Category: Blog

Posted in Blog

7 Sci-Fi/Fantasy Series by Women You Need to Read.

Posted on by Avery Carter

I love love LOVE the recent push for diversity in the publishing industry, and I thought it would be a good time to bring back some old content I created a while ago, and give it a bit of a fresh face.

Just a note: the links on this post are Amazon Affiliate Links, and I do earn money from any qualifying purchase. With that out of the way, let’s get started!

  1. The Tortall Series by Tamora Pierce

A series of quartets, duets, and trilogies, the Tortall books cover every aspect of high fantasy that you want. They begin with The Song of the Lioness, a quartet about Alanna of Trebond, a ten year old girl who disguises herself as a boy to become a knight. With knights, magic, magical creatures, and dragons, these books are full of diverse heroines and messages that are definitely worth reading.

2. Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

If you want to be a better writer, read these books. The prose is stunningly beautiful, and the worldbuilding is something to be envied. In three books, Taylor creates a world so vividly imagined that you will cry when you finish the trilogy, if only because you won’t get to read about these characters anymore. Beginning with the mystery of who Karou is and ending with the glory of peace after a war, the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy are easily some of the best books of the decade.

3. Unraveling by Elizabeth Norris

Holy seven hells, these books need to be on your “to-read” list now. The duet introduces the concept of parallel universes that are crashing together because three boys just want to get home. The main character, Janelle, is a breath of fresh air, with a badass skill set and an actual reason for having it, as well as a maternity streak a mile long. The book starts with her dying and being brought back to life, then continues on with a clock that seems to be counting down to the end of the world, and a string of bodies dying from radiation poisoning. Fast-paced and wholly original, Unraveling will sink its hooks into you from the very first page.

4. The Ward by Jordana Frankel

It’s rare that I put down a book and say “this needs to be made into a movie immediately,” but The Ward inspired this immediate reaction. Set against a post-apocalyptic New York, Frankel’s tale of a young street-racer who accepts an impossible mission from the government to save her younger sister is gripping and ambitious. New York City has been flooded, and Ren has been given the task of finding a new freshwater source. In a city full of saltwater, what should be a simple mission turns out to be Herculean in its execution. When she starts looking, she uncovers an astonishing truth about the city and what lies beneath the water’s surface. With a woman of color as the protagonist, and Native American legends to draw on, Frankel’s debut novel is a home run of a work.

5. The Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir

Do you like lesbians? Do you like space? Do you like necromancers? Well, have I got a book for you! Set in a haunting echo of our own solar system, The Locked Tomb follows Harrowhark Nonagesimus, better known as Harrow, and her cavalier Gideon as they vie to serve a mysterious deathless emperor. Full of brevity, bones, and body horror, this series is one you’ll find yourself coming back to again and again.

(This is also my wife’s favorite book series, and she wants more people to read it.)

6. Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor

For those of you who love the Dark Academia trend but want something a little different, look no further. Akata Witch follows Sunny, an albino girl living in Nigeria as she struggles to find her place in the world. Unexpectedly, she find it with a secret magical society and discovers that she herself has magical powers too. Bursting with childlike wonder and a terrifically ripping climax, this book is nothing short of fantastic.

7. Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel

Many people have heard of this book thanks to the television series of the same name, but it’s difficult for TV to properly capture the truly powerful impact of Mandel’s writing. Sliding back and forth across timelines, Mandel uses multiple character perspectives to take us through a deadly pandemic, past to present day. Though it may seem a little on-the-nose, given how we’re currently 2 years into our own pandemic, Station Eleven is a stunning reminder of the beauty and terror of humanity.

Posted in Blog

NEW BOOK ALERT

Posted on by Avery Carter

Hello Everyone!

It feels like only yesterday that I released a book (it was less than a year ago, Avery. That’s basically yesterday in book publishing times) and now I’m releasing another! You may have seen it on my Book Series page already, but here’s the full run-down of everything to expect from my new release: THE GHOST AND THE REAL GIRL.

When Sera is hired to rob a 200 year old grave, the last thing she expects is the ghost of Lady Clementine de Quill rising up to scold her for it. Though her world is full of magical echoes from a not-so-distant past, a ghost is unheard of, and what’s more, no one else can see or hear Clem. Sera tries everything to get rid of her– selling the items she took from her grave, bathing in saltwater, even putting herself through a religious smoke cleansing from the Church of the Wheel. Nothing works, and Sera finally resigns herself to having a ghost follow her around for the rest of her life.

Despite their differences, a partnership begins to bloom between them, but just as they settle into their new routine, Clem begins to fade, flickering in and out for longer and longer periods of time. It becomes clear with each time Clem vanishes, there’s a chance she won’t come back. There’s only one problem: Sera can’t imagine life without her anymore.

Featuring an LGBT relationship and an autistic protagonist, THE GHOST AND THE REAL GIRL is perfect for fans of WARM BODIES by Isaac Marion and THE NIGHT CIRCUS by Erin Morgenstern.

Preorder Now!
Posted in Blog

Well, here we go…

Posted on by Avery Carter

Though I began my journey in publishing two years ago, at the height of the pandemic, my journey as a writer began a much longer time ago.

When I was in first grade, I wrote a two page story about a white cat who couldn’t live in her hometown because everyone in that town was allergic to her. My teacher was astonished that a child came up with something like that. She didn’t know that my mom was deathly allergic to cats, while I was fascinated with them. I moved states that year, and stopped writing for a while as I adjusted to my new routine.

When I was fourteen, I started my first novel: a hybrid of fantasy and anime tropes that was meant to be the start of a trilogy. I began posting it one chapter at a time on a tiny blogging website, waiting for people to hail it as the next big thing! The best story they’ve ever read!

It was not. It was terrible, and the wonderful people of the internet told me so. I was embarrassed, but not discouraged. I kept writing.

When I was sixteen, I began writing the novel that would eventually become my debut novel. It was based on a dream I had about a red-haired girl, a werewolf, and a grey room. The novel grew and developed as I did, with the protagonist going from sixteen years old to twenty years old. I added elements of Fae mythology, creating a story that was a weird mix of styles and tropes. I finished the first draft when I was twenty, and I began writing the second book.

When I was twenty four, I was finally comfortable enough with the book to begin querying agents, so I did. About twenty rejections later, I gave up. The story was too old, or too similar to other stories on the market, or simply not what they were looking for. I began polishing the first novel again, making revisions, adding characters, and changing others. The love interest, originally a boy named Tristan, became a woman named Talia, and from there: a spark.

When I was twenty seven, I realized that I didn’t want to be traditionally published after all. So, I self-published, and my book flopped. Hard. To be fair, it was unpolished, and the “final” product was a result of the week I was in quarantine because a single student in a class on a different floor than mine was diagnosed with COVID-19. Funny, how our standards for that have changed now. Now, I can have a student in my class who tests positive, and life continues as normal. But, I digress.

Two years later, I released the second book, and re-released a more polished version of the first book, and now we’re here! I’m midway through obtaining my MFA in Creative Writing, four years into an ESL teaching career in South Korea, and almost a month into a marriage to my favorite person in the world. I don’t think fourteen year old me ever saw this coming. They would honestly probably just be surprised I made it this long. But, I did, fourteen year old me. We did. And we have so many more stories to tell.