Samie Foster's Blog, page 2

No Time To Work, So I'm Doing Another Giveaway

Hey everyone! It is another insane week coming up. And it looks just like the last one where I will have absolutely no time to work on anything. But I don’t want this week to be completely wasted project wise. If I can’t get anything done for a while, I might as well do another giveaway so some people can read my stuff and maybe leave a good review. That might be a little more productive than doing nothing, maybe.

What story? I just went with the book version of my second anthology Meteors & Monsters. I will post the synopsis below.

Ancient gods have awaken to make the world their playground. A runaway Alice must make a stand in the last free city of Wonderland. Radio show hosts must survive an alien invasion. A freelance photographer falls deep into trouble when her house is broken into by a horribly mangled woman. A young woman goes to a mysterious place where dreams come to true to find an estranged best friend. This is another collection of short stories stretching across science fiction, fantasy, and horror. This collection is composed of eight tales including:

- Midnight Special: Murder at Blue Bayou
- Meteor City
- Lonesome Town
- In The Land Of Gods
- The Junkyard Murders
- On The Air with Mike Gypsy and Sacheana Crow
- Alice: Stone's Story
- Midnight Special: Bishop

This will be free on Kindle from June 14th to June 18th. Grab your copy at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08FQDMKB1.

And that’s it for now. I’ll have more stuff to share soon I promise. But I hope you enjoy this giveaway until then.

A Free Book & A Bunch Of Updates

Hi there everyone! It has been ages since I posted anything and with the long silence, you might be wondering what in the world is going on. And I thought that I would post something to update you all about the works in progress. So what has been going on? Life has been busy. My injury from around Christmas relapsed once again, and I had to go to the doctor to finally sort the mess all out and had to make some life changes. Also, I have been chasing job opportunities nonstop while volunteering in environmental work. So the projects have been a struggle to find time for. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been doing anything.

So what I have been doing the for last couple of months? I have been writing a new short story. A modern day urban fantasy about a wizard who makes a deal with a demon to save the world with a godlike power, only to be imprisoned by the government because he’s feared by the world he saved. It’s been a fascinating little idea to play around with.

Then I have been making progress on revising Palm’s Inn. I am seventy-five percent of the way through cleaning up one of the first things I self-published. In this massive review, nothing has been all that terrible mistake or typo wise, but I really wanted to clean it up since I threw it out into the wilds of the internet when I was just eighteen. And I really do call that an accomplishment. After every newly revised chapter, a new version is being updated to KDP, so the latest version is always up.

Also, even though I have been working at a snail’s pace, I am almost done editing the first draft of a scifi thriller that I currently have titled as Rainy Day Hotel. It’s about some researchers on another planet who encounter some invisible aliens. Not anything ground breaking. But fun enough, I think. I enjoyed writing something a little more straightforward. When I finally it get polished up enough and posted on Scribophile for beta readers, I hope people enjoy it.

And speaking of the other shorts. I really do intend to get back into finishing the half edited next Alice story. After taking a break, I might be able to tackle it again with some fresh eyes. It needs a fair hand of tweaking. With a mentally ill lead, half the readers were confused about what was going on. But I know it can be polished up into something nice.

Now those are what I have been working on. But what about the plans? Especially for the summer. The last summer, I did three and a half months of free short story giveaways. I had a different free story every week. So many people took the free stuff, but I only got two reviews out of it. They were good reviews, but I hoped to get more. So my plan this year was to advertise a different short every week on Twitter with the “Free on Kindle Unlimited” sales pitch. That way, I can make a little bit of money. But the last three weeks have been so busy, I was too exhausted and forgetful that I haven’t been able to advertise anything. So for this upcoming week, I am going to make one of my collections free and maybe consider doing the summer of free shorts again, because free stuff advertises itself. I do have more followers than ever before, so it might be worth doing again because there may be better results, but I would really like to make a little bit of money too. So I am thinking about it, because this summer looks like it might be a busy one.

