August fantasy book sale – hundreds of book deals #fantasy #booksale

Posted on August 29, 2026 by Suzanne Rogerson Author

This weekend Narratess has organised another huge indie books sale with hundreds of books on offer in the genres of fantasy, sci-fi and horror. This year the price point selected for most books is £1.99, though some are free and others £2.99. Here’s the link to check out the Indie book sale.

Visions of Zarua is in the sale and I’ve made it available across all countries at £1.99. This was my debut novel and I’m proud to showcase it in this sale.

Perfect for fans of epic fantasy with split timelines, chosen one tropes, mystery, magic and creatures conjured by blood magic.

I’ve recently changed the blurb, what do you think?

What if an apprentice wizard’s haunting visions of a long-dead hero were the only key to stopping an ancient sorcerer’s resurrection?

Paddren is a wizard plagued by visions that are not his own. When his master is brutally murdered by a monstrous Nagra, Paddren’s terrifying visions of a fallen city and a long-dead hero intensify. Accompanied by his loyal friend Leyoch, and Varnia, a fierce tracker hiding a volatile magical bloodline, Paddren hunts the assassin.

But the trail leads them into a conspiracy far greater than simple murder. A rogue faction of wizards is using blood magic to resurrect a sorcerer whose power once nearly destroyed the realm. As the kingdom of Paltria edges towards war, Paddren must lead his friends into the cursed ruins of Zarua. To stop the resurrection, he must decipher the visions of the ancient Guardian who failed to kill the sorcerer three centuries ago and hope he has the strength to succeed where others have failed.

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Here’s the link to the sale again for lots of bargain indie books.

Celebrating the National Year of Reading 2026 with a bookstall! #indieauthor

Posted on August 28, 2026 by Suzanne Rogerson Author

This August Bank Holiday Monday I’ll be at a special summer fair held in my local high street, which is being run to celebrate the National Year of Reading 2026. As a local author I’ve been asked along to share my books on a book stall and I’m really looking forward to it. It’s been almost 3 years since I’ve taken part in anything like this, so let’s pray for good weather and even better footfall.

I’ve been busy preparing sample writing bags to give away, which includes free short story booklets, leaflets with details of the romance series I plan to release next year, a bookmark and business cards. I’m updating the table display which includes some new print outs that highlight the tropes and themes in my books.

I’ve got public liability insurance, so if this goes well I’d love to look at some other local events to trial out. I’ve also invested in a new gazebo which we’ve just set in up in the garden in the wind. That should be fun on the day. Let’s hope it doesn’t rain as one reviewer said the gazebo is as useful as tissue paper!

Below is the leaflet with news about the upcoming series set in a Cornish hotel in the fictional town of Lowenporth. I can’t wait to finally getting this series out into the world because it’s been living in my head since 2020.

If anyone is in Ashford, Middlesex, stop by and say hello. The fair is from 11am to 3pm.

I’ll get some photos on the day and post an update. Wish me luck!

The question of what to write next #authorlife #indieauthor

Posted on May 29, 2026 by Suzanne Rogerson Author

Hasn’t it been a scorching week! Perfect for sitting in the shade with a book and a cool glass of something special, or maybe an ice cream (my favourite go to snack when I’m lost in a good book).

Over recent weeks, I’ve been struggling with the issue of what to write next.

In my fantasy readers newsletter this week, I posed the question of what I should work on next. The response has been interesting, so I thought why not get some feedback on my blog. Here are the 7 suggestions I made…

1. More short fiction set in the world of my current fantasy books – like Fantasy Short Stories – which I offer free to all newsletter subscribers.

2. A prequel novella to Silent Sea Chronicles where the focus is firmly on Farrell’s people and Stone Haven.

3. A sequel to Silent Sea Chronicles following the lives of the characters after book 3’s conclusion and their adventures on the Silent Sea.

4. Serialised fiction in a new world of wizards and wraiths where you have to trust your enemy to survive.

5. I could re-start work on Starlight Prophecy. I have planned it as a trilogy focusing on an anti-heroine and the lengths she will go to for revenge. No one is safe, not even her closest family.

6. In other writing, I’m busy working on a romance series set in a seaside hotel in Cornwall with a matchmaking landlady. Do you read across genres?

