My Favourite Zombie Shows

Hi all! 

This week I wanted to share a few of my favourite zombie shows with you. I absolutely love watching anything with zombies in it and it usually doesn't take long to get me hooked. I won’t talk too much about them as I don’t want to give too much away and I think you should watch them yourself! Take a look at what I love below... 

iZombie

Such a great concept and I love all the characters. The plot is easy to follow and it has a few twists too! The mix of zombies and detective work is a really good combination and makes for a great watch. 

Z Nation 

A mix of zombies and comedy, this is one of my favourite zombie shows of all time. There are plenty of different types of zombies, and a few of the characters even turn into them as well. I love how absurd the show gets as time goes on and it's so entertaining. 

All Of Us Are Dead 

This is one of the newer ones I've watched and it didn't take long to get me hooked. The characters are trapped in a school, trying to fight their way out. The characters are great and I cried when the deaths started to pile up. 

Kingdom

This is the most serious out of the four, but it does have a few moments of comedy. The setting is fantastic and the way the zombies come about is fascinating. One thing that sticks out to me is that these zombies can be killed by water, which isn't something I've come across before. 

As far as I know you can watch all of these on Netflix and I highly recommend that you do! They're all loads of fun and so easy to binge. They all have several seasons too, which is great if you want to watch them all in one go. Whenever there are new zombie shows out in the future, you can bet that I'll be checking them out. 

That's it for this week, I hope you enjoyed reading. See you next week. 

My Favourite Greek Myths

Hi all! 

As I am now writing the first draft of Missing Constellations, I thought I'd tell you about my favourite Greek myths. 

Laelaps and the Teumessian Fox. 

This should come as a surprise to no-one as I'm writing a book about them! This was always one of my favourite myths, mostly due to the fact that it's a paradox. They can't touch each other without one winning over the other. I always knew I wanted to write a book about them and I'm so glad that I can do that now. 

Perseus and Medusa. 

There are so many iterations of this myth but I still think it's one of the best. In some, Medusa is the victim and in others she's just a monster. Either way, Perseus defeating her with the gifts that the gods gave him is always a great read. 

Pegasus. 

Winged horses are always beautiful in my opinion and Pegasus will be in Missing Constellations too. I couldn't leave out one of my favourites! 

Hercules and Cerberus.

I named one of the dragons in Elemental Dragons after the three headed canine so of course it would be one of my favourites! I love how Hercules managed to wrangle him in the end and marched him out of the underworld. 

Jason and the Golden Fleece. 

This one is really popular and I can see why. I've watched several films where Jason has had to retrieve the golden fleece and the story never gets boring. The fleece is even mentioned in Missing Constellations, but I haven't decided if it will make an appearance yet. 

There are so many great myths out there but these ones are definitely my favourites. I grew up watching Jason and the Argonauts and Hercules. I loved reading mythological books before I went to sleep too. It's no wonder that I'm now writing about the myths themselves! 

That's it for this week, I hope you enjoyed reading! See you next week. 

PS; last day to check out this Sci-Fi bundle!

SCIENCE FICTION BOOKS THAT KNOCK YOU OUT JUNE 1ST -- JULY 1ST

Elemental Dragons Stickers

Hi all! 

I thought I'd show off all the stickers that I've had designed for the Elemental Dragons series. You might recognise some of the designs already but I wanted to show off some of the newer ones! 

Aqueous. 

Aqueous is my favourite dragon from the series and he was the first to get a sticker. I got them a couple years ago and there aren't many left from the original batch now. I love the design and the way the stickers shine. 

He's also available as a circle sticker, but I prefer this one.

Damayanti. 

The simplest of the stickers, but I absolutely love it. They're nice and thick and they stick really well. Damayanti's design is perfect and I love the position the artist chose to draw her in. 

Like Aqueous, she's also available as a circle sticker. 

Drea. 

This was the last sticker that I had done. I love how she sparkles and I think it shows off her design really well. I don't think she's like this sticker if she saw it though, it doesn't show off her toughness enough! 

Drea is also available as a circle sticker. 

I'd love to be able to set up a shop so I could start selling them but at the moment I'm not sure where to start. I want to focus on setting up a Patreon for this year and then I'm hoping to get a shop set up. The stickers will also be offered as rewards to those who sign up to my Patreon at certain tiers. It's something that I would love to do in the future, once I have more time and a better idea of how to do it. I'd love to see people with merch from my books. 

That's it for this week, I hope you enjoyed reading! See you next week. 

