Indie Roundtable Read: First Contact

What image does the word author conjure in your mind? A recluse holing out in the mountains, who probably hasn't slept or been outside for days, and is surrounded by papers, a horde of cats, empty cups of coffee, and maybe a typewriter? Sorry to disappoint, but that's not the trendy author look anymore. With the boom of social media, podcasting and livestreaming, authors of all kinds all over the world have unleashed other sides of their creativity - and now more than ever.

Earlier tonight, my indie author friends and I launched Indie Roundtable Read, and we spent an hour together reading excerpts from our books and drafts. It's actually a lot of fun, and very fitting, since June has been dubbed as Audiobook Month, though believe me when I say that the event had been organized... on a whim. In just a week, in fact, all because someone (read: me) had an idea and everyone (read: my friends) hopped on the bandwagon like genetically enhanced teenage dragons heading out on a vampire-hunting quest on a starship in the 1930s. Watch out for cats with spears, and don't forget the creampops! 🤣

(That warranted an emoji, okay.)

It was streamed live via E.B. Brook's YouTube channel, where we fumbled along like genetically enhanced teenage dragons... well, you get the drift. We've never really Zoomed before. Or Zoomed to YouTube. But now that we've gotten the hang of it, you can bet there's going to be more sessions to come!

Special thanks to Dawn Christine Jonckowski for taking care of our marketing collaterals and presentation deck.

If you'd like to join our next sessions, whether as a reader, a member of our technical team of genetically enhanced teenage dragons (okay okay I'll stop! 🙊), or part of the audience, please follow us on Twitter or check the hashtag #IndieRoundtableRead for updates.

And now, let me introduce you to the gang!

Rebecca Lemke

Rebecca is an audiobook narrator, YA author, artist, formatter, and hobby addict. When she isn’t writing, she is spending time with her husband and son in their Oklahoma farmhouse.

She read an excerpt from her science fantasy YA novel Blood of Beasts, the first book of the Geneshifters series. The sequel Head Under Water is now available for pre-order and will be out in September, and she's also just completed and released her first audiobook project, Hotel Fen, an urban fantasy Norse mythology novel which I co-wrote!

“After her!” Silen screamed at the guards.

Debris rained down on him. That blasted girl had taken out a wall! What remained of it was ablaze.

The guards scrambled to get to their feet and obey his order. Silen’s vision blurred as he struggled to look to- ward the door. The girl’s tantrum had blasted everything in the room, sending everyone flying on their backs onto the ground.

Silen still lay on the floor, blood covering his chest.

The smell of burning flesh gagged him. He squirmed, try- ing to get away from it. He watched the guards fumble out of the collapsing room to chase after her. The titanium shackles that had held her to the wall lay in pieces on the floor. None of the other Titans had ever broken titanium shackles.

And now this one, his strongest creation, was gone.

You can find her on Twitter at @NewCrunchyMom.

Des M. Astor

A creator of worlds, Des has a taste for the dark and dangerous. A dark fantasy and horror writer, she aims to shatter certain tropes and turn monsters into heroes. Very violent ones, of course. She also enjoys blending biology into her works. After all, she graduated from University of Connecticut with a Bachelor’s degree in Biology.

She shared a snippet from the recently released audiobook of her vampire horror novel The Dancing Crow, where she and Robert "Rein" Ramsay did a dual narration. By the way, she's running a giveaway of her audiobook on Twitter, so if you'd like to win a copy, you have until July 1st to enter!

Fists punched into the air as starved cheers rang out coupled by hisses. No one spoke up to disagree. I was far too gone to go against this. “Widdle humans are put here for us to eat. We gotta stop hiding from what we are. Don’t we? One missing here…. One missing there… won’ be too bad. We won’t kill ‘em. Hear me out. We keep ‘em here and take what we need. We free ‘em when this war subsides a-and figure it ou’. I don’t fuckin’ know. But we gotta eat. It’s the way of things.”

My voice echoed in my head, and I realized I sounded exactly like that bastard of a brother, and Ash. What was I turning into.. No! NO! … yes. Blood… blood… need blood…

I shook my head to clear it, and boy did clarity come. That eerie sneer didn’t fade, rather, it spread. “You hear me? No more hiding. We take what’s ours. The city is ours. The humans there are ours… It’s about time we accept that. I ain’ lettin’ anyone die here on my account to save those cowards who destroyed their world anyway.”

You can find her on Twitter at @TheRealDesastr.

