Well September has come to a close and with it so has Self-Published Fantasy Month. It seems like it started with a bang and then finished with a whisper. That’s on me for some poor planning.
I only managed one review this month for The Great Restoration: A Tale of The Verin Empire by William Ray. I also posted my first ever author interview which you can read at Author Interview: William Ray.
Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme originally hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine and continued now by Tressa at Wishful Endings under the heading “Can’t Wait Wednesday” where readers and bloggers share and discuss books they are excited about reading and which have generally not yet been released. I’m sticking with “Waiting On Wednesday” just because I like the way it rolls off the tongue.
Fans of the blog will know how much I loved Quenby Olson’s supernatural/horror novel The Half Killed. If you’re not a regular follower check out my review in the link in the previous sentence. Here’s the blurb from the back cover of that one:
“Dorothea Hawes has no wish to renew contact with what lies beyond the veil. After an attempt to take her own life, she has retired into seclusion, but as the wounds on her body heal, she is drawn into a world she wants nothing more than to avoid.
She is sought out by Julian Chissick, a former man of God who wants her help in discovering who is behind the gruesome murder of a young woman. But the manner of death is all too familiar to Dorothea, and she begins to fear that something even more terrible is about to unleash itself on London.
And so Dorothea risks her life and her sanity in order to save people who are oblivious to the threat that hovers over them. It is a task that forces her into a confrontation with her own lurid past, and tests her ability to shape events frighteningly beyond her control.”
As I said in my review, it’s story that will seduce you. I absolutely love Olson’s dark, intimate, and immersive writing style and the Victorian setting. It was a five star read for me, and I’ve been waiting on a follow-up novel for months. Unfortunately this isn’t a Waiting On Wednesday post about book two in the series. From what I understand Olson is working on that story, but it isn’t ready yet. She did write a short story though…and that’s what this post is about Continue reading
Today marks the first ever Author Interview on Off The TBR! William Ray graciously accepted my interview request and I want to take a moment to thank him.
Ray is the self-published author of the Tales Of The Verin Empire series which at this point consists of two full length novels, Gedlund and The Great Restoration and a short story, A Case of Eager Heirs . You can read my reviews of those novels by clicking on the links in the titles above. Continue reading
Author: William Ray
Publisher: Self-Published
Publication Date: 2017
Format: Paperback
Pages: 483
(I received a copy of his book from the author in exchange for an honest review)
Gaslight, elves, goblins, secret societies, kidnapping, detectives, and black-powder fantasy. All of these come together as William Ray continues his Tales Of The Verin Empire series with The Great Restoration. Where Gedlund, the first book in the series was a mix of black powder fantasy mixed with sword and sorcery while on military campaigns at the boundaries of the empire, for this installment Ray took a different approach. In fact he kinda went with a slightly different sub-genre. The Great Restoration is a detective-mystery story set within both the heart of the empire and one if its recently acquired territories. Continue reading
If you haven’t been following along lately, September is Self-Pub Fantasy Month here on Off The TBR, and you’re invited to join in on the fun. This is a month where we’re going to celebrate and discuss all things self-pub fantasy. Some context behind the motivation for this month devoted to self-pub fantasy can be found in my post The 2018 #SPFBO (And Maybe A Self-Pub Fantasy Month).
So what can you expect to see here on the blog this month? Well, I’m still new to this so things won’t get too crazy. But you should expect to see the following:
I’m starting to have a little freak-out. I took a look at the calendar and realized September and Self-Pub Fantasy Month is less than a week away. It isn’t a huge deal – I’ve known for a while the basics of what I’m gonna do, but I’m now feeling the pressure of getting all my reading and blogging in. Thankfully I’ve already started the reading. Hopefully I’ll get that first review up on September 1 or 2 (if I can force myself to do some writing during the week). Continue reading
In my post Announcing Self-Published Fantasy Month I mentioned that I’d come to realize there’s some really great self-published fantasy out there. This after always believing (and being told) that if a book was any good it would be picked up by a publishing house. My realization over the course of this year that I was so very wrong about self-published fantasy inspired me to celebrate it by devoting a whole upcoming month to it on the blog.
Well, I was reviewing some things on the blog last weekend and something made me take a closer look at the books I’ve reviewed this year and their scores. I was a little surprised and delighted by what I found because it fits perfectly with what I’ve been saying lately. Here’s what I discovered… Continue reading
I’ve been hinting at this for about a month and I’m finally ready to take the plunge and announce that September will be Self-Published Fantasy Month here on Off The TBR! This is something I’ve been debating doing for the past couple of months even if I haven’t said much until recently. I’m pretty excited about it and I hope you will be too. I’m sure you have questions so let me answer a few… Continue reading
Well another month has come and gone!
Things are looking up here at Off The TBR. The really crazy hectic period at work came and went, and we hired another person in our department to help pick up some of the load which means I should be working less on the weekends which means MORE TIME FOR BLOGGING! This has already played out this month just in terms of reviews. I went from no reviews at all in June to posting two in July, and if it weren’t for a weekend long power outage across practically the whole city I might have posted a third.
So here’s what happened this month… Continue reading
One gem of Sci-Fi/Fantasy book twitter and bloggosphere I discovered this year is self-published fantasy, and the #SPFBO (Self-Published Fantasy Blog Off). Prior to starting this blog I had what’s probably the typical opinion and response to self-published fiction; if it’s self-published it must be bad, otherwise a publisher would have picked it up.
At the beginning of 2018 I put together some goals for the year. One of those goals was to read more debut novels. I wanted to read one debut a month. What I originally meant by that was debuts published in 2018. To my surprise a few self-published authors contacted me asking if I’d be interested in reading their debut, some of which were written in prior years. At first I didn’t want to accept (see my comment above about self-published books), but I came around. Thank the literary gods I did because I discovered how wrong I was! See my love for Gedlund for just one example.
Then, I discovered the #SPFBO. Continue reading
