Category: Updates

Find your next Kindle Vella read!

The first Potions & Passions Kindle Vella promo is LIVE, my friends, and you can find it here. How excited am I?

This promo runs January 8 – February 7, 2023, and has scifi, fantasy, romantic fantasy and fantasy romance (aka romantasy!) titles. With 18 stories and 13 authors to choose from, the BookFunnel page will help you find your next Kindle Vella read!

You’ll also find my stories Stone Circles: A New Fairy Tale (based on Irish myth) and A Court of Swords and Sugar Plums (which I describe as The Nutcracker meets The Cruel Prince).

This is my first time creating a BookFunnel promo, and I look forward to helping everyone find some new Vella readers. As Vella authors, we’re usually scouring Facebook posts for readers with tokens to burn and interest in what we’re writing, so I think this makes a lot more sense for writers and readers both!

Wondering what the heck Kindle Vella is?

Potions & Passions Kindle Vella BookFunnel Promo January 8-February 7, 2023
Potions & Passions (Kindle Vella) inaugural promo

Kindle Vella is an Amazon platform for serial storytelling.

If you’ve never checked out Vella before, there’s a good chance you have some free tokens just waiting for you to claim them. Besides that, the first three episodes of every Vella story are always free to try. Pretty cool, right?

Every episode costs a certain number of tokens, depending on the length. As readers, you can like, follow (and even favorite, if you have paid tokens) the stories you love, so Vella incorporates a bit of social media into its platform in that way. You can still review stories, too!

Vella authors often break their stories up into “seasons,” which they may break up into separate stories (or not). Anastasis Blythe, whom I’ve interviewed and reviewed ARCs from, is a prolific romantic fantasy author on Kindle Vella, but there are LOADS of authors and genres to choose from. 

The only downside is that this is still a relatively new platform, so it’s only available to US Amazon users. (I know, I have quite a bit of readership outside the US, but authors always have the option of publishing their stories 30 days after removing them from Vella, which IS my plan).

Check out the Promo

That’s all for now!

Cheers,

CKB

Read A Court of Swords and Sugar Plums on Vella!

Vella readers, rejoice! You can now read the next installment in the Season of the Fae series, A Court of Swords and Sugar Plums, on Kindle Vella!

Right now, the plan is to later publish this story as winter-themed novella duology, so don’t worry if you don’t have access to Vella. (Vella is still relatively new, and is currently for U.S. Amazon users only.)

Check out the full cover!

A Court of Swords & Sugar Plums, by C.K. Beggan - Cover image of a sword topped with holly and surrounded by plumes of smoke

For the synopsis and more, visit the Season of the Fae series page here.

Cheers!

-CKB

Paperbacks now available!

Are you as excited as I am? Paperbacks of Girl of Shadow and Glass and Girl of Glass and Fury are now available on Amazon! Order your copies here.

Signed copies should be available later this month, along with series and bookish merch. But more on that later!

For now…Yay!

Cheers,

CKB

Girl of Glass and Fury

Book sale, this weekend only!

November 26 through 28, 2021, you can get a serious deal on my books.

2 books for 99c Smashwords sale, this weekend only

Yes, that’s 2 books for 99c…total! I wanted to do a special sale for Small Business Saturday weekend, and you may never again see its like. If you’ve been thinking about starting the Tara’s Necklace series or have been meaning to pick up book two, now’s your chance!

This sale is on Smashwords only. Use coupon code AJ39W at the checkout. Find both sale books here!

Cheers to small businesses,

– CKB

Girl of Glass and Fury Launch Day!

In less than two hours, Girl of Glass and Fury arrives!

Girl of Glass and Fury Kindle Mockup

I’ll keep the price at 99c for the first week, so you can use this Universal Book Link to purchase it. Remember, if you haven’t read book one, that’s no problem! Girl of Glass and Fury takes place at the same time as Girl of Shadow and Glass (also 99c for a limited time!).