Kyle Robertson

Kyle is a writer, editor, and all-around creative from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. By day, he works in marketing at an online financial college, but his dream has always been to be a full-time writer. He's also a second-degree Black Belt who enjoys teaching martial arts to the next generation.

He read an excerpt from his draft of The Showstopper Returns, the sequel to his historical fiction novel The Showstopper, which has been described as 'Phantom of the Opera meets Batman, but make it the roaring 20s.'

McKenna folded his arms, refusing to budge. To hell with it: he’d had enough of this posturing pest to last him a lifetime. "You think I'm afraid of you, Swifty? Please. I was a police officer on the streets of this city when your mother still had to show you where she was serving the drinks. I've seen things you couldn’t even imagine and you'd never believe even if God himself wrote them down for you to read. Do you even know how to read, you ignorant sod?"

You can find him on Twitter at @krobnovelist.

Dawn Christine Jonckowski

Dawn is a writer, editor, dancer, musician, shoe connoisseur and lover of the Oxford comma. She is married to her very own rebel leader and they live with two adorable yet spoiled dogs in Wisconsin under an infrequently seen single sun.

She read an excerpt from her scifi novel The Ashes of Hope and Hunger, the sequel to The Weight of Stars and Suns. She hopes to release the third book of her trilogy in the fall, so watch out for it!

She told her husband late one night in his bar after everyone had gone home that they'd offered her a job. They wanted her to fly for the rebels, fly on the fuel her father had developed in a ship named after her mother. He kissed her forehead and mixed her a drink and promised to pack a sack lunch for her first day.

You can find her on Twitter at @dawncjonckowski.

Kristina Brooks

Kristina is an author, mother, wife, and homesteader who loves to bring out the magic in everyday life. She posts draft chapters, research notes, and custom stories for her patrons, along with free daily flash fiction for everyone on her Patreon page. She writes in all genres and lengths, but lately her efforts have been concentrated on short stories which she bundles into anthologies.

She read a flash fiction piece from her anthology The Kingdom of Elsewhere, one that she calls The Power of Creampops in her head. Afterwards, we all wanted creampops! She hopes to release a cat antics romance and an anthology of all things witchy in the next year.

[Sally] massaged her head with her free hand, as though she could shake loose an idea. She couldn’t remember any reason to stay alert right now. What could her dratted truthsense be on about? “I can relax now?” she asked, fishing.

False.

“I’m late for a meeting?”

False.

“I forgot something?”

False.

“I… darn it, what?”

Nothing. She scowled, licking ice cream drips off her fingers.

“Umm,” interrupted a man’s voice behind her. “Is that Harold’s creampop? Because I think he was saving it for his kid.”

You can find her on Twitter at @fictionalK.

E.B. Brooks

Author, scientist, husband, father, homesteader, philosopher… E.B. stays busy! He lives in Appalachia with his wife, two children, and many, many pets, in a house they’re building as they go. He’s written a few short stories, but his main creative effort (thus far) has been the Emissary Quintet, of which two books are out in the wild. He’s wrangled the first one, Emissary, back to get cleaned up for a rerelease this year, but book 3 is on the way soon as well.

He read an excerpt from his novel Sandstorm. Watch out for cats with spears!

“Asst! Get off me, demon!” a young girl’s voice hissed.

He grabbed her anyway and threw them both aside as the massive head slammed into the ground where they’d been. She yowled in shock, then scrabbled away from it.

Ewan lay there, staring in awe at the dead eye not a yard away from him, still glaring at him for ruining its owner’s fun.

“Gems of old,” he whispered, coughing as a shout went up from the dune crests. “What was that thing?”

“It was my kill.” The girl spat and came at him with the dagger again. He tried to seize her wrists, but she stabbed him in the arm and sprinted off down the valley.

You can find him on Twitter at @EBBrooksFiction.

Marie Sinadjan

And there was me! I'm a Filipino fantasy author, singer-songwriter and musical theatre actress currently based in the UK. I read an excerpt from my brand new YA fantasy project Broken Wings, which I thought of pursuing after taking part of the fantasy prologue challenge right here on Vocal!

"Uhhhh, ya girl, there definitely weren't always dragons in the Valley." A shadow loomed in the doorway, making her unable to see past the wooden frame, but it didn't feel sinister or threatening. If anything, it was laughing. As well as coughing from the dust and smoke and whatever else her outburst had unleashed. "And now we have one more. Why are you all so volatile anyway? The last one was like, super weepy."

"... What?"

You can find me on Twitter at @notanybunny.

Creampops for everyone!