Author Introductions 2022

This is the author introduction thread for 2022.

Please tell us about yourself, what you're working on and any interesting facts about you! (I.e. what hobbies do you enjoy.)

We are interested in who you are, where you are from, what genres you write in, and why you write about what you write. But do remember that you are introducing yourself, not your book. If you just copy and paste a book blurb you will not be added to our Hobnob Group's Author index.

There is also a reader introduction thread.

There was also an Author Introduction thread for 2021

As usual I will start by introducing myself. (Longtime members can just ignore this post, it's mostly copy and pasted from the last thread's post.)

My pen name is L. Shelby, but the L doesn't stand for anything much, I actually go by Shel, or Shelby. :)

I am the Hobnob Group moderator, but even though it says I'm the creator of the Group, I'm not. I was actually elected by the group some years back, when the original creator disappeared.

I am a 'pro' author with three sales of short works to traditional markets, and have also self-published five novels and a novella. I write fantasy and science fiction because I love worldbuilding. I also sing, play a concertina, designed and coded my own website, enjoy art, and do tatting. I have six children, all grown now, I love nature, and I also unfortunately suffer from CFS/ME which causes me to disappear from the group randomly. (Sorry about that!)

I'm a Canadian, but I live in Ohio.

And I love, love, love talking about writing, which is why I'm here. I look forward to meeting you all.

I probably introduced myself once before on this group, but it would have been so long ago that Shel suggested I do so again. (I joined LibraryThing about a week after it started, and have been around intermittently ever since.)

My formal academic background is in geology and geochemistry, with an undergraduate minor in anthropology, but my real love has always been ancient and medieval history. I've wanted to write historical novels since my 9th grade Latin teacher showed us Rosemary Sutcliff's The Lantern Bearers. I eventually got back to that ambition through the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism). I've always liked studying languages, and my latest interest was Welsh. Having just spent two weeks in Wales, I volunteered to write a couple of travel articles for our local newsletter, and decided it would be fun to write them as my SCA persona, a 6th century CE bard and storyteller. I loaned my persona name Gwernin to my narrator (it's a male name; I contemplated for about 30 seconds the girl-pretending-to-be-a-boy trope, and decided against it), and never entirely got it back! Those first two stories turned into a monthly serial, which eventually turned into a novel called Storyteller, which turned into a series. I'm working on the fifth book now, and will be offering the ebook version of the fourth one, The Fallen Stones, in next month's Early Reviewers batch, along with another ten copies of a spin-off stand-alone novel, The King's Druid, which was in the March batch.

I'm entirely self-published, through Lulu, but most of my books are also on Amazon, although the ebook versions of the last two are on Smashwords. This introduction is already more than long enough (!), but if you're interested I have some threads in the Roman and Dark Ages Britain group (https://www.librarything.com/ngroups/13060/Roman-and-Dark-Ages-Britain). I also have a blog (http://www.tregwernin.com/).

I am an aspiring author, poet and publisher, its a great big dream ahead but I will walk through it. I just self published my first work, a poetry book and I am currently working on my second book, a novel.
But I have big dreams of getting started on this journey of authorship with more published work to come.
I am single by the way and I come from Papua New Guinea an island country in the pacific. I also have a background in public policy which I am most passionate about and which also have greatly influence some of my works.
Apart from that, I am a keen learner and have been self taught in many things, one of which is web design where I have got my own designed and I currently working on the second one..
I also got some works on software reviews as well which I planned to switch to book reviews..
So its all about me on the LT.
Over to you.

>3 gwernin:

Thanks for posting Gwernin!

Even when someone's been around for a while, sometimes its still nice to hear a little more about them. :)

My SCA name was based on my online handle, rather than the other way around. It ended up a little TOO appropriate to the period, totally startling the advisor working with me. "Do you really want to be known as 'the washerwoman' in French?" "Why not, I have six kids, I do a LOT of laundry!" (I learned French as a kid back in Canada, so it really had been done with malice aforethought. -- But alas I haven't been able to participate for years, I have trouble even keeping up with things here.)

I'm curious, are you familiar with The Once and Future King? My son checked it out of the library recently because he's fond of Arthurian stuff, but then couldn't finish it because it "wasn't really Arthur". So now it's sitting on my nightstand. I heard that the author was an authority on the period, but then he tried to give it a more modern flavor ('modern' as of 1940?) so that could confuse the issue?

I added you to the historical section of the author index, but did you want to be listed in the fantasy section as well? Also, do you want to be listed in the Location section? (It's so that people can find other authors close to them to maybe do group promotion or writer's groups or whatever, so we list by closest major metropolis.)

>5 LShelby: fyi, my SCA name is Guernen Cimarguid. When I registered it (through the West Kingdom when I was living in Alaska) they changed the spelling. I am a bardic Companion of the Laurel and a Court Baroness, although I'm not very active these days. I've been too busy in Ár nDraíocht Féin (adf.org, a Druid organization), where I'm a Senior Priest and editor in chief of our quarterly magazine. :) (So yes, in writing about bards and druids, I'm writing about things I know!)

