Maybe. Maybe not…
As an indie author, one of the things you have to watch out for in your email inbox is folks reaching out to offer promotions for your book(s). Oftentimes, I’ve found these offers to be scams, or offers for promotional packages that I simply couldn’t afford at the time. Still, I usually respond to find out.
Last month, I received such an email from someone who’d found my books on Goodreads and was offering to put one of them, Goblinprince, on their list for Listopia! Well, I was blown away and responded with my hopes up. As it turns out, the offer was legit… and now my book is on Listopia for the best portal fantasies of the 21st century! (Here’s the link if you’d like to see the list)
I’m so excited. I wouldn’t call my books “the best” out there, but I do believe they are good and I’m absolutely honored to have their potential recognized by another.
The Pizza Shop Chronicles started in 2017 as a challenge to myself while waiting to finish edits on a completely different project (The Chronicles of Asunder). At the time, I wanted to see how few words I could get away with using while still telling a decent story, and I wanted to create a character that readers would love the way I loved other characters I’d read about. I wanted to be able to write a book where a character death would make readers cry. Enter Elrond Higgins and Elfboy. I had my character, my formula, and a basic plot. I went to town with it and two years later, after many fun adventures and friends
met along the way, I published. I followed it up the next year with the sequel, Goblinprince, which I had started writing about three days after completing the first draft of book one. Right now, those are the only two available to the world at large, but the series totals five books.
The basic pitch I usually give folks is “There’s elves, who live in rural Kentucky and make pizza”. The portal fantasy element comes in because there’s a closet at the pizza shop, which is a
portal to the world where the elves come from. There’s a couple dragons, some fairies, lots of goblins, and some breathtaking scenery. There’s also a lot of drama and some teenage angst, since, well, I was a teenager when I wrote the majority of the books. But I did accomplish the goals with which I’d set out: I made my readers fall in love with a character, and cry about him. I also managed to write a story with very little body and lots of action due to limiting myself on words. The latter of those is something I am smoothing out a little bit in my current task of finishing the series to publish, mostly because of changes in my personal preferences when it comes to what I like to read. I don’t really care for the action-based, skeletal-style narration as much as I did back then.
To be honest, I sometimes wish I hadn’t published the books when I did due to that rushed writing style. I feel (hope!) I am a better writer now. But I’m also grateful for all the adventures I’ve had along the way which came from and contributed to these books. I don’t know if many other people would consider them the best portal fantasy series of this century, or the best anything really, but I do think they are good books and I had fun writing them. I’m still having fun writing them, and I’m exciting to be releasing the rest of the series soon. If you think they sound like something you’d have fun reading, please stay tuned. You can do that by subscribing to my newsletter, where I will be posting updates when I remember, or for a slightly more fun option, you could join The Pizza Shop Chronicles Corner group on Goodreads. I’d be happy to have you along for the next leg of this adventure!
