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...

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...

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...

Here’s my totally irreverent, irrelevant, and worst ever annual “Books of the Year” list for 2023! This is a terrible list of books. I mean, most of them aren’t even books. Why did I make this? I could’ve been playing Final Fantasy XVI, or hanging up the laundry, or literally anything else. But instead I am pleased to present to you my totally irreverent, irrelevant, list of awards to mark the end of the grand old year of two-thousand-and-twenty-three. And of course, it’s in a top-ten format.

I’m pretty happy with the amount of books I managed to read and review this year! So many were indie books, too, which was my goal. All in all, I read and reviewed 25 books up to the time of writing this post. Whenever I review books, in addition to this blog, I usually post them to Goodreads and Amazon, as well as sharing the link to the review on Twitter, Threads, Bluesky, Facebook, and sometimes Instagram (if I remember).

An excellent eclectic short story collection from J. Dianne Dotson. After finishing the Questrison Saga, I knew I’d be forever picking up J. Dianne Dotson’s books, because they’re a great lot of fun. I think there’s only one more book out that’s under the J. Dianne Dotson pen name: The Inn at the Amethyst Lantern, and from there on, her works will be published under the pseudonym Jendia Gammon.

Meghan Douglass’ short indie sci-fi horror that is dark, bleak, and utterly disturbing in all the right ways. Coming in at around the 50-page mark, I blasted through Humanity Lost really rather quickly. You might think that’s not enough time for a story to make your skin crawl, but, oh boy, this did exactly that.

I picked up Last Flight of the Necros Night by Eldritch Black & E.G. Seven for free on Amazon, and the premise sounded good, also I really dug the vibe of the cover art. I fancied a little taste of cosmic/sci-fi horror, especially since I recently played the new remake of Dead Space, so I’m on a bit of a kick at the moment. I’m sorry to say this one didn’t do it for me.

The fantastic speculative fiction short story collection from Gary J. Mack. Grab a punnet! One of the really unexpected things I’ve discovered since getting back into reading fiction is how much I enjoy anthologies. I started on that route with the excellent Nine Streams of Consciousness and was pleasantly surprised, and I’ve since added a few to my TBR list. Impossible Fruit by Gary J. Mack is my second such short story collection, and it is absolutely fantastic.