Sharon L. Clark

Sharon L. Clark, Author

Tag: local authors

Support Indie Authors This Holiday Season!

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On November 22, 2023

In Book Reviews, Messages From Sharon

Black Friday is only a couple of days away and the holiday season is officially upon us! Are you struggling to find a gift for your coworker, neighbor, sister, nephew, random gift grab bag? Don’t panic!!

Give the gift of BOOKS and support your local and indie authors!

There are a ton of options out there and even looking through various best-seller lists or celebrity recommendations can be overwhelming. How on earth do you find something good by an author you’ve (likely) never heard of before?

You let me make some suggestions.

Following is a collection of books from different genres written by people I personally know who are self-published or independently published and don’t have the marketing clout of one of the major publishing houses. I have read almost all of the books listed – I haven’t finished all the series, unfortunately. Take a look!

Laura A. Barnes is a Des Moines area author I met by doing NaNoWriMo in 2017. (Turns out we were on the same United Nations trip when we were in high school but never met – small world, right?) Laura writes steamy period romances and currently has three series available for purchase. Whether you’re looking for pirates and spies, noble scoundrels, or matchmaking madness, Laura has got the goods to get your pulse racing.

Sarah Latchaw lives near me and is one of the most delightful people I know. Her Hydraulic Series is full of relatable characters, swoon-worthy romantic moments, humor, and a view of mental illness from a place of true love. Her writing style pulls you in and her characters are so real that you can’t help but laugh and cry right along with them. This trilogy isn’t the spicy type, but will get your heart racing.

I met Jethro Weyman through the writing platform Channillo and we became friends via the Twitter #WritingCommunity. I was struck by the amazing prose of his writing and the unique and wickedly clever ways he explores some dark and existential themes. Bang to Begin is a gorgeously written collection of stories that seem unconnected on the surface. Kind of mind-bendy deep stuff.

Taylor Hohulin is a local radio celebrity and all-around terrific human. the first time I read his writing, I was pulled in and have devoured pretty much everything of his since. I met him through NaNoWriMo, as well, and was lucky enough to get encouragement from him through a small critique group and I learned a lot from him.

  • The Marian Series follows a young man who gets unexpectedly transported to a pirate ship in another world where water is the ultimate prize. This trilogy is kind-of steampunk and has both human and supernatural dangers and lots of terrific science fiction gadgets.
  • TAR is probably my favorite, though. If you like cybernetic body modifications and a dangerous, living infection that ravages anyone it comes in contact with in horrific ways, set in a post-apocalyptic alternate future, you’ll dig this. It’s a tale of a traveling wizard with a shotgun but told through the exploits of a sometimes-likable survivor.
  • Your Best Apocalypse Now will have you chuckling almost immediately. In this humorous light fantasy novel, a struggling author jumps on the bandwagon of best-selling doomsday books, making it up as he goes along. Or so he thinks. When he correctly predicts the end of the world, a group of other-worldly beings take him on a journey that he could never have predicted.

Kelly Fumiko Weiss is another tremendous talent that I discovered through Channillo. I have read two of her books, from vastly different genres.

  • Her science-fiction-esque novel, The Cube, is set in an alternate near future where a mysterious cube has changed the way the world works. The main character and his best friend, Molly, start out on a fun treasure hunt for a series of mysterious symbols, but the fun turns to unexpected romance and danger for them and their friends.
  • Her other novel, The Stories We Choose Not to Tell, is a story of familial relationships and racial identity for a Japanese-American woman who learns about herself and the roots of her strained relationship with her mother by exploring the life story of her late Obachan (grandmother) who lived in a World War II Japanese internment camp on American soil. Well-written characters that had me crying along with them at the end of the book.

I am lucky enough to know many other talented authors with terrific books available, even if I haven’t read them all yet. Inspirational romance, memoir, poetry: If you don’t see something listed here that tickles your fancy, comment below or send me an email with the genre or type of story you’re looking for and I will give you a suggestion based on my own personal knowledge of the book and/or the author.

Do YOU have any recommendations of books written by indie-published or self-published authors? Share them below

Happy Holidays from my family to yours!

Laptop, coffee and diary on autumn landscape as background

October Means Prep Time

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On October 10, 2023

In Messages From Sharon

It’s fall y’all!

This is my favorite time of year for a slew of different reasons. I love the change in weather, the cool nights and comfortable days, the end of sweltering heat and oppressive humidity, and ‘sweatah weathah’. September also celebrates several of my favorite people: my oldest sister, my daughter-in-law, one of my best friends, my daughter, and my husband.

Now it’s October, and I love it even more.

October is my (and my younger sister’s) birthday month, the leaves are changing color, I can put up my silly Halloween decorations, it’s chilly enough to pull out soup and stew recipes, and it’s time for Preptober.

Never heard of it? Don’t worry, you’re not alone.