I've never read The Once and Future King, and am unlikely to now. I stopped reading other people's Arthurian-period books when I started writing my own, to avoid unconscious copying. There are a lot of adaptions of the original Norman-French legends, which were in turn adaptions of the Welsh traditions. I do recommend Rosemary Sutcliff's Sword at Sunset and Mary Stewart's Merlin series for a probably more historically based Arthur.

You might as well put me in "fantasy" as well, since all my stuff has some degree of magic involved. And I live in Denver, Colorado, where I am managed by four cats. You can find me on Facebook as GR Grove / Gwernin.

>4 mato123:
Hello Mato, (or do you prefer Ricky?) welcome to the Hobnob group!

What sort of novel is it, and how is it going? What kind of poetry do you write, is it more descriptive, passionate, insightful?

Papua New Guinea sounds marvelously exotic to this northerner (born in Canada), so... what do you see looking out your window? (Or if that's no fun to describe, how about some favorite place nearby?)

(Here in Ohio it was half-heartedly snowing a few days ago--not enough to do the blanket of white, just enough to make everything look grey and miserable, but this morning my husband looked out the window and exclaimed excitedly that there were buds on the cherry tree, so it might start getting pretty soon.)

Guess what? I am also a self-educated web designer. I've been building a writer website for myself for a couple decades almost, so it's a big mess of spaghetti code. A couple years ago I started building a new improved version, and what with Covid, spinal surgery, two of my daughters getting married and my usual health problems, it STILL isn't ready to go live. Sigh!

I checked out your site. It's colorful! (I like that. :) I live in a bedroom with a mural of hills and cloudy sky painted on it, and my living room is purple. The back hallway has a jungle mural painted on it, but my husband has been doing renovations so it needs to be redone. One of my married daughters studied scenic painting, so we're hoping we can bring her back home for long enough her to do the repainting.)

Your author page and book page here on LT look pretty good, but you might want to add more tags to your book. Tagging it "poetry" and "pacific island" may seem redundant when the title pretty much says as much already, but you have to remember you are working with a computer system here. There are ways to discover books via tags, that will ignore the book title. Other descriptors of the poems "political", "rustic", "activist", "nature" or whatever is appropriate would probably be good to add as well.

Other than that, I can only recommend that you keep adding books. You've made a nice start, but the more the better. (Hey look, Campion! My sister read me the first Campion mystery as a bedtime story when I was a kid. I've read several more of them on my own since. My favorite Campion line is still "I like a plain man, a simple man, a man who calls a spade, a pail!")

It's very nice to have you join us, and I hope you will participate in some of the discussions here. Please let me know when that novel is out, so I can add you to the appropriate category in our Hobnob Author Index.

Hi All, I'm new to all of this so bear with me! I go by Subguy on here but my actual name is Rick McCann. I have 1 novel in the mystery thriller genre that was released October 10, 2021 in paperback and EPub format by Commonwealth Books. Currently I'm not working on another book as trying to see how Two If By Sea is received. I like the water as I've worked on and lived by the sea all my life, I also enjoy flying and I hold a private pilot's license. If there is more you wish to know you can check out my website at www.ballastmarineservices.com I used to have a consulting/training and had a small private boat tour business but has since retired from all of that and converted the site to my Author site. Thank you!

>8 subguy:

Hello, Rick! Welcome to Hobnob! (Okay, I know we've already talked, but it's a habit.)

Which sea do you live by, if you don't mind us knowing? Do you have any favorite authors who you think writing about the sea the most convincingly? (One of my old-time writer friends is retired Coast Guard, but his book is a Zombie Apocolypse Thriller that takes place entirely on dry land ::shrug::)

Did you like writing when you were younger and came back to it once you retired, or is this an entirely new endeavor? If it's new, what made you think of trying it, anything in particular?

I've checked out your author page, which looks very nicely filled in. I've also looked at your book page... er, LibraryThing users tend to frown on authors who give their own books a five star rating and who use tags like "Great Book" on their own work. Just letting you know. Once you get a few more users the fact that you did this might become slightly less obvious, but I really have to recommend against it, since the community attitude toward that sort of thing is so strongly negative, and LTers tend to be a bit on the technologically sophisticated and geeky side.

What I do recommend is adding a few more books to your library. You've chosen to list some bestsellers and a classic, and there is no harm in that, but the connections the LibraryThing platform makes between books are stronger when the books are owned by fewer people. So rather than aim for the most famous books in the same general category as yours, the most useful books to list in your library are the ones that are lesser known, but beloved by you and a perfect match for your own work.

And now that I've done my general advice for a new LT author, here's my specific advice for a new author in general...

I don't know how big Commonwealth Books is, but one of the barriers that new authors face is just that there are already so many books out there. Books are one of the few products that remain viable for centuries -- even, possibly, millenium (with the assistance of translators), and nowadays absolutely anyone can get published. So there is a lot of competition old and new. Before a reader can like your book, they need to notice that it exists out there in the vast ocean of available books, and then obtain a copy and try reading it.