PS; don’t forget to check out this Sci-Fi bundle:

SCIENCE FICTION BOOKS THAT KNOCK YOU OUT JUNE 1ST -- JULY 1ST

The Impact of Writing on Mental Health

Hi all! 

This week I wanted to talk about the impact writing can have on your mental health. Writing can help me immensely when I feel low, but sometimes that can reflect what I write. I thought I'd list a few things here. 

Relieves stress. 

Even if you only write a few words a day, I've found that writing can be a huge stress reliever. It lets your mind wander for a bit instead of worrying. 

Get your emotions out. 

Writing can be a good way to get your emotions out, good and bad. It may help you with how you're feeling and relieve some of the pressure. However, this can also be a double-edged sword. I find that when I'm mentally ill, this reflects in my writing a lot. I tend to write the characters with what I'm going through and how I'm feeling. This is especially evident in Street Rats, which has taken over the entire story. 

It's an escape. 

You can escape for however long you want in writing. Even if it's just for a few minutes every day. It gives your mind a rest from what's going on in the world. But this can get unhealthy if you're doing this too often, you need to make sure that you're not making yourself more sick by writing longer than you need to. 

Improved mood. 

It can help improve your mood as it gives you something else to focus on. Afterwards you can come back from it with a clearer mind. 

Organises your thoughts. 

Writing can help you organise your thoughts and feelings by writing them down. You don't even need to write a story, you can just write about your feelings and what made you feel that way. 

I hope this blog post can make you feel better about writing, even if you don't feel like you're in the best mental state. I've found writing to be such a good thing for me and it gives me an escape but also a way to get my feelings down. I love writing and it has definitely helped me when I've been at my lowest. 

That's it for this week, see you next Sunday! 

A Fun Monthly Writing Challenge

Hi all,

This week I’m going to talk about a monthly writing challenge I usually take part in, called Furious Fiction. I was introduced to this by the chairman of my writing group. He sends the email around each month and we can participate and share our stories if we want to. I try to take part as much as I can, though sometimes because of NaNoWriMo or not being able to come up with an idea for the prompt I don’t contribute.

First off, what is Furious Fiction?

It is a writing challenge that launches on the first weekend of each month. On the Friday, an email is sent out with the prompts and you need to squeeze it into 500 words. They usually supply a few words that have to be in your story as well as another challenge. This month’s was to write a story in the middle of something. I went with the middle of a trial, which Bastet has to complete without being killed by a zombie lioness.

The email goes out on Friday and you have 55 hours to write your story and submit it. The ones who manage the challenge are Australian, so you have to go by Australian time to submit it before the deadline. They have a countdown on their website when the challenge is live which is really handy to keep track of how much time you have left!

So far all of the stories that I have written for this challenge have been set in the Curse of Anubis universe. Two have been in Bastet’s perspective, while the others have been various unnamed characters that kick off certain events of the story. I’m hoping to get these stories submitted to anthologies instead of collecting them together for the Curse of Anubis Short Story Collection. There are other stories that I want to write for that book, but Furious Fiction really helps with getting other ideas out.

I’ve participated in a few of their challenges and I find them all really fun, it’s a good way to flex your writing muscles and write on a strict deadline. Some of the words that you have to add in can sometimes be hard to work in too, so it takes a lot of thinking.

I love participating in this challenge and a lot of the members of the writing group that I’m a part of write stories for it too. It’s really interesting to see what others come up with the same prompts and deadline. I’m going to try to participate as much as possible, even if I don’t win! The winner and the shortlist entries are all displayed on their website once all the entries have been read. The winner receives $500.

That’s it for this week, I hope you enjoyed reading! See you next week.

PS; don’t forget to check out these book bundles:

SCIENCE FICTION BOOKS THAT KNOCK YOU OUT JUNE 1ST -- JULY 1ST

Summer Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books in Kindle Unlimited!

Pride Month - Character Edition

Hi all!

Last year I wrote a blog post about the dragons in the Elemental Dragons universe for Pride Month. This year I thought I would list the characters that I have written so far that are LQBTQIA+. This will be for characters who are either main characters or important side characters, so not every character is included. You may not know them all yet, but they will all be appearing in my books in the future.

Elemental Dragons

Wes - Gay.

Braith - Lesbian.

Violet - Asexual.

Original Elementals

Francesca - Lesbian.

Lucia - Pansexual.

Su-hyeon - Gay.

Tiegan - Genderfluid Bisexual.

