Author: Dave (Page 1 of 15)

November newsletter: WorldCon, an anthology, and more!

September 3, 2026 / Dave / 0 Comments

Our anthology launches today!

A group of authors and I are putting together Rings of Adventure, a fantasy/sci-fi/horror/romance/etc./etc./etc. anthology that just went live on Kickstarter to come out later this year. There will be 34 stories in this anthology, and you have lots of options of how you want to get them – ebook, fancy sprayed-edge hardcover, or (the coolest, maybe) a new story every day for all of December, holiday calendar style. Each story has its own custom illustration (all human-made). There are cool stretch goals as well. If you like awesome stories (and who doesn’t?) please have a look!

Kickstarter and other crowdfunding platforms are a place indie authors are turning to do special editions (e.g. illustrated hardback versions of their books with fancy edges and embossing), audiobook funding, or even just straight sales. Patreon is another platform I’ve seen growing as well, where authors will share exclusive peeks at books, subscriber-only stories, and other goodies. I haven’t wanted to go this route, since I would much rather grow my audience of readers than try to make more money off my writing, but I’m in a lucky spot thanks to my history with Snood to be able to do that.

But Kickstarter is perfect for a big bunch of authors wanting to work together in a fun project, and this fits that bill. We’ve been on Discord for months editing each other’s stories, sharing tips, and building a fun little community. I’ve really enjoyed working with this diverse group of indies, and I hope you’ll consider spending just a little (you can get the whole thing for ten bucks) to see what we’ve made.

WorldCon 2026

I just got back (as in, I took the redeye home from Los Angeles last night) from WorldCon, the long-running annual science fiction convention that’s grown to include fantasy, gaming, and a bunch of other related fun. I was there for the whole five-day run, and I had a blast. This was my second one; I went to the one in Seattle last year just as a fan, attending various panels and events. This time, I was accepted to be on some of the panels, and I was part of seven different events during the convention. I ran a sci-fi themed trivia show like I’ve done at The Idiot Box here in Greensboro, and I emceed another game show modeled after the Just A Minute show that BBC Radio does. I ran a boardgame development workshop, and I was on four more literary panels, two as moderator.

Here’s my gameshow crew. Lee Harris, on the left, is a multiple-Hugo-nominee editor, and he eked out a victory in a very competitive game.

These panels had wide-ranging topics, reflective of my diverse life choices (I have half-assed a tremendous number of endeavors during my time on the planet, so there was a lot to choose from). I started with a panel on the difficult topic of Generative AI and writing (the panelists were united in thinking it was a bad idea to have AI write crappy books, although the audience was not 100% with us, and there are a lot of nuances). Next, I was part of a panel on what sci-fi gets wrong about my profession, and I was able to talk about a lot of bad geology in books and movies (I’m look at you, The Core). Then, I did a panel on using earlier times in geologic history as a model for sci fi and fantasy worldbuilding in books, which was a ton of fun – we had five geologists, all of whom were also authors, talking about interesting periods in geologic history and all the transitions and processes at work on Earth throughout geologic time. On Monday, I finished up with a panel on merging the fantasy and mystery genres, something my Inquisitors’ Guild books do with gleeful abandon. The other authors on the panel all had very different mystery styles – one was an homage to Agatha Christie, with a murder mystery amongst witches on a train; one was a gritty noir story with a private eye who has revealing visions; one had a necromancer detective, which puts a really different spin on murders, I’d think; and one had a really cool Christie-ish dark academic premise where students were trying to learn an impossible spell at a remote castle while getting picked off one by one.

I also attended a bunch of events and panels. A group of people I met at the boardgame playtesting event was willing to give my game The Treasure of Mag Mell a try, and one of them even bought my copy afterward. I got to see John Scalzi and Wil Wheaton talking about audiobook production, and I saw David Gerrold (writer of the Trouble With Tribbles episode in original Star Trek) read one of his stories, a really funny one about Jesus reincarnated as a dog.

I got to L.A. the day before the convention, so that day, my birthday, I treated myself to a few hours at Disneyland, where I got to see the Star Wars area for the first time. For a kid who was seven years old the summer the first movie came out and fell head over heels in love with it, that was really special.

Writing update

We had a really strong month for Best, which started the month with a free promotion via BookBub. That led to over 17,000 downloads, which is about as good as those giveaways have ever gone for me.