And the most likely reason for a person to pick up a book is because they already read one by the same author, and liked it. (Unfair to the new people, I know, but there it is.)

Back in the good old days when you were a young chap, a publishing house would purchase a book from a new author, expecting not to make any money with it. The hope was that by the time they put out the THIRD book by the same author, that author would have built up enough of an audience that they would break even, and every book after the third could be counted as profit.

The big commercial publishers now work differently. Publishers are owned by megacorporations who insist on instant profit, and so they rely on "big media" to create instant successes. But for smaller presses that's not such an easy thing to succeed at -- it takes a lot of money, and existing market positioning and reputation and so forth. So the old advice that "the most important thing you can do to promote your book is to write another book" still holds true. Two books is twice as many chances to catch someone's interest, and, hopefully, twice as many sales once you are seen: four times as many possible sales. Three books is three times as many chances to catch someone's interest, and hopefully three times as many sales once seen: nine times the possible sales.

You can keep doing the rest of the math yourself. :)

I have added you to the Hobnob Author Index under Mystery/Suspense/Thriller. If you let me know which major city is closest to you I'll add you to the Locality section of the Index as well.

Hope you stick around and talk to us about books and writing!

In response to message 143 by 143 Dreamer2022 from the previous Introductions thread.

Hello there, Heather! Welcome to the Hobnob Group!

You did write in just adding to the 2021 thread, but I am replying to the new thread, so that the old thread can fade into obscurity. (When we keep the old ones "live" people get confused and keep posting to them.) Don't worry, people can jump back to your original post, using the link I embedded above. :)

I did not see a 2022 intro started so adding to the 2021 list.

Yay, a Mom! (I have six children of my own, so I feel an instant kinship, although mine have all grown up, now.) How old are your kids? Do they read much? What sorts of books do they like? Are their any other kids books that you feel ought to exist, but that you'd rather not write yourself?

Do you do your social dates with other Mom's, with old friends (sounds like a tricky proposition if you moved around a lot) or with other writers? ("Writer's White Water Rafting Adventures -- Adrenalin surges by day, and crit circles by night!" I'd sign up!)

A lot of great writing careers have been launched by realizing that nobody has written the book you want to own, yet, and deciding to fill the gap. So I'm wishing you all the best with that. (I find it interesting that it didn't end up being a book on your educational focus of making spaces that are beautiful and functional, but life is unpredictable like that sometimes.)

But! I went to your author page, and only one of the books listed there also happens to be in your personal library, making me suspect that there is another author out there with the same name, and so your author page needs to be "split".

I can do this myself, or I can tell you how to do it, if you want to learn how to maintain your author page on LibraryThing by yourself. (On LT every user is a 'librarian'). Before I do anything, though, I really need you to verify which of the two books and one "Also by" listed on the Heather Vincent page are by you. Once we get this little matter cleared up, I will add you to the Hobnob Author Index.

I hope you stick around and chat with us all more!

>9 LShelby: HI Shelby, thanks for the advice! The rating and review actually weren't from me, I was trying to add one that came from Facebook, and it was attributed to me by the system. Didn't know how to change it or remove it! And yes I know that 2 or more book thing gets more audiences and that equals sales etc., Commonwealth Books is a very small publishing house, not sure how long they've been around, my Agent found them and it went from there. Thank you for the addition to the Index and The closest major city to me would be Philadelphia, PA. Over the years I've read many books, mostly Tom Clancy, Dale Brown and a few other authors so I guess I can root through my library to get the info and include them into my LT Library if that's the way to do it? I just added what I've read recently. Thanks again and hopefully I'll get the hang of this!

Rick

Well, hello there LibraryThing people.

My name is Aeron Dusk (well, kind of. It's the name I sign on books, so we'll go with that), and *shifty eyes* it's nice to be outside of the Amazon ecosystem once in a while. I am 39 and currently live in Orlando, Florida (yes... before anyone asks, I did work at Disney World and Universal Studios way back in the ol' college days. It's not quite as magical as one would think, but that's another story), but will move to Boise ID soon to be in the mountains where I've always belonged.

When I'm not writing or hawking my book all over the internet like a toddler throwing food, I work full time as a software developer. I'm also very big into fitness and promoting healthier lifestyles, and between May 2020 to now, I've lost 177 pounds, which has been a journey in itself alongside the whole writing thing (will be a *gasp* nonfiction book I'll work on soon).

I've been 'writing' all my life, but only recently decided I might be able to make a career out of it. I had no idea what the heck I was doing when I started, and I made a lot of mistakes. I was fortunate enough to have a lot of CP's and beta readers who helped me, not to mention the plethora of writing blogs and videos out there that have really helped me practice and hone my writing.

