On the Reef is a series featuring fabulous indie authors from around the blogosphere and beyond. Titles, covers, and blurbs that catch my eye, new releases, great reads… Basically, authors I’d like to highlight and works I’d like to share with my fellow book-loving word nerds. Happy Reading!

New Release

Serang by C. S. Boyack

Monastic life is all about duty, service, and harmony. For Serang, a young girl abandoned at the temple by her mother after the death of her father, that life becomes all she knows. The monks give her purpose, and become her new family.

When political upheaval brings chaos throughout the land, Serang again loses everything and everyone she loves. Alone, she struggles to survive. She convinces a wandering monk to take her under his wing and complete her training. Thus begin her adventures through strange lands and her trials to become a confident, capable, independent…

Hi, SEers! Mae here today with a small promo tactic you may not be using. This one involves some help from your friends, but it’s another avenue to get your work noticed.

Have you ever searched lists on Goodreads? You’ll find them under the BROWSE drop-down on the main navigation bar (screen shot at left). The link will connect you to Listopia—Goodreads’ home for sorting books by category.

You’ll find plenty of genre lists, along with specific niche lists as well. These are the ones likely to benefit you the most.

As an example, I enjoy books featuring creatures from cryptozoology (i.e, Loch Ness, the Mothman, the Van Meter Monster, etc). Fortunately, Listopia has a Crypto Fiction list that allows me to sort through a number of books at once. As a reader, I find GR lists easier and more accurate to use than Amazon, especially when I want to search…

Good morning Story Empire readers. P. H. Solomon here with you today sharing about a recent experience, running in the dark. With the short days at this time of year, I usually end up running in the dark or just after. On one of these recent runs, I observed the things about my surroundings in the darkness that set off my imagination.

Don’t get me wrong, I was not running completely in the dark. I wore a headlamp that’s rather bright and there were a few lights to see by on the semi-desolate road on which I ran. Normally, I choose to run in a nearby subdivision where there’s more light on my running route. But this particular evening, I chose to run my regular daytime route on a little used side road that can be very dark in some places. Along the way, it struck me how many houses…