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SPSFC#4 Quarterfinalist Review: Wakers of the Cryocrypt by Nathan Kuzack

This is my first review of a full read for the Peripheral Prospectors judging team for SPSFC#4. For more information about the team and our progress, please go to the team update page here.

The book is Wakers of the Cryocrypt by Nathan Kuzack (author site here). Nathan is offering this book for free through Google Books here. It’s also available on Amazon and Apple Books.

Blurb

A thought-provoking post-apocalyptic story about an unexpected reunion between humankind and the AIs it created.

In a world full of living machines one man may die… again.

The future. The human race is extinct. Earth is ruled by eltecs, descendants of the AIs humans created before their demise.

While searching for prehistoric cave paintings, two eltec explorers discover a hidden cryogenic crypt containing 23 perfectly preserved human bodies frozen inside crystal columns.

As eltec society argues over who might have built the crypt and what to do with it, one of its occupants is restored to life. Human beings are no longer extinct, but, for reasons of their own, not every eltec wants to see them come back. The only living human on Earth is in terrible danger.

My review

I enjoyed my time with this book. It was creative, exciting, featured a richly-imagined future world, and dealt with moral and ethical issues in an interesting way.

Plot and Characters

The story centers on several main characters, adopting their point of view or an omniscient point of view at various points. The human protagonist is a man given the name Lazarus. He awakes from a mysterious tomb (the cryocrypt) into a far-future, post-human world populated by sentient robots called Eltecs.

The Eltecs, descendants of human robotics and AI technology, live in a low-population utopian society goverened by a set of uber-intelligences. Even in their utopian future, they are factionalists. Some are fans of humanity, adopting human-like form and wearing clothes. Others are anti-humanity, adopting odd and unnatural shapes. All are protected from death by a cloning system that recreates and reloads them if they are destroyed, a la Paranoia.

Humanity has been dead for over ten thousand years, so the discovery of Laz and twenty-two other humans in the crypt, perfectly preserved, is a tremendously significant event. The Eltecs frequently cluck their steely tongues at humanity’s base, self-destructive instincts that led humanity to perish in an environmental and political cataclysm leading to a nuclear war long ago.

Thrust into this odd society, like an 18th-century savage brought back by colonialist explorers, Laz struggles to learn and adjust. He is afflicted by a mysterious amnesia, which prevents him from remembering his past life, although he seems well-versed in 21st century society and customs.

All of the above is established quickly, in the first few chapters, and the rest of the book is a tale, sometimes political, sometimes introspective, sometimes high-octane adventure, of Laz struggling to figure out who he is, why and how he was placed in this crypt, and how he will fit into Eltec society. His Eltec allies are often perspective characters, and their musings on Laz and their own society are interesting and robust. I don’t want to spoil the plot, which is fun, so I will leave the plot summary there.

My thoughts

As I was reading this, I was reminded a great deal of the many original-series Star Trek episodes where Kirk and Bones and Spock discover a planet living with very different social rules, often derived from 20th century America. Our brave Starfleet visitors have to figure out how the society works, and often what is wrong with it, before judging them, punching some people, kissing others, and flying away 43 minutes later. This absolutely isn’t a diss – I loved those episodes – but there’s a parallel there.

I was also reminded of fables or parables, stories told to explore moral issues. There’s a lot of judginess in many of the characters, and moral flaws and collective guilt are frequent concerns. The language of the book fits this style as well, with characters often ruminating about the sins of the past (or present), sometimes in bold declarative sentences.

To me, the main character’s amnesia didn’t seem necessary, although it’s explained and justified as the story progresses. It was a little tropey, and I don’t think the story would have been too different had he known he were a blacksmith or a baker or whatever. It did give him a constant sense of not knowing himself, which worked, but it also made him a limited character. There are books and shows where that trope is used better, The Bourne Identity being a big one, where hidden skills and connections are discovered, but Laz didn’t seem to have any of these. A new TV show I like, Doc, has amnesia as a central theme, and even though it’s a cheesy plot device, they’re deploying it well and capitalizing on the main character’s alienation from her past self as she learns more about it.

The book got more action-packed as it went on, which was fine and exciting, but the main human character lacked agency and control throughout the whole thing, leaving him subject to the manipulations and machinations (get it?) of his tormentors. The ending, in particular, seemed like a place where he and his friends were far more spectators than protagonists, and I wasn’t a big fan of that choice. This was the book’s biggest disappointment for me, although as an author, I certainly know it can be hard to stick the landing. I actually thought the Eltec characters, especially Shulvara, were more both more interesting and more capable characters, and I’d have preferred to spend more time in their chrome crania rather than in Laz’s largely empty one.

One quibble for me was the Eltec society and speech. Despite being robots from the future, they spoke very much like 21st-century humans, even to the point of using “gonna” and “wanna” frequently, which grated. They also used 21st-century idioms frequently (e.g. something up my sleeve) which seemed out of place for sentient robots in the 33rd century. Their culture and personalities were also very human-seeming, which added to the Star Trek/parable feel but which seemed a little jarring to me, who would expect the Eltec society to have evolved into something more different in 12,000 years.

There was also some odd fixation on sex, even from the robots, and some repeated male gaze from Laz towards a fellow crypt resident. Even the robots got into ogling people sometimes, apparently totally on board with a 21st-century standard of Hot-or-Not. I’m not a prude at all, but this seemed out of place. It totally wasn’t a big deal, not frequent, and didn’t detract, but the few mentions of orgasms and cocks and lust and such didn’t (for me) fit the nature or tone of the rest of the story, which was closer to classic sci-fi and focused on other, cooler things.

The POV was not quite fixed, sometimes restricted to one character, sometimes omniscient with thoughts from all of them, sometimes party to observing events none of the main characters could see, and it sometimes floated from one to the other within a paragraph or two. It was a little fuzzy – not bad, but as an author who worries about that stuff, I couldn’t help but take note.

Summation

This was a good book, often exciting, thought-provoking, funny, and emotional, with a creative future world to explore and a lot of moral questions to think about. Kuzack should be proud of what he’s done with it. It well-deserves its quarterfinal spot in the SPSFC. Because it’s the first of our quarterfinalists I’ve read, I don’t have a real sense of how it will stack up against those others, but I recommend it, especially if you liked those old Star Trek morality plays.

My indie author business – Jan 2025

I’ve been doing monthly business posts, so here’s my first of 2025.

Revenue

Here’s my revenue from Amazon:

I had nine audiobook sales through ACX, which will be about another $25, and I sold two books in person at an author event at my local library ($30 in revenue). So, put me down for about $315 in revenue.

Kindle Unlimited page reads are in the table, but here’s how it looks in a bar graph. Kenai is the light blue at the bottom of the columns, by far my most-read book, making up more than half of page reads and 1/3 of sales.

Expenses

I turned off my Facebook ads in mid-November and haven’t started them up. I have a few Amazon ads running, but the bids are so low that I seldom get them placed. I invested in a sponsorship for Dr. Who Online that’s still running, but I paid for that back in November, and it’s not doing much. The two books I sold came out of my home stock, which cost me about $6.50 each, although I paid for them back in mid-2024.

All of that is to say, I’m not running many promotions now and haven’t since the middle of November. What that means is that my revenue now is probably my current baseline – what I bring in if I don’t spend anything on promotion or advertising. It’s great that this seems to mean I can still pull 40K page reads and $300 in a month without spending anything, but I’d like to be reaching more readers than that, and some of my books aren’t finding an audience without help from ads.

