Our Gift to You: Knowledge and Author Humor

snowflake holiday shopping timeHere at Indies Unlimited, we’ve been taking pride in supporting the indie author community for more than six years. We’ve won accolades and honors, and those are great – but that’s not why we do it. We do it to help others – to prevent them from being preyed upon by vanity presses, and to save newbie authors from struggling to figure out how to publish.

Everyone at IU – minions past and present – works for free. And not only do they work for free here on the blog, but many of them put themselves out there and give self-publishing seminars free of charge. This is, indeed, a wonderful community.

And speaking of free – yes, IU is free, but we do incur quite a lot of expenses each year maintaining this monstrosity of a superblog. If you want to help out, you can donate through PayPal, or you can simply click through on a Thrifty Thursday book (or a book in the sidebar) and then make some purchases on Amazon. Every little bit helps.

In the spirit of free – here’s a little something I put together this year to help authors. I hope you enjoy the video – and all of us here at IU hope you are never “that guy.”

Happy Holidays to you and yours.

How to Produce a Professional Book from BiblioBoard Library on Vimeo.

Flash Fiction Writing Prompt: Waiting for Santa

kbpioneer village cr copyright ksbrooks
Photo copyright K. S. Brooks. Do not use without attribution.

Use the photograph above as the inspiration for your flash fiction story. Write whatever comes to mind (no sexual, political, or religious stories, jokes, or commentary, please) and after you PROOFREAD it, submit it as your entry in the comments section below. There will be no written prompt.


Welcome to the Indies Unlimited Flash Fiction Challenge. In 250 words or less, write a story incorporating the elements in the picture at left. The 250 word limit will be strictly enforced.

Please keep language and subject matter to a PG-13 level. Continue reading “Flash Fiction Writing Prompt: Waiting for Santa”

Alyssa Devine Wins Flash Fiction Challenge

Alyssa Devine is the Readers’ Choice in this week’s Indies Unlimited Flash Fiction Challenge. The winning entry is decided by the popular vote and rewarded with a special feature here today. (In the case of a tie, the writer who submitted an entry first is the winner per our rules.)

Without further ado, here’s the winning story:

Continue reading “Alyssa Devine Wins Flash Fiction Challenge”

Minion Spotlight: Nicholas Forristal

author nicholas forristal or is itAs you probably know by now, the staff authors here at Indies Unlimited are referred to as minions. No one is sure exactly how or when that started, but it stuck. What you may not realize is that all the minions (and everyone) here at IU work for free. That’s right, they don’t get a dime out of this. They do it out of the goodness of their hearts. So our Fearless Leader (admin) thought it would be nice to give some props to the minions by featuring each of them in a spotlight interview. We hope you enjoy it.

What is your name?

Nicholas Forristal.

What is your quest? Continue reading “Minion Spotlight: Nicholas Forristal”