September 3, 2025
By Paul Goat Allen
As a book buyer for Waldenbooks and an editor for B&N, Inc. back in the ‘90s and 2000s, I always sought out new anthologies to promote. In my mind, for the price of one book, a reader could experience a wide variety of stories, and a diversity […]
December 11, 2024
By Paul Goat Allen
Continuing our mission to highlight some of the all-time best self-published and indie releases, the fourth part of our Unearthing Masterworks series focuses on a much-maligned segment of self-publishing: fantasy!
As someone who has bought self-published releases for a national retailer, and reviewed literally thousands of self-published novels over the […]
October 31, 2024
By Paul Goat Allen
After weeks of being inundated by one egregious political commercial after another—one local ad has a candidate claiming his adversary called constituents “ignorant sheep”—I realized it would be fitting to dig up some of the very best indie zombie fiction titles ever released.
And while zombie fiction may not be […]
October 17, 2024
By Paul Goat Allen
As part of BlueInk’s ongoing Unearthing Forgotten Masterworks series, we’ve reached the point in our search through the thousands of titles our reviewers have read and picked the very best indie horror releases. And just to clarify—these aren’t just books that received rave reviews, many are towering masterpieces that have withstood […]
January 26, 2021
By Paul Goat Allen
As a genre fiction book reviewer for almost the last three decades, I’ve seen firsthand the slow but persistent evolution of all genre categories—science fiction, fantasy, romance, mystery, horror, etc.—and it has been a glorious growth to witness. There is no question about it: today’s genre fiction is much different […]
December 9, 2020
By Paul Goat Allen
The pseudonymous N.L. Holmes burst onto the literary scene in 2020 with not one but two stellar sagas: the Lord Hani series, a historical mystery saga set in pharaonic Egypt during the reign of Akhenaten; and the Empire at Twilight, a historical fiction series which takes place in the last […]
October 21, 2020
Growing up and now living back in Upstate New York, I’ve always loved Halloween. The temperatures drop, the leaves on the trees turn kaleidoscopic colors, and the air smells like ripe apples and cinnamon sticks. Yeah, there’s the trick-or-treating and the gluttonous consumption of candy afterwards but seeking out and […]
August 11, 2020
I’ve reviewed a lot of books over the last 25+ years and many of those have featured formulaic, rehashed, and predictable storylines, premises, and ideas. When it comes to traditionally published titles, I get it—publishers need to make money and they only publish what books that they think are going […]
July 30, 2020
Yeah, 2020 has been a nightmare thus far—and the pandemic is just one burning bag of garbage in this blazing dumpster fire of a year. Every day seems to introduce some new horror, and—to no one’s surprise—people are turning to novels to temporarily escape all of the stress and existential […]
July 6, 2020
Fiction, at its very best, elicits a powerful emotional response—be it fear, sadness, joy, or sexual arousal. Achieving the latter, however, may be the most difficult challenge to writers. Decades ago, when I first started editing and reviewing for B&N, one of my very first interviews was with the legendary […]