Upcoming strategies

I have a BookBub promoted free deal hitting in a few days for my three-book box set of Inquisitors’ Guild books. If it works as they have in the past, that will probably lead to thousands of downloads and a whole mess of page reads, and it may lead to read-through on my other books and a bump in the Amazon rankings that lasts for a couple months. That’s what’s happened for most of my other BookBub featured deal promotions, so I’m hopeful it keeps up.

I’ll have some expenses in the next month for new covers in preparation for a mystery book release in February or March and an updated cover for Got Trouble. I’m also probably going to start up some advertising again. I’ve been trying to do some reading on how to make my ad dollars go farther, so we’ll see if I can apply anything I’ve learned.

My 2024 in the indie author business

I’ve taken to doing monthly reports of my financials as an indie author. I also started doing an annual report last year, which some people found interesting, so I thought I’d continue with that. If you’re curious, here’s last year’s report.

The Books

Here are my books and their relative sales through Amazon last year. It was good to see my newer releases doing well (What Grows From the Dead and The Glorious and Epic Tale of Lady Isovar). I also had some good success with Kenai, which won the 2023-24 SPSFC this year (announced June 19th). I have audiobook and paperback sales on top of these figures, but Amazon provides most of my revenue.

All my books are exclusive to Amazon and in Kindle Unlimited except Traitors Unseen, which I use as a reader magnet giveaway on other platforms. Unlike other authors who don’t get much out of KU and prefer the increased sales that come with selling on places like Kobo, Apple, Google, and Barnes and Noble, I have done pretty well in KU, so well that I don’t feel comfortable giving it up. Here is my revenue breakdown for my sales (not counting the relative few paperbacks I sold at conventions or via my web shop).

Revenues

Here are my revenues by category for this past year. A total of about $7,400.

That represents a good improvement over last year, when I made about $4,800. A 54% increase. Yay!

Here’s my year-over-year revenues from regular sources (ebooks, KU, paperbacks, audio) without other minor sources:

So, that growth trend looks pretty good. Some of it is having more books out. Some of it is getting more BookBub features, which provide a huge boost to me. Some of it is getting smarter about how I spend money. And some of it is just spending more money on ads and other promotion.

Expenses

Here are my expenses by category for 2025. A total of about $13,400.

Notes

  • I only bought one cover this year, the cover for The Glorious and Epic Tale of Lady Isovar. Usually, that category would be higher. I spent some money getting art for ads this year, and some of that has been useful in creating Facebook ads.
  • I have a very kind and talented friend, Tami Ryan, who has edited and proofed my last five or six books. She doesn’t like charging me money, although I try to send her payments. One time she asked me to donate to an animal shelter instead. So, my editing costs are unusually low.
  • I overinvested in giveaways, blog tours, and contest entry fees. I did a ton of giveaways for the Indie Fantasy Addicts Summer Reading Challenge this year which was quite expensive. It’s a great group and fun to be part of, but there’s no way I recoup those costs from the small number of sales and reviews they generate. Blog tours are a lot of fun, and you get some fun reviews and insta pictures, but I’m not convinced they lead to very many sales. With contests, I tried a few new-to-me ones this year that had modest entry fees. That went nowhere, and I doubt I’ll do those again (except for BBNYA, which is very low-cost and run independently). SPFBO and SPSFC are great free alternatives, so I’ll stick with those. There’s no equivalent I can find for mystery/thriller books, which is too bad.
  • Many of the convention supplies I bought for this year’s Crash City Con will serve me well for as long as I keep doing this, so those are one-time costs.
  • The advertising I did was mostly through Facebook. I’m not sure I’ll continue that, because Facebook has taken a sharp turn toward bigotry in recent weeks, but it’s the only major advertising platform where I’ve come close to breaking even on my ads.
  • I was able to get a few Bookbub featured deals this year, and they continue to be great. They’re very expensive, but they’re the only reliably positive-return promotion I’ve found to do. The “New releases for less” Bookbub feature I bought for The Glorious and Epic Tale of ady Isovar, by contrast, was a total bust and a waste of money. Won’t be doing that again.
  • I also bought up a full inventory of my books (about ten each, a few more of some titles) in my home to sell. I didn’t have nearly that many before this year, and it represents about $600 in inventory value. So, some of that is product I haven’t yet sold – not really a loss, but rather a kind of unrealized profit.

Analysis

Like my revenues, my expenses also made a big jump from last year, when I spent about $7,200. Last year, I had $4,800 in revenue on $7,200 in expenses, meaning I only made back about 2/3 of what I spent.

This year, I made $7,400 on expenses of $13,400, so I only made back about 55% of what I spent, so that’s worse, both in having a $6000 loss and in having a worse return on expenses. Boo.

That’s not a great year-over-year for a business, unless it’s a business that’s still growing, or where there are other factors at work.

If I were going to offer caveats for some of the expenses, here are two big ones:

  • I already know that audiobooks aren’t a good investment for me. Over the several years I’ve had audiobooks out, I’ve made $988 in revenue on about $6375 in expenses for the four books I’ve done audio for. This year, I made the decision to get two more audio books out there (Kenai and What Grows From the Dead) even though I knew they wouldn’t make financial sense. I was doing them more for fun than for profit. That’s a luxury I have with the money I have available. If I were trying to become profitable as fast as possible, I’d have skipped every audiobook after the second one once the pattern became clear. In a sense, then, the $2600 I spent on audiobooks this year (and the $800 I spent this month finishing up the audio for WGFTD) could maybe lie outside my business model.
  • I incurred a pretty major advertising expense late in the year, with ads that didn’t go live until December but will last for nearly all of 2025. This is with the Dr. Who Online site. I checked with a friend who had done a sponsorship there, and he said it had gone pretty well for him, so I went ahead and did a big buy there. The ads they created for me are really neat, and there’s some traffic from them, but given how it’s gone for the first couple months, I don’t think there’s any way it’s a good investment for me in terms of return. Live and learn, right? But it also seems like most of the $700 cost should be billed to 2025 rather than 2024.

If I deduct the $2600 in audiobook costs (more vanity/fun on my part than sound business) and maybe $650 of the Dr. Who advertising cost that hits this year, that knocks my expenses down to about $10,150. Kind of fake, yes, but that puts my return for the year at 73% of expenses with a $2,750 loss. Still not profitable, but comparable or a little better than last year.

Here’s how the big picture looks year over year. The shaded areas in the 2024 column at the right are if I take out the audio and 2025 advertising expense like I mentioned above. That’s probably a little bit of BS to make me feel better, but I’m giving both figures, so read it how you want.

2024 Successes

I had some really great developments this year in trying to move my indie author career forward. Here are a few:

My biggest thrill was having Kenai win the SPSFC. That’s an indie sci fi competition founded by Hugh Howey of Silo and Wool fame. This was the third year of it (Daros was a semifinalist in 2021-22). Kenai won out over 221 entries across nine judging teams in an exciting competition over seven months. I also had a great time meeting other authors – we did some fun interviews and hung out together on YouTube for a bit. Kenai sales and page reads make it my strongest book right now.

I got two new books out, the mystery What Grows From the Dead and the silly epic fantasy The Glorious and Epic Tale of Lady Isovar. I had an absolute blast writing Lady Isovar, and it’s slowly finding its audience, maintaining one of my highest review averages (4.7 on 68 ratings on Amazon). It also reached the semifinals of SPFBO. What Grows From the Dead got a Bookbub promotion mid-year, and during the week or so it was out there for free, it was downloaded an astounding 20,000 times. That led to a long, successful ride on the Amazon algorithm, leading to a bunch of page reads and a huge number of readers. It’s closing in on 600 ratings on Amazon, which is 250 more than any of my other books, nearly all of them coming in about a three month period.