And what is the Free Book this week? It’s Flying Pigs & Witches. I’ll share the synopsis and Giveaway date down below.

Lily must travel to a scientific dystopia to save her husband. A gunslinging Alice is looking for a way out of a dark Wonderland. A cashier must take the late shift in a haunted retail store. Siblings Liz and Denny encounter an evil witch in the woods. A teenager learns his uncle is a wizard. A little girl races into another world to get back her favorite socks. This is a collection of eight short stories stretching across horror, fantasy, and science fiction.

This collection includes:
-The Island
-Late Shift at Pennies
-Socks and Fluffle Puffs
-Somewhere Beyond the Sea
-My Name Is...
-Alice: Winter's Story
-Secrets of Charles Mahogany
-Vanity

This is Free from June 7th to June 11th and you can grab your Kinle copy at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KREO7C0


And that is what I have for this week. I apologize for such a long drought of information. But I’m going to try to get more done at a better pace. I hope to be back with more news and fun stuff soon. Until then, I hope you have a great week.

Siren on Berry Avenue is Out & Free For The First Five Days

Hello there. I hope you all doing well. I wanted to post a blog to share some fun news today. What is it? The Siren on Berry Avenue is finally out. The short story is released as an ebook and is currently enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. And this week, for the first few days it will be FREE! I will post the synopsis and other information down below.


Half-bood. It’s a term for those not quite human. Off spring of monsters and humans. It is an issue that the United States has not known how to deal with. The solution for the longest time was to lock them away from the public. But when a new law is passed to make them citizens, and they are released into the world.

One of these half-bloods is Cyan. A teenage girl with a Siren blood flowing through her veins. With her mom long gone, her step father takes her in and, for the first time, enters the real world. But it’s not an easy one for a half-blood. In a world that hates monsters, it’s hard to find her place in it. And as she tries to find her way, she knows the monstrous half of her family is out there. And she fears he may come for her.

This short story ebook is going to be FREE from April 7th to April 11th. You can grab your free copy at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09X4STDYY.


That is what got to share. If this story sounds like your sort a thing, grab a free copy and give it read. And with that said, I hope you have a great week.

New Stuff Coming Very Soon

Hi there everyone. It has been absolutely ages since the last update, and I apologize for that. Life had been busy. I have been recovering from a complete relapse of a bad injury I had around Christmas. It’s way better now, but not 100% yet. Also, I’ve been scrambling to make money, with pay cuts and cut hours at my current job, by hopping between different warehouses around town. I’m kinda cheating the system the corporation set up, but no one has stopped me yet and the corporate overlords were cheating me first. So it only seems fair. And then some job opportunities fell out of the sky in the last month or so and I have been chasing after those opportunities as well. And my computer died, and I had to save my stuff and get a new one. So least to say, I fell behind on a lot of things. But not completely.

So what is going on? First of all, The Siren on Berry Avenue is done! It polished into a final draft. A cover has been made. It’s all uploaded to KDP right now. Just have to put together a catchy synopsis and click “publish.” So it is coming very, very soon.

Beyond that, what is coming soon is up in the air. I have Alice: Rosa’s Story and Nowhere, both half edited and reviewed by multiple beta readers. And they need a lot of work. They may be further off from this publication than I wanted. I expected to have more time to work on them in the last couple of months, but things did not work out that way. I still want to get them out there for sure, but I don’t know how fast I will be able to get them out.

So this is what I think I’m gonna do. I got some more straight forward stories that I think will require less work. One is called Witches in the Castle (A working title of course) and it is a horror fantasy monster adventure that echoes the vibe of old Universal monster movies. The other is a straight forward scifi thriller called Rainy Day Hotel (working title as well.) I am going to print out these drafts along with current drafts of Nowhere and Alice. Spend some time away from the computer and edit them the old fashion way with pens and highlighters. Maybe out even out in the sun at the park in the sun. The weather has been so nice lately. And whatever I make the best progress on is what will be most likely be the next one to be published. I know it is crazy and chaotic. But my brain seems to operate best in this scatterbrained madness.