And these downloads pushed the book to more visibility in Amazon’s algorithm, leading to a jump in page reads in Kindle Unlimited which is only now fading some. Best, is teal below; the yellow is Unwelcome Matt, for which I did a $0.99 sale a little after the Best, giveaway. The other books just perked along as they normally do.

I didn’t have a lot of time to write in Los Angeles, but I did get some done, at least until my ten-year-old travel laptop decided that it was no longer happy being in one coherent piece and started the process of screen separation as shown below. Amazingly, the screen and keyboard function was undiminished despite their only being connected by a 3/4″ wide hinge on the other side, but the computer gradually lost any ability to hook to the Internet, which is a no-go when I’m composing in Google Docs.

The sci fi novel is coming along, though, and I’ve got them through the challenging middle part of the story and into the final act, although there’s still a lot to figure out there. Still hoping to have a first draft done by mid-November and a release date maybe near the end of the year. My plan is to get this one to Christina, then start something new in November as I usually do, and then come back to edit this one in December. I’ve got a sleek new laptop on order for travel, too.

Some stories to try

I’m part of several author collectives, and we share each other’s work to try to help all of us reach more readers. In many cases, the books we share are are free or discounted. Sometimes, they ask that you sign up for a newsletter like this one. Here are some new books I have to share this month:

First, I have The Crucible Directive by K.R. Vance. This prequel to Vance’s main series sounds amazing – a heroic captain disgraced, then shunted off to a decrepit vessel, then pursued by those who want him dead, forcing him to pull together the outcasts on his crew into something more. This is free, and I’ve just grabbed a copy myself, sold on the plot, which sounds like a movie I’d love watching.

Next, I have Crown of Serpents by Sierra Storm. Not a book about uncomfortable headgear, this is an expansion of the myth of Perseus and Medusa, set after those events when Medusa is brought back from the dead (desevered, I presume) and is hell-bent on vengeance against her killer, until she sort of starts falling for him. Not just enemies to lovers, this is enemies to beheaders to avengers to it’s complicated.

Next, I have Beyond the Crystal Sky by Glen C. Strathy. This dystopian sci-fi story is set on a rigidly controlled multi-generation starship, where a girl with genetic gifts longs to escape the restraints forced on her by the ship’s community and the traditions that bind it together.

Next, I have Exostar by Rae Knightly. This award-winning YA sci-fi adventure stars a damaged android who may be more than she seems. A 4.5-star average on 146 ratings on Amazon is a real mark in the book’s favor, so if this sounds like your kind of thing, give it a look!

Next, I have Dead Drop by J.P. Burton, which bills itself as an 8-bit detective mystery. I assume that means there are 256 possible suspects in this cozy mystery set at a snowed-in inn. Available for free!

Finally, I have a big set of FREE speculative fiction books – forty-five stories and books available for download in sci fi, fantasy, thriller, and other genres. There’s sure to be something here you’ll enjoy.

Thanks

Thanks so much for signing up for my newsletter. Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions for upcoming books! I love hearing from people. If you’ve read one of my books and wouldn’t mind leaving a review anywhere (Amazon, Goodreads, Bookbub, LibraryThing) I’d really appreciate it! Each review helps me reach more readers.

May the Bloodmother watch over you –

Dave

Allison reviews finalist Our Simulated Selves by Nikki Null

September 1, 2026 / Dave / 0 Comments

Allison’s original review on Goodreads is here. This is a copy of that post.

This was a clever, moving tale about queer identity wrapped in a sci-fi package. I loved the twists and turns the story took and the complexity of the characters (TASA and Ember were two of my favourites). After a while, I realized where Ren was heading before he did, and I just wanted to yell at him to hurry up and accept his true self already, haha. The pressures from society were devastating to read about (but so realistic). The pacing of some of the chapters was a bit too slow for my taste, but this story will be sitting with me for a long time to come.

I read this as a judge for the Self-Published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC5). This review is my personal opinion and doesn’t reflect the novel’s place in the contest. Thank you to the author for the e-copy!

To see all reviews and activity from Team 1.21 Gigawatts, visit our team page here.

Wick Welker reviews SPSFC#5 finalist Artificial Selection

August 28, 2026 / Dave / 0 Comments

Here is a finalist review for a full read for Team 1.21 Gigawatts for the first round of SPSFC#5 by team judge Wick Welker. For more information about the team and our progress, please go to the team update page here.

Artificial Selection by Marianna Pickles

Cozy, character driven mystery.