I hit my second million pages read on Kindle Unlimited, hitting 2,000,000 much faster than I did 1,000,000. This is the graph that gives me the most hope that I’m headed somewhere other than obscurity. Of course it’s been helped out hugely by Bookbub promos, which I can’t control, but I didn’t used to get those in my first four years of this, so that’s getting better too.

Thanks for reading! I’m happy to answer questions in the comments. If you’re interested in any of my books, please check them out on my book page here.

Notes on the departing books – SPSFC #4

This year, I’m on the Peripheral Prospectors team as a judge for SPSFC. We’ve recently announced our six quarterfinalists, as you can see in this post with more information and previous posts available on the team page here.

I’ve been a participant twice before, in 2021-22 (Daros) and 2023-24 (Kenai). I’ve been in SPFBO four times, I’ve done BBNYA twice, and I’ve entered another couple contests. Although I’ve met with success in some of these contests, I have also at times exited (very) early, and I absolutely know how much that stings.

In that spirit, I thought I’d share what I liked about each of the books I read that didn’t progress beyond this stage. Our judging team of five split our 31 submissions into two groups, with each judge assigned to one group or the other. For each of these books, I read the opening chapters, usually 20 percent or so, which is the expectation for the “scout phase” of the competition. So, these comments (and the quarterfinalist status) aren’t based on the whole book in my case, although some of the books below got full reads by the other judges.

I’m not including any critiques or problems I might have had with the books, because that’s not the point of this post. I’m just looking to celebrate and highlight these books and authors as they depart the competition.

309

This had an exciting opening with definite alien invasion vibes. The characters had strong voices and personalities, and the invasion and mysteries were intriguing. The story has a good old-school sci fi vibe – I was reminded of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, with all the tension and horror that scenario provides.

Battle Calm

This book quickly established a world at war with a merciless foe along with a band of rebels fraught with their own internal conflicts. The dialogue was snappy and emotions were high, with a number of mysteries (both past and future) set out for the narrative to unwind. The nature and behavior of the enemy here was creative and interesting, and the hierarchy and mistrust in the human forces was tense and at the breaking point nearly immediately. The desperate situation of the main character at the opening was a good way to introduce all of this.

Chasing Naomi

I really enjoyed my time with this one. It had a fundamental goofiness and high-concept spirit that worked for me. The main character was plucky and appealing, and the ship and ghost-people picking her up were fun and funny. Because of the scout stage partial read, I didn’t get far enough to see where it was all headed, but it had a bunch of tropes I enjoyed – fish out of water human among advanced non-Earthlings, a la Hitchhiker’s Guide, sassy ship’s computer, space battles, negotiations and laws, superhero-ish main character discovering her powers.

Children of the Fall

This was a hyperviolent, breakneck pace view of a future dystopian world. Some very creepy scenes with artificial people gone bad, and some zombie-flick-style action with hapless humans facing killer beings. The main character’s worries about battery life were a great way to add tension. There was also some really interesting use of language here – words, phrases, and images that were used in ways that were unexpected and thought-provoking.

The Dream of the Forest

The opening scenes here are a quick contrast – a loving couple (actively loving, if you know what I mean) with high status, wealth, and privilege, although in a restrictive society with some draconian rules. Immediately, there’s a bitter, awful betrayal, one impacted by those draconian rules and designed to exploit the high status, throwing everything into turmoil. It’s a raw, emotional opening, promising high stakes throughout.

Eye of Destiny

This was a two-sides story, with one side being young humans whose father is caught up in mysterious research, and the other being an alien menace to all of humanity. The human characters had clear, established relationships, and the growing sense of something wrong on Earth, with exploration and discovery, was engaging, promising higher stakes to come. To me, it kind of read like a dystopian future story targeting the young adult market, maybe like Divergent or Maze Runner, although with an Earth much closer to our real Earth than in those stories.

The First Herald

I liked this one and enjoyed my time with it. There was a strongly hierarchical dystopian future, with a strong undercurrent of family politics and conflicts, with people operating at many different levels in society. The future world was interesting and compelling, clearly having a lot of planning and thought behind it. The dialogue and writing were engaging, and the mystery and conspiracy afoot were intriguing, with hints of an equally complex counter-culture full of rebels (and backstabbing too).

Hauler

This book had a ton of charm, with an everyman protagonist constantly struggling with a system that wants to hold him down and exploit him, not always making the best decisions, but aware that he is not, which is fun. The growing danger and entanglement were handled well, and there’s also a lot of humor and colorful characters as this one progresses. I could totally see this as a goofy sci-fi movie, probably starring a pro wrestler.

Horizon

This book opened with a tremendous space battle full of panic, despair, and violence. Really dramatic beginning. The book moved on to the aftermath of that disaster, and you get a better sense of the setting, the conflict, and the characters involved, all of whom are brimming with emotion and tension. Lots of action here, and squarely in the tradition of a future with warring ships and a bigger universe to explore.

Mushroom Blues

This was a really, really interesting book, very well written, with a complex society reminiscent of colonial powers and resistance struggles on Earth, but set somewhere else, an imagined non-Earth but very Earth-like place. Adding to the weirdness is the fact that the subjugated people are fungal organisms, although they have many human (and relatable) characteristics and emotions and desires. The vibe is 20th-century hard-boiled detective, which works well, and the dialogue is real-seeming and the pace taut and exciting while sometimes taking pauses for some neat imagery and reflection on the gritty world. This one was hard to categorize – it’s doing well in SPFBO, although some of the judges there are wrestling with whether it’s fantasy (see here). Similarly, we wrestled with whether it’s sci-fi – there’s a scientific basis for the mushroom people’s biology and weird powers, but (at least in the opening I read) there’s not advanced human tech or spaceships or that kind of sci-fi staple, nor is there a future setting – just an alternate Earthlike world where mushroom people exist along with humans. Regardless of the categorization, it’s undeniably a good book, well-written and tremendously creative.

Non-Conscious

I liked this one. It was definitely quirky and coarse, with a lot of crass humor, sex, and language you’d never use in front of your grandma. The premise of a vibrant computer game world with real-world corporate workers running it is not new, but it’s fresh and intriguing here, milking the computer game scenario (and the power and control the corporate workers have in it) for all those tasty plot bits and also having a desolate, confining, dysfunctional corporate and workplace structure with pissed off people taking shots at each other. A lot of imagination went into this, and if you can abide the rawness of the sex talk (and sex scenes) and profanity, you’ll find something to chew on inside.

Use of Emergency

I liked this one a lot – it had a great set-up with a plucky heroine bucking an unfair system, finding a way through impassable societal and career barriers even if she has to bend the rules. The sleeper-ship scenario was well-described and seemed real and authentic, and (unlike many of these entries) I found the protagonist relatable, fun, and easy to cheer for, and the mystery that was just getting started in the part I read was engaging and juicy.

The Widow’s Tithe

I enjoyed my time with this one too. It had a very high-concept setup, full of future media celebrities, gunfights, megacorps, and bullets-flying action. You’re quickly aware here that everybody is a bit of a caricature, like in 1980’s sci fi movies, but it works (just as it often did in those). The reality-TV military commando squad might not be realistic, but it’s fun, and the catty, egotistical, self-absorbed main character is fun to watch as she navigates a huge setback and a new life full of trials. You’ll know quickly if you’re going to like it, and if you go for this kind of thing, it seems likely to pay off.

My editing process

A Kenai reader who’s also an author wrote me to ask about my editing process. I thought I’d share my answer to him with you all here. For my first book, Flames Over Frosthelm, I hired a developmental editor who was really great, but I haven’t included that step since.

