June 2018 Author Recap

I hope you enjoyed the previous month’s worth of introductions to authors you may not know. It was my pleasure to share such talented writers with all of you.

I had the idea in late May to do a month long series exposing my followers to other writers who I admire and read. When I started this project, I told no one. I wanted it to be a surprise for all the authors involved. No one knew who I was going to share or when. It was pretty cool to see the surprise coming in from those whom I featured. For those writers, I do hope it was a well-received surprise. For you readers, I hope you found a new author or two to check out and sample their work.

I want to stress that there were many other authors I could’ve included. I don’t want to upset any of my author friends that may not have been included in this first series of Authors You Should Know. Please don’t take it as a slight against you or your work.

For a recap of each author, please click their name below and it will take you to the brief post I published. I encourage you to try someone new and try one of their books. You never know when you might come across a writer you’ll absolutely have to read. It’s difficult finding readers. My hope is that you found something useful through the month of June within these posts.

 

Jason’s Authors You Should Know – June 2018

Amy Hale                    June 1

Leland Lydecker        June 2

Donna McCarthy       June 3

Vince Churchill          June 4

Mirren Hogan             June5

Brian K. Morris          June 6

SA Gibson                   June 7

Mark Pannebecker   June 8

RJ Batla                       June 9

Simon Bleaken           June 10

F. Kenneth Taylor        June 11

Brent A. Harris           June 12

MD. Parker                 June 13

Pamela Morris           June 14

Ray Wenck                 June 15

Stephanie Barr          June 16

Thomas Gunther       June 17

Greg Alldredge          June 18

C.A. King                     June 19

PC3                             June 20

Jay Noel                      June 21

Christa Yelich-Koth   June 22

Eric Asher                  June 23

Diane Morrison         June 24

John W. Smith           June 25

Lucinda Moebius       June 26

Merri Halma              June 27

Bryan Caron              June 28

Leo McBride               June 29

Aaron Hamilton         June 30

Jason’s Authors You Should Know – Leo McBride

Today’s author you should know is Leo McBride.

Leo is a super-talented speculative fiction author. He writes science fiction, fantasy, and horror from the warm climes of the Bahamas. He’s one of the driving forces behind Inklings Press, the small press responsible for such awesome short story collections such as Tales From the Underground, Tales of Wonder, and Tales from the Tower. His stories are included in all the collections and so worth your time and money. He’s also released a short story collection of his own called Quartet: Four Short Stories, Four Explorations of the Fantastic.

Leo is highly supportive not only of the indie community, but great writers no matter what their publishing history is. He’s been an encouragement to me from almost the beginning, reading and reviewing my first two flash fiction collections and continued support through interviews and shares on social media. He’s a great person to have in your corner and a spectacular writer in his own right.

From his Amazon page:

Leo McBride is a writer of speculative fiction – spanning the fields of horror, science fiction and fantasy. A journalist for more than 20 years, he is based in The Bahamas where he is an editor for the country’s leading newspaper.

He has published several ebooks – although Quartet is the first of his own writing. He has also been published in anthologies published by Inklings Press.

You can find out more about Leo on his blog alteredinstinct.com.

Review: Tales From Alternate Earths

As a student of history, I’ve always been fascinated with great moments in time. Of course we can’t change what happened but there’s an entire branch of fiction dedicated to exploring the “what if’s” of history. Alternative history as a genre is often difficult to define and even harder to write.

“Tales From Alternate Earths,” the latest anthology from Inklings Press, presents eight tales of wonder and “what if’s” that reach back to ancient Romans (and earlier) to events not far removed from our present. And the collection they’ve assembled does alternative history right.

The collection starts with a fascinating tale from Jessica Holmes rewriting the events of Sept. 26th, 1983 when the Soviet early warning nuclear detection system incorrectly alerted that the US fired intercontinental ballistic missiles. She reimagines the events as if the Soviets believed the alert and the consequences of that action.

Author Terri Pray follows with a detailed account of the last days of Julius Caesar, but not as we know it. It was so well written I forgot entirely about Caesar’s true demise and found myself buying in to her retelling.

From there the collection reimagines Earth as ruled by dinosaurs from the imaginative story “Twilight of the Mesozoic Moon” from Brent Harris and Ricardo Victoria.

Nuclear war and the rise of JFK to presumed world leader in the story “One World” by Cathbad Maponus is an intriguing take on a very well known figure.

Rob Edwards takes a real event, the meteorite that struck a remote Russian forest, and places it in another setting in urban London in his tale “Stargazing on Oxford Street.”

“The Secret War” by Leo McBride is an excellent tale of what truly inspired H.G. Wells. The tone and feel of this story easily one of my favorites in the collection.

Daniel Bensen’s “Treasure Fleet” tells the tale of a Chinese empire that’s converted to Islam and discovers the New World. Though well written and highly unique, I couldn’t quite get into the story as much as the others.

The collection ends with another of my favorites, “Tunguska, 1987” by Maria Haskins. This time traveling tale grabbed me from the first line and didn’t let go till the end.

As the fourth offering of short stories from Inklings press, I found this anthology to be imaginative and original. This was the first time Inklings Press opened the doors to out-of-house authors and it was a welcome addition to an already strong field of writers.

If you like to guess the course of history and how things could be different if only one thing were changed, this collection is for you. I can’t recommend this enough. Even if you aren’t a student of history, pick the anthology up. The writing is so strong and convincing you’ll not be disappointed.

You can get the anthology from Amazon.