Synopsis
There are worse things than the shadows.

It’s a cruel and unjust world Finchoa lives in, and she’s determined to change it. Which would be a lot easier if not for one, massive problem: She’s a wisp.

To change the course of history, Finchoa will use every advantage she has—including her many friends. With the help of the boy she can’t be with and the friend she most trusts, Finchoa sets out to find their ancestors’ lost magic and a better future for her world. One in which her childhood friend Kith—and all the shade-children like her—will never have to choose between the dangerous shadows of the Open World and starvation.

Set in the same few days as Girl of Shadow and Glass (Tara’s Necklace Book One), Finchoa’s righteous anger grows into a force of its own, leading her out of her desert home and into a wild, new world she never could have imagined. Nor could she have dream of Arc, the mysterious soldier who suspects she’s more than she appears. And he isn’t wrong. Finchoa’s encounters with ancient magic are changing her in ways she can’t understand—yet.

With a bone-chilling jungle world full of dark surprises and a desert world mired in wicked winds, the worlds stand against a girl with the body of a ghost. Can Finchoa become what she needs to and unravel the secrets of Sundown? Or will those secrets die with her?

Call of the Sorcerers Finchoa Quote
Girl of Glass and Fury Finchoa Quote

May Updates

May 2021 Updates

Hi all!

This May, the snow is gone (for now!), the trees are flowering and my projects are slowly coming together.

At the end of last month, the first two chapters of The Fishermen’s Princess were released for subscribers to my mailing list. This month will bring a more usual single chapter. The story currently follows Drina as she grows up and steps into her role as princess. That includes an arranged marriage!

On a personal note, I am a real language hound. I studied Japanese in college and have tried to keep it up as much as possible. I just finished the first level of Duolingo’s Japanese course. It was a great refresher and filled in some content I was missing (including things I was familiar with while living in Japan but never knew quite how to say).

Fun fact: at Japanese fast-food restaurants, you must ask for ketchup when you order. I often forgot to do this, much to my chagrin (I love ketchup, it’s the perfect condiment). Whenever I forgot, I was always too embarrassed of my language skills to walk back up to the counter and ask!

Now, what will this month bring to the blog?

Playing Catch-Up

I still have reviews coming of The Road to Farringale, by Charlotte E. English, and the full review of The Empress of Salt and Fortune. And that lace-making article is still in the works!

Upcoming Reviews & more

Sometime in the next two months or so, I’ll be adding reviews for Intisar Khanani’s The Theft of Sunlight, Tamora’s Pierce’s Tempests and Slaughter and a review of at least one of the books in The Daevabad Trilogy, by S.A. Chakraborty. And of course I have to talk about W.R. Gingell’s Between Jobs from her City Between series!

I also have another author interview in the works, which I hope to bring to you in this month or the beginning of June.

Promos

One of last month’s promos is continuing until May 10th. For the rest of the month, I’ll have two going, all through BookFunnel.

You should also be sure to watch for an upcoming 99c sale of Girl of Shadow and Glass!

Now for the promos from BookFunnel:

Fantasy & Sci-fi Giveaway Ends May 31, 2021

This new promo is for all the sci-fi and fantasy lovers out there. Find free samples and whole titles available for download.

May Mashups Giveaways 2021

More giveaways! Mashups are stories with a blend of two genres. In the case of Girl of Shadow and Glass, sci-fi elements are incorporated into the world building, which is more like solar system-building.

Fantasy & Sci-Fi Giveaway through May 10, 2021

This one began April 10th and will finish up May 10th. Once again, all the listings are for free books and samples in the sci-fi and fantasy genres.

Comics on the way!

I’ve been sitting on new comics in the Growin’ Pup and Social Isolation series. I hope to get both out soon.

I also still have some partly finished episodes of Princess Disasterface to complete. With my second draft of Girl of Glass and Fury in need of finishing, I can’t give you any definites, other than that I am definitely behind on everything!

Thanks for reading! Till next time.