I’m happy to describe my editing process, which I doubt is standard, but it works OK for me. I enjoy writing the first draft much more than editing, and I’m usually more reluctant than I should be to delete things that really need deleting. So, I’m not sure I’m a role model, but here’s what I do:

First Draft – I usually do this straight through without a lot of edits as I go. Most books, I go from start to finish, but with Kenai, interestingly, I wrote right up to where Jess’ ship crashes, and then I got unsure how to finish, so I actually wrote the ending chapters backwards, from the ending I wanted for her, back to how it would be on Kenai with the plants, and then the battle with the ship. I’d never done that before, but it worked well here, and actually, in a book where time goes backwards, it was almost fitting. The book I’m working on now has been a little non-linear too in terms of my writing. Very rarely here, I’ll write a section that I come to think doesn’t fit, and I’ll take that out and rewrite or go in a different direction. If there’s going to be a big change, it usually happens here.

First Editing Pass – When I’m done with the first draft, I usually let it sit for a few days, and then I start at the beginning and go through it. That first edit is a big one, because I write without an outline and usually without a big idea of where the book is going. Because of that, I discover things about the plot and characters as I go which need to be included or at least foreshadowed earlier in the story. So, that first edit is usually full of little changes and adjustments to make the story have a better thread through the plot and to make the characters be more consistent throughout. I also make a set of notes as I write the first draft about plot elements or questions I need to answer, and this first edit is where I try to address those issues.

Reader Number One – Once I’m happy with the book, I print out a paper copy and give it to my wife, who reads the whole thing and makes notes in the margins and on post-its, some good (e.g. jokes she laughed at), some critiques or questions or things that didn’t work for her. She will often catch typos or logic errors or inconsistent personalities, or places where I spend too much time on the characters thinking about what they should do (one of my persistent issues). Or rarely, she just hates something, and I need to figure out how to work around or change that.

Second Editing Pass – with her notes, I go through and make her suggested corrections and adjustments (or most of them – sometimes I’m too excited about something to change it). I’ll also make any other adjustments that seem necessary, but usually these are minor tweaks. Occasionally, I’ll have a recommendation for something that’s a bigger change, and I’ll have to delete or rewrite a section or make a bunch of smaller changes to accommodate the feedback.

Early Reader Team – I have four or five people, friends or relatives of mine, who are usually willing to read an early draft and give feedback. They all respond to different things. One is a physics professor, so I lean on him for science stuff – that’s Don, who I mention in the Author’s Note for Kenai. I get feedback from them, sometimes detailed, sometimes general, sometimes contradictory between the various readers.

Third Editing Pass – with their feedback, I go through the book again, making changes and adjustments based on their comments. This is usually a less-intense edit than the first two, because the book is usually in better shape by now. At this stage, I’ll often run the book through MS Word’s grammar and spelling review, 99% of which is not useful, but a small fraction of which is stuff I still haven’t caught that should be changed.

Copyedit and Proof – I have a high school friend, Tami, who’s offered to do my final proofing and copyediting, so when I think the book is ready for publication, she’s the last step. She reads through and catches any punctuation and grammar issues that remain and gives me some other feedback. She usually doesn’t comment on plot or characters unless I press her, but sometimes she has some comments as she goes.

Fourth and Final Editing Pass – This is my last run-through before publication. I implement Tami’s suggestions and make any other small changes I think the book needs. Then, it’s a bunch of formatting and such to get it ready for ebook and paperback publication, but no further changes to the text.

Six years of page reads

I put together a progression of 60 days of my page reads in Kindle Unlimited showing good growth from 2019-2024. I stuck with the same date range each year, Sept 1 to Nov 29. Pretty happy with what I found.

Data Notes:

— I rescaled the default vertical axis for the graphs to be comparable year over year.

— I was advertising my first book pretty heavily the first year (2019) which I assume is why the numbers were stronger than 2020.

— I had a BookBub promotion for Kenai in late October 2024 which shows up on the final slide.

My November Finances as an Indie Author

I’ve been doing a monthly review of my finances as what I think of as a middle-range indie author – more successful than some, far less successful than others. See here for my thoughts on the developmental stages of an indie author career.

November revenues

Here are my KU page reads:

The teal here is Kenai, for which I ran a recent BookBub promo. More on that later. That’s a very good month for me.

And here are my sales:

Yellow here is the tail end of the Kenai BookBub, while teal is a free promo for The Glorious and Epic Tale of Lady Isovar. For both, I stacked a bunch of promo newsletter sites. So, most of those are free books, and this isn’t very helpful other than to see what the shape of an advertised free promo is. If you’re curious about that, this graph of the last 90 days shows how much more intense the downloads are for a BookBub vs. just FreeBooksy and other promo sites.

On this, Kenai (via BookBub) is the teal, and TG&ETOLI (via Freebooksy and a few others) is yellow.

If it’s a financial picture, though, the paid sales are more important. Here they are:

In terms of total revenue, I took in nearly $1000 as follows:

This total is overwhelmingly ebooks – I made $972 off ebooks, $10 off paperbacks. It is also largely from Kindle Unlimited, at $733 from KU, $250 from sales. That’s 75% of my revenue here from KU, which is more than usual, but I think that’s probably from the read-through for Kenai after the promotion.

I also had a very good month (for me) for my audiobooks with 17 sales. I won’t get a financial report from that until later, so I don’t know how much revenue it will be, but it’s historically been small, about $3 a book, so maybe $50 if that holds.

I also sold one book via my new online bookstore, for a revenue of about $15, net after shipping and book cost of about $4.

November Expenses

On my monthly ledger, I have $1365.53 in expenses, which is more than I took in. However, $699 of that was for a year-long future advertising contract with a sci-fi website which wasn’t even set up this month. So, probably not fair to put that one in November set against these revenues. If we take that out, we’re left with $666.53 in expenses, which would leave November with a tidy profit of about $370. Neat!

However, that’s not really true, because some of what went on this month is from the BookBub for Kenai which was $523. The BookBub listing itself happened in late October, but all the impact was this month. There’s no question it has already made back its cost in KU page reads and sales of the book after the giveaway, and its impact isn’t entirely finished, as sales and reads of Kenai are still elevated relative to its pre-promotion levels. But, we should probably set that cost against this month’s revenues, especially because I didn’t count it last month. That gets us to a loss of about $150. Not terrible for revenues totalling $1039, but not profitable.

Other notes

I did a bunch of Facebook advertising in September, October, and November. That had a big impact on sales on the books advertised (mostly The Glorious and Epic Tale of Lady Isovar and my Inquisitors’ Guild series), but it didn’t make up its cost. You can actually see in the revenues and to a lesser extent the KU page reads graphs above when I turned it off, which was on November 15.

I always see an impact from Facebook ads, and I paid an artist to make a cool image for the Inquisitors’ Guild series. Here’s the ad, which is probably the best, most effective ad I’ve run. It had rotating text, so it wasn’t always with this text, and the format was different on phone vs. PC vs. tablet.

And here’s the TG&ETOLI ad, which got a comparable number of clicks but didn’t result in as may sales or page reads. It’s for a single book rather than the series, so that might have an effect, and it only has 50+ reviews as opposed to Flames Over Frosthelm’s 335.


I am happy that my ads get people to check out the book. That’s terrific, and it’s really neat seeing the sales and reviews come in. I wish that they generated more revenue than they cost. Having done this for five years, I’m closer to that point now than I’ve ever been, getting back maybe 80-90% of the advertising cost in revenues, but it’s still a net loss (except for the BookBub featured deals of all stripes). I’m not sure what will push it over the magical edge to profitability.

