Joshua Fordyce: Pursuing What Molds Us

I met Joshua Fordyce recently at the Middle Georgia Literary Festival. You need to meet him too. He is a retired American Navy veteran who loves writing stories, songs, and movie scripts. He found inspiration to finish one of his hundreds of incomplete projects in the wake of his mother’s passing in 2022. Being a huge fan of both Westerns and Fantasy, he decided to merge the two genres to create Black Sleeve, his premiere book, completed in 2023. 

Tell us a bit about your most recent work.

I am currently working on Book 3 of the Arms of Malar series called Rune Sleeve. 

What are the themes and subjects you tend to revisit in your work? 

Growth through suffering. There is a tendency in today's society to say that suffering is bad, but in all honesty, our suffering is what truly molds us into who we are. 

What happened in your life that prompted you to become a writer? 

My mother passed away in February of 2022. After that, I wrote my first book. There was an article about it published here.

What inspires you to write? 

Initially, it was to deal with grief, now, though, I think it is the feedback from readers that really motivates me. 

What of your works has meant the most to you? 

I wrote a screenplay about the life of my grandparents called Lewis & Jane. That definitely is the work with the most emotional investment.  

If you have any former project to do over to make it better, which one would it be, and what would you do? 

This is going to sound crazy, but I wrote a movie script for the Predator series, and I am pretty sure elements of my manuscript were poached through an online script submission site. 

 If I could go back, I never would have wasted the time to write it. 

What writers have influenced your style and technique? 

Bernard Cornwell, C.S. Lewis, Larry McMurtry, and George R.R. Martin

Where would you rank writing on the "Is it an art or is it a science continuum?" Why? 

I think it is both. I work with engineers on software and hardware development projects, and technical writing is imperative to the process. Not only are idea proposals just as creative as a fictional story. All science is fiction until it can be proven and manifested. 

What is the most difficult part of your artistic process? 

Time management. I work full-time and write, and I think I could get much more accomplished if I had more time. 

How do your writer friends help you become a better writer? Or do they not? 

It has been crazy to me that the random people who have come out of nowhere are very supportive of my work. Some of them were just acquaintances before, but now I think of them as close friends. My editor, Rebekah Becker, is fantastic. She is the one who keeps me focused on projects to finish them. Sarah Meuhler is my proofer, and she is beyond awesome. Another independent author Rowan Burroughs, is like my charge paddle when things are getting flatline, she comes along and shocks me back into focus. But my greatest support is my Uncle Toby; he says how proud he is of me all the time, and I never realized what a void that was in my life until he filled it. 

What does literary success look like to you? 

I think I have already reached literary success. My biggest regret is that my mother could never read my book. 

Any other upcoming projects you would like to plug?  

I have projects opening all the time. If you join my Facebook author page, you can keep up with them easily.

For more information, visit: 

https://www.amazon.com/stores/Joshua-Fordyce/author/B0CT43Z6FS

Motivational Monday: Shoveling Sand

Sunday Funnies: Purging the Excess

AIRSHIP 27 PRODUCTION PRESENTS TOMAHAWKS & SORCERY

The French & Indian Wars, a tumultuous time in the history of America. Hundreds of European immigrants sought to build a new future in a new land among the struggles of ancient empires. One player at the front of these struggles was Declinn Blayde, a one-time scout and Indian fighter turned artist. Using a sculptor’s tools, he now gives shape to his dreams in wooden figures.

But living on the frontier, putting his violent past behind him is impossible as he is continually called upon by naïve settlers and friends to fend off the supernatural forces of dark evil employed by native people to the horror of all. Pulp writer Teel James Glenn offers up three new adventures of the frontiersman and a bonus yarn featuring two sword-wielding maids born on the high seas. Artist Mike Laperuta offers the interior illustrations, and Adam Shaw the dramatic cover.

AIRSHIP 27 PRODUCTION – PULP FICTION FOR A NEW GENERATION!

Available now at Amazon in paperback and soon on Kindle.

Thomas Hraynyk: Writing Is My Escape

Thomas Hraynyk is Canadian-born from Oshawa, Ontario. At forty-three, he is accomplishing a long dream of publishing his first novel. Through many obstacles over the past five years, he has persevered and worked hard to get to this point. His story goes far beyond that and is pretty darn inspiring, so you should check out his website for the rest of it. 

