Jonathon Mast: Author

Year of Books 2025: Top Ten

Every year in July, I look back at the last twelve months of reading I’ve done. Well, it’s July. Time to look back!

Today I’ll be listing the ten best books I read!

The Return of the Whale Fleet
By Benedict Patrick

The Melodious Narwhal fell through a rift and landed in the Darkstar Dimension, a place between dimensions that no one can survive long. First Officer Min has helped her crew survive for months, though. But then a new threat enters, something that devours the miraculous whales that fly far overhead. And this threat has turned its attention to Min’s ship…

This is the direct sequel to Flight of the Darkstar Dragon, a book I very much enjoyed, and Patrick’s work in general feels dark, but never too much for me, personally. This book fits right in with the wonder, imagination, and darkness of the first volume. It builds to a climax I did not see coming and threw me for a loop. Patrick used amazing skill in climbing tension. I’m really, really hoping he’s writing another book in this series!

Viridian Gate Online: Cataclysm
By J. A. Hunter

The world is ending. An asteroid is going to impact earth, and no one will survive. But in the near future, a company that had been set to release a VR World of Warcraft type game has figured out how people could upload their consciouses to their servers, buried so deep in the ground they should survive the asteroid’s impact. When Jack takes advantage of the offer, he discovers that the virtual world is a lot of fun… but also dangerous. The ultra rich have already figured out how to set up this new world to greatly advantage them at the cost of so many other lives. Now Jack must find a way to stand against this old evil in a new world.

I had the pleasure of meeting the author at a con. He’s not just an incredibly generous man, but was a delight to talk to. And his book? Yeah. I have book two. I devoured this thing. I loved every aspect of it. The world Hunter created invites questions, and he doles out answers at a perfect pace. I highly, highly recommend this one!

Curse of the Cosmic Horror
By Tom Leveen

Mike was forced to move to Hastur, Arizona. Mom and Dad decided to move there for… reasons. Because of a bizarre mineral under the town, there’s no wifi. And that first night in their new home, something dark invades. Now the town is creeping toward insanity, and only Mike and his new friends have a chance of making sure they escape alive.

This book was perfect middle school horror. I felt the danger to the kids, and yet there was never any gore. The stakes are huge, and yet still perfectly appropriate. I highly, highly recommend this one!

Lonely Castle in the Mirror
By Mizuki Tsujimura
Translated by Philip Gabriel

Kokoro hides in her bedroom. After traumatic bullying at school, she can’t leave. Her parents try everything to help her, but her anxiety is too high. And then, her mirror calls her. She steps through to another world, a castle hidden… somewhere else. She’s not alone, either. Other kids, just as trapped by their mental illnesses, have been brought there. But the castle has rules, and the children dare not break them.

I picked this book up on a whim, and I have to say, I was blown away. The descriptions of anxiety and panic attacks hit real close to home. Yet, the book really is healing as well. It doesn’t just describe the problems, but also ways to deal with them in real ways. I loved the characters in this novel. Read this book.

Drawn by Light
By John W. Otte

King Narius is dead, and his wife, Queen Everys, a refugee. The entire world has turned against them. Everys will not go quietly, though. She gathers with forces loyal to her, and she will take back the throne. She does not know that Narius actually survived, though, and is now captured by enemy forces. They manipulate him for their own ends. Will the king and queen ever be united?

At last the trilogy ends! Look, Otte has crafted a wonderful world of technology and magic. He introduces heroes you want to cheer for, villains that feel real, and a plot that does not sit still long enough to get old. Read the entire thing. It’s worth your time.

Ensaadi
Dune Drifter
By Elisabeth Wheatley

Talitha defends her city-state with everything in her. She is honor personified. She is a warrior, leading their military in service to the ensaak. But when a peace mission to a neighboring city-state goes horribly wrong, she must flee. She finds safety for her people among the dune drifters, and she might even find love there. But honor and love often conflict, and a plot is brewing that may destroy her beloved city.