If it’s writing more books, I can do that, but it will take time.

If it’s getting better ad art and ad copy, I can work on that, although hiring artists is expensive.

If it’s finding better groups to show the ads to or better placements, that’s tricky. The Facebook ad interface is nightmarish and glitchy, and I have had a lot of trouble figuring out the best strategies there.

There’s another possibility, one that I’m toying with, but I’m not sure if it’s real or not. It could be that I just need to get my books seen enough that people read them and like them and review them and discuss them. If that’s the case, then this advertising money is worthwhile even if it is a net loss in terms of revenue, because it is getting me more eyeballs and more ratings and reviews. It could be that spending this advertising money at a loss is me blowing on the embers of my book sales, and it will take a goodly amount of blowing and care to get the books to catch fire and take off.

That’s a seductive thought, though, and maybe a wrong one. If I’m wrong, then advertising more will just keep losing me money, and I’ll be stupid. But I think I’ll keep trying Facebook ads and other pathways. It may be I just have to blow $10,000 or $20,000 to get to a more voluminous and more sustainable business model. If that’s true, it sucks, but it’s not unique to indie publishing – tons of new business operate that way, from burrito shops to car detailers to ecommerce.

The big picture

This year is shaping up to be another good one, like last year, thanks again mostly to the few BookBub featured deals I’ve landed.

Here’s how this year is looking with most of it done. You can see the two big free BookBub giveaways dwarfing whatever else I’m doing, except for the $2000 or so I dropped on Facebook advertising in late September to mid November. Teal here is What Grows From the Dead, while yellow is Kenai.

The KU pages picture is similar, and even more stark. The BookBubs really feed that KU revenue a lot. Interestingly, the Facebook advertising produces more sales.

Finally, here’s my five-year showing since my first release in June 2019. Closing in on two million pages read, which I may reach this year, and revenues growing year over year.

Developmental stages of an indie author

I’ve come up with a (likely imperfect and non-universal) set of stages in the development of an indie author. Here it is:

I’ve been at this five years, and I think I’m probably at the Crossroads stage. A lot of activity under my belt, consistent page reads, nine books out, but not yet making a profit at this (not nearly so).

An October in the indie book business

I’m doing a summary of my October book business. That turns out to be a tricky month to calculate precisely. I’ll start with the basics and then get into the complications.

Basics

Sales

The total orders graph is stupid, because I had a BookBub fueled giveaway for Kenai in the last couple days of the month which wipes everything else out on the graph.

If you take out those zero-revenue giveaway books, I still have pretty robust sales through Amazon:

The top sellers by far were my fantasy books, with the other four books (sci fi and thriller) making up only 38 of the sales. The peak around October 10-11 is artificial – about 70 of those are free books I gave away as prizes as part of the Indie Fantasy Addicts Summer Reading Challenge (see discussion below).

Page Reads

74K is a lot of pages for Kindle Unlimited for me – a very good month. The top books were What Grows From the Dead and Flames Over Frosthelm at about 18K each, the Inquisitors’ Guild box set at about 13.5K, and Lady Isovar at 7K. All of those were books I advertised at various points, and I think the advertising (mostly on Facebook) helped them find readers. You can see a bit of a spike in dark blue on October 31 – that’s the echo (in page reads) of Kenai rocketing to the top of the Amazon rankings during the massive giveaway (14K books given away so far). That should persist into November if it follows the pattern of past promos I’ve done.

Income

ItemSalesValue
Amazon Paperbacks14$31.08
Ebooks234$557.26
Audiobooks48$115.90 (estimated)
Web shop paperbacks11$144.57
Total Book Sales307$848.81
KU page reads74107$337.08
Total revenue with KU$1,185.89

And here are my monthly expenses, at least the ones that relate to this month’s sales:

Expenses

TypeExpense
Advertising$1,131.44
IFA free book prize codes$323.76
Web shop book shipping$25.32
Cost of paperbacks & reviewer copies$101.68
Overseas IFA prize shipping$50.65
Total$1,632.85

Summary

OK, that’s a loss of about $450 with these numbers. Not great. However, some of that is because I ended up sending a lot of free books as prizes for the Indie Fantasy Addicts Summer Reading Challenge. That event is about $200 of my losses this month – a marketing expense that may pay off later as reviews and word-of-mouth comes in, and not something that happens every month.

One thing I tried deliberately this month is doing some Facebook advertising, something I haven’t done much of this year. It always has a response, but in the past, it’s rarely made back its cost, sometimes only a depressing fraction of its cost. I was closer to break-even this time, but I’m not there yet. I will probably slow that down in November, although it’s been gratifying seeing the (much) increased sales and page reads and reviews come in.

Complications

I said there were some complications, and boy are there. Here are some, just to give a fuller picture of what expenses I run more broadly:

  • Audiobook revenue estimates: I’m not sure I have that right. This has been the biggest month for Audiobook sales I think I ever had, not for any reason I can explain. Most of the sales are not the new Kenai audiobook – it’s mostly Daros and Flames Over Frosthelm which have been out for a long time. I did the estimate here based on the average revenue per book from October 2021-May 2024, which is only a couple dollars. That might be low, though, because a lot of those “sales” were actually free reviewer codes, and I didn’t give out any free codes for the older books this month. I won’t know the truth of it until ACX releases October revenue numbers, which probably won’t be until December.
    • IFA reading group prizes: I took part in the Indie Fantasy Addicts Summer Reading Challenge this year (check out their Facebook group). I was on a reading team, but I also participated as a sponsoring author, which means I got to send out my books as prizes to the winners of the summer challenge. I also put some of my books up as unlimited prizes, and a LOT of people chose them. Because nearly all my books are in KU, I’m supposed to be Amazon-exclusive for such things, which means when I give books away, I’m supposed to buy redemption codes for other people. This is only possible to do for the Amazon you’re local to (in my case US Amazon), but I tried to do it for all the winners who could take part. That was a lot of books this time, and it cost me the full price of the book, so I ended up spending about $435 on all the codes. However (even more complicated!) – (1) not everybody redeems the codes, so I can return the unused ones after a couple months, and (2) I get royalties for the redeemed codes, so I make back about $2.80 out of the $3.99 + $0.27 tax I spend on my own books. With 76 copies redeemed so far (out of 102 bought), that means I spent $323.76 but got $212.27 of that back in royalties. That’s included (both as books and dollars) in the tables above.
    • Other IFA prizes: The IFA SRC also included two paperbacks which I shipped internationally. That’s about $6.40 per book (which I spent months ago to build up my home supply) and about $25 in shipping for each of two overseas deliveries. I also gave away four audiobooks, but I could do that with reviewer codes from ACX with no additional cost to me.
    • Audiobook: In October, I started an audiobook project for What Grows From the Dead, so there’s another $700 there to get the narrator the first half of his money. I didn’t count that in this month’s expenses, because it’s a future project. I’ll certainly count it in my annual reckoning, although I’m sort of feeling like the audiobooks I do (three now, with a fourth on the way) are so far from making their costs back, and so slow to do so, that I’m doing them more for fun with extra cash than I am to make money. If I were making the decision strictly on profit/loss concerns, I wouldn’t do the audiobooks, at least not after the first one which took so long to recover. Alternatively, I’d do them with revenue-sharing only, but I don’t feel comfortable having the narrators do a bunch of uncompensated work for me, or I could self-narrate. But I’d rather have quality audiobooks out there. Maybe someday when I hit it big, they’ll make their costs back, but it’s a losing proposition now.
    • Restocking my web shop supply: I have been selling from my home supply both over my web shop (recently revamped), with books for reviewers, and at in-person events like Crash City Con. I have another couple events lined up soon, and I was running low on some of my books, so I spent another $368 restocking my home supply, which is about 120 books when fully stocked. I didn’t count that in this month’s expenses, although I’ll include it in my end-of-year, because it’s not really a monthly expense. I did count the cost (in bulk) of the paperbacks I sent out this month to customers and reviewers (about $6.35 per book) for this month’s expenses.
    • My end-of-month BookBub promo: I am in the middle of a giveaway for Kenai via BookBub and other stacked promos. That’s having a big impact, but nearly all of the revenues will probably be in November, so even though I paid for all of it in September and October, I’m leaving that $701 or so out of this month’s expense summary.
    • Expenses for next month’s free promo: I scheduled a free promo for The Glorious and Epic Tale of Lady Isovar for November. It’s not a BookBub one, so it’s a lot cheaper, but there are still a couple hundred dollars of expenses there. I’ll put them in the November summary (and the end-of-year reckoning also).