Next month is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and October is the time to start getting ready, to start plotting, and to reconnect with all the friends I’ve made through writing. I get to help organize events for November and to draw more authors into the fold of our local writing group.

The other day I held my first Preptober event of the season and even though I was awkward and weird, I think it went well. The goal of Preptober is to help authors gather the tools, community, and confidence for a successful and fun November. Don’t get me wrong, it is fully self-serving. I need the encouragement and the kick in the pants to get ready to write next month.

And cheering on other writers is the best way I know to cheerlead for myself.

This will be my seventh year participating in NaNoWriMo and I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that it changed my life. Not only did I meet my best friends through the group, but I can now see a future in which I can have a career as an author, doing something I love for the rest of my life. Every year in the fall I get to meet new people, develop new skills, and draw ever closer to reaching my dreams.

What’s not to love?

Will you be participating in National Novel Writing Month? Do you use October to prepare? Leave a comment, ask me questions about NaNoWriMo, or send me an email and let me know!

Book Review: Witches’ Quarters

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On November 9, 2019

In Book Reviews

Stephen King has said it time and time again: “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”

Finally, I took some time to read for fun! I started with a book I purchased six months ago at the DSM Book Festival in downtown Des Moines, Iowa. One of the books I purchased was Witches’ Quarters, the debut novel from Des Moines-based author Laura Snider.

This was a thoroughly enjoyable read for me and I hope Laura can turn this into a series, somehow. She made it easy to become invested in the lives and troubles of the characters and I would love to see what happens next!

Siblings Charlotte, Ava, Nolan, and June exist under consistently unpredictable circumstances. They have a violent father who takes his anger out on their detached mother; June, the youngest, lives with epilepsy; and the relationships among the four are tenuous at best, resulting in frequent clashes and arguments.

Their mother’s sister, Aunt Stacie, had given the oldest sibling, Charlotte, a bizarre gift for her 16th birthday: a bag of state quarters and a coin bank in the shape of a creepy, bare tree. In an attempt to distract themselves from the sounds of yet another beating that they are powerless to stop, they decide to examine the bank and slip a quarter from the bag into the slot.

That’s when things get wild.

The siblings are transported to another world that looks much like their own, but things are slightly off. For instance, in Nova animals can talk – and they aren’t happy to see the four children. Before long, they find themselves caught up in a war they know nothing about, June’s seizures are starting up again without her medication, and despite fighting and being separated, they have only each other to rely on.

Laura Snider does an excellent job of establishing the unique personalities of the children and demonstrating how much they change and grow throughout their events of the story. With every chapter, new strengths are revealed for each of the siblings, and they are all forced to make choices and take action in a way none of them thought they ever could.

Witches’ Quarters is full of excitement and danger, laughter and tears. While it could be considered a Young Adult novel, I think it has enough thrills to entertain readers of all ages.

If you’d like to check out this novel for yourself, visit Laura Snider’s website and order your copy today!

Summer Writing Shenanigans

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On June 18, 2019

In Messages From Sharon

There is a lot to love about the start of summer: the warmer temps, the longer days, vacations. And this year, it seems that spring is going to stretch at least to the first official day! For me, that means there are days that I can take my trusty laptop outside on the back patio to write without fear of drowning the keyboard in sweat.

Summer also brings with it Camp NaNoWriMo in July. Where NaNoWriMo takes place in November and challenges authors to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days, Camp NaNo is a little more flexible. Taking place in April and July, Camp lets you build or join a ‘cabin’ of other writers to support and encourage each other. You also can set your own goal, whether that is editing pages, writing lines of poetry, or writing another novel and setting your own word count objective.

I love Camp.

After my first NaNo year, I decided I needed the camaraderie and accountability of a writing group so I’ve created my own Cabin for each Camp for the last two years. It’s so fun to annoy my friends with daily encouragement quotes, to hold virtual meetups, to gather other local authors for donuts and writing on Saturday mornings. I look forward to Camp every spring and summer and kind of can’t wait for July to roll around!

This summer is also a big step for me in my writing journey. I am in the final round of edits for my novel, I’ll Call You Mine, incorporating notes and suggestions from my beta readers. Then, in the middle of July, I will send my baby off to a professional editor to see how I can fully polish it up and get it ready to shop out to agents.

This is a thing that is going to happen and it terrifies me.

It’s one thing to sit down and write for fun, maybe sharing with a friend or two, but with no real plans beyond that. But I have found that I want more than that. I’m realistic, I know it’s not easy to get an agent and even more difficult for that agent to sell an unknown author’s novel to a publisher. Putting myself out there will probably mean hundreds of rejections and stabs at my notoriously thin skin and fragile ego.

But what if…?

My summer is jam-packed with exciting writing, editing, and reading challenges. What are you planning to do this summer to push yourself and reach for your dreams? Comment below and thanks for reading!