In June 2020, I decided to completely rewrite a story I wrote 10 years prior, since it was a good concept. The story itself was unsalvageable. After learning more and fumbling my way through the process, I ended up rewriting the story 3 times. I submitted the story to 5 agents, and actually got a full manuscript request within a week. However, I had no idea what traditional publishing was about or what to expect. As I did more reading on the process, and weighing what I'd have to give up vs what I would get (IF my manuscript was actually purchased by a publisher, which could take months or years, if at all), I decided this path was not for me.

As soon as I decided to go it by myself, I knew there was a lot of work that still needed to be done. There was also a limit to what CPs and Beta readers could do, and I still felt like there was something missing in my story, so I spent the big bucks on a developmental editor, which was the best money I've ever spent (literally, if you have the means, get at least ONE developmental edit. You will learn your strengths and weaknesses and get a very detailed editorial review of what to work on.)

After a few more major revisions, partial rewrites and a copy edit, the book was ready to go and I honestly couldn't believe I was doing it. I was doing the whole author thing! Well, now I have a published first book, and you know? For a debut, I couldn't be prouder. I did make a lot of mistakes on the release, bungling my ARC review process while rushing to meet a deadline I set for myself. For my next book, I'll be a lot more thorough with the marketing process. It's a live and learn thing.

Lately, I've been rewriting a story I drafted last year, and it is currently in the beta reading phase (some new beta readers, and some from my last book. I was very pleased with the interest and I filled up my beta slots quickly). Yup, I'm going to do it again. I haven't set a hard date for the book, but I'm looking at spring of next year. With everything coming up in my life, it may take longer.

You're probably on the edge of your seat with intrigue, asking the monitor "Well? What genres does Dusk write in???" Okay, maybe not, but let me have this.

I have always loved fantasy, sci-fi, and books about adventures through nature and the wilderness. Combine that with a good gay romance, and I'll be hooked. Unfortunately, few books out there have any combination of these elements in a story. For example: while I like cute or steamy romance in a book, I don't want that to be the only plot point. So, I write what I want to read. Combine realistic gay romance with magic, fantasy and adventure, the mountains and the wilderness, and that's what I do. I have an intense love for werewolves, and they are a very common theme with me, but I write them differently from other writers. I also love the 'portal to another world' trope. One day, I'll get around to a sci-fi when I really want to punish myself. So, long description short: I like to write what I'd like to read.

I'm not sure why I included a tome in my intro post, but there you go. A bit of background on me as a writer turned author.

Hi all,
I joined Library Thing a while ago and then in all the frenzy of indie publishing, I forgot all about it until today. So glad to be here!
About me...
I've been writing forever, in between all the other parts of my life, and then my kids grew up and I retired from teaching and there was a pandemic quarantine. In last last two years, I have written and published two novels, both historical fictions. I did not even know I was capable of writing a novel; all of my writing has been short stories and professional articles for educators. But I have been teaching writing workshop to kids and grown ups for almost forty years, so I guess some of my teaching rubbed off on me!

I also never saw myself as a "historical fiction writer" and I don't like labels and pigeon-holing, so I am open to any type of writing in the future. I get my ideas from everywhere and usually write them on my Idea List word .doc so I don't forget them. It really helps. I run 4-8 miles almost every day and I do most of my composing and plot puzzling when I am running. It always amazes me how well that works!

Hubby and I love to travel and once the world opens up and is relatively safe again, we have a lot of overseas trips planned. For now we are doing many short and long road trips in our beautiful country (USA), and our fur-baby Harley comes along. We live in New York, just north of the city, (which is where I grew up and is a featured setting in both novels).

We have three grown and married kids and two grands so far. I'm called "Oma" by them, a Dutch and German term for grandmother. It's what we called my grandmother and it's a term I carry proudly!

If you want to know more about my writerly life, I have a Facebook author page, an Amazon author page, a WordPress blog, an Instagram page (@readingwritinglife) and a GoodReads profile. Ha! No wonder it took so long to remember Library Thing, but I'm happy I did!

Hello everyone:)

I am also a recent addition to Library Thing. I have published a book on Amazon and about now I am walking in the corridors of "how to get the news out there".

I have been writing all my lilfe, Atruka is my first English novel. Yes, English is my second tongue. I am originally Turkish, and living in Istanbul. I have written two books in Turkish and various short stories.

I love magic. Hence, what I write is either fantasy or magical realism scented. I believe the world is a magical place and when we truly see and embrace that, things will be easier to comprehend.

Apart from writing, I work in education. I am an educational consultant. I do aikido and I love biking! Nature and all the plants fascinate me. I have started to grow things. (signs of old age??) :) By things, I mean little cherry tomatoes or pepper. I am 42 and constantly looking for new ways to enjoy life. (Book marketing is a tough nut to crack, though.)

@books_of_barlok is my Instagram. You can msg me from here or there if you want to know more!

Hello everyone:

I am a new author, a new Library Thing member, and a retired lawyer.

My pen name is "Steve Rhinelander," and my debut novel is entitled "Poutine and Gin." It is a mystery set in 1940 of an alternate timeline in which the Frence won the French and Indian War in the 1700s. As a result, Quebec is an independent republic that includes the U.S. Great Lakes.