    My sixteen for the scouting stage of SPSFC

    I’ve done a bunch of these contests now (four SPFBOs, two SPSFCs, three BBNYAs, a SFINCS, and some others), and one thing I know as a participant is that it’s fun seeing your book progress through the competition, and it’s also nice to know what’s going on at any given time. In that spirit, I thought I’d give a little bit of info on our judging process and then an intro to the sixteen books I’ll be sampling for the first part of the SPSFC.

    Judging Process

    I’m on the Peripheral Prospectors team. The homepage for our team is here, including author bios and a whole bunch of other information from our team lead, Athena, at OneReadingNurse.com. That’s where our official announcements and progress will be, so that’s the place to bookmark, although I’ll be posting my own updates and reviews here.

    Not all judging teams do things the same way, but I’ll let you know what we’re doing with ours. Our total allotment is 31 books. This is our team “scout list” from which we’ll pick our full reads and quarter- and semifinalists.

    We’ve divided the allotment roughly in half, with our six judges spit up between the halves. My three judge sub-team is each reading the opening parts of our half, so there are multpile eyes on each book as we work towards choosing which books we’ll carry onwards and all do a full read from all six of us (those will be our quarterfinalists). When we get to that point, I’ll review those full reads here, but not all of the Prospectors may choose to do a public review at that point.

    There’s no set number of full reads/quarterfinalists that we’re looking for, but it definitely won’t be all sixteen, so a fair number of books will be cut at this first scouting stage based on consensus of our three-judge working group. Judges may decide to complete a full read and write a review even at the scout stage, but that’s up to each of us individually and is not required (and usually not very common).

    My Sixteen

    Here are the sixteen books in my half of the 31. I’ll be reading the openings of each and recommending some to go on to the full-read quarterfinalist stage along with my two other judges in the sub-team. I’ve included some preliminary impressions just for fun, although none of my comments are based on actual reading, so they don’t mean anything. Think of it as a sportscaster sizing up the athletes prior to the competition – mostly fluff, but hopefully fun. I will sometimes mention number of reviews on Amazon or Goodreads from a quick scan, but I’m not reading any of those external reviews so as not to spoil anything or color my opinions.

    309

    Blurb: Meet Lisa Hudson, a dedicated journalism student, on a beautiful, spring morning in Pittsburgh that proves to be the last ordinary day of her life. As she struggles to survive in a new reality, forged from catastrophe, Lisa confronts its mysteries and dangers with the aid of intriguing and unlikely companions. For her, the world will never be the same. For you, the journey is just beginning. Michael Shotter is a lifelong resident of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. As a lover of science, fiction, and fantasy, his works aim to push beyond the boundaries of traditional genre fiction into new and exciting realms born from literary craftsmanship. “309” represents his most ambitious effort to date and is sure to thrill fans of both science fiction and high adventure.

    Dave’s notes:
    An enigmatic cover, title, and blurb mean I don’t know much going into this one, although it looks like Lisa’s going to have at least one very bad day. The book has a solid number of positive ratings on Amazon and Goodreads. Looks like Michael’s got a few other books and short fiction out.

    Afterburn

    Blurb: Kara is an outcast. A freak. A non-telepath. The only person to ever show her any kindness − Caethiid, is dead. Ever since the state informed her of Caethiid’s death, Kara’s life has been bleak, consisting of a tedious job, a small book collection and the painful memories of a love that never was. But Kara also harbours a dark secret. Within her is a terrible power, one that’s manifested in times of great danger, with devastating consequences. When Caethiid miraculously reappears, Kara’s joy is short-lived. From across the galaxy, Caethiid has been listening to Kara’s thoughts. He knows her secret and he wants to use her power to overthrow the state. Kara finds herself trapped in his twisted game of psychological manipulation. As Caethiid’s ruthless nature is revealed, Kara realises the man she once knew may no longer exist. With Caethiid’s grip tightening, Kara begins to wonder whether she can trust her own mind, or whether everything she thought she knew was part of his plan all along.

    Dave’s notes:
    Ah, a seemingly mundane person in a world where everyone else has power – a great trope ripe with cool potential for story greatness. Kara also seems to have swiped right when she should have swiped left, big time. I can’t tell from the cover or blurb if we’re on Earth or elsewhere or what time period we’re in, although “across the galaxy” suggests a broad scope and space travel. A solid number of good reviews on Amazon. This looks like the author’s first published work.

    Battle Calm

    Blurb: When Badger succeeded his father, Red Skin, as Keeper Base Leader, he was well prepared, raised to handle anything the enemy threw at him. He was the best killer and the most respected tactician. He knew Red Skin’s Laws like he wrote them himself. Most importantly, he was always calm, no matter how frenzied the combat. These were only some of the reasons why he still had all his original parts. Trinity would die for him. Korry would follow him without question. They were Keepers. They fought, they killed, they lived to kill another day, even when it meant bugging out to another Base 
 and another. That was life when life was war. They knew nothing else. But even war cannot last forever, regardless of the infallible truth of Red Skin’s Law #35: “Under conditions of peace, men attack themselves; thus, there never has been, and there never will be a time without war. It is the greatest, most perfect thing men can do.”

    Dave’s notes:
    Definitely looks like hardcore military sci-fi here, maybe mixed with Spartan-style stoicism and philosophy and maybe cyberpunk-style bioware enhancement. Somebody should definitely get that guy on the cover a towel. Looks like this is a pretty new release without many reviews yet, although Kilpack has another couple of series and other books, some with competition awards.

    Chasing Naomi

    Blurb: July 1969. Clive, Iowa, Earth. Sixteen-year-old Allie has a big decision to make: Watch the lunar landing with her mom in their run-down double-wide trailer or boost to the stars aboard a grumpy, sentient deep space exploration vehicle (DSEV-424) buried in her backyard for 5,000 years. Accompanied by Gem, a dead space captain, now a glitchy hologram, Allie stops on the moon and surprises Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin aboard the Eagle lunar lander. (Neil never mentioned the encounter to Houston). With Gem as her guide, Allie survives her first space battle and drops Gem off at a military regrow center in the middle of a spaceport casino. The teen’s adventure lifts off at a military space academy, where she faces danger, makes friends, battles enemies, and discovers her own surprising abilities. Along with Rin, Sky, and Gem, Allie sets out on a mission to locate and defeat a rogue fleet led by Naomi, a mad-as-a-hatter warship, all while navigating the complexities of growing up and finding her place in the galaxy.

    Dave’s notes:
    Hey, 1969 Iowa! That’s where and when I was born, although I missed the moon landing by one stupid month and also didn’t have (or at least never discovered) a 5,000-year-old ship in my backyard. We did have lots of walnuts, but they never took me to space. This book looks delightfully bonkers, with alt-history, coming of age, a dead holo-captain, and maybe even academy-style school tropes. This book is part of a series with a second one already released, and the author has six out in total. Not a ton of reviews on the others yet, but this one has a solid average so far.

