Celebrating Independent Authors
Congrats to Sara Stark, the readers’ choice in this week’s Indies Unlimited Flash Fiction Challenge.
The winning entry is recognized with a special feature here today and a place in our collection of winners which will be published as an e-book at year end.
Without further ado, here’s the winning story:
Today we have a sneak peek from The Lead Cloak, the science fiction novel by Erik Hanberg.
Byron Shaw can track and find anyone on Earth. Except the people who tried to kill him.
By 2081, privacy no longer exists. The Lattice enables anyone to re-live any moment of your life. People can experience past and present events–or see into the mind of anyone, living or dead.
Most people love it. Some want to destroy it.
Colonel Byron Shaw has just saved the Lattice from the most dangerous attack in its history. Now he must find those responsible. But there’s a question nobody’s asking: does the Lattice deserve to be saved?
The answer may cost him his life.
This book is available from Amazon, Smashwords, and Amazon UK.
Here is an excerpt from The Lead Cloak…
Thank you for finding Indies Unlimited.
Here at IU, we do our best to provide helpful information to indie authors of all levels. Our goal is to provide the knowledge they need to make intelligent decisions about writing and publishing. We are not, however, a watchdog site, nor do we try to be. There are other sites out there, such as Writer Beware and Preditors and Editors, which dedicate their resources to identifying scammers.
Despite all the efforts to make authors aware of predators looking to make money off of them, the best tool is actually knowing how to spot a scam. That knowledge will enable authors, no matter how often the scammer changes its name, to avoid being taken advantage of.
Thank you again for finding Indies Unlimited.
– The Admins
Indie writers go through a growth arc as they learn and apply new skills in their writing and in the many other aspects of book production. We don’t have the luxury of passing a manuscript off to Emily, the bright-faced publishing house intern, who will take it from there. Being independent means being responsible and engaged with every aspect of book production.
Nobody comes out of the birth canal with all the requisite skills and knowledge. We each have to learn the intricacies of the business for ourselves, and this can be challenging. Fortunately, the indie author community is remarkably good about sharing information. It is a rare thing indeed to run into an indie author who is not willing to talk (sometimes at great length) about tips, tricks, scams, strategies, or shortcuts they have learned along the way.
I like to think Indies Unlimited is also a great help to indie authors. This site has a tremendous repository of information available at no cost whatsoever. We also have a few handy reference books available at pretty reasonable prices (ahem). Continue reading “The Five Stages of Indie Author Development”