Book Recommendations

My narrator uploaded the first half of the Jehovah and Hades audio book, so I'm about to start going through that to see if he needs to do any re-recording before making the master track. He said the full audio is ready to go, I just have to give the two plus hour long audio book a listen before we move on to mastering it. So that audio book isn't too far from going live.

Before I start listening to chapters of Jehovah and Hades, I figured I would post some book recommendations for self-published authors that I've read but you may not have heard of yet. In most of these cases, I've read at least one of their books. These books do have swearing and violence in them, so I'm adding that in as a disclaimer. Let's start:

1. A.G. Riddle
A.G. Riddle became successful on Amazon with his first self-published book, which is pretty rare. He's turned it into a series that now has three books. The first one, The Atlantis Gene, has over 7,000 reviews on Amazon and a rating of 4.2 / 5 stars. I've made it about 90% of the way through The Atlantis Gene and I have to say that it's been a good book so far, even though I think Riddle is a little too long-winded at times. This first book in the series clocks in at just under 500 pages. It's $2.99, so definitely a bargain. This action / adventure thriller deals with the origins of a specific disease and goes back to track down the mystery behind the evolutionary line of humans. Pretty interesting stuff. It's currently #64 in the Amazon Top 100 and it has been in the Top 100 for a long time now. You can pick up The Atlantis Gene as an e-book by clicking the cover image below:

2. Russell Blake
Russell Blake has been featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal and has sold over 600,000 books so far. He mainly writes fast-paced thrillers and is successful in that area (as evidenced by the strong sales in his Jet series.) Personally, I like Blake's PI / Detective books the best. There are currently four books in his Black series (about a PI named Artemus Black) and I've read all four. They're all great reads. Instead of linking to Jet, I'm going to link to the first book in Blake's Black series (which is currently at $3.99):

3. Nick Russell
Nick Russell made the New York Times Best Seller list with the first book in his Big Lake series, selling over 100,000 copies. Nick has featured my books on his blog several times which has brought in many additional sales for me. He's a traveling RVer who tours the country while speaking at various RV conventions and recently even started an informal workshop on self-publishing books. I read his latest stand-alone novel, Dog's Run, last year and it was in the top 5 for best books I read in all of 2013 (and I read a lot.) I'll link to Dog's Run below (which Amazon actually tried to make a deal with Nick to acquire.) It's definitely worth the current $3.99 price tag:

4. Hugh Howey
Hugh Howey hit it big with what I think was around the 10th book he wrote, a short story called Wool. It was so popular that fans demanded that he continue it into a series. I purchased the complete Wool collection a while back and I'm currently in book 4. It's a great series, but for the moment I've moved on to other reads. Howey is famous as an indie author for making a deal with Simon and Schuster for ONLY his paperback rights. Every other company in the Big 5 wanted to take his e-book rights as well and he stood firm and told them no. I'm currently reading Hugh Howey's latest novel, Sand, which is the book I will link to below (it's a different book outside of the Wool series, Hugh currently has it at $5.99 but I grabbed it when it was on sale for $1.99):

5. Brandon Hale
Brandon Hale is the author of the popular Day Soldiers series. He's also made my last two Facebook profile images, because he knows I love Assassin's Creed and thought it would be cool to photoshop me as an actual assassin. Brandon recently made the jump to full-time author and then found out shortly after that he has cancer. He's been fighting it and I know he's going to beat it, but it would definitely help him out if you grabbed a copy of Day Soldiers. I've read it; it's amazing. It features a world where vampires, werewolves, and other creatures come out of hiding and publicly declare that they exist, promising to extinguish humanity. The Day Soldiers are the humans that stand against them and fight back. Brandon has a great way of writing about the old school, original creatures of the night, not shiny, sparkling vampires. I read Bram Stoker's Dracula when I was a teenager and Hale does vampires more justice than Stephanie Meyer ever did. Day Soldiers is free, so if you enjoy it I would encourage you to leave a positive review and pick up more books in the series:

So there you go. Five new self-published indie authors to try out. Read any one of the five books I recommended and you can tell all of your friends that you're a hipster who reads indie authors. I know that's what you all secretly want, right? :-P If none of those books work for you, you can always check out my author page here. (Keep in mind that I'm a self-published indie author too.)