    Children of the Fall

    Blurb: Hypatia is a companion child, a cyborg with the consciousness of a child, designed to help her non-verbal human sister, Alexandra, navigate the world. When a flash knocks out the power and a civil war erupts, the sisters are forced to travel through powerless cities and dangerous country roads in search of refuge on the eastern coast of the United States. Realizing that without access to a charging station it’s only a matter of time before her battery fails, Hypatia must deliver Alexandra to safety before it’s too late. Yet, as Hypatia and Alexandra encounter other companion children that have gone berserk, Hypatia begins to suspect the flash may have done more than just take out the power. Can Alexandra trust her sister, and is Hypatia exactly what she seems?

    Dave’s notes:
    This one may win the “most things going on on the cover” prize, what with chromosomal tattoos, firearms, explosives, and a weird blue mandible thing. A companion child for nonverbal neurodivergent kids is a really interesting idea, and I like the tension of running out of juice along with zombie-ish aftermath vibes. This is a relatively recent release, and the author has one more also released in February of this year, so not a ton of external feedback on either as of yet.

    The Dream of the Forest

    Blurb: More than one hundred years have passed since the cataclysm. The year is 2197 and Earth’s surviving inhabitants now live in heavenly cities above the clouds, unwilling to descend back to the unstable surface. Helen is a lawyer whose life is seemingly perfect, complete with career, partner and plans for a family. But she soon discovers that it is all an illusion. A car accident turns her life in a different direction and she finds herself on the Earth’s surface, in a forested world utterly foreign to her. Is it true that Earth cannot sustain life? What if the truth was entirely different? What if there were survivors — and how would Helen return to her own world?

    Dave’s notes:
    Huh. A post-apocalyptic Matrix-style future, maybe, and then a portal fantasy part? Interesting. I’m not sure I see all the layers here yet, but it’s definitely intriguing. Unlike nearly all of the other authors in this group, I have heard of Stjepan before, both from passing contact out there in the indie community and when he reviewed one of my books a couple years back. He’s a prolific author and poet with many books out, some in his native Croatian. This one is a 2018 release with 23 ratings.

    Eye of Destiny

    Blurb: In an invasion turned all-out war against humanity, can three brothers save the world and discover what’s been hiding on Earth all along? Malcolm, Walker, and Calvin are three brothers living vastly different lives. Malcolm loves to party and be a jerk to his siblings, Walker is the front man for a band, and Calvin is just trying to survive being bullied while wrestling with his unrelenting anxiety. They never expected to become superheroes. Things change when the Ekronian Empire makes Earth their next target for conquest. Their leader, Reyin, will kill as many people as it takes to get the job done and make Earth like his home planet—a world where children become soldiers, the unemployed become slaves, and those who voice disagreement are cruelly silenced. But Reyin has come for more than that. He’s seeking the Eye of Destiny—an ancient artifact that could bend reality to his will. Unexpectedly armed by a clandestine organization with the only technology in the galaxy that can withstand the Ekronians, it’s up to Malcolm, Walker, and Calvin to stop him. Can they navigate life, high school, and their personal demons while working to save humanity? Or will their family fall apart along with the rest of the world?

    Dave’s notes:
    An alien invasion of Earth by vile enslaving Ekronians? An ancient artifact of power? Cool beans. The blurb here diverges a little from the cover, at least to my eye, where the blurb reads Independence Day or Emperor Zurg and the cover reads teen drama or boy-band album cover. It will be interesting to see how the planetary invasion part mixes with the teen life coming-of-age part. Reminds me a little at first blush of John Christopher’s Tripod trilogy, which I loved as a pre-teen. This looks like a first book from the author (although a series is maybe promised if that’s what “chronicles” means). Not a ton of reviews yet, but what’s there is strong.

    The First Herald

    Blurb: What price would you pay to protect your country? When his city burned around him, Zacharias Eld swore on his life it would never happen again. Sworn in as the First Herald, there is no camera he cannot access, no idle chatter he cannot hear. No secrets he cannot unearth. But a break-in at a lab reveals the hole in the network he spent seven years to build. Worse, the evidence is contaminated, the suspects missing, and the innocent refuse to speak. Zach soon finds himself in a world he thought he had purged years ago, festering in the shadows he once scoured. As the layers of the conspiracy peel back, so too, does the safety of Zach those around him. Either Zach finds the culprit or he will witness the fall of the city he’d spent his life to protect.

    Dave’s Notes:
    If I were running a cover contest in my little group, this would be a top contender. I love the composition and the vibe. This looks like it will have a lot of world-building going on to explain everything in the blurb and also all the powers (magical? sci-fi? innate or from a position with access?) that the main character seems to have. I’m not sure if he’s an administrator or gumshoe or something else. Interested to find out. A very recent release (August) with a few strong ratings.

    The Ghost Gun

    Blurb: The Ghost Gun kills what it hits, its ghost bullets ensnaring the victim’s soul to their killer. Except nothing is that simple. Certainly not an apparently simple theft that leads detectives into a war between secret societies over artifacts which have been around for millennia, their origin unknown, their abilities inexplicable. Demoted to Vice due to departmental politics, Detective Cassie Kinsala sees an opportunity to restore her career path. But what looks like it might offer a decent arrest soon turns into a quagmire the law might not cover, and might not protect her from. Jimmy Bancroft used to be a cop. Working for the other side lets him avoid paperwork. Investigating rumours of a competitor moving in on his employer’s interests, he becomes entangled in a war between criminals and a secret society. And someone might be trying to set him up.

    Dave’s Notes:
    Ooh, a gritty mystery with a supernatural weapon? Cool concept. Ensnaring souls to their killers sounds like a major bummer – I mean, it’s bad enough you’re being killed, and now you have to hang around with the guy who did it? What would you even have to talk about? The first in a six book series released mostly last year, there aren’t a lot of ratings to go on yet, so this one will remain an enigma for a while longer, at least until I crack it open.

    Hauler

    Blurb: Governments have fallen. Corporations control the world. Now their eyes are on Mars. But Benjamin Drake is about to ruin everyone’s plans. Earth is no longer made up of countries and nations. Every bit of land has been privatized, and most of it is owned by five big corporations. Life is hard, and people are struggling. Crime is rampant, and they send serious offenders to Mars to help with the terraforming. Benjamin Drake is a happy-go-lucky truck driver (or hauler) with an uncomplicated life, hauling cargo around the world in his Hydrostar, until a run of bad decisions leaves him without work. Down on his luck and desperate for a contract, he makes a decision that he instantly regrets. As Drake gets caught in a tug of war between a mining mogul and the world’s most ruthless security force, he suddenly finds himself with a truck full of stolen cargo, and decisions need to be made. But who can he trust? After a big professional blunder, Lt. Lily Wells plots a way to get her career back on track as one of Penta Corporations’ top security officers. But when Wells ends up on a murder case, she uncovers something much bigger. One on the run and the other on the hunt, Drake and Wells cross paths, at odds and supposedly enemies. But could their alliance be the only way out alive? Set in the near-future, Hauler is the first book in the Benjamin Drake adventure series, filled with witty dialogue, flawed heroes, and plenty of bad decisions.

    Dave’s notes:
    If this turns out to be a humble-trucker-takes-on-the-system-and-fights-for-justice thing, I will be down for it. The blurb sounds a little like the plot of those gloriously campy 80’s sci fi movies I loved. All it needs are space ninjas. At 206 ratings, this has way more than most of the others in this batch. The author has three other books listed on Amazon, although those have much lower review counts.