Cheers,

-CKB

Join the C.K. Beggan mailing list, read The Fishermen’s Princess

April promos!

April Promos

Now that the third of three BookFunnel promos I’m participating in this month has begun, I thought I’d collect everything in one place!

I’m finally building a newsletter, so it makes the most sense to change how I tell you about these promos. From now on, I’ll be including links to current promos at the bottom of my normal blog entries just like I will my newsletters (and yes, there is a normal blog coming this weekend. My review of Thorn will appear tomorrow).

BONUS: A MINI BOOK REVIEW

I just finished reading  Nghi Vo’s The Empress of Salt and Fortune. What a beautifully written, imaginative book! I’ll be sure to pen a review as soon as possible. I had plenty of highlights in this one (that being said, the ending felt a bit rushed and climax lacked the emotional punch it should have, given Rabbit’s stakes in what happened.

A full review is forthcoming, possibly for May at this rate.

A New Promo

Fantasy & Sci-Fi Giveaway through May 10, 2021
Best Heroes – Fantasy & Science Fiction With Awesome Hero(in)es (April 10-May10, 2021)

This promo is for sci-fi and fantasy works only, so there’s plenty to find! All entries require a giveaway, too, so free content for all!

Other April Promos

Otherworldy Promo April '21
OTHERWORLDLY BEINGS (BOOKS FEATURING NON-HUMANS AND FORMER HUMANS) (April 1-30, 2021)

Otherworldy Beings is a sales promo for books in the romance, fantasy/sci-fi romance and fantasy/sci-fi genres. Time to look for your next favorite read!

Under the Surface Sci-Fi and Fantasy Giveaways
UNDER THE SURFACE (STORIES WHERE THINGS AREN’T AS THEY SEEM) (April 1-30, 2021)

Another all sci-fi and fantasy genre promo! It’s a newsletter builder, too, which means giveaways.

That’s all for now!

Cheers,

– CKB

April updates

April '21 Updates

The business side: I have three—count ’em, three—promos to share with you all this month! Including two that begin today (more on the third next week).

Book promo 1: Otherworldly Beings (books featuring non-humans and former humans).

Otherworldy Beings is a sales promo for books in the romance, fantasy/sci-fi romance and fantasy/sci-fi genres. It goes until April 30th, 2021.

Otherworldy Promo April '21
Book promo 2: Under the Surface (stories where things aren’t as they seem).

These stories are all in the sci-fi and fantasy genres. It’s a newsletter builder, which means free content! (Again, until April 30, 2021). Newsletter-builders are one of the major reasons my TBR list is so long!

Under the Surface Sci-Fi and Fantasy Giveaways

I’m still giving away a 9 chapter sample of my debut novel, Girl of Shadow and Glass, but soon I’ll have a new offering with…

The Witch of the Unexpected Journey

The Witch of the Unexpected Journey Cover draft
The possibly final version of the cover...We'll see!

My novelette, The Witch of the Unexepected Journey, is in the (hopefully) final stages of development. The story bounces between Kijo, the Witch of the Northern Light, as a fourteen-year-old girl and a mature witch, famous for her garden and cures, who is now deep into her eighties. On both occasion, catastrophe strikes, courtesy of one mysterious Lord General who’s out to get Heroab’s witches.

In the future, I’d love to continue Kijo’s story. I have some ideas already, but with a series to finish and another in the editing process, I don’t know when I’ll have the chance to draft another book. I’m overflowing with ideas, people!

Other news:
Cover of The Fishermen's Princess

The first chapter of The Fishermen’s Princess is coming this month! I can’t wait for you all to read it…but (not so subtle hint coming) you’ve got to sign up for my newsletter to receive it! To read more about it, check out my post here, or the Books page.