If you’ve never seen Elisabeth Wheatley’s short content on Youtube or TikTok, you need to look her up. She’s delightful. I decided to support this author I’d come to know through her videos, and I was not disappointed. These first two books in her Warriors of the Sandsea series grabbed me and did not let me go. I’m eager to read more!

Letters from Hadley
By Cassidy Bryant

Hadley is dead. Parker, her ex, had already moved on before she died. It’s his last year of high school, and he wants it to be a good one. Hadley’s parents call him, though. They found a box of letters to him. Would he please take them and read them? He doesn’t want to. They’d been broken up for a while. Why should he? But he can’t escape the box. And as he begins to read the letters, he has to ask some uncomfortable questions. Was her car accident actually a suicide? Did he cause her to kill herself? What kind of person is he, really?

Look! Another Kickstarter find! I backed this project because it felt… familiar. And Hadley’s letters are ones I could have written in high school. Bryant nails the feeling of despair and anxiety that young broken love can create. She keeps in a number of amazing twists and turns, though. The story does not go where I expected it to! Overall, the book was quiet and emotional, and I greatly appreciated it.

Dead Reckoning
Enemy Colours
By R. M. Olson

Captain Hollis Ives will capture the pirate Mad Dog and return her to the Level. The pirate seems to know how to jump her ship from planet to planet so well, though. And Mad Dog? She’ll do anything to destroy the Level, but she’s got a sense of honor to her. She’s loyal to her crew, and they’d die for her. But there are enemy forces conspiring, and these two bloodthirsty enemies may need to ally if they’re to have any chance to survive.

I backed this trilogy on Kickstarter a few years back, and now I’ve completed reading it with these, books two and three. And they are fun! It’s Treasure Island and Horatio Hornblower in space. Thrilling characters in tense situations kept me glued to the page. And then I got to the end of book three and was disappointed it didn’t keep going. Ah, but I was wrong! Since I backed the original project, three additional books have been released! I’m gonna have to get those…

The Island of Dreams
By Jaye Viner

Everyone knows the stories of the Pan. He flits into windows to steal children away so they never go to heaven nor hell. He kidnaps them to the Neverland, to have the childhood they never had on earth, to never grow up. He is a capricious god. He needs a mother, though, and Justine is just the person. She’s a servant in late 1800’s London, and she longs to get away. But when she’s taken to the Neverland, she discovers that her afterlife will be even more complicated. The Pan’s brother, a dark pirate, longs to bring Time to the island. And she may be falling in love with him…

Another Kickstarter find! This book holds that dreamlike quality that Peter Pan stories should have. It’s at the same time both innocent and incredibly subversive. I really like the reimagining of Neverland. Justine is a great protagonist, both independent and longing to be loved. I’m looking forward to the final book of the duology.

A Duel Among Friends
By Filip Wiltgren

The warded gunslinger continues his flight through the stars, now trying to protect an entire colony of people as they make their way to a new colony. Supplies are running low, though, for everybody. Space si empty and cold. Can he find what they need to survive?

This is the fourth (and so far final) book of The Warded Gunslinger, and I desperately want more. This series is such a great mix of Firefly and gritty urban fantasy. Please go read it so Wiltgren knows he’s got an audience to write more.

Why You Won’t Find Me on Kindle Unlimited

Y’all ever hear of Kindle Unlimited?

Imagine it as the Netflix of books. At least, that’s how it was sold to me. For a monthly subscription fee, you can read any book enrolled in the program on Amazon. That’s thousands and thousands of books that you have cheap access to. And you’re supporting writers, as they get paid per page that’s read.

It sounds like a great idea!

You won’t find my books there.

But why not? It seems like a win-win. Authors get paid, and readers get books cheaper!