Artificial Selection starts out a bit quirky and with a somewhat dull mystery: who’s been stealing pages from a library book? The MC Charlotte and her side-kick AI assistant, named Ben, are on the case as they represent the Department of Awkward Questions for the corporatocracy that has subsumed power over post-melt Britain. The beginning was slow and with a dynamic between these two characters I found to be a bit dull. However as the book went on, I realized this was more of a cozy character driven story. Flashbacks of Charlotte were at first obtrusive but then I realized they were weaving into the main story line and everything was related. It takes time, but Charlotte does get the fleshing out she deserves and by the end of the story I was really sympathetic toward her and why she had such an attached relationship to Ben.

This isn’t a murder mystery but that doesn’t mean the stakes aren’t high. Beneath the plot is a story about class struggle in a corporate authoritarian society. The corporation has a tight grip on immigration and uses an algorithmic standard for who comes and who goes. Charlotte navigates the depths of the ruling class’s dependence on an algorithm they don’t really understand and how she herself found favor in the algorithm for reasons she doesn’t quite know. What I enjoyed about this social arrangement is that it’s not that different from modern ones today. It’s not overtly totalitarian but it is inherently unjust and full of bias where the responsibility is off loaded to a third party. There are cautionary tales in the book that are very relevant for the present moment without being heavy handed.

Overall, this was a slow but enjoyable read that sticks the landing in a character driven narrative.

I received a free copy as a judge for the SPSFC5 competition. This review has no bearing on the book’s standing in the competition.A slick cyberpunk identity crisis.

This review is also posted on Wick’s Goodreads profile. Wick’s website is here.

Archie reviews semifinalist ab initio by Jacob Terracina

August 27, 2026 / Dave / 0 Comments

Archie’s original review on Goodreads is here. This is a copy of that post.

Disclaimer – I read this book as a judge for SPSFC#5 and received a complementary copy.

Without going into the details of this book as other judges who have read it before me have adequately explained its contents, I will say that I enjoyed reading this work.

I found the writing to be excellent and the characters real. The details in the science and courtroom drama were well done.

Thank you Jacob for submitting the book in the contest.

To see all reviews and activity from Team 1.21 Gigawatts, visit our team page here.

Allison reviews finalist Artificial Selection by Marianne Pickles

August 27, 2026 / Dave / 0 Comments

Allison’s original review on Goodreads is here. This is a copy of that post.

I love cozy mystery and sci-fi, so this genre-blend is right up my alley. I appreciated Charlotte as a protagonist—her curiosity, backstory, and drive to discover the truth was relatable—and her relationship with Ben (the AI) was endearing. I liked how absurd the mystery they were investigating seemed at first and the questions brought up about this supposedly utopian society.

The worldbuilding was great. We have a society after a flood, and Charlotte is living on a human-made island governed by a corporation and run by an AI. She has drunk the Kool-Aid about the corporation being totally benevolent and having its citizens’ best interests at heart, and it was cathartic (and sad) to watch that belief start to crumble. I thought I was going to be bored by her backstory, but it mostly kept my attention, and I liked the “villain” duo, Straight and Narrow.

I found the pacing too slow at points, but there were many interesting conversations, characters, and ideas here. It was low stakes, fun, and enjoyable.

To see all reviews and activity from Team 1.21 Gigawatts, visit our team page here.

August 15 2026 Newsletter

August 16, 2026 / Dave / 0 Comments

Get Unwelcome Matt for cheap!

Unwelcome Matt, my mystery about a librarian who comes home to evict her deadbeat housemate but instead finds a body in her house, is on sale for $0.99 (or the equivalent in other global markets) until midnight Sunday Pacific time. I had a BookBub feature for the book last Monday, and I’ve sold 424 of them already at the discounted price, and there’s been a bit of a boom with readers borrowing the book in Kindle Unlimited, so that’s all very exciting.

Here’s a recent review from one of my most dedicated readers, somebody great whom I’ve met through my books. She’s read them all, I think, or nearly so – I know I signed a bunch of them for her in Roanoke a couple years ago.

Headed to WorldCon

There’s a big annual venerable science fiction convention held each year, called “The World Science Fiction Convention” but usually shortened to WorldCon. It’s held in a different world city each year. Last year, that was Seattle, and I went for the first time, not as a guest, but just to attend talks, meet people, and see what it was all about. It was super fun, and I got to hear panels from authors I’d been reading since my childhood.