Tell us a bit about your most recent work.

A.M.P.D. Artificial Military Prosthetics Division Book 1, and Book 2 The Phantom Limb releases this coming March. It is a series that follows a handful of soldiers who end up with weaponized prosthetics. I have also just published a short story on Kindle called Hearts on the Apex: The Afterburn. This is a story about a young race car driver with all the skill and potential to be great. However, life happens, and everything changes, and he decides to disappear.

What are the themes and subjects you tend to revisit in your work?

I have experienced a lot of loss and hardship in my life, and my writing is my escape. It is also the way I strive to motivate and encourage others to never give up. Even though my novels are science fiction, the message is in the characters and backstories. Soldiers with weaponized prosthetics have to cope and deal with loss and PTSD, while trying to protect the world. It also looks at the debate of choice and orders.

What happened in your life that prompted you to become a writer? 

I had this Idea for A.M.P.D. years ago, and one day, after losing my job, my fiance looked at me and said, "Why don't you write that story you keep talking about all the time?" So I started writing it on my cell phone. Years later, after life and living, she passed away tragically. She died in my arms, and after a year of grieving, I said to myself, "I need to do this." I need to get this finished and published. So I made the decision to learn and do whatever it took to get it done.

Motivational Monday: Keep Writing

 

AIRSHIP 27 PRODUCTION PRESENTS TENDERFOOT : AN AMERICAN MAMMOTH NOVEL BY MICHAEL PANUSH

Time, the Post-Civil War in a world not our own. A United States where the great megafauna of North America—mammoths, cave bears, and saber-tooth tigers—never went extinct. Clement Clarke is an ex-Confederate Elephantine Dragoon soldier, now a washed-up, drunk bounty hunter whose only friend is a uniquely intelligent Columbian Mammoth. While on his way to the bayou in search of a notorious outlaw, he encounters twelve-year-old Thalia Ridgeway, an orphan wanting to hire him to find the man who murdered her father.

Clarke tries to dissuade her, but when he discovers a paid assassin hunting the girl, he has no choice but to get involved in what he soon discovers is a deep conspiracy of railroad tycoons looking to profit from Reconstruction. The only thing in their way, Thalia.

Once again, writer Michael Panush showcases his incredible imagination with a setting and cast of characters unlike anything you’ve ever seen in print. Artist Ron Hill provides the wonderful interior illustrations and Adam Shaw the gorgeous color cover.

AIRSHIP 27 PRODUCTION – PULP FICTION FOR A NEW GENERATION!

Available now from Amazon in paperback and soon on Kindle.

[Link] 10 books for fans of slow burn, character-driven science fiction

These 10 sci-fi books are perfect for readers who enjoy getting lost in character-driven stories that unfold at their own pace.

by Ash Anjum

Science fiction is often known for big ideas and high-stakes plots that move quickly from one moment to the next. It's a genre that usually thrives on faced-paced storytelling that keeps readers hooked through constant forward motion.

But some science fiction stories take a different approach. These books put characters at the center, allowing their thoughts, relationships and personal journeys to lead the story. The alien worlds and advanced technology still matter, but the real plot has to do with the characters' heads and hearts.

These slower-paced stories give you time to really know the characters and feel for them. Today, we’ve put together a list of 10 such character-driven books that fans of thoughtful, slow-burn sci-fi will appreciate.

Read the full article: https://winteriscoming.net/10-books-for-fans-slow-burn-character-driven-science-fiction

Amber Hansford: It Ties Back to Music

I met Amber Hansford recently at a Middle Georgia Book Festival. She is a writer, designer, and Dragon Con track director living in Atlanta, Georgia. A former UX Director turned full-time creative, she’s currently focused on stories, strange hobbies, and sharpening her Apocalypse Skills™.

Tell us a bit about your most recent work.

My most recent work is The Veil of Takhsha, Book Two of The Emari Chronicles, an epic fantasy series inspired by pre-Islamic Persian history and mythology. The series is a quartet, and the second book leans harder into political fracture, divine silence, and the personal cost of power. While the first book establishes the world and the magic, Veil is where things start to crack and the reader sees how the darkness and rot are revealed from a different perspective.

What are the themes and subjects you tend to revisit in your work?