7. I’m also working on some more seasonal short stories for my Winter Warmer Series and want to get Book 3.

It’s not an exhaustive list of my ideas, as I have tons that could be developed. It’s more a case of working out what my readers want and what aligns with my goals, which is to publish something this year. I’d really hoped it could be my romance series, The Mermaid Hotel, but that project is stalling with lack of funds and also lack of inspiration for the cover art, plus a bit of doubt about if the books are good enough yet.

Maybe you’d like to share your thoughts as a reader, or a fellow writer?
What makes you pick up your next read, or decide on your next project?
And if you’ve read any of my books, what of the above list would you be most excited to read?

Before I go to enjoy the sunshine, I also wanted to take this opportunity to remind you of the Book Cave giveaway I signed up to.
For the whole of May, there are some great books available free or on a giveaway. I’ve picked up some new to me authors, and I hope you will take a look and see if there are any free books that take your fancy.

Book Cave link

My Fantasy Short Stories collection is on the list available and I’d love to see you over on my newsletter.

If you prefer not to join through the Book Cave link, there is a sign up form (link in the above page menus).

Whatever you’re doing today, be it reading, writing, or working a boring day job, have a good one.

Until next time…

A new logo and a new name for my website

Posted on March 24, 2026 by Suzanne Rogerson Author

Over the last few weeks I’ve been tidying up my website and trying to get a more professional look across all platforms.

I purchased a logo from Fiverr which I’ve very happy with and I’ve also bought a new domain name – http://www.suzannerogersonauthor.com. The previous one still works and is linked to this website, I just wanted my name to reflect that I write more than fantasy books.

I think it’s a good reflection of fantasy and romance genres. What do you think?

Next I will will revamping my newsletter and possibly moving services over to mailer lite if I don’t get too frustrated with the set up process. I will also finally get around to signing up to Book Funnel so I can give freebie books to all my subscribers!

I’m also working through my current book blurbs and categories on Amazon. They are still not showing in all the right places, but I’ll keep working at it.

Hopefully later in the week I’ll be able to share the revised cover for one of my books, along with all the revised blurbs I’ve been working on.

I have lots more planned over the coming weeks that I’m looking forward to sharing too.

Until next time…

You can check out linktr.ee to see the other platforms to follow me on.

The Writer Blog Prompt Project B is for Book Trailers

Posted on February 11, 2026 by Suzanne Rogerson Author

Last week the prompt from Ari Meghlen was Book Trailers – now that is a subject I didn’t expect to be writing about at the moment. But I want to take part in the weekly blog challenge so here goes…

I don’t see many book trailers. I guess I don’t hang out where they are shown and I don’t go out of my way to find them. But they do have a place and, done right, can be a real game changer for authors. There is no doubt the world of social media has become very visual, so authors need to move with the times.

When I bring out my romance series later this year I will be using all forms of promotion to reach readers and that will include book trailers.

My son is a music production graduate. He makes amazing music so I will be commissioning his help for that. My daughter is learning digital art so I’m also hoping she will be able to help in some way as well. It would be great to work on the project as a family – though not just for the free labour! (only joking, I would pay them for their time.)

I have dabbled with book trailers in the past, well I had one made for me to promote the audiobook of The Lost Sentinel. The narrator’s wife put together a video on Youtube. It was fun to see my book brought to life in a different medium, but it’s no longer available to watch so I can’t share the link.

I don’t feel very qualified to talk about book trailers but I’m excited at the prospect of doing my own and seeing what works.

As I planned out this blog post I listened to Radioactive by Imagine Dragons and one line in the song stands out ‘…welcome to the new age…’. I suppose that’s how indie authors need to look at book trailers and everything involved in publishing our books.

Later this week the topic of choice is Content Warnings.

Here is the link to Ari’s post on Book Trailers. She shares some great tips, so it’s worth having a read.

Until next time…

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See my book catalogue on the Suzanne Rogerson Collection

The Writer Blog Prompt Challenge – A for Achievement

Posted on January 31, 2026 by Suzanne Rogerson Author

This is the start of a 26 week blog challenge set by Ari Meghlan. I think it’s a great idea and have decided to play along. This week’s word is Achievement.

My big achievement is the fact I’ve been an indie author for 10 years!

This milestone passed by very quietly on 16th November 2025. I suppose I wasn’t feeling very successful and didn’t want to advertise the fact that I’m not yet a big name in the book world, nor am I able to support myself with writing alone.