Benjamin - Bisexual.

Mute

Audra - Asexual.

Briar - Non-Binary.

Hanne - Demisexual Lesbian.

Years

Cheyenne - Bisexual.

Celestial Plague

Raya - Bisexual.

Shannon - Lesbian.

Ashleigh - Asexual Aromantic.

Jenna - Lesbian.

Cindy - Lesbian.

Curse of Anubis

Darrus - Bisexual.

Fawn - Non-Binary Pansexual.

Eddy - Demisexual Pansexual.

Bastet - Lesbian.

Sekhmet - Bisexual.

Mafdet - Demisexual.

Thoth - Non-Binary.

Street Rats

Hailey - Bisexual.

Blythe - Lesbian.

Eularia - Lesbian.

Rix - Genderfluid .

Shiloh - Gay.

Missing Constellations

Laelaps - Gay.

Teumessian Fox - Asexual.

I am Bisexual myself, so I know the importance of including LGBTQIA+ characters in my books. I like to explore the relationships between characters and show that sometimes it’s not as easy to be in a relationship as some make it out to be. A lot of my characters are Bisexual and I think it’s important to raise awareness about Bisexual relationships.This list isn’t complete as the more books I write, the more characters I will create. There will be plenty of LGBTQIA+ characters in my books in the future and I can’t wait to write about them,

That’s it for this week, I hope you enjoyed reading! See you next week.

PS; don’t forget to check out these book bundles:

Summer Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books in Kindle Unlimited!

SCIENCE FICTION BOOKS THAT KNOCK YOU OUT JUNE 1ST -- JULY 1ST

Camp NaNoWriMo Project Announcement - July 2023

Hi all!

Like with April’s Camp NaNoWriMo, I thought I’d share a brief post about my next project! As I’ve written three Original Elementals books on the trot, I’m now taking a break to write a standalone. This book is called Missing Constellations. I’m hoping to write 50K of the first draft in this month.

This book will follow Laelaps and the Teumessian Fox. The dog that always catch it’s prey and the fox who always escapes it’s captors. They are one of my favourite Greek myths as they get stuck in a never-ending loop so Zeus places them in the sky as constellations. This book will be a dual POV of both of them. I’m undecided if I will have chapter headers commissioned for both of them or not.

Every few years, Zeus allows the constellations to return to Earth for a day to experience life as a human. Once the sun sets, they are returned to the stars once more. Only this time, they don’t return. When the sun sets they turn into their canine forms and are still trapped on Earth. When one approaches the other, the loop kicks in and they are separated by a few feet. They travel the Earth trying to find out what has happened and eventually notice that all of the constellations are gone.

Laelaps is a quiet dog who would much prefer to sleep, while the Fox is more hyper and loves to run around and tease him. They’ve been stuck in the sky together for centuries in an endless chase. Though neither will admit it to the other, they consider themselves best friends.

My plan is still to set up a Patreon and this is the first book that I’m hoping to post on it! I’m still trying to figure out the details, such as covers and editing but I will worry about that more once the book is done. Alongside getting to read the book early, I’m going to offer other rewards such as ebooks, paperbacks, merch and possibly even a book dedication. With the book, I’m going to have character polls, 100 word drabbles and Q&As on there too. I’m not sure when I’m going to get this done, but I’m hoping by the end of the year I have a clear plan in place.

That’s it for this week, I hope you enjoyed reading. See you next week!

PS; don’t forget to check out this book bundle:

Summer Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books in Kindle Unlimited!

Paperback Price Increase

Hi all,

Amazon have recently announced that they are increasing the price of their paperback production due to rising costs. I will be raising my prices slightly to align with this, but you can still order paperbacks at the current price before the middle of June. The current prices for my paperback books range from £9.99-£10.99, depending on the book and series. The price will only go up by a small amount, but I still wanted to give you a heads up just in case you were thinking about buying one.

I do have some plans for my paperback books, some long-term and some short-term. Seeing as this post is about paperbacks, I thought this would be a great place to discuss it!

Signed paperbacks.

Some authors use their own websites or sites like Etsy to sell signed paperback books. I've thought about this a lot and it is definitely something that I would like to do in the future. I would like to do bundles where you can buy a signed paperback, bookmark and some stickers as well. This would be exclusive to that site and I think it would be a great way to also sell some of the merchandise that I've had created. 

Distribution.