What I’m reviewing this month

The Road to Farringale (Modern Magick #1), by Charlotte E. English (quirky fantasy)

Thorn (Dauntless Path #1), by Intisar Khanani (YA fantasy)

What I’ve just read

Between Jobs (The City Between #1), by W.R. Gingell (quirky but dark, paranormal fantasy). What took me so long to get started on this series? Gingell already had me with Spindle [my review here], but throw in two fae and a Korean vampire and apparently you’re speaking my language. What is it I love about monsters and mythological creatures, anyway?!

What I’m planning to read

The newly released The Theft of Sunlight (Dauntless Path #2), by Intisar Khanani (of course!)

What I’m blogging about

Lace! Will this be an ongoing series? Who knows! But after finishing Atelier on Netflix, I am in lace withdrawal. I’ll be including pictures of my own work!

Also, an article about culture clash (my favorite kind of story) films is on the horizon…though maybe not for this month.

What I’m quoting

“A rose who wore her barbs proudly, as a warning. My beauty is not yours for the taking. Touch me and you will bleed.” —a determined Aster, describing herself as she’s about to face the beast in An Enchantment of Thorns, by Helena Rookwood and Elm Vince

“I wait, not daring to speak, for some things require quiet to come into being.” – Alyrra in Thorn, by Intisar Khanani

What I’m planning

A summer of Princess Disasterface. I hope to be back on the comic trail as my health issues (hopefully) ease up in the warmer months. If I could build up a backlog and keep releasing them for longer, that would be amazing. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

What I’m feeling

The joy of a brand new bookcase! With doors! Someplace to put my treasure trove of books, model horses and miniature izakaya (Japanese drinking establishment with small plates of food), when it’s finished. I do have to assemble the bookcase itself, too.

Also, that feeling of panic when you realize you’re laptop battery is running out but you haven’t saved your work yet. Sheesh! Get it together, lady.

Cheers and stay well,

-CKB

Spring Break Promo

Spring is heeeeere…ish!

Cherry Blossoms
Cherry blossoms from last spring. Visiting them has become a family tradition.

First, the bookish business. For anybody looking for something to read over spring break (should you have such a thing) there is a new BookFunnel promo featuring CLEAN reads only. That means no swearing, sex or gratuitous violence. One of my favorite authors, Intisar Khanani, writes clean (more on her below). In fact, Girl of Shadow and Glass is clean (yes, a sample is available as part of the promo).

Spring Break Clean Book Promo
This spring break promo is clean as a whistle.

Moving on…

This time of year, my puppy, who may in fact be slightly allergic to grass (but only affecting her eyes…go figure), loves nothing more than to lie in the sun, on the grass, and do nothing, except maybe eat some of said grass. Being a puppy and all, she’s still got that destructive streak, and apparently spring grass tastes DELICIOUS to dogs. I had to make a call to the vet after said habit ended with some…er…messy results.

We took her on a short trip to see the cherry blossoms last year (also a messy trip, but unrelated to the grass. Pupper’s got a car ride time limit and we were SO CLOSE to making it!). Because of the pandemic, she’s had even fewer reasons to get in the car. Ohio weather has kept her close to home for the past few months, too.

I hope to be taking that trip to see the blossoms in the not too distant future. Really, there’s nothing like it.

What about you guys? Do you have any special spring traditions or things you really look forward to?

More Cherry Blossoms
More cherry blossoms...we were a little early last year.

What I’m Reading

The Road to Farringale, by Charlotte E. English. It’s getting good…!

What I’m Crafting

A fabulous model of a Japanese izakaya (drinking establishment). I just love miniatures! And making stuff. It’s the perfect marriage, really.

What I’m Looking Forward to

The Theft of Sunlight, by Intisar Khanani, is soon to be released! In two days, in fact! I’ve been following Rae’s story for quite some time, back when it was a free short story the author made available on Amazon. It’s nice to see her get the full-book treatment. It’s also notable that Rae is the rare fantasy character with a disability (she was born with a club foot).

That’s all for now!

Cheers and be well,

-CKB

Join the C.K. Beggan mailing list, read The Fishermen’s Princess