But now I am ready to celebrate it, because although there have been a lot of challenges, it can’t be denied that I have achieved one of my dreams…

I am a published author with 4 full length novels and 4 short story collections to my name.

I have plans to write and publish a lot more over the next 10 years. My books have been downloaded by thousands of people and I’ve hit a few bestseller lists on Amazon, albeit briefly. My books have had lots of wonderful reviews, and I’ve even had the amazing experience of being called a reader’s favourite author. In 2021 I was a finalist in the book bloggers novel of the year with The Lost Sentinel, and the opening of my romance novel Secrets and Love Songs at The Mermaid Hotel came second in the flash 500 novel opening competition in 2023.

One of the biggest achievements came early on when I was contacted by a publisher and had my debut, Visions of Zarua, translated into Czech. I travelled to Prague, visited my publisher and the local bookshops to see my books on the shelves.

The last 10 years have involved a lot of learning, and plenty of tears, but I wouldn’t go back and change it. This is my achievement and I am owning it today.

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Thank you to Ari for starting off this challenge. Here is a link to her post on Achievement where she shares her thoughts on the subject and also links to anyone else who has decided to take part. Please take a look and join in if you feel inspired.

Next week B is for Book trailer.

A new look for the website and questions on an author rebrand

Posted on January 27, 2026 by Suzanne Rogerson Author

I’ve been messing around with the website headers and how the site looks on WordPress. This is a snippet of its current new look.

It’s temporary because I will hopefully have some romance covers to share soon. I love all shades of purple, so this appealed to me and the sunshine reminds me of the happiness of spring.

What I’m finding really difficult is getting a look that says I’m a writer of both fantasy and romance. Maybe I need to split the header into two and showcase both sides of my writing. It could end up looking messy, so I will do some experiments and maybe share the results here to get feedback.

The next few months will be all about defining my author brand ahead of the launch of The Mermaid Hotel Series.

Whilst experimenting on Canva with graphics, I will need to ask myself: should I come away from my fantasy books completely for now and rebrand as a romance author? Is it viable to do both on the same website? Should I have two websites dedicated to each genre? These are hard questions, and I’d love to know what other authors have done.

Also, what other softwares are out? I’ve dabbled with the free versions of Canva and Book Brush. Is it worth the monthly subscription?

I thought it would be fun to look back on the banners my website has used over the years, starting at the beginning. When I first started out, I used my own pictures to make banners. These were a couple I played with.

When I started publishing books, they took centre stage for a while.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the evolution of my website. It’s been fun looking back, especially seeing all the pictures I’ve used and being reminded of the posts they relate to. I hope to do a post looking back at those favourite images soon.

Until next time…

Writing update and last push to the end of the year! #amwriting

Posted on December 12, 2025 by Suzanne Rogerson Author

So November passed in the blink of an eye and we’re almost halfway through December as well!

Book 4

My plans to finish book 4 in the Mermaid Hotel series have fallen behind – it’s currently sitting at 53K. It’s going well and I could still finish it by the end of the year, but it will be a tough challenge! I’m trying to make it a well developed first draft, which takes longer than just churning out the scenes, though as Christmas approaches I may have to rethink how I do this.

Will I hit the 75k word count that the other books are averaging? From experience, the first draft is usually shorter and increases as I edit. 75k will be my end goal for next year when I have a polished, edited version.

Other writing

I’ve started working on the first prequel in The Mermaid Hotel series which starts during the run up to Christmas and ends the following Christmas. I’d love to get this ready to publish later in 2026.

Winter Warmers Series – I haven’t found the time to really get planning on book 3 in the series but I’m challenging myself to write one story a month starting in January. I would aim to get it finished by August, which would be 8 stories just like the other books.

Throughout December I’ve been enjoying taking part in the Advent Calendar Story Train, both sharing ‘A Squirrel’s Tale’ on 8th December and reading everyone else’s stories. Ari is keeping a list on her blog of each story as it goes live. Here is her link if you’ve missed it – 2025 Advent Calendar Story Train.

I can’t resist sharing Sammy AKA Scruffy’s picture one last time because he’s so sweet…

Audiobook news

The start of two book tours starts tomorrow with a ‘One Day Blitz’ hosted by Rachel’s Random Resourses. I can’t wait to get sharing the reviews on various social platforms and I’ll share a few updates here as well.

