitter ~ Facebook ~ Website

Be sure to check out Card Mage: Slumdog Deckbuilder and Chaotic Aperitif, let’s show them both some love!

Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week Footer

Image by Monika from Pixabay
The 2024 Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week Logo was made by Witty and Sarcastic Book Club

Spreading the Self-Pub Love with D.H. Willison

By HCNewton

On July 26, 2024

In Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week

An Elevator Pitch for Something You Love

The Last of Her Kind by Annabelle Hawthorne

A disillusioned veteran meets a kindhearted librarian who’s actually a predatory spider-woman. No, this is not metaphoric, nor is she some costume-wearing superhero. She’s physically half spider.

Yes, this is actually a serious book, yes, it’s a romance, and yes, I enjoyed the heck out of it! I love finding stories that refuse to paint between the lines, that fall far enough outside typical genre norms to make you question it.

Note: there’s a bit of steam, so if that’s not your thing, be warned. But it’s a great story, with well-written characters which I enjoyed a lot.

Goodreads

My Elevator Pitch by D.H. Willison

Have a look at my newly released novel, The Forest of Fate: A Tale of Adventure, Romance, and Forgiveness

It’s us against the forest.

Stripped of weapons and exiled to the worst wilderness in the land, we have a three-week trek to reach a friendly settlement. My companion? An icy, aristocratic wolf woman who looted an ancient artifact from the only safe haven in the Forest of Nightmares.

Will we work together to survive this nightmare?

Heart-pounding survival scenes and narrow escapes from all manners of creepy creatures blend with witty banter and cozy moments by the campfire in The Forest of Fate.

e-Book ~ Paperback

About this Author
Hi, I’m D. H. Willison, and I write fantasy adventures that blend dark and creepy creature encounters with witty banter and cozy moments by the campfire. I’ve lived or worked in over a dozen countries and never missed the chance to visit a historic site. From castle dungeons, to catacombs, to the holds of tall ships, to the tunnels of the Maginot Line, I’ve had the good fortune to see a lot. One of my main themes is alternate and creative conflict resolution. The same situations are often seen by cultures quite differently. Sometimes it leads to conflict, sometimes to hilarity. Both make for a great story.

Join us on the fantastical world of Arvia. Beneath lush colorful landscapes, danger lurks. From carnivorous trees to giant mythic monsters, mere humans are way out of their depth on Arvia. Survival depends on wits and creativity more often than mighty swords, mystic artifacts, or magical powers. And yet… monsters are often overcome with empathy rather than explosions, and friendships are forged in the strangest of circumstances.

Website ~ Goodreads ~ Instagram ~ Bluesky ~ Twitter ~ Facebook

Be sure to check out The Last of Her Kind and The Forest of Fate: A Tale of Adventure, Romance, and Forgiveness, let’s show them both some love!

Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week Footer

Image by Monika from Pixabay
The 2024 Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week Logo was made by Witty and Sarcastic Book Club

Spreading the Self-Pub Love with Marie Sinadjan

By HCNewton

On July 26, 2024

In Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week

An Elevator Pitch for Something You Love

The Kindred Chronicles: Between Two Worlds by D.A. Chan

I’ve rarely heard of other Filipino authors being mentioned during SPAAW (or around Twitter in general) so I’d like to introduce everyone to The Kindred Chronicles: Between Two Worlds by D.A. Chan, an action-packed fantasy/scifi novel with a little of everything — cool powers, romance, drama, political intrigue, even its own language! Plus it’s on its way to being adapted into an animated series.

My Elevator Pitch by Marie Sinadjan

Take a chilling road trip through the United Kingdom with Bloody Hell: An Anthology of UK Indie Horror, out this August 1st!

About this Author
I’m Marie Sinadjan, a Filipino SFFH author currently based in the UK. I’m the co-author of The Prophecies of Ragnarok, a Norse myth new adult urban fantasy trilogy, and I also have several short stories published in anthologies and literary journals.

A list of my works can be found here. You can find me online (mostly on Twitter) at @marienettist or at www.mariesinadjan.com.

Website ~ Twitter ~ Works

Be sure to check out Bloody Hell: An Anthology of UK Indie Horror and The Kindred Chronicles: Between Two Worlds, let’s show them both some love!

Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week Footer

Image by Monika from Pixabay
The 2024 Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week Logo was made by Witty and Sarcastic Book Club

Spreading the Self-Pub Love with DB Rook

By HCNewton

On July 25, 2024

In Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week

An Elevator Pitch for Something You Love

Renia by Karl Forshaw

A unique fantasy noir with vibrant and relatable characters that choose their own path through mystery, hardship and the intriguing world of Luna Ruinam.

My Elevator Pitch by DB Rook

A western flavoured odyssey of revenge and redemption played out across a wayward, post-apocalyptic, world.

About this Author
DB Rook can be found wandering the UK, rambling about his next book or the nutritional value of Star Wars for greater society. An avid reader of SFF and a keen gamer, he is one quarter of the Four Beardsmen of the Bookpocalypse and occasionally scribbles out reviews for http://Fanfiaddict.com.

Website ~ Book ~ Twitter ~ Linktree

Be sure to check out Callus & Crow and Renia, let’s show them both some love!

Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week Footer

Image by Monika from Pixabay
The 2024 Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week Logo was made by Witty and Sarcastic Book Club