Also, as I said before, I want to also make Siren on Berry Avenue bigger project. I can just picture it as a series of short stories. And wrote a couple of sequel stories. One called The Scarabs from Tullah and the other called The Ghost in Room 104. Still brainstorming about where to take the series next. But I still want to get The Scarabs from Tullah out soonish. It’s still in a notebook, and only partially typed in the computer as of now, though.

Then there is lastly another little side project I’m experimenting with. I was thinking about maybe release some writing journals with some artwork. I like sketching. Besides writing, it’s a hobby of mine, and though I do sketch my book covers, I do just like drawing random fantasy sketches as well. And I do nothing with these things. So with the recent hardcover release option through KDP, I am seriously considering releasing nice hard cover writing journals with the artwork. It’s something that I think can work. And I am constantly seeing vlogs about no content books and such to make quick cash. But I really don’t want to make quick cash in a scam like fashion like some of these appear people to do. I want to create a high-quality product with good artwork. If no one cares for them, then so be it. But I just been thinking my sketching is a skill that could be used for an idea like this. So I’m gonna do some experimenting to see if I can make it a possibility.

And that is what I got to share. I am sorry it’s not all that new or exciting. I really do wish I had the time and could work at a faster pace. But that has been so hard to do lately. But I promise I am trying. Hopefully, with the next blog, there will be something much more exciting.

Its A New Year. I'm Still Writing & The Plan Is The Same As Before

Hello everyone! It has been a while since I have blogged anything. The last blog was in the beginning of November 2021, and I went in depth with all of my plans and what was being published next. I had everything figured out, and it seemed like I was on the right track. But two really big things happened. One was the work I decided to take this holiday season shifted everyone 6 day work weeks until the end of the year and my time to work on my book stuff shrunk drastically. Then around the same time, I got a negative review of Flying Pigs & Witches, saying typos annoyed the reader. And my brain immediately melted, and I was like, “Typos! What typos!? Where are these typos!? I slaved away to get all of those things stomped out!” But sure enough, there were some typos. Some people in an online writing community suggested some tools about how to find these more elusive mistakes and I put them to good use. So in my limited free time, in the last two and a half months, I stopped all progress on new stuff, and went through all of my shorts and revised works so far, looking for these issues. They were not as abundant as I feared, but they were fixed.

And now that issue is out of the way, I think I’m back on track. And what does back on track mean? One it means, I back at work revising Palm’s Inn. It also means I’m back at work editing The Siren on Berry Ave. The second draft just got a round of reviews from beta readers. I haven’t looked at all of them yet, and I am curious about what everyone has to say. Also, a new Alice story is in the process of being edited as well.

Beyond that, not much else is going on. Been scribbling down some more shorts here and there. But nothing big. I really am trying to get back into the groove of everything again. But I am getting there, and I promise new exciting stuff is coming soon.

A New Alice Story, Siren On Berry Ave Status, & Other Updates

Hello everyone. I hope you have all been well. I know it has been a few weeks since my previous blog, and there’s a good reason for that. Because the summer of weekly giveaways is over, I didn’t want to blog again until I had more to actually share. So now that I actually have some updates to share, I wanted to blog.

First off, I think the summer of free e story giveaways went okay. Seventy something people took advantage of the free short stories. And a couple people have actually left good reviews recently, and hopefully more will trickle in over time. So time will tell if it will boost my Goodreads and Amazon rating or not. But I’m glad that at least I know a couple people are enjoying my work.

Beyond that I have finally settled on a short to go through editing process and eventually to Kindle. It is another Alice story. It’s yet another tale of an Alice set in a dark Wonderland. This Alice is Alice Rosa. She’s a Brazilian Alice who fell into the world of Hatters and madness. It follows her as she tries to escort a prince away from the City of Clubs, while trying to keep her madness in check. It’s just been uploaded to Scribophile to see what Beta readers think of it. This one is a little more experimental as the lead suffers from mental illness, and I am curious what people will think. Hopefully the reactions will be good and the editing process will be short and will be on Kindle in some timely manner.