I have aspired to be an author all my life, but did not devote very much time to it until after I retired from my legal career.

Steve

Hello all.
My pen-name is NathanRH, I am a new unpublished author, very interested in getting people to read my completed Adult Literary hard-sci-fi. I would love to have an ARC group and participate in ARC groups for others.

In my past I worked mostly in medicine, doing almost literally everything under the RN level including going to nursing school. Among the many things I did was be an EMT-I for AMR Las Vegas, Dialysis tech, plasma-phleb, Lab-corp and ARUP tech, oncology tech, wound care, rhum, internal, peds, workplace, and many more backoffice MA.
While in nursing school I started having problems. I learned much later that I'm ASD, what would have been called Asperger's in years past. As I've aged I've had a harder and harder time overcoming it, and now I'm quite literally homeless and penniless.

My book is my only joy. I learned an hour ago my last cat died before I could get a home for us. Now may not be the best time to be writing an introduction, I suppose.

I have a deep love of science, and am pretty articulate. Both symptoms of ASD for the record, I need objectivity and linguistics to convince myself that I am communicating at all. Sadly my poor memory has made me inept at higher math, and my academic life stalled in the same manner as my work history.

But in the end I cannot seem to stop fighting no matter how much I lose. These books I'm currently working on, they are my attempt to give the world what value I have.

If I may include a minor self-promotion, look up my current teaser page for my completed book, "Sweet Sol System," which I will be adding to over the year. And then on Reddit, you can find some raw's of a book I intend to finish "Skyrim Geological Survey" by Nathan_RH.

I'm in the process of testing the traditional publishing route, and will let that run it's course while I study how to self-publish well. I've already set in motion all the traditional publishing paths I know about, but I have a 284,000 word manuscript, and I've never been published. The agents run screaming and so few publishers accepting unagented manuscripts appear to be worth partnering with.

Hello all,
Newly published first-time novelist (January this year) in the niche genre of murder mystery set in Antiquity, first in a planned series: "An Evil Planned." My world is the Greek-speaking part of the Roman Empire at the start of the second century C.E., Antioch in Syria to be precise. Self-published. I also have a prequel short story out, also first in a series of prequels.

I've wanted to write since I was 8 or 9 years old. First efforts were about characters in my children's books, like Noddy and Tommy Turtle. Then I discovered the Roman Empire, and also the joy of whodunnits. I now have the time to combine those two passions.

I've lived in several countries, mostly in France; English is my mother tongue, French the tongue I use most often even in my new home in Oslo, Norway (jeg kan norsk også, but not very well).

My novel is currently in the hands of a reader from the Historical Novel Society. Keeping fingers crossed that it will be appreciated muchly !

Favourite cities : Paris, Rome, Istanbul, Venice, more or less in that order.

Hi! My name is Kim Amaral. Originally from Massachusetts (USA) but have lived in 4 states since. During my travels my perspective on my spiritual/mental health were tested and forced to changed, for the better. The journey of self-reflection led me into becoming certified as a Chakra Healer, a Meridian Energy Practitioner, as well as, a Mindful Meditation Teacher and Yin Yoga teacher. I also have my online shop where I offer gemstone and crystal jewelry to assist in balancing energy centers. And I'm not stopping!

This year was a big year to put some of these tools out to the public. I published my first book in 2022, The Journey To Find You, as a stepping stone to get others to learn the basics of meditation. I hope to continue writing more helpful meditation guides and pamphlets very soon. This new path has me excited to be able to serve you and better your mental and spiritual mind.

I'm very excited about this new path and appreciate any support you may bring me.

Hi friends,

I'm Vrin del Royal. Originally from Pittsburgh PA, I've also lived in Germany, and currently reside in California. I'm 20, a college student, and a thrill seeker (I've been skydiving, paragliding, hiked in the Swiss Alps, drove a rental car at 143mph on the Autobahn, and more). I have a love hate relationship with writing. Mostly hate.

I love reading and helping others improve their writing - I'm a much better editor than I am a writer. For the most part, I don't publish my writing, but I do have a new book Survival Lottery that I've just started to release. (If you're interested in getting it for free, I have a giveaway starting on Goodreads in a few days). It's a short dystopia, based on the thought experiment presented by John Harris - but I'll try not to give too much away ;)

Aside from writing, I love the world of politics. At times it can be quite frustrating, but nothing gets me going like a good debate. It's not uncommon for me to argue a position I don't hold, just for the fun of it. Currently my main priority is children's rights - and I recently started a non-profit dedicated to protecting those rights.

If you ever want somebody to look over your writing - for a short critique to a more in detail review, feel free to reach out!

