In 7th Place .... A huge congratulations to #BBNYA25 finalist The Light Of Kasaban by @thomashowardriley.bsky.social Well done!!

Concentration is key to casting magick and in my books some wizardly folk resort to physical motions to aid their mental focus—a sweep of the arm, a punch of a fist, a clap of the hands…. …or in the case of one MC, pointing finger guns at her enemies

So my kids received walkie talkies as an early Xmas presents from their aunt and, well, I’m not getting a lot of writing done at the moment 😂

Whatever you’re doing there should be more fucking swords involved.

Couldn’t sleep So I decided to go ahead and mess around with this manuscript once more and ended up adding a few banger lines and now I am finally sleepy once more Only to look at the clock and realize I must now get up and go to work

I’m a lucky fella this week! Thank you @authornickbetts.bsky.social for the first three books in The Fates Of Aten series and to @beardedbookbeast.bsky.social for putting on the giveaway!!! Very excited to have these beauties on my shelf!!! 🔥🔥

I love all the books I’ve written equally, regardless of length. But I could not help but notice that JUST the final battle at the end of The Heroes We Never Were has the same page count as ALL of The Light Of Kasaban. The battle sequence by itself is as long as a whole book.

Editing fun: ‘What are you dong?’ he asked. ……… Good question, wrong story though

What’s your writing process like? My writing process is that a tiny wizard living in my head keeps me up at night by shouting at a jaded coffee drinking 7th dimensional entity, translating the results & whispering to me whatever secrets are revealed and that comes out as books.

You know what I heard, frens??? Everyone loves a good year end list, so I have one for you! Bill's Best of 2025 Indie Awards Extravaganza! Like last year, I'm giving some major awards to some of my fave indie books I read this year! Check them out in the link below! #booksky

I reviewed The Light of Kasaban by @thomashowardriley.bsky.social There is a sense of looming pressure and stress, built up from the stark, brutal beginning, that lingers and hangs in the balance until the abrupt ending, which brought both sadness and a slight glimmer of hope.

books I’ve published thus far (w/word counts): We Break Immortals 310K The Monsters We Feed 109K The Light Of Kasaban 66K The Last Gasp Of Midnight 11K books I plan to publish in 2026: The Heroes We Never Were 280K WBI Sequel (title forthcoming) 400K Corrin solo prequel 90K

In case you hadn’t guessed, I really dig reading books Like holy shit it’s just awesome I kinda feel bad for the people who choose not to

Being an author must be one of the only professions where you give a copy of your product to a friend and they call you back to complain: “hey you didn’t kill me in this one”

It’s bookiversary week for my chonky debut WE BREAK IMMORTALS and to celebrate (besides drinking my fair share of Irish whiskey) the ebook is FREE on kindle until Sunday Dec 14th So if you’re in the mood for a rated-R epic fantasy in all its thicc majesty there’s no better time

I have a terrible time letting go of finished manuscripts. The urge to fiddle with a line here or a word there is like a damn addiction. I need a fix and the only thing that can do the job is changing one word to a different word and switching the order of these two paragraphs.

My son (age 5) walked up to me wearing shades, a sword in one hand, a boxing glove on the other. “Daddy, my training is complete. I am now in my ultimate form.” “Excellent,” I said. “You are supremely powerful. What are you going to do now?” “Crush my enemies.” 🥺 #proud

Only a few hours to go! Join Holly, along with @dbrook.bsky.social, @thomashowardriley.bsky.social, @tdevens.bsky.social and Fantasy Files Podcast as we wrap up with year - we start at 8pm GMT so grab your mincepies and meet us on Youtube! www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr0Q...

My queue of books I want to write is getting to be about as big as my tbr

During the epic final showdown of We Break Immortals, I gave three side characters temporary POV status alongside the three MCs as each one fights their own part of the battle. The main professional thematic reason I chose to do this was because I thought it was cool.

Every story decides how long it needs to be and that means some will be shorties but I miss going big. I think the next 2 books will bring back a little bit of my chonky mojo. They are hefty tomes.

This Sunday! Come join HL Tinsley along with @dbrook.bsky.social, Fantasy Files Podcast, @thomashowardriley.bsky.social and @tdevens.bsky.social for festive tomfoolery and general chaos. Grab your jingle bells and come celebrate the end of the year with us. Link coming soon!

I just want you to know All the terrible things I’ve done All the horrors I’ve wrought All the pain and tears I’ve caused I did it for the plot

#booksky Took me 1.5hrs to film this damn thing, so please watch 😅😅😅 Anyway, starting a new Indie Book Rec series of mini reviews, first up is my new fave: The Severing Son by @vaughnroycroft.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7E5...