Then, the project, The Siren on Berry Ave is a work in process and I think I may have figured out how to tackle the project. The first story is up on Scribophile with very good reviews.
But I enjoyed the characters and the world so much that I wanted to do a lot more with it. I wanted to make a collection of stories with an overall arch like I did with The Last Witch, and then release them all at once. But after a couple months it’s not working. Where with The Last Witch, I wrote all the stories back to back in a number of months with a strong vision of what each one should be and how it should all end, that is not the case for Siren on Berry Ave. In fact I feel like I am forcing these stories to happen to meet a desired ending, instead of writing individual tales that would be fun on their own.

So I am going to change my plan. I am not going to wait months or years for the right ideas to come to me for a collection with an appropriate underlying story. Instead, I am going to take my time and release them one at a time and hope readers will one day want to follow these shorts as they are written opposed to the all at once approach I wanted to do originally. Right now I have three sequel stories written. Two are not on par with original tale, but the third is good enough. That tale is called The Scarabs from Tullah. So right now, since the reviews are so good on
The Siren on Berry Ave, I hope to finish editing that in the near future. And The Scarabs from Tullah will be typed off out of the notebook it currently sits in and will be uploaded to Scribophile for Beta readers to review as well. That is the status of the whole project right now. I should have just published the original story months ago, but I over complicated things thinking I could make it part of something grander and now here I am again at square one. I apologize more that.

Also there’s some news about Palm’s Inn. I am currently revising the book. Seeing how I self-published it so young, I wanted to really go through it and clean it up. And I am about a third through it now. Every Sunday I am updating the draft on KDP with the revisions finished up until that point. And so far, aside from some small typos and awkward sentence structures it really wasn’t as rough of a draft as I was expecting. So it’s not as daunting as I would have suspected. Hopefully that will be completely revised in the near future.

And that is all I have to share this week. Hopefully some I’ll have new stuff in the future. But that is in works right now. I hope you all have a good week, and I will be blogging again when I have more to share.

Its the Final Week of the Summer of Giveaways!

Hey everyone. Its time for another update blog.

So what has been going on? Not a lot. It has been another very busy week life wise but it has been a constructive week with a side of good luck, which isn’t so bad. But I have had some quiet nights and did some writing. Most of my writing has been with bigger projects lately. Mainly the giant Mars story I’m working and the episodic short story series that ties into The Siren on Berry Ave. I actually finished the second short story in that project. It’s called The Scarabs from Tullah, and hopefully I will have it typed up into Word and uploaded it to Scrib for beta readers to check out in the near future.

Also it’s the last week of the summer give away. And on this final week it’s an old short story (One of the first shorts I ever written actually) called The Dark West. I will post the synopsis down below.


For Abby and Caleb, it started as a day of book hunting. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but when Caleb finds a battered paperback book called 'The Dark West,' things becomes rather odd. Without warning the two of them are sucked into the book. After the incident Caleb is nowhere in sight, and Abby must rely on her bookworm skills to find him in this world of fiction.

If this sounds like something you would like, it will be FREE on Kindle from August 25th to August 29th. It is available at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B014VV73FI


And that is all that I have for this week. I apologize for not having anything exciting and the new on all the work in progress at moment. Life has been so busy lately. I have been moving at snail’s pace on everything else. But I hope to get life balanced somewhat and be back at it soon. Until then, I hope you all have a great week everyone!

The Island is Free This Week!

Hey there everyone. It’s another round of updates with not many updates at all. In fact, life took control of everything this week with round of bad luck. After the whirlwind of the 2020 and all its aftermath, it seemed like I had finally grabbed a hold of a permanent job and had some actual stability in my life. Then it just all unraveled in the course of a week, so least to say, I do not have a lot of project progress to report. But the summer of free short stories is still continuing. So I will share the synopsis of this week’s freebie down below.