All the best,

Vrin

My pen name is Terry Birdgenaw. I am a new author who began writing during the pandemic lockdown, like perhaps many others. My wife Ann Birdgenaw inspired me to write, and also inspired my choice of pen name (how is that for supporting feminism?). Ann is a children's author who writes chapter books for 8-12-year-old readers. When she was working on the second book in her Black Hole Radio series (Bilaluna), she came to me for some plot ideas. When she accepted my ideas for what the alien creatures would be and what problems they faced on their planet, I felt compelled to give her more plot ideas. At one point she got fed up with all my suggestions, which became too complicated for her target audience, and she suggested I write a young adult backstory to her book. I had never previously had a strong desire to be a writer, but I accepted her challenge. When I got into it, I discovered I really loved writing fiction. As a university science professor, I had experience writing research papers and editing the writing of my graduate students, but I had never written fiction. After a big learning curve, my backstory developed into a trilogy entitled The Antunite Chronicles.

The first book, Antuna's Story, is a Sci-Fi adventure story explaining how Earth insects were transported through a wormhole to a habitable planet in a far-off galaxy and how they survived and developed. Think Watership Down, with bugs, not rabbits, and on a distant planet. There is a struggle between altruism, encouraged by a young ant, Antuna, and aggression, espoused by the colony leaders.

Antuna's Story, released May 16, 2022
See: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B1KWFF24?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_tkin_0&...

The second book, The Rise and Fall of Antocracy, is more of a satire about the perils of a failed democracy. It follows the continued development of these Earth insects, who because of reduced predation and lower gravity live much longer and become much smarter. They build an advanced civilization and evolve into giant insect cyborgs or insectoids. Yet an autocrat who ignores a looming climate catastrophe takes over their fledgling democratic government.

The Rise and fall of Antocracy, released July 4, 2022
See: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B3KJRW58?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_tkin_1&...

The third book, Antunites Unite, is a dystopian tale in which spies from the moon Bilaluna must infiltrate and liberate the Antalone society on the mother planet, where the leaders have used histrionics, bionics, and socionics to subjugate their citizens. I call it a 'Brave New World' that is out of this world! Yet there is a twist, with chameleon ant spies working to save the oppressed.

Antunites Unite, to be released Sept. 21, 2022
See: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BCT1SFJY?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_tkin_2&...

I am offering all three books here as giveaways in October 2022, and hope readers will provide honest reviews.

Hello,
I'm M.J. Webb and I live in the heart of England. Writing is a passion started and fuelled by my love of reading books. The feel of that page turning is something wondrous. I read fantasy, thrillers and historical fiction mainly, though I like to mix it up from time to time by throwing in a curve ball; a book from any genre recommended by friends/members on sites such as Librarything and Goodreads. Often these novels are by self-published authors and I have found several gems over the years that way. Though my favourite authors are John Gwynne, Stieg Larson, Lee Child and Conn Iggulden. I love that those names highlight the diversity in my library.
I am in my mid-fifties now and married to a wonderful lady who has given me two fantastic children. They are the light of my life. So much so, that when they were young, I decided one morning that I wanted to do something for them. Give them a little piece of me they could always hold on to. Hopefully, something which would inspire them in times of need, comfort them in times of sorrow and enthuse them as they navigate their way through adolescence and adulthood.
I’m not sure I succeeded but The Jake West Trilogy was the result.

Jake West shares the same initials as my son and a central character is Princess Zephany, whose name closely resembles that of my own daughter, Sophie.
I launched into the first novel, ‘Jake West - The Keeper of the Stones’, without thinking it through correctly and the original concept just grew and grew. I intended to pen just one novel, maybe two (one for each child) but in the end, the tale simply took on a life of its own and evolved into a real epic. There are wizards, dragons, an army of the living dead, different species of warriors, spirits, Gods….

https://www.amazon.co.uk/M-J-Webb/e/B0049OUVD4/ref=dp_byline_cont_pop_book_1

I found that I had a relatively successful trilogy on my hands. So, why did it take me ten years therefore to write again?
Part of it was work. It is a HUGE commitment writing a novel when you work full time and have a family/other interests. It was also a sense that I did not want to write for writing’s sake. I was waiting for an idea which really enthused me. A project I believed in and couldn’t wait to explore. Something different, you know?
I found it one day in my new job. I had been encouraged to write again by fans of Jake West and friends of my own. I was kicking an idea around in my head for some time and then I verbalised my thoughts to another good friend. His enthusiasm was infectious. Before I knew it, I had penned six or seven decent chapters and it was full steam ahead.

A Child of Szabo is an adult thriller. Please be aware that it is not suitable for under 18’s.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Child-Szabo-M-J-Webb/dp/B0BCD84938/ref=sr_1_1?crid=5VHY...

It's a novel about an orphan on the edge of the abyss. She is offered one final chance of redemption and recruited into a secret organisation begun by Winston Churchill just after the war. Her life story/missions/fight to bring down a leviathan, an organisation of aristocrats who control the world, killed her parents and are now trying to kill her, are told in alternate chapters. It is exciting, thought-provoking and realistic. Consequently, there are the occasional swear words (especially when she undergoes SAS E and E training, firefights, torture.....).
I hope and believe that fans of Lee Child, Duncan Falconer, Mark Greaney etc. will like this book. It has an immensely tough female anti-hero and she pulls no punches.