Looking through my work in general, both published and not, I’d say that I tend to come back to what it means to be strong, especially when it comes down to the difference between being strong for others and being strong for yourself, and what that choice costs.

What happened in your life that prompted you to become a writer?

I have always been a storyteller, ever since I was little. I have around twenty books in some state in a digital drawer that I worked on for years before I realized, at 50, that I needed to decide what I wanted to do with my writing. The Hand of Mashyana became my debut novel, published a month before my 51st birthday.

What inspires you to write?

Almost everything I write ties back to music I love. Emari started because of a few lines in a song that I couldn’t get out of my mind because of the image that it created for me. While it may not be obvious within what I write, I always have a song, or sometimes even an album, that has inspired it. There will always be a playlist, usually best played on shuffle, that will give you the vibes of what I’ve written.

What of your works has meant the most to you?

The Hand of Mashyana will always hold a special place in my heart. It was my debut, my baby. It gave me my first published book and the world I’m building this quartet in. I think there are more stories outside of this series in Emari, but this quartet is the solid foundation.

If you have any former project to do over to make it better, which one would it be, and what would you do?

I once heard an author say that you hope your first book is your worst book. I have that digital drawer of things I’d love to revisit now that I’ve gone through what I have with Emari.

What writers have influenced your style and technique?

Oh, so many… and the list does change depending on what I’m writing and where I am at the moment, but for Emari in particular, R.F. Kuang, Brandon Sanderson, V.E. Schwab, and L. Penelope were all highly influential in shaping Emari into what it is.

Where would you rank writing on the "Is it an art or it is a science continuum?" Why?

For me, it’s very hard to separate the two when it comes to writing. The art is the story, and the science is telling it well. And in that balance, you find that great book that is someone’s favorite book.

What is the most difficult part of your artistic process?

Outside of balancing a full-time job and building an author career, I’d say that it’s trusting that the work will come together before all the pieces are visible to me. I tend to see pieces of a story before I understand how every part connects, and sitting in that uncertainty can be uncomfortable, and honestly? A blocker when I first started getting serious about writing. While editing isn’t the easiest, it’s still so much easier for me than drafting.

How do your writer friends help you become a better writer? Or do they not?

I fell for the whole ‘authors work alone’ trope myself for years, but my writing, both craft and career, finally found its footing when I found my current writing group. We all met via a writing workshop, and once the workshop wrapped up, we kept meeting every week since, now for over two years. They’ve been huge for camaraderie, critique, and support.

What does literary success look like to you?

Stability. Being an author, especially an indie author, is a long game. Your backlist is your superpower, showing that you’re not just here for a little while. I only half-joke about the fact that writing is my retirement plan, given the state of everything else.

Any other upcoming projects you would like to plug?

I’m currently wrapping up work on Book 3 in the Emari Chronicles, The Embers of Tamidh (working title, may change), with a release scheduled for mid-year 2026, and I’m also working on the final book in this series to release around the end of the year 2026. After that? I have a few things that wouldn’t let go of me until I got a beat sheet together, so now it’s just a matter of choosing what comes next.

For more information, visit:

My website, amberhansford.com, includes information on upcoming events, social media links, book details, and my direct sales shop if you’d prefer to buy directly rather than through major retailers.

Motivational Monday: Paper Breaths

[Link] There’s a crisis in non-fiction book sales. What’s to blame?

We’re buying 17 million fewer factual books than six years ago. Is the rise of podcasts to blame? Or publishers’ obsession with celebrities and influencers?

by Ceci Browning

Inside the world of books there are always a few things that everybody knows about but nobody can bring themselves to say out loud. Much of the present whispering is that something has gone seriously wrong with non-fiction. When did the big magisterial titles so common on late 20th century bookshelves disappear? Where did they go? Is there anything left to read for those who aren’t interested in ghostwritten celebrity memoirs or self-help manuals?

Unfortunately those fears are backed up by facts. Fiction sales might be swelling – underpinned by the rise of romantasy and a strange new demand for dragon-based love affairs – but according to Nielsen, sales of non-fiction books in 2025 were down 6 per cent compared with 2024. It was the lowest yearly total since 2017, the sorry end point of years of painfully consistent decline.