This year, it’s in Los Angeles, so I’m going again, and this year, they accepted my application to be a guest. I’ll be involved in several different events:

The Game Design Jam should be really fun for creative folks – we’ve ordered a ton of game pieces, and we have a long stretch of time with all kinds of paper, cards, dice, pawns, etc. to come up with a new game design. Just a Minute is a BBC game show, so I’ll be MCing that with some other cool panelists as players, and the trivia show I’ll run on Saturday solo (I’ve done that many times online and at my local comedy club). The other ones are all discussion panels, and I’m really looking forward to those, especially the fantasy mystery one, which my Inquisitors’ Guild books fit right into.

Writing update

I haven’t done a ton of writing in the last couple weeks, although I got a little done, and I’m getting back into it. Got distracted by my new boardgame design (I’ve played it three times now, and it’s fun!) and by helping my dad move from New Mexico to Iowa, which was a fun road trip in a big U-Haul truck. I’m working on my third sci-fi novel, which is about three-quarters done, and I hope to get it revised and out this year, probably in November or December. Here’s a teaser excerpt from the opening chapter:

“I was kind of hoping for death robots.” Rex sat at the engineering station, but he wasn’t facing the console. That made sense, because he was a marine, not an engineer. He was leaning as far back as the seat would let him, feet resting on the railing surrounding the plasma containment unit. That also made sense, because he was off shift, and he had nothing much to do even when he was on duty.

“Death robots? Really?”

“I mean, no. But it would be more interesting than this.” He waved a hand at the holo display to his right. “This is just sad.”

The display showed Harini, or what was left of it, along with tracking vectors and velocities for the bigger pieces of the huge debris field in orbit. Three and a half centuries ago, Harini had been a colony world, one with ten million people living on it. Now, it had a crater scarring ten degrees of arc across the center of the northern continent, plus evidence of a bunch of other smaller impacts. Most of the surface of the oceans was frozen up now following the impact, and big continental ice sheets crawled across any land mass that was more than 20 degrees from the equator. The darkness from the dust and ash after the impact had tipped a world already on the edges of an ice age deep into colder temperatures, with positive feedback from the high-albedo ice driving it ever deeper. Our science team guessed that most of the residents would have died when the atmosphere reached a few hundred degrees centigrade as the ejecta from the impact fell back through what was left of the atmosphere. If that didn’t get them, there was always the shock wave, the tsunamis, the massive instant volcanic eruptions, or any of the other consequences of the impact. And then the cold.

Some stories to try

First, I have Earth 2100, a collection of 18 sci-fi stories by different authors trying to predict (through storytelling) what Earth might be like in 2100. A cool concept! The editor, J. Scott Coatsworth, will be on my Gen AI panel at the convention in Los Angeles I mentioned above, so it will be cool to meet him in real life. This is free to download, so there’s no obligation other than providing your email.

Next, I have Purpose Unearthed by Darice Fetcher, the first book in her No Winning This War series. This highly rated book (4.8 over 26 ratings on Amazon). It says it’s a “slow-burn philosophical dystopian science fiction novel about identity, control, and the fragile line between truth and perception in a world built for comfort rather than meaning.” Wow! A dystopian future where everyone relies on augmented reality glasses that project a censored, comfortable environment, in exchange for an extended, peaceful life. As you might expect, there are those who walk away. Sounds really intriguing!

Next, I have Last Ember of Azrith by Rowan Ashborne, which has spooky scaly naked-torso glowing eyes guy plus a dragon plus a towering city full of castles. The book itself is not about a fire going out, but instead a half-dragon warrior and an elf princess betrayed by an empire and struggling to save their people. Great stuff. You can get the full 91-page book here for free.

Finally, I have The Control Room by Miriam Khan, a sci-fi mafia romance for adults. A man bent on revenge meets a woman having visions, the daughter of his enemy, and their worlds and idea of reality start to come apart. This is part of a two-book series, and the first one is discounted to $1.99 if you act fast.

Thanks

Thanks so much for signing up for my newsletter. Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions for upcoming books! If you’re going to be at WorldCon and want to meet up, I’d love that too. Just drop me a line.

I hope you and your friends and family are having a safe and rewarding end to the summer (or winter, if you’re in the southern hemisphere)!

May the Bloodmother watch over you –

Dave

Wick Welker reviews SPSFC#5 finalist FrostByte

August 15, 2026 / Dave / 0 Comments

FrostByte by N.S. Chaudhury

A slick cyberpunk identity crisis.