The whole process of writing has been an immensely pleasurable one. I’m not sure what the future holds but I’m looking forward to seeing what people make of this story. My last novels were penned for my children. They have been enjoyed by families around the world. That is something I will always be grateful for and proud of. This one however, is all mine. Indulgence, pure and simple.
I would love reviews and have made A Child of Szabo a free giveaway in October.

Thank you

>1 LShelby: Hi,

I'm Mahua. I'm a new author living in Vienna, Austria. I'm originally from New York. Prior to moving to Vienna, my husband and I lived in Nairobi, Kenya for four years.

My years in Kenya were the inspiration for my debut novel, Nairobi Ndoto. The story is character-driven women's fiction. My next novel is set here in Vienna and falls into the crime fiction genre.

When I'm not working on that, I'm studying German, knitting, eating my way through Vienna, and dreaming of my next dive trip.

Hi, I may have posted in last year's thread, but I'm having one of those things called a 'senior moment' so instead of spending time looking to see, I'll just jump in here.

My writing name is Max Folsom, and my actual name is Martha. My dad called me Max, or sometimes 'Bud' so I chose Max to write with. I wasn't trying to make people think a man had written my book, it just seemed the right name for the books I wanted to write about a kick-ass female private investigator.

I've lived all over the U.S. and am currently spending part of my time in Vermont. I'm married to a Canadian, so the rest of my time I'm in Ottawa and that's where my books are set. >22 MahuaCavanagh: (Mahua, I also lived four years in Africa and part of that time I was in Tanga, Tanzania.)

Unlike most writers, I never dreamed of being a fiction writer, it just happened. I find the writing is the easy part. The editing is gut-wrenching. I now have two books out. The first, One Bad Day After Another, besides being a murder mystery delved into the illegal activity that goes on in the military arms and equipment industry. The second, Searching for Peter Griffiths, is a missing persons case that becomes a murder case and touches on the human rights issue of the inhabitants of Diego Garcia. I'm now writing the third, Death of a Codebreaker, involves another missing persons case with two related murders and which has roots back in WWII and the Ottawa codebreakers that worked with Bletchley Park intercepting messages from German U-boats in the St. Lawrence.

>15 SteveRhinelander: Steve, has your book been published? Sounds like one I'd like to read.

The year is drawing to a close. I wish everyone a very successful new year!

>23 mysterymax:

Hi Max!
I'm a Canadian who married an American. :)

Ottawa codebreakers sounds very fun to me. I hope I will be feeling enough better to do some actual reading soon, but I may have to settle for just, finally being able to chat a bit again. (My kick-ass female private investigator flies around in a spaceship, but lets not let this small disjunct in genre get in the way of a wonderful friendship.) I never dreamed of being a fiction writer either, I just wrote. How about you? Can you provide more details on "accidentally" becoming a writer? How about on why you write mystery?

>24 LShelby: Besides reading tons, esp mysteries, I've always also been crazy about movies. I think I'm more a visual person than a sound person and as a result I "see" the action in a book, rather than "hear" the sounds of the words. It's a drawback to being a good writer, I think, and I'm working hard on the "hearing" part of writing. I say all this because it is how I became a writer! I was sitting out in the back yard on a lovely summer day and all of a sudden, this scene popped into my head like I was watching a movie. That had never happened to me before and I told my husband about it. He said, "What happened next?" I said, "I don't know." He said, "Well, write it down and see what happens."

How about you?

>25 mysterymax:
I hope you don't mind, but I responded to this message in a different thread.

I hope we can continue the conversation here. (Other people are more likely to join in if we converse in a thread that isn't the intriductions thread. So I always try to move coversations elsewhere if I can.) :)

Greetings,
I grew up on fantasy. I fell in love with the escapism it offers you. In the stories, you don't have to care about anything in the "real world". Well, until you can't hold your pesky bladder anymore. I needed this to get through those difficult years without going insane. (of which I'm still not entirely sure)
I'm 30 now. My approach to life has changed, but I still love fantasy. So my first book had to be fantasy, naturally.
My greatest hope is that someone out there (ideally human, but I don't discriminate) will find the same escape in my work. – albeit probably not in such a short book, but hey, it was my first time! I'll do better next time, okay?

Not what I initially thought I would write, but meh. If it works, don't fix it. And it works as an introduction.... actually, does it work?

I recently published my first book Hodge Podge: A Collection of Short Stories and Poems on Amazon and Barnes and Nobles. I do Stand Up Comedy and I have a podcast called: Woz Happening!

Hi Everyone, I'm Roman (pen name Roman Lando), besides writing I'm a composer, musician, web and new media designer, and positively have too many passions, interests, and hobbies in my life.

When I'm not writing books or music, I can be found sailing, playing keys in a prog rock band, flying my drones, building crazy flight simulation rigs, and LARPing. My lifelong love and passion for hard Sci-Fi take a special place in my heart. Reading was never enough. The only way to satisfy this obsession was to write my debut novel Progress Report, which I recently self-published on Amazon. I hope to share my love for true Science Fiction, along with my interest in history, science, philosophy, and technology, with my readers.