And the books that did sell well in 2024 weren’t “big ideas” titles like Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens or charming travelogues like Bill Bryson’s The Road to Little Dribbling that elbowed their way into the charts a decade or so ago.

Read the full article: https://www.thetimes.com/culture/books/article/what-happened-non-fiction-books-publishing-industry-trends-gd9snqwjz

Anna Holloway: Don't Forget to Wave

Anna Holloway spent her teaching and administrative career of forty-six years all at one HBCU (historically black college and university). I have written about my experience, especially the early part, and I’m still in the process of learning more about black people’s experiences. Originally from the Midwest and now in the South and the mother of two interracial sons, Anna writes about her life-changing experiences as a white instructor at a black college during the time of the Vietnam War, voting reforms, and public-school integration. 

Tell us a bit about your most recent work.

Be Sure to Wave: An Interracial Family in Rural Georgia takes place 1978-92 in very rural Macon County. We experienced a gunshot in our house and a local church reacting against our three-year-old son's attending Sunday school, and we were even touched by the KKK, it appeared. But we came to like most of our neighbors, our two sons loved being in the country, and we lived seeing the wildlife. We did work and took the boys to school in Fort Valley.

What are the themes and subjects you tend to revisit in your work?

In my memoirs and many of my poems so far, I reflect on real-life differences between being a Southerner and being a Midwesterner, and this is through my lens of coming from the Midwest in 1968 to teach at Fort Valley State, where I spent my career of 46 years.

Motivational Monday: From the Brain to the Heart

[Link] 5 Great Claustrophobic Crime Novels

by Matthew F. Jones

I’m not sure that the term claustrophobic crime novel is a genre unto itself. If it isn’t it should be. Claustrophobia, whether of the physical or mental kind, is the engine that drives some of our best novels. Thrillers and crime novels in particular.  This is because every well-done claustrophobic novel is also a psychological character study told entirely or, almost entirely, from the point of view of the novel’s protagonist; and being inside someone’s mind in a claustrophobic situation – whether of their own making or created from external circumstances – can’t help but be thrilling, tense and unpredictable. In several of my own novels I have found it most effective to write from a single character’s perspective – whether from the first or third person point of view. What’s interesting for me as their conduit in a sense is to observe through a character’s mind how they will react as the situations/encounters I put them in become tenser and/or more fraught. Who of us can say who we really are – the heroic, or anyway upright, person we want to believe we are or something less – until we’re in a crisis situation? That unpredictability and sense of a protagonist revealing to me their truest nature at the same time that I am writing the story that is forcing them to do so, for me defines the art of writing and is what makes doing it exciting.

Read the full article: https://crimereads.com/5-great-claustrophobic-crime-novels/

Horrific Scribes Presents: Rulemakers and Rulebreakers: 26 Works of Order and Chaos (Horrific Scribes Anthologies)

Horrific Scribes Presents: Rulemakers and Rulebreakers: 26 Works of Order and Chaos 

by L. Andrew Cooper, H.J. Dutton, Sarina Dorie, et al

Format: Kindle 

Which is more terrifying, the imposition of order that might involve stifling limitations and repugnant values, or spiraling into chaos as order splinters or disappears? The 26 authors in Horrific Scribes Presents: Rulemakers and Rulebreakers have 26 answers, each with the potential to shatter you. Prepare for works by Sam Arlington, Raymond Brunell, Harley Carnell, Emmie Christie, Nicholas De Marino, Sarina Dorie, Eric Fomley, Douglas Ford, Matt Hollingsworth, Douglas Kolacki, Christine Lajewski, Devin James Leonard, E.J. LeRoy, Susan L. Lin, Mavrik McMeekan, Jason Frederick Myers, Lena Ng, Dimitry Partsi, Nick Porisch, Nilay Kumar Sarker, C.M. Saunders, Briar Shannon, Steve Toase, Mark Towse, Fendy S. Tulodo, and Andrew Welsh-Huggins.

"A terrific mix of 26 short stories, all on the theme of rule use and abuse. They're all engrossing, though some in that peering-between-your-fingers way, and a few are downright disturbing. I particularly liked the banality of "The Basement" and the bizarre "The Reflection's Strike, " but my favourite was the possession story "No Vacancy." A great anthology, just right if you want to have disturbed sleep!"