IngramSpark have recently scrapped the fee that they used to charge authors to upload their books to their database. I'm looking into this one, but it is definitely something that I have been interested in for a while. On Ingram, you can list your books at a discounted price and retailers/libraries may purchase them. I've looked into this before, but the £50 upload fee for each book is what always put me off. Now that it's gone, I'm thinking of uploading all of my books on there at some point. This will only be the paperback version, the ebook and hardcovers will still be available on Amazon.

Rewards.

I've discussed creating a Patreon several times before on my blog. For Camp NaNoWriMo July 2023 I will be writing the first draft of Missing Constellations, the book that would be a Patreon exclusive. My plan is to have a tier where patrons would get the option of receiving a signed paperback twice a year. They would also eventually get a signed copy of Missing Constellations, when that book has been completely published on Patreon and is ready for publication in ebook, paperback and hardcover on Amazon.

Giveaways.

I would love to get back into the habit of doing regular giveaways for paperbacks whenever a new book is published. I just love the feeling of readers receiving a signed copy.

If you want to order one of my paperbacks at the current price, make sure you do this before mid-June, as that is when the prices will be raised. That's it for this week, see you next Sunday!

PS; check out this Fantasy/Sci-Fi book bundle!

Summer Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books in Kindle Unlimited!

Purgatory Cover Design

Hi all!

This week is the cover reveal for Celestial Plague #3: Purgatory. This is the third book in the Celestial Plague series and as with previous covers, it has been designed by Deranged Doctor Design. They will be designing the last cover in the series later on this year and I love working with them. My banners and newsletter will get updated in August 2023, when I’m hoping to have the book available for pre-order. The cover is…

• The character on the cover of this book is Raya. As with previous books, each of the MCs will get their own cover. The last one will be Jenna.

• DDD came up with the colour scheme for this one and I love it! It fits nicely with the previous covers and is eye-catching.

• The typography remains the same as the other books.

• The background for this cover is the mall, which the characters have used several times in the previous books to hide and escape Sarjs.

• The panther, Damisa, is represented on the cover as Raya’s power. She’s a panther shifter and I wanted to include her on the cover too. I adore the pose that DDD picked for her.

• I decided to continue with the hoodie theme that the previous characters wore. Jenna will probably have one too.

• The sky in this one is my favourite. The colours are beautiful.

Purgatory will be available in October 2023 and will be available for pre-order in August. Celestial Plague #4: Hell, will have it’s cover designed around November.

That’s it for this week, I hope you enjoyed reading! See you next week.

PS; don’t forget to check out this bundle before it expires:

Great Books Giveaway!

April Camp NaNoWriMo Wrap-Up

Hi all!

With Camp NaNoWriMo over with, I thought I’d talk a bit more about the project I was working on. Original Elementals #6: Sunrise is almost complete, I’m hoping to get it done within the next few days.

This book follows the first Light Elemental, Lucia, and her dragon companion, Sunrise. The two of them have never gotten on, due to the fact that Lucia wishes that she had a different dragon and has made several attempts across the series to try and swap him for a ‘better’ one. Because of this, Sunrise is quite angry and depressed, he doesn’t play like other dragons and loves to fight. This one is set outside of Aria, so the other Originals only make brief appearances. This book also delves more into the Amphiptere species, how they act and why Lucia’s father uses their scales and feathers to make clothes.

My final word count is…

The rest of the first draft should be finished in the next few days and then I can take a break until Camp NaNoWriMo in July.

The main character was a lot of fun to write about, as she’s gotten some screen time in the other books but the other Originals don’t see her as much more than an annoyance. In Sunrise, she got her chance to shine and grow and lose some of her attitude that has been showcased in the other books. She’s also another one to complete defy Zmei and forge her own path, even if her opinion was different than when she started. She has never trusted Zmei and knew that when it was time for her mission that she wouldn’t complete it.

The Amphiptere are showcased in all of their glory in this book. Ever since I wrote the short story, Orange to Blue, I’ve wanted to write more about them and explore them a bit further. In Sunrise, they live on a farm in the mountains that Lucia’s father runs. They are kept in small cages but are fed well. They shed twice a year, on the Summer and Winter Solstices. Their shed skin is then collected to be fashioned into clothes.

Overall this book was a lot of fun to write and once I’ve finished it I can take a break from the Original Elementals series. I’m still sticking to my plan of writing three books and then a completely different standalone to keep my mind fresh. But I’ll talk more about that project in July!

I hope you enjoyed reading, see you next week!

PS; don’t forget to check out this giveaway:

Great Books Giveaway!