After living in three countries on three continents and speaking three languages, I have finally settled in Toronto where I live with my wife and two daughters. No dogs or cats are involved - my drones are my pets. I'm now working on my second novel.

Greetings, everyone. My name is D. Emily Hicks. I write academic, non-fiction books and performance art texts (and I include texts in my art). I am an artist (performance artist/mixed media) and a writer. I was born in San Francisco and I live in San Diego, California in the United States. I live in a neighborhood with many musicians, artists, filmmakers and photographers (on the border between South Park and Golden Hill). The land used to be known as Indian Hill. Edward "Ned" Bushyhead (Cherokee) lived two blocks from my house. I write about literature, art, the Mexico-US border and education.

I am interested in literature, art, philosophy, pedagogy, anarchist theory, borders, immigrant rights, complexity (chaos theory), the environment, music, feminism, queer theory, Afro-pessimism, Zapatismo, curanderismo and mixed ancestry. My maternal ancestry is Redbone (an ethnicity linked to the Louisiana-Texas border). My paternal grandfather was of Cornish ancestry (Redruth and Camborne). I am a member of a complexity lab group directed by a geophysicist at UC San Diego. My book An Introduction to Complexity Pedagogy, Using Critical Theory, Critical Pedagogy and Complexity in Performance & Literature has been printed (and copies are on there way to me) by Stylus and will be available on Amazon and at independent bookstores by the end of January 2023. This book includes chapters on LeAnne Howe (Choctaw), Gloria Anzaldua (Chicana lesbian), Karen Finley (performance artist) and Bob Flanagan/Sheree Rose (performance art collaborators). My other books, Border Writing (1991) and Ninety-five Languages (1999), are available on Amazon.

I live with a musician (guitar/jazz fusion/progressive rock/electronica). My son is a computer scientist and my daughter-in-law does hair/make-up (high end clients) and special effects (and runs an online Hunter role-playing game group). I attempt to please my chihuahua.

I am currently writing a book, Parables, on authors of African and Afro-Latinx ancestry, including Octavia Butler. It will be published in 2024. I support independent bookstores. My aunt and uncle founded Moe's Books in Berkeley. I worked at the bookstore running a children's art workshop and I spent a lot of time in the jazz section of the bookstore (in the basement). I look forward to doing book signings/readings. I'm offering An Introduction to Complexity Pedagogy as a give-away.

Thank you to my followers! I am holding a physical copy of my book in my hands. Two copies arrived in the mail today. According to the marketing department at the publisher's, the book is in stock and back orders are being processed. There are 41 copies in stock and 50 copy reprint is underway. If I have understood pre-sales (the definition), there are over 70 presales in independent bookstores/chains in over a dozen countries and many states (mostly on the East and West Coast). There's a pre-sale from a great bookstore in Los Angeles and one in the Haight in San Francisco. I made a new friend through a Facebook error (we got connected, but neither of us had made the friend request). He co-founded a theatre group--TuYo. I've been inviting people who might be interested in the book to become friends on Facebook (if we have friends in common) and I am very grateful for the response. I am making connections with activists, performers, poets, writers and musicians, exactly the audience I want to reach (well--since the book is about pedagogy--some policy people might be nice, but maybe that will come later). Some people with more resources are placing orders and others are providing "a chorus of support," in the words of one of them. I am most grateful for the support that I am getting from a leader in the field of critical pedagogy, Peter McLaren. I will be posting an interview with him for how to survive in these very challenging times that he just sent me.

My book is being sold in Mexico in the Gandhi bookstore chain (including in Tijuana and Mexico City). It will become available on Amazon tomorrow, January 30th, 2023.

My book An Introduction to Complexity Pedagogy, Using Critical Theory, Critical Pedagogy and Complexity in Performance & Literature, is now available on Amazon as well as in bookstores and book chains in 20 countries including the United States, Mexico, Canada, the UK, Germany, South Africa and India. In the US, it can be ordered through bookstores in the Bay Area (San Francisco, Berkeley, Santa Rosa), Los Angeles, on the East Coast and elsewhere. 60 readers have offered to review it in the Giveaway program and I am waiting for the selection based on LibraryThing's algorithms. I will be sending out 5 copies. I have posted excerpts of chapters, A Paragraph a Day, for seven days on my Facebook page. I am in the process of setting up a book signing/reading in the Bay Area.

>30 Emily-HIcks:
Hello Emily! Welcome to Hobnob!

I'm sorry I wasn't here to welcome you when you arrived.
I've noticed that you keep posting to this topic thread, even when other topic threads would be more appropriate. (Book announcements have their own threads). Are you having trouble finding your way around? I know many people find LT confusing at first.

Your self introduction was so marvelously complete that I'm finding it hard to come up with any questions to ask you about yourself, but I would love to discuss multiculturalism in literature with you -- only we probably ought to take it to its own thread. If you would be willing to start such a thread that would be awesome. (If you would rather I started it, let me know.)