    Horizon

    Blurb: There is no salvation among the stars
 With every known planet, colony or settlement mostly ruined or completely destroyed, a desperate crew of humans onboard the starship Odyssey, hear rumours of a mythical phenomenon called the Horizon. This magical place on the edge of known space is believed to transport those who traverse it, back in time to the moment they were at their happiest. With only death, heartache and baron wastelands surrounding them, the crew head toward the Horizon. However to reach this phenomenon, they must cross the Expanse – a 30 day trip through entirely empty space. No light, no stars, no planets
 nothing. At least that’s what they think.

    Dave’s notes:
    Oooh, space horror vibes, especially if the fiery planet skull on the cover can be taken at (skinless) face value. Odyssey is maybe a bad name for a colony ship if I can suggest anything to the far-future protectors of humanity. Need some lit majors in your planning group, or you’re asking for trouble. I’m expecting slithery things pulling people into dark service access tunnels with sparking wires. This author is tremendously prolific with 44 titles listed on Amazon, although most of those books have no or few reviews. Maybe he’s finding his audience elsewhere, though.

    Mushroom Blues

    Blurb: ENTER THE FUNGALVERSE. BEAT THE WINTER BLUES. Blade Runner, True Detective and District 9 meld with the weird worlds of Jeff VanderMeer, Philip K. Dick and China MiĂ©ville in Adrian M. Gibson’s hallucinatory, fungalpunk noir debut. Two years after a devastating defeat in the decade-long Spore War, the island nation of Hƍppon and its capital city of Neo Kinoko are occupied by invading Coprinian forces. Its fungal citizens are in dire straits, wracked by food shortages, poverty and an influx of war refugees. Even worse, the corrupt occupiers exploit their power, hounding the native population. As a winter storm looms over the metropolis, NKPD homicide detective Henrietta Hofmann begrudgingly partners up with mushroom-headed patrol officer Koji Nameko to investigate the mysterious murders of fungal and half-breed children. Their investigation drags them deep into the seedy underbelly of a war-torn city, one brimming with colonizers, criminal gangs, racial division and moral decay. In order to solve the case and unravel the truth, Hofmann must challenge her past and embrace fungal ways. What she and Nameko uncover in the midst of this frigid wasteland will chill them to the core, but will they make it through the storm alive?

    Dave’s notes:
    This is the only entry in our group that I know anything about beforehand. I read the first chapter when I was doing my SPFBO haikus, and the book has been named a finalist in the SPFBO (the older sibling fantasy competition to SPSFC). It’s a kind of a future-noir detective story set in a world with mushroom people. I enjoyed the first chapter, but I was writing 300 haiku, so I had to move on. The author is a SFF podcaster with a lot of connections in the community, so the book made a pretty big splash when it was released earlier this year. It’s got 77 ratings even with a recent release, most of them quite strong. It is the author’s debut novel.

    Non-Conscious

    Blurb: In a post-cybernetic world where most have abandoned their neural enhancements, seventy-year-old Herbert Ferris clings to his outdated tech—and the troubled legacy it carries. Once a rogue hacker, Ferris now clocks in at Re/Live Corporation as a digital ecologist, crafting biomes for the popular fantasy game world, New Europa. But when a glitch starts turning players’ avatars pink, triggering an online uproar, Ferris is thrust into the heart of a spiraling corporate crisis. Ferris is ordered to clean up the mess alone. Fed up, he decides to go non-con, using his neuromod to become the perfect corporate zombie until the storm blows over. But when he reawakens, the chaos has only escalated: protesters are picketing Re/Live’s head office, his job is on the line, and, to make matters worse, an innocent schoolgirl has gone missing. Gripped by a paranoia he hasn’t felt in decades, Ferris races to uncover the truth, clashing with police, protesters, ruthless rivals, and—worst of all—his vindictive ex. Non-conscious is a darkly humorous journey of one man’s battle to reclaim his dignity and sanity in a world where the line between fantasy and reality has blurred beyond recognition.

    Dave’s notes:
    I mean, how can you go wrong with a tentacled head in a box? This looks like a high-concept dystopian body-mod thing, which the world definitely needs more of. The fact that it includes a vengeful ex on top of the world basically ending is pretty chef’s kiss also. The author seems to have two books out, both out a while (this one since 2017), but they have one review between them, so no external hint of what I’m getting into.

    Use of Emergency

    Blurb: A newbie pilot with a secret, broken comms, alien artifact, viral code, empty space. What can go wrong? Jax, a freshly minted spaceship pilot had a simple job: taking a group of sick people to Rebels’ Republic space station to have their brain implants fixed while keeping her secret – secret. She had a smart plan to get it done: just some tweaking of the comms to make it look like an accident. But her ship had some surprises aboard: two healthy passengers, who weren’t who they claimed to be, a real emergency, and a piece of virally spreading rogue code. Then
 came some more problems
 Can a loner learn teamwork to survive and save the solar system from collapse?

    Dave’s Notes:
    This one has some great tropey elements I’m excited to explore – newbie pilot, hidden secrets, cyberware, a viral threat, a world to save. Some great ingredients there, and we’ll have to see how they mix into a final meal. The author has four books out – three books in this series plus a prequel. This one has a pretty-standard-for-this-group-of-entries 20 ratings on Amazon.

    Wakers of the Cryocrypt

    Blurb: The future. The human race is extinct. Earth is ruled by “eltecs”, descendants of the AIs humans created before their demise. While searching for prehistoric cave paintings, two eltec explorers discover a hidden cryogenic crypt containing 23 perfectly preserved human bodies frozen inside crystal columns. As eltec society argues over who might have built the crypt and what to do with it, one of its occupants is restored to life. Human beings are no longer extinct, but, for reasons of their own, not every eltec wants to see them come back. The only living man on Earth is in terrible danger.

    Dave’s Notes:
    A big, bold concept novel here, almost with classic Star Trek vibes, except there won’t be an over-emoting captain and redshirt crew to come study this weird culture. Flips the script a little with the extinction of humanity a foregone thing rather than a future threat, and placing the AI-people in the driver’s seat with the moral quandaries. Intriguing. A recent release with only a couple ratings. The author has 11 others which look to be mostly sci fi leaning into horror.

    The Widow’s Tithe

    Blurb: Sasha Michaels has it all. She’s got the looks, some natural, some bought-and-paid for. She’s got the fame, with over one-hundred million Omniverse subscribers and a shot at breaking into the coveted Top 100. She’s got the wealth that comes with both. And she has the ultimate accessory, an even more famous husband. Alex Michaels is a HotDropper, a cybernetic corporate mercenary whose missions are streamed worldwide. But when Alex is killed on only his second mission, Sasha soon finds out that everything she thought she owned is now property of his paymasters, who invested hundreds of millions in him and intend to collect on the debt. Now she must serve as a rank-and-file trooper in the militia of the LifeWise corporation, until she pays off or she dies. Some people call it indentured service, but the troopers know it by a different name. They call it the Widow’s Tithe.

    Dave’s Notes:
    I’m not sure what to make of this society – sounds completely bonkers and over the top – but the setup of a major social media influencer forced to do cybermercenary work against her will sounds like the beginnings of either a bloody journey of trial and redemption or a Kevin Hart movie. Cool title, hinting at a less comedic, darker vibe. The author has six books out. This one doesn’t have any ratings yet, so I’m going in with a blank slate.


    Side note: The other cover I really loved from our allocation is Transference by Ian Patterson, but that ended up in the other half with the other three judges.

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