As I mentioned in my most recent writing update blog post, I have been making moves to take my books off of Kindle Unlimited and push them out widely to other ebook stores. This process started with The God Sun, which wasn’t on Kindle Unlimited and was a great way to get all the accounts set up. And now, happily, the rest of my books have followed suit! The Re-Emergence, From the Grave of the...

A new year update on the state of my books, and leaving Kindle Unlimited. The God Sun is Now Wide! The first bit of news I have for you is that my new cosmic horror sci-fi novelette, The God Sun, which came out on Amazon as an ebook in November of last year, is now available widely on other platforms. This means that it is now up for purchase from places such as Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Apple

If you had told me when I was a teenager struggling to get through The Lord of the Rings and bouncing off the Entmoot that I would one day not only gleefully smash through the whole trilogy but then follow it up by reading The Silmarillion in just one week, I’d have laughed in your face. But inexplicably, here we are. And as personal reading achievements go, this one is something of which I am...

I liked doing this reading wrap-up thing last year. It gave me an opportunity to showcase once again all the books I read and reviewed this year. Review posts are often ephemeral—even though they’re on the internet forever, once they’ve been posted on the socials, they’re quickly forgotten and buried. So this is a great chance to bring some more well-deserved attention to the books...

Dragonmeat is another of the books from the first SFINCS competition that I have been meaning to read for a long time. Initially I thought it was going to be a bit longer than the previous two I’ve read, but the book ended while I was still at 75% on the Kindle, and this is because the first chapter of Fortune’s Fool, the first novel in the Eterean Empire series, is included at the back as a...

The holidays are a time of gift-giving, and here’s my gift to you: You can get all three of the current books in the Son of Adam arc of The Augment Saga, following James, Angela, and Austin’s adventures, for 0.99 each in the UK and US. This is the first time The Shadow of Arcadia has been discounted as well, so take advantage of it while you can. From the Grave of the Gods is in the SPSFC group...

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...