To celebrate Cameron Day (the author not the ex British Prime Minister) I insist you buy: The Maleficient Seven: heroic last stand but the heroes are all villainous monsters (unbelievably fun and gripping) Or The Last Shield: Die Hard in a castle, somehow even better than it sounds GO NOW, BUY

Does my next book take place in a single location? Yes. Do the characters journey outside of this one location in any meaningful way? No. Does the story need a map of the entire kingdom for any rational reason? No. Am I going to put a map in the book anyway? Yes.

With one chonky book going in for proofreading, I’m gonna make a mad push to wrap final revisions of my other chonk sequel for my editor so I can spend the downtime hammering out a Corrin the Magnificent solo prequel. Oh, did I mention I’m working on a Corrin solo prequel? I am.

Yes! I just thought of a banger line for a book you won’t see until 2027 being excited as an author is truly a weird headspace

Happy Thanksgiving! I’m thankful my queen and I get to raise these two brave little warriors I’m thankful for Penelope and my army of cats I’m thankful for good friends I’m lucky enough to frequently annoy I’m thankful I get to write books and that people sometimes read them

I’m tired of having to choose between writing cozy fantasy and grimdark fantasy. Why can’t I do cozy grimdark fantasy? BARBECUES & BLOODLETTING TEA TIME & TORTURERS DONUT SHOPS & DEFENESTRATION

My 5yr old just discovered that I have actual real swords My cool factor just went up 1000 coolness points according to his official report regarding the matter He asked wide-eyed if any were “legendary swords” I assured him I found each one in a secret cave atop a mountain

I feel like if Robert Jordan had balanced every “she folded her arms beneath her breasts” with a “he crossed his legs adjacent to his balls” there would have been far less criticism

Don’t write half assed books. Take the time. Do the work. Give em the whole ass.

Ironically, one of the longest chapters in We Break Immortals (7300 words) is often mistaken for the shortest bc the tension keeps the pages turning I generally aim for 3K-5K words (it’s epic fantasy, if I wrote thrillers it’d be shorter 😂) but I’ll go longer if a scene demands

I don’t know about you, but this is how I feel like I sound every time I try to market my books 🤣 It does not come naturally to me at all I’m almost certain I’m doing more than just shaking people and screaming “read my books dammit!” but I’m not all the way certain

Hey friends and beasties! I’ll be cavorting with the Bearded Book Beast in an hour and a half! Feel free to stop by and join the fun.

I can’t imagine We Break Immortals without Keluwen as a POV, yet she did not exist for the first 16 drafts I can’t imagine The Monsters We Feed w/out Jansi Wake & the poor hidden wizards of Tenement Lane yet didn’t think of them until the final draft The muse is rarely punctual

are you a plotter or a pantser? I pants my plot outlines then try to write to the plot but as character voices develop I re-pants scenes & entire arcs then re-outline to fit it all in & usually think of some pivotal idea at the end & have to go back & re-plot over existing plot

Trying to keep track of which character has what wounds in a 120 page final battle is not as easy as it sounds

I came here to chew bubble gum and write some fucked up epic fantasy. And build cat shelters in my back yard. And I’m all outta bubble gum. But not cat shelters. I’ve still got a ways to go there.

Speaking of under reviewed books What? You didn't ask? Hey, I don't come to where you work and poop on your desk

I feel like a real writer should love the writing part, the euphoria of their own thoughts coming together to breathe life into characters and worlds. I just don’t believe that someone who loves writing would ever ask a machine to rob them of the joy of creating their story.

What inspired me to choose a brutal desert as the setting for The Light Of Kasaban you ask? Because I live in a desert & it’s fucking hot as hell & I decided you all needed to hear about it😂 But also because it perfectly mirrors the oppressive vibe of the characters’ situation

I have ADHD and my social media profile pics needing to be updated to all match each other is one of my doom piles

Editing fun: “She held on to those precious mamories as hard as she could, but the more she sought to retain them the harder the creature fought to take them.” Oh…ohhhhh dear.

I wish we could write books made up of all the cool lines we swore we wouldn’t need to write down because we’d never forget them and then promptly forgot them

tbh if my readers are swearing their heads off at me by the end of one of my books I will consider it a great success

Being able to thrill readers with what you create is just top tier awesome

I don’t know what kind of cyberpunk wifi-delivered drugs they’re lacing this Kpop Demonhunters movie with but my kids never sat through a full animated movie in their lives without getting bored & wandering off, yet are obsessed with this They call it CakePop Demonhunters though

I stumble across all manner of delightful things while researching horrific stuff for my books Today I leaned about “the Swedish Drink” Fucking diabolical I mean, it’s definitely going in one of my books…..but diabolical