Continuing on with my decision to read some of the novellas from last year’s Speculative Fiction Indie Novella Championships, here we have contest winner A Sorrow Named Joy by Sarah Chorn. The cover art on this book is wonderful, and after reading, it really captures a lot of the heart of the character of Joy. Although I will freely admit that I’m a bit of an idiot. Before I realised what this...

The second annual Speculative Fiction Indie Novella Championships (SFINCS) is well underway and almost into its second round, and it’s an exciting time for all of this year’s entrants. It’s well worth keeping an eye on for some incredible novellas to add to your burgeoning TBRs. So I decided that it was high time I actually read some of the books from my fellow entrants from last year’s...

Here we are at last. It’s been a long time coming—years in the trying—but I have finally finished a full read-through of The Lord of the Rings. After the surprising ease of reading The Two Towers, The Return of the King was a step into totally uncharted waters. And what a remarkable ending this was for the trilogy. I’ve stopped my read at the end of the narrative chapters, short of the...

For the first time, my books have been nominated. James and Seventeen need your help! The Indie Ink Awards is an annual contest run by Indie Story Geek, with public nominations and voting, and lots of different categories. For the first time, two of my books—From the Grave of the Gods, and The Re-Emergence have received nominations in several categories. I am amazed, since they’ve been eligible...

I mentioned in my review of The Fellowship of the Ring that when I tried to read The Lord of the Rings as a teenager, I only ever managed to get about halfway through before dropping it. In truth I don’t recall how many times I tried, but it was certainly more than once, and certainly at least once at university. The sticking point was always The Two Towers. Specifically the Entmoot, which is...

It’s been a very long time since I last attempted to read The Lord of the Rings. I was a young teenager when I first picked up a ratty old combined edition paperback that was the size of a brick, and this was naturally off the back of the Peter Jackson movie trilogy. Back then I got as far as about halfway through The Two Towers when I crashed out, finding the Entmoot mind-numbingly boring...

This Black Friday weekend, we’ve got an impressive list of some amazing indie books for you, all with fantastic discounts. This year there’s 170 indie SFF books in the sale from 120 different authors! This sale has been organised and hosted by indie fantasy author James Lloyd Dulin who co-organised last year’s sale, so massive shout-out and thanks to James...

It’s release day! My cosmic horror novelette, The God Sun is out now. I freely admit this wasn’t a book I thought I would have written at this point in my author journey, much less actually released for people to read. I’ve had the title banging around in my mind for the last six months or so, and I thought it would become a new novel trilogy set in a completely different universe...

It’s been a long time coming, but with the reading of The Other Wind, this brings all the main books of Earthsea to an end. I also followed up the book with the short story, Firelight, which wraps everything up, and reader, I am bereft. Journeying through Earthsea has been an absolute joy, and this combined illustrated edition, by which I read the last three books and the short stories...

Earthsea is one of my favourite series. As I’ve spent the years gradually going through all the books, each one has been utterly remarkable and special. Nobody writes like Ursula K. Le Guin. Tales From Earthsea is no different. It’s a bit of an oddity amongst the rest of the books, being a collection of shorter tales rather than one long narrative, but it’s no less impactful...

If you’ve been following my social media posts for the last few weeks, you’ll no doubt have seen it teased that I got into the Halloween spirit and spent the latter half of October writing something spooky. I had intended to finish and publish it before the end of the month, but as always things took longer than I expected. But, not two days into November, I finished the first draft...

Honestly I thought I’d hit the peak weird of the Dune Saga with God Emperor of Dune and that the final two books would be dealing with the fallout while coming back down the mountain. But like a car salesman slapping the roof of an old jalopy, Heretics of Dune is where Frank Herbert confidently declares that there’s plenty of weird in this baby yet. Only, this time the series pivots...

A brief writing update, and a look at some new art. If you're following along on social media, you'll probably be aware that I have put a pause on writing Legacy of the Gods for the time being while I work some things out. To put it simply: I burned myself out doing NaNoWriMo in 2023, writing over 30,000 words in just 30 days (yes, I fell short of the 50k goal). Then I had to re-plot the book...

I have really enjoyed J.D. Sanderson’s work in the past. If you haven’t already, you can check out my review for his twilight-zone inspired short story collection Around the Dark Dial here. I like it when sci-fi books teach me something new about science or astronomy (it’s not a requirement for me, but it’s nice when it happens) but I’ve never had that happen right on the title page before...

A dark, corporate dystopian sci-fi novella full of action and intrigue from Rohan O’Duill. I’d like to take a moment to praise the cover art for Cold Rising. It’s really well composed, and I love the use of Mars to replace the O in ‘Cold’. The cover is initially what attracted me to this, and as with all the ebooks on my Kindle, it’s been there a while and I definitely wish I had gotten to it...

I very much enjoyed J. Dianne Dotson’s space opera quadrilogy, The Questrison Saga, and so I’m at the point now where anything from this author is bound to pique my interest. The Inn at the Amethyst Lantern is a whimsical young adult lunarpunk adventure—a genre I have never read before, but I really dig the vibes. Think a civilisation that lives in dark forests or at night with plenty of...

Announcing the first annual Indie Orbital Science Fiction Sale! You really thought Indie August would be the last of the big group sales for the year? Well not this time. Here we have a brand new group sale dedicated to independent and self published science fiction books kicking off Sci-Fi September! This sale is being hosted by sci-fi author and graphic designer, Conrad Altmann...

By now you all know how much I enjoyed Witch in the Lighthouse, and so I jumped at the chance when author Azalea Forrest put out a call for ARC readers for its sequel, A Witch in Isenshire, a book which I had the privilege of helping to reveal the cover for recently. I’ve really come to enjoy cosy fantasy as a genre, and if you had told me this would be the case a few years ago...

Celebrate independent speculative fiction authors by buying their books in not one, but two, huge sales for an extended period of time. From Friday 23 to Tuesday 27 August you can get awesome discounts on nearly 400 SFF books.

Howl’s Moving Castle is one of my favourite Studio Ghibli movies (that’s not really saying a lot, because most of the movies in Studio Ghibli’s catalogue are my favourite movies lol!) But I was intrigued to read the original children’s fantasy novel by Diana Wynne Jones, and I was surprised to learn it’s only the first book in a whole trilogy. Let me just take a moment to praise the cover art…