Don't Miss the Orconomics Kickstarter!

Of all the indie books I've read and loved (and there have been many). The one that stand head and shoulders above the rest is Orconomics. Zachary isn't a fast writer, but he's an excellent one and his trilogy (The Dark Profit Saga), is finally done, and he's launching the final book with a Kickstarter for the full set. 

Why do I love it so much?  Well, it's so damn fun, and addictive, and original, and just plain wonderful.What's it about? Well, here's the back of the book marketing copy: 

High comedy meets high fantasy in this award-winning, bestselling satire

Fight, kill, loot, get credit. Repeat until you're dead.

The adventuring industry drives the economy of Arth, where professional heroes are hired to risk their lives to slay fantastic creatures. After said slaying, the loot gets hauled back and divided among investors, banks, plunder funds, adventurers, and the Heroes' Guild. This works out well for everyone except the Shadowkin—orcs, goblins, kobolds and the like—who must apply to become Noncombatant Paper Carriers (or NPCs) to avoid being killed and looted by heroes.

When Gorm Ingerson, a disgraced and drunken Dwarven ex-hero with a checkered past, stands up for an undocumented Goblin, he is forced to accept a suicidal quest to save himself and his new friend from certain death. With one shot at redemption, Gorm must get his party of eccentric misfits to stop fighting each other long enough to recover a stolen treasure and stay one step ahead of the powerful organizations showing an unusual interest in their progress. Through a series of unfortunate choices and with the guiding hand of an insane goddess, Gorm inadvertently sets off a chain of events that will change his life—and the world—forever.

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Oh and you don't have to take my word about how good of a book it is. Orconomics won the SPFBO (self-publishing Fantasy Blog Off), and it was the highest rated book (out of 1,200 entries) over the first four years of that competition). I think it's still tied for first place after 9 years of that competition started by Mark Lawrence.

I'm an enthusiastic backer of this project, and I hope you will be, too. It's currently just shy ($9,000) of becoming one of the six-figure elite, and never was there a project that deserved it more. So, what say you? Do you want to be part of something truly special? Then head over to the Kickstarter and back it. You can thank me later - it truly has my highest possible recommendation.

Author Interview - The Fantasy Review

I had a great interview with the folks over at The Fantasy Review.  There were a lot of great questions, but the one that is probably most interesting to people here is:

 "Are you working on any new books or other projects at the moment?"  

Please check it out. The Fantasy Review is a great resource for people reading in the genre.

Starting From Scratch

So, back in the day, once I returned to writing after a ten-year hiatus, I vowed not to publish because riding the query-go-round and receiving nothing but rejections was just too painful. My plan at that time was to just publish the books online for free, and hopefully, a few friends would read them.

That didn't go well. At the time, they were on a website that few people knew of, and I think I only had three or four people take a look.

These days, there are much better sites for making stories available for free, one of them is Royal Road. It's mainly a place for people to serialize their novels, but for now, I'm going to post some of my short stories out there. The hope is I get some "eyeballs" on it, and then I can post some of my novels in the hope that some new readers will discover my work.

As with most sites of this kind, discoverability is difficult, but I'm hoping that maybe more than three of four of you will read, rate, and comment on my stories, and if you do, others will start to find them. 

Royal Road is free, and there are many stories to be found there. (Mother of Learning - a serial novel that has been doing amazingly well, had a Kickstarter done by Wraitemarked Creative that I backed and I'm enjoying the story quite a bit.

So please go here, checkout my tale, and please comment or rate it so others might find my work.

Farilane Trailer

 It's been over a year since I posted this video, but it was buried in a larger post and so some people might not have seen it so I'm sharing again. If you haven't read Farilane (and you should since Esrhaddon is just a bit more than a month away),  this may get you to give it a try.

My eternal thanks to @RiyriaExplained, a massive fan on YouTube.

Fantasy Review's Six Fantasy Books That Will Make You Believe in the Power of Hope

I'm often asked by readers about other books that are like my own. In many ways, there aren't that many because I tend to see the world through rose-colored glasses, and much of fantasy prefers grim-dark spectacles. But I recently ran across a list from The Fantasy Review that focused on the more positive aspects of fantasy. So I thought I would take a moment and shine a spotlight on the books they picked. So here are their Six Fantasy Books That Will Make You Believe in the Power of Hope.

I hope you find this list helpful, and I have my fingers crossed that you'll find more books to love. Oh, and thanks again to Robin, who did all the hard work of putting the montage of covers together and compiling data from Goodreads for the following chart.

Title	Author	Publisher	Ratings	Reviews
	Travis Baldree	Tor	92,501	19,302
	T. J. Klune	Tor	486,459	80,996
	Raymond E. Fiest	Bantam Spectra	92,472	2,327
	Terry Brooks	Del Rey	94,303	4,662
	Emly Tesh	TorDotCom	16,171	3,126
	Michael J. Sullivan	Orbit	64,926	4,668

SAVE 80% - Age of War Audiobook

There's another great opportunity to save big on a Legends of the First Empire audiobook.  As part of the monthly deals, Age of War is just $6.99 (less than half a credit).  This was my first New York Times Bestseller, and it has a 4.8 / 5.0 rating on Audible with more than 11,900 ratings.  If you haven't picked it up yet, this would be an excellent opportunity to do so.  Get your copy here.

A very big side benefit of writing

When I started writing, I was just hoping to get someone . . . anyone. To read my books. I hoped they would enjoy it, and over the years a number of people have written to me saying that they have. That is, indeed, a gift beyond measure.  But from time to time I get an email like this:

"I have always hated books. I didn’t like that when I was in school I was forced to read them. It did not help that I was always bad at reading; my ADHD made sure of that. Similar to your daughter it takes a lot of energy out of me to read so I just don’t. I have not read a single book (not even my books for class) in full since 5th grade, when I read the Hardy Boys. I am 24 years old now. My friend in college two years ago recommended I try reading the Riyria books. Hesitantly I went to a library and picked up Theft of Swords. I could not put down the book. For an entire week, I spent every bit of my free time reading Theft of Swords. Something inside me changed. I started to actually like the calmness of reading. I was able to quiet my mind because I was diving into this whole knew world. I quickly picked up Rise of Empire and was able to finish that in two weeks. I found a new love of reading."

I never in a hundred years expected to have this kind of impact. As a young boy, I, too, didn't like reading. It was Tolkien who got me to find my "love of reading," and to find out I've done the same for someone else is a treasure beyond measure.