Frostbyte is a well written tale about a young woman who loses her identity (or her body?) and is reincorporated into a new illegal body to uncover the mystery surrounding her previous death. It turns into a found family story with a charming cast of characters that slowly burn their way into meaningful and complex relationships. The cyberpunk world strikes a great balance between being derivative of other cyberpunk worlds but it certainly creates its own tech ecosystem that has excellent continuity and impact on the characters and the plot. To me the crowning achievement of the work is the thoughtful world building and social stratifications that surrounds the story.

The prose is really quite economic as well with a driving mystery that keeps the momentum going. For me the front end of the book was a tad too top heavy and it took a bit before the overall thrust got going. The layered world building at times was also overwhelming but these were minor issues. It was overall an enjoyable and engaging read.

I received a free copy as a judge for the SPSFC5 competition and this review has no bearing on the book’s standing in the competition.

This review is also posted on Wick’s Goodreads profile. Wick’s website is here.

Team 1.21 Gigawatts semifinal round report for SPSFC#5

August 8, 2026 / Dave / 0 Comments

Team 1.21 Gigawatts recently concluded our judging for the semifinal round of this year’s SPSFC (the 5th annual competition). All of our reviews and posts can be found at our team homepage.

We nominated two semifinalists from our initial allotment of 25 books. These were:

Black Sails to Sunward by Sheila Jenné
Who Nuked Silicon Valley? by Mike Donoghue

For the semifinals, each team was given four more books to read from the other teams’ semifinal picks (there were ten semifinalists in total). Our four additional semifinalists were the following, in alphabetical order:

ab inito by Jacob Terracina
Cold Blooded by Rohan O’Duill
Generations by Noam Josephides
Time Traitors by Eli Donovan

We’ve posted reviews on our team homepage, so if you’re looking for our thoughts on the individual books, head there. I’ll give you a general summary of how it went here.

We had a target of having at least two of our judges read each book. We achieved this goal. For most of the six books, we had three or four readers, although for two of them, we had two readers. We also wanted to post at least one judge review for each book, and we’ve accomplished that as well.

We liked all of these books and found them worthy of the semifinals. We were required to rate each book on a ten-point scale to combine ratings with other teams. Our average rating for each book ranged from a bit under 7 to almost 10. In ranked order, our average ratings led to positions as follows (including the two books we initially promoted as semifinalists).

ab initio (1st place)
Black Sails to Sunward (2nd, tied)
Who Nuked Silicon Valley? (2nd, tied)
Time Traitors (4th)
Cold Blooded (5th, tied)
Generations (5th, tied)

In some cases, there was not much space between our ratings (including ties, as shown). Our team ratings were averaged with the team ratings of other teams to generate an overall semifinal rating, which was then used to promote the top six semifinalist books to the finals. Of the six semifinalists we read, three moved on to the final round:

ab initio
Time Traitors
Generations

Obviously different judging teams responded quite differently to different semifinalist books, which is common and expected in this kind of competition. Our ratings for these books will carry on into the final round, and we will have no more input on the ones we’ve already rated. Our job is now to read and rate the other three finalists that we have not yet read, and the other teams are doing the same thing. The six finalists will thus have a team rating from each of the five judging teams, and the book with the highest average team rating will be our champion.

Watch our team page for more updates and reviews as we continue with the finals!

Allison reviews semifinalist Generations by Noam Josephides

August 8, 2026 / Dave / 0 Comments

Allison’s original review on Goodreads is here. This is a copy of that post.

There is some fascinating worldbuilding in this book. I love that the story takes place on a generation ship many years before the ship will get to its destination, so characters have to deal with existential questions as well as make practical decisions that will impact their ancestors’ futures. The birthing rules and society that has formed aboard the ship are also fascinating.

I also liked the protagonist, who is an archivist uncovering a conspiracy aboard the ship; her introversion, obsession with following the rules, and drive to discover the truth was relatable.

Unfortunately, the pacing is very slow, and as someone who prefers medium- to fast-paced books, that impacted my enjoyment of the story. It is largely character-driven, more interested in exploring ideas, philosophical questions, and futuristic science than action or drama. The dialogue drags and the mystery takes too long to unravel for my taste. The science is neat, though. People who enjoy slow-paced novels with interesting worldbuilding might like this.

To see all reviews and activity from Team 1.21 Gigawatts, visit our team page here.

Newsletter August 1 2026

August 2, 2026 / Dave / 0 Comments