Beth Martin's Blog, page 10

Book Review: The Conjurer's Almanaq

I may have gone a little overboard ordering cool puzzles recently. I wanted to scope out the other items that people who might enjoy my puzzle book would also want to read. OK, let’s be honest: I used it as an excuse to finally purchase the cool indie puzzle books accumulating in my Amazon cart. For some reason, I never thought to write up a review for a logic games or interactive book. If you

A Guide to Front and Back Matter

I’ve become quite proficient at putting together a book, and I’m not just talking about writing and editing a manuscript. There are actually a lot of elements which are included between the covers which authors and publishers need to think about. For indie authors, it’s up to us to create all of these elements, even if we have no clue how to go about doing that.

I thought I’d demystify all of

Board Game Review: Unsolved Case Files

Unsolved Case Files
My Rating: ★★★★☆

You have the files from a cold case and are tasked with the challenge of finding out who really murdered Harmony Ashcroft twenty years ago. With the original witness interviews, newspaper clippings, coroner report, and other information collected for the original investigation, players can pick through all the details, looking for new connections and any

Announcing my Next Book: Puzzling Escapes, Mystery of the Spaceship and the Missing Crew

I feel like I’ve talked about this for a while, but I’m finally ready to officially announce my next book, Puzzling Escapes: Mystery of the Spaceship and the Missing Crew, which will launch on June 14, 2019.




The crew on the Oort 7200 Spaceship mysteriously disappeared over a decade ago. Since then, brave travelers have navigated to the abandoned ship, but none have ever returned. Despite the

Board Game Review: Dominion Renaissance

Dominion: Renaissance
by Rio Grande Games
My rating: ★★★★★

The card building game Dominion was first released ten years ago, and after hearing a number of good reviews, I decided to give it a shot. I bought the base game, as did a few other friends who I met up with weekly for our long-standing game night. After getting a hold of how to play the game—using treasure to buy cards, playing

Spring Writing Update

My most recent novel, In the Midst, came about two weeks ago, and since then I’ve been asked the same two questions several times: “Where can I buy a copy?” and “When does the next book come out?” The first one is easy. Amazon! The second is, well, a little harder to answer.

The puzzle book I’m currently working on is super close to completion—if you follow me on Instagram, then you may have

Today is Release Day for In the Midst

When I was getting ready to release my first book, a few people told me I should consider writing a sequel since series sell better than stand-alone novels. If you’ve read The End of Refuge, you already know that the story doesn’t really have series potential. I did have a multi-book arc in mind when writing Mental Contact, but ultimately, I really love crafting stand-alone stories. I’ve always

Building a Puzzle Book

If you follow me on Instagram, then you probably already know that I've recently been working a bunch on a puzzle book. I'm a huge fan of logic problems, boards games, escape rooms, and strategy video games, so I decided to use my background with those to build an engaging puzzle book. Even with that, as well as my experience publishing novels, putting together a puzzle book has presented

How to Judge an Indie Book

Sorry for the clickbait-y title, but this subject has been on my mind recently. Since I read a lot of indie books, I spend a lot of time sifting through books on Amazon and Twitter (yes, I sometimes browse social media to find my next read) looking for something to purchase. It’s hard to tell whether a novel will be worth reading at first glance, but I also don’t want to spend hours upon

Board Game Review: Codenames Duet

I thought I’d try something new and review a board game this time. I certainly play a whole bunch of them, so I have some experience in this arena.

Last time I took my kids to a toy store, my husband and I ended up buying a ton of games for ourselves in addition to letting the kids pick something out. One of the things we grabbed was Codenames Duet. I had heard good things about Codenames,