The Summer Magic Fantasy Group Giveaway is just one of the many great giveaways going on this month.

‘Tis the weekend for free giveaways, so here are links to the various giveaways I’m participating in right now, with suggestions for other books you might also want to check out.

Some of you might be asking how these giveaways work and why authors would participate in them.  Basically, these events are run by Instafreebie and BookFunnel (you can join one or the other; I’m in both).  Authors upload short stories, previews, or even whole books that they want to give away for free in order to give readers a taste of their writing.  Depending on how the giveaway is set up, readers have either the option or the requirement of joining the author’s mailing list in exchange for the free book.  It used to be that many authors had mandatory opt-in, since after all a book is a huge amount of work and we don’t want to give them away *completely* for free, but with the implementation of GDPR last week, most giveaways have gone optional opt-in only.  I’ve always done only optional opt-in if I can, since I figure I only want people on my mailing list who *want* to be on my mailing list.

Oh, and by the way, if you do want to sign up for my mailing list, you can do so here.

Then, and this is the crucial part, all of the dozens or hundreds of authors participating in the giveaway are supposed to promote it (like I’m doing now) on their blogs, newsletters, etc.  The idea is that we all cross-polinate, hooking up our readers with other works they might enjoy and hooking up other authors with potential readers.  It’s a win-win situation for everyone–except when you, like I tend to do, load up on so many free books you don’t know how you’re ever going to read all of them!

So here are some recommendations of books I’ve read that are in these giveaways:

The Summer Magic Fantasy Giveaway:

Ellison Blackburn has a preview of “If There Be Giants” in this giveaway, which is a smart speculative fiction story about a female archeologists who unearths something very unexpected.  You can read my review of it here.

Assaph Mehr’s “Murder in Absentia” is a kind of fantasy version of the Roma Sub Rosa series, featuring a private detective investigating a murder in Romanesque fantasy world.  My review of it is here.

The Contemporary Upmarket Fiction Giveaway

has “If There Be Giants” as well as “Flashback,” another specfic story by Ellison Blackburn (my review of the series here), and some really interesting-looking multicultural fiction that I have downloaded but haven’t read yet.

And then the Best New Releases in Fantasy giveaway

has books by Chrys Cymri and Angela J. Ford, who both have some unique elements to their world-building: Cymri, who is a vicar in the CoE himself, features vicars in some of his books, and Ford includes women of color in her stories.  There’s also Tessonja Odette’s Shadows of Lela book, which I’m reading right now and has some fun unicorn stuff in it, if you’re into unicorns (and let’s face it, who isn’t into unicorns??)

Happy reading, everyone!