          --L.N. Hunter, author of The Feather and the Lamp

Available on Amazon

Open Skies (new poem)

From my upcoming second volume of poetry, Brunch with the Obelisk.

J. Brice Odom: Becoming an Older Kid

J. Brice Odom was born and raised in the great state of Georgia and now resides in the beautiful city of Macon. Since he was a young child, he has enjoyed creating stories and investigating history. He has been writing stories of all shapes and sizes since he was in elementary school. As he has gone through high school and college, and out of and back into a teaching career, that desire to create worlds of words and explore the ideas of literature and history remains undiminished. He has been telling stories since he was a young kid and intends to be telling stories as he becomes an older and older kid.  

Tell us a bit about your most recent work.

My most recent book is hard boiled detective novel called Moonlight in the Tombstones. I tried to channel the feeling of the old film noir stories like The Maltese Falcon. The detective is wearing a fedora, the dialogue is often quick and sarcastic, there is a beautiful woman who we have no clue whose side she is really on, plenty of twists and turns, and a couple good gun fights along the way! 

What are the themes and subjects you tend to revisit in your work?

I am a pretty eclectic writer in terms of genre. I have a detective novel, fantasy novel, short story collection that has various genres, a little poetry book, and a history book. Ultimately, what I like to usually say is most often I write of the fantastic, whether that is fantasy, science fiction, southern lit, or any other genre.

What hapened in your life that prompted you to become a writer? 

I can't think of a time I have not enjoyed telling stories. I remember, when I was little, my Granny typing as I told her a story about a lava monster on her typewriter, and then putting it in a little plastic page protector thing. I got to make a cover and in some ways it was my first book. But I was writing stories all through elementary. I like to describe myself as an older kid still just telling stories...and I don't think I will ever grow out of it!

Motivational Monday: A Whole New Book

[Link] The Unexpected Benefits of Reading at Random

Elspeth Wilson on Becoming a Literary Omnivore

by Elspeth Wilson

As someone who has spent much of the last half-decade trying to “make it” as an author—an increasingly slippery ideal, I fear—it feels bizarre to admit that for much of my adult life I didn’t read fiction at all. Sacrilegious, even. Like so many other writers, I’d loved books as a weird, shy child, finding them refuge, friend and escape all wrapped into one. But as someone who’s a very slow reader, I just couldn’t keep up with the volume of reading that was demanded of me as I progressed through school and then university.

If we had to do assigned reading at home for English, it would take me ages and sometimes I’d have to cram pages in breaks before class. By the time I was studying for my undergrad, reading felt like a chore I couldn’t keep on top of. I stayed up late to finish articles and usually only managed a couple of chapters of books that were assigned in their entirety. When I had any free time, the last thing I wanted to do was struggle over more reading.

Then, in a quintessential story of reconnecting to reading, I moved to a new city at twenty-four. I was lonely and often very sad. I was in a long-distance relationship, I hated my job, I had an undiagnosed disability that sometimes caused me such agonising pain I couldn’t leave the house. It turns out circumstances such as these will push you back to considering novels as your friends. To reading in bed when you can’t do anything else. To imagining yourself in different worlds.

I used to feel stressed about reading all the hot, trendy books, getting caught up in the emphasis publishing puts on newness, but now I’m much more likely to read an older book than one steeped in hype and discourse.

At first this rediscovering of reading was delicious. I read on my way to work, distracting myself from the dread of going into the office. When it felt impossible to see friends or go out in bleak London weather, I had a cozy activity to do at home. I found my own taste, reading a lot of heartbroken free verse poetry by young women, plenty of queer romcoms and what the industry might describe as “contemporary women’s fiction” like Big Little Lies.

Read the full article: https://lithub.com/the-unexpected-benefits-of-reading-at-random/

Captain Science Goes to Oz! (New from BEN Books)

Science and fantasy collide in the merry old land of Oz in the new digest novel, Captain Science in Oz! available in paperback and ebook at Amazon worldwide with more retailers to follow. The author will also have autographed copies for sale soon.

When his old enemy, the Beast Men of Rak, invade Oz, Captain Science answers Oz’s call for aid. BEN Books presents Captain Science in Oz!, a pulpy action-thriller by Bobby Nash featuring the return of the 1950’s super-science hero, Captain Science. Cover illustration by Jas Ingram.