In the middle of the Second World War, scientists start vanishing all over the world. When Lily's husband is snatched away, she teams up with her brother in law to unravel what is happening to all the world's geniuses. After a year of traveling the world looking for clues, they are led to a mystery island in the eye of a never ending storm. A place that holds more danger than they ever expected.

This story if FREE from August 18th to August 22nd. Grab your free copy of this Kindle story @ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B014VXB4MY


And that is what I have for this week. I really wish I had more to share this week, but life got really crazy. But hopefully I will be able to bounce back with more stuff to share next week. Have a great week everyone!

A Free Story & Updates on Little Urban Fantasy Project

Hello everyone! It time for a new updates blog. So let’s get started.

So what has been going on? Well first off there have been some interesting developments for The Siren on Berry Ave. The reviews have come in from Scribophile. And aside from a couple plot holes, people universally enjoyed it. But despite all the good reviews I’m going to take a pause to brainstorm a little bit. I feel there is more to explore in this world with these characters and a many of the reviews stated as much. Some were even disappointed that it was just a short story. I have been brainstorming lately about the expanding it into an episodic short story project. This is a method I use with Alice, The Midnight Special, and The Last Witch. They are short story series covering an arc much like any book series just in shorter format. But unlike The Midnight Special and Alice, I do want to try to release these things consecutively if possible. Where The Midnight Special and Alice can be told in any order as stand-alone stories. I don’t think Siren on Berry Ave can take that approach do to the characters and world. So I would like the idea of getting all the stories out in the same way I got The Last Witch released. But that also means, I must have enough material to even take this approach. The other night I feel I finally find my footing and the heart of these sequel stories. So as I’m trying to figure out what I want to do with this project. So The Siren on Berry Ave might be on hold for a while self-publishing wise.

In the meantime, I might dig up something else to work on. I have a Transylvania monster mash like story I could post for beta readers to review and then edit. I could finish the horror tale Nowhere. It has pretty bad reviews so far, but with all the feedback, I think I can clean it up into something nice. I also have a couple more Alice tales sitting on my desk top as well a couple science fictions and fantasies laying around as well. So there’s plenty of other stuff sitting around on my desk top and in notebooks to try to get out instead.

Also with Sam & Miguel’s Run out of the way, I’m going to dedicate more time to revising Palm’s Inn.


And of course the summer of free stories are still continuing. It’s the final three weeks! This week the story is a romantic highs seas fantasy, Somewhere Beyond the Sea. I will post the synopsis below.

Davey has been trapped on a rock of an island his entire life building a glass castle with his father for the king. He feels as though he is prisoner with no contact with the world beyond the island. Then one day during a storm, an odd yet captivating girl washes up on shore. She says she's from somewhere beyond the sea, but Davey's new friend is full of more mysteries than he ever expected.

This story will be FREE from August 11th to August 15th. Grab your copy at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01C7X0D90


And that is what I have for this week. It’s not a lot new stuff, but it’s a lot of updates on the works in progress. Also there is new free story as well. I hope you all enjoy it. Have a good week everyone! I will be blogging again soon.

In The Land of Gods is Free This Week

Hello there. There is a not a lot of progress to report this week. Life was really busy and I also was a little sick. So unfortunately, I don’t have any updates on any works in progress unfortunately. But there is still one month left of free e story giveaways. This week it will be on In the Land of Gods. I will post the synopsis below.

The world was ordinary once upon a time. That is until they found them. At an archaeological dig a dozen corpses were discovered. When they were brought out into the world, sunlight breathed life into them. The world quickly discovered they do anything, be anybody, and most importantly bend the world to their will. The press called them gods and world has not been the same since they woke up.

This will be FREE on Kindle from August 3rd to August 8th. Grab your free copy at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01C7XUFFC .

And that is what I have for this week. Hopefully, I will have more news soon. Have a great week everyone!