More Recommended Reading, you say?

It has been an exciting time for me over the last month, moving to a different country and everything, but nobody came here to read about my life!

Fortunately I was able to get some reading in, and the result is one of those books stood out enough to enter it into the Recommended Reading section.

The Penitent Assassin by Shawn Wickersheim is another book on Mark Lawrence's Self-Published Blog Off competition, but I was aware of it long before then. Thankfully I got round to reading it and wasn't disappointed.

While there are flaws, they are easily forgiven due to the quality of the writing and the superb plotting of this dark and gruesome tale of vengeance.

So if you're not above graphic descriptions of violence, you'll definitely want to give this a shot!

You Benem believe it! Another addition to the growing Recommended Reading section!

David Benem is our newest entrant to the Recommended Reading section with his delightfully dark What Remains of Heroes.

Benem is another quality author brought to my attention by Mark Lawrence's excellent self-published blog-off that I've spoken about before.

So if you're looking for a solid gritty fantasy in the style of Stover and Abercrombie then give this a shot. Yet more proof that self-published work can hang with the best of them.

Harry Connolly joins the Recommended Reading list.

It was obvious from the word 'go' that Harry Connolly was an author worthy of inclusion into the Recommended Reading section of Fictiongarden.com. To be honest, I could probably make a second entry and stick him in our hall of fame!

The Way Into Chaos is a rollicking, fast-paced fantasy adventure with all the grit and determination of its contemporaries. An excellent kickstarted book which sports a glorious cover and excellent prose.

Then again, if you've been even remotely following the fantasy self-publication scene over the last year or so you already know that.

I can only hope that the next book I read will be anywhere near as good as this one.

Thievery at its finest! A new addition to the Recommended Reading list.

After a month of reading a number of books that certainly qualified for my 'grinding through the pile' section (good enough to finish, not good enough for this site) I've finally struck gold again with another great piece of fantasy.

Michael McClung's The Thief Who Pulled on Trouble's Braids is a classic thief-based Sword and Sorcery tale, but instead of your typical heists we have a tale of a woman hunting down a murderer.

The book rips along at a fast pace and doesn't let up, giving various nods to the works that came before it but never borrowing from them wholesale.

When last I checked this title was free on Amazon, so go pick it up and give it a read. It's short and punchy and full of intrigue!

Michael J. Sullivan continues to be awesome.

Fictiongarden.com Hall of Famer Michael J. Sullivan proved a few years ago that the transition from self-published author to traditionally published brick and mortar author was not only possible, but realistic if you had the talent.

Now he's extending the opportunity to anyone with the chops to write a suitable short story!

Go to http://amazingstoriesmag.com/2015/05/extending-helping-hand/ for full details. A summary from the great man himself is provided below:

For my next Riyria novel, I'm going to bundle someone's short story with it to give exposure to a new or aspiring author. You can read the full details in the link but the bottom line is this:

• I'm going to hold a contest and I've provided a sign-up sheet to be notified when submissions open.
• Winner will receive $0.15 a word (more than 2x pro rate for anthologies) for up to 5,000 words - story can go up to 7,500 words but the payout is maxed at $750.
• Any genre is acceptable - although the audience will be my readers so take that into account when when writing your shorts
• If you aren't familiar with my work, you can get a free sample when you sign-up.

The reason for the pre-posting and sign-up is the window will be really small, and I can't have it delay the release date of the novel it will be bundled with. So, by announcing early people can start working on their query and short now and be ready when submissions open up.
I'm hoping to get some good stories, and everyone who enters will, at a minimum, get their query critiqued - an added benefit.

Now back to J.R. typing.

For those who don't already know, Riyria is a best-selling series, so if you've got a story that fits into that kind of thing then you're going to get a LOT of eyes on your short-form work. You don't need me to tell you that's a big deal and can translate to a lot of eyes on your long-form stuff, if you do that kinda thing.

So what are you waiting for? Get writing!

Grinding through the pile.

While not exactly a site update, I figured I should inform you as to why there haven't been any recent additions to the Recommended Reading section.

I read a lot of books, and it's honestly not the terrible ones that make this task difficult. Rather, it's the books that are solid and enjoyable that cause the struggle.

If a book is bad, I can dismiss it fairly easily. If a book is unsuitable for this site, that soon emerges upon reading it. I can make my way through any number of these titles with ease.

The books that are reaching for the proverbial brass ring and just slip short are the type that are causing the holdup. They flatter to deceive, with parts of them which are great followed by elements that cause problems. As a reader, I am engaged and entertained by the book, and I have to read to the end in order to determine whether it can do enough to merit a place on the site. This determination takes a lot more of my time, as these are the books that merit a review but not a position on my site.

What's 3 star to me may well be 4 or 5 star to other readers, and I feel it'd be disingenuous of me to only review books on Amazon/Goodreads that merited a 4/5 star rating. As I've stressed in the past, 3 stars from someone as stringent as I am is a good score to attain and it means that you've kept me interested throughout the whole work. Not to mention the fact that a balanced but favourable review is like gold dust to the modern independent author.

I've given 3 stars to some absolutely excellent authors, people like M. Todd Gallowglas, Patrick J. Loller and Claire Frank. All of whom are going from strength to strength with their respective series.

So while I may have gone into double figures without finding anything worth publishing on the site, I will continue reading away in the hopes that some of the upcoming titles on my vast list will result in a hidden gem.

Thank you for your patience.

A minor update to the site.

No new recommended reads, no brand spanking new section (still working on that). Instead, today's news item will be a small addition to the site in general.

When I started this site but a few years ago it exclusively sold an anthology for business purposes. From there it blossomed into what it is now becoming, a fully-fledged hub for self-published fantasy.

The anthologies will always be free, as will my own works. Having said that, you now have a second button underneath that download one. If you have the money but don't feel like searching for the work on Amazon, you can now click the 'buy' button and be linked to the purchase page. This also applies to my own works of fiction in the J.R. Karlsson section of the site.

Due to not being a United States citizen, a chunk of the royalties I receive from my own works will be held indefinitely for tax reasons. This does not apply to the United Kingdom version of the site, so if you hail from there I urge you to use that instead.

This decision hasn't been made out of necessity. Fictiongarden will continue to operate with or without financial aid of any sort. Everything on here will remain free.

There will be more updates in the coming months as I work on the new sections for the site and power through the backlog of material I have yet to read. Expect more updates in a timely fashion!

...famous last words, eh?