Meet Debbie Young, the editor of the Alliance of Independent Authors Self-Publishing Advice blog (www.selfpublishingadvice.org), and the author of the book promotion handbook Sell Your Books! She blogs book marketing tips at Off The Shelf Book Promotions (www.otsbp.com), while her personal blog, short stories, flash fiction, travelogues, memoirs, and reviews of other indie authors’ books…
Read MoreAll articles filed in Amira K.
Writer, explorer, and keeper of Alder the dog.
I Wanted To Love You
In the snow, we whistled, chased birds, threw ourselves down hills, ran along railroad tracks and chased trains blindly through the soft senescent light of streetlights. We drank tea and coffee and ran together and fought and I broke the spines of your books as an act of vengeance. In the flowers, we bled, we…
Read MoreBook Review: “The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In A Ship Of Her Own Making” By Catherynne Valente
Fairies, golems, wyverns, magical swords, talking furniture, flying cats, and evil sorceresses. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In A Ship Of Her Own Making has all of these and more, critical elements of a soon-to-be childhood favorite that, I hope, will stand among the classics of the genre. The Girl Who… seems to me best described by elements…
Read MoreAuthor Interview: Dan Holloway
Meet Dan Holloway, a novelist, performance poet, and journalist. He is the MC of spoken word show The New Libertines which has toured festivals across the UK, and was winner of Literary Death Match in 2010. His new book, Self-publish With Integrity, helps writers to discover why it is they really write, and then achieve it.…
Read MoreBook Review: “Tinkers” by Paul Harding
In the style of The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy, L’Etranger by Albert Camus, and Native Son by Richard Wright, Tinkers by Paul Harding is a novel about death. It’s a story of the connected lives of a generation of men, from grandfather to father to dying son, and, ultimately, it’s the story of each man’s death. Most books that…
Read MoreThe Sowing is an “Irresistible Read”!
I rarely toot my own horn on my blog, but recently something big happened that I just have to announce and share with the world. A few weeks ago we submitted The Sowing to a new website called Compulsion Reads, which reviews and endorses independently-published books. I couldn’t be more pleased to announce that The Sowing has…
Read MorePossession
I think sometimes that the ancients had it right, that we ought be buried with what we own. That too many spirits inhabit these things of ours for them to be anything but haunted. This vase here that was grandmother’s a generation ago is too valuable to be used, a cabinet piece, a thing in…
Read MoreMeet Tyler Nitbone (and a Special Cyber Monday Deal)
Here today on The Z-Axis I have Imran Siddiq, author of the Divided Worlds Trilogy and a new release called Tyler Nitbone. Imran is one of my favorite indie authors, and I find both his works and his presence on Twitter to be a constant inspiration to me to write more and to write better. Imran’s…
Read MoreBook Review: Neuromancer
Neuromancer was one of those books that drew me in purely by virtue of the title. Neuromancer, I thought, what’s that? Like, Necromancer? But with the brain? Wow, I’m intrigued already. It was on a friend’s bookshelf and I picked it up almost without thought, without really knowing why. I’d heard the name William Gibson but had no…
Read MoreTwittiquete: How Not To Suck At Twitter
Welcome! This is the second post in my Twittiquete series: How To (Not) Suck At Twitter! If you’ve been following this blog, you know that last time, we learned all about how to offend the hell out of everyone on Twitter and make yourself universally reviled! Did you follow those ten steps? Congratulations! Now it’s…
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The Z-Axis 