The from 17th December I have a week long tour with Love Book Tours. Again, it will be wonderful to share these reviews and see how the reviewers found Colette’s narrating style. I feel she has a very calming and relaxed voice, perfect to help you unwind after a hard day’s Christmas shopping.

Publishing decisions and marketing

I haven’t made any progress on my newsletter dilemma and really need to start marketing rather than just talking about it here! I also need to make some decisions on the covers for the series and set a publication date.

I feel like January will be a big month for making decisions, that’s why I really wanted to have book 4 in decent shape by 31/12/2025.

Reading

I’m close to reaching my Goodreads goal which is only a lowly 19 books this year. I’m on book 17, so again it’s going to be close. At least I caught up with my Netgalley reviews and have banned myself from looking on there for the rest of the year.

Everything else

Work and family each have their challenges but with only a week left before breaking up from college / work, I think I can make it!

I’m hoping to start the holidays fit and healthy as last year was ruined with a bad, lingering cold that meant I could barely taste the Christmas dinner I slaved over, or the many chocolates I scoffed.

That’s about it in my world, I’ll be back with some review highlights of the audiobook blitz for A Little Christmas Magic over the weekend.

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October wrap up and plans for November #amwriting #indieauthor

Posted on November 3, 2025 by Suzanne Rogerson Author

Ok, so I realise my October wrap up is slightly later than planned, but I’m quite proud of what I achieved, so I wanted to share it.

First, the big news:

I’ve just agreed the audiobook for A Little Christmas Magic, and it’s now with ACX for their quality checks before they release it for sale. Colette Davies-Kerwin has done an amazing job bringing the stories to life, and I can’t wait to share the audiobook with everyone. To help with this, I’ve set up two audiobook blog tours in December, so will share more info on those when I can.

I made changes and sent Book 2 in the Mermaid Hotel Series out for its second round of critique feedback. Cristal is a very thorough reader and really challenges me to make the story better, so I’m looking forward to working through her suggestions as they come in. I’ve also entered the first chapter into a competition and have everything crossed that it gets to the shortlist stage.

I finished the latest draft of Book 3 in my Mermaid Hotel Series and sent it to two of my beta readers – we meet next week to discuss their thoughts on the last chapters. I hope they like it!

The story for the Advent Calendar story train is complete, and the post will publish on 8th December. It’s called ‘A Squirrel’s Tale’ and is a little different from my usual stories, so I’m looking forward to sharing that.

Plans for the rest of the year…

November is all about Book 4 and trying to finish the first draft by the end of the year. I’ve been reading through the story so far and trying to make a brief plan of what comes next. I’m aiming for around 1k words a day. If I manage this over November and December, I should reach an end word count of 75k. It would be great to start working on the finished novel over the Christmas break, as it will need a lot of editing!

I also need to start marketing my Mermaid Hotel Series and decide on things like my newsletter – do I try going with a different provider and use a new name? I don’t like Mail Chimp, so it seems like the perfect time to start afresh. If you have any newsletter recommendations, please let me know.

I still need to share my reviews of NetGalley books. I should get onto that ASAP as these were summer books, and now I have several Christmas ones to read and review as well.

I’ve also purchased the new Authorpreneur Academy course from Dave Chesson. I need to work through the modules and get familiar with self publishing again. If I want to make a big splash next year, all the preparation work I do now will hopefully help The Mermaid Hotel Series take off.

That’s enough from me. I’ll be back soon with those book reviews and details on the audiobook tours for A Little Christmas Magic.

NaNoWriMo 2023 starts today #amwriting #indieauthor

Posted on November 1, 2023 by Suzanne Rogerson Author

Today is the start of NaNoWriMo, where thousands of writers pledge to dedicate themselves to writing a novel, or 50k of a writing project, during November.

I’ve tried the challenge on and off since 2011 with varying levels of success.

In 2023 I’ve pledged to type up my handwritten draft of book 3 in the Mermaid’s Hotel series and expand it to 50k (or more if I can!).

I also want to increase the word count of book 2 in the series which currently stands at 24,096. I would like to add 20k to this, but that would be an added extra as my main focus is book 3.

I have written a novel plan of each book in the 6 book series on excel to help me. This is a break down of each chapter showing what happens and whose VP it is.

I have some cool printed word count sheets to keep me going. And I’ve signed up to Nanowrimo where you can post your daily word count and watch it grow. You can also see how your buddies are getting along.