Well, Amazon doesn’t run the program out of the goodness of their hearts. They get a cut. Now, that’s true of any platform that sells books online. If you buy my books from Amazon or Barnes and Noble or Walmart, each of those platforms get a cut. It’s part of the cost of doing business.

But part of Amazon’s cut for Kindle Unlimited is exclusivity. If I put my books on Kindle Unlimited, I would not be allowed to sell ebooks anywhere else. To get access to the Kindle Unlimited audience, I must essentially sell myself to Amazon.

I know writers who make good money through Kindle Unlimited. They’re able to support their families through that program! I bear no ill will to anyone who has chosen to go that route.

But I simply can’t. I don’t trust Amazon enough to allow them exclusivity to my stories. What happens when there’s a hiccup in the system and I’m locked out? What happens when I’m banned because someone reported me for something, but who knows what? Both those things have happened to authors I know, and suddenly their support was gone.

Another aspect of Kindle Unlimited is that the rate of pay to authors fluctuates every month, and Amazon doesn’t share what the rate is. It simply tells a writer how many pages have been read, and by the way, here’s your paycheck. It’s hard to budget when you can’t even predict how much you’ll receive for one of your books. At least this way, I know that one sale will equal this much money.

Every writer is on their own journey. So is every reader. If you like unlimited reading, Kindle Unlimited may be a great way for you to go. It might fit in very well with your writing and publishing strategy, too.

But for me, I can’t.

(As a side note, if you like the idea of unlimited reading but don’t want to support Amazon, may I suggest Kobo Unlimited? My books are enrolled there, so you could also support me! No exclusivity there! Woo!)

Even the Fey Can’t Do Everything

…and I’m not fey. I think. Maybe I should talk to my parents about that.

Y’all, it’s been three and a half months since I’ve posted here. That’s just a scosch of time, just a few ticks of the tock. Why?

Honestly, many reasons. The biggest is probably me trying to figure out where I want to spend my time. I tried to do everything, and, well, that doesn’t work. As my writing career grows, I need to focus on what’s most important. Is it the blog? Is it staring at the sky? Is it making sure I sacrifice all seventeen of my first-born children to the muses?

No one can do everything, and alas, most writers are still human, even if they have a bit of fey blood in them. I’ve posted in the past about how much I’ve done, but I couldn’t keep up that schedule, particularly during the school year when my kids are busiest. TikTok has fallen to the wayside, as did the blog, as I kept up with my writing.

This is also an effect of my depression. In my daily life, I’ve given up things I had once enjoyed, bit by bit, as I simply don’t have the energy to partake in various activities anymore. For my “day job” I once posted a daily video devotion. I couldn’t keep up. It’s the same here in writingland. I can’t keep up as much.

It’s a normal activity for so many humans. There are so many good things we can spend our time pursuing. And for my writing, what’s most important?

Well, writing. That must remain.

Along with raw writing, editing and revising.

And as my intention is to continue self-publishing, that means I must also pursue little things like finding cover artists and working with them. If we’re ever going to get some audiobooks out, I need to find and work with a narrator.

Oh, and if I expect anyone to buy the books, I need to advertise them in some way. Otherwise, no one will know they exist!

These are the realities of every writer. Where do you spend your time? We all have the same amount of time. What’s the wisest use of that finite resource? You can’t do it all, so what will you do?

Which brings me back here. This blog is one way I share what books I have out there. It’s not the only way or even the primary way, but it is a way. So my intention is to be back here, at least for a little bit.

Will I fall into the blogger pattern of posting once every six months, apologizing for not posting more?

Not likely. Or at least, not yet! By the time this posts, I’ll have a few months of blog entries written and ready to go.

Thanks for your patience!

As a writer, where do you focus your writing and writing-related time?

(As always, if you’d like to support me, the best way to do it is to read my books!)

One Little Detail

My wife sat beside me in worship, and she did it again. She repeated the same thing that first drew my attention to her so many years ago.

It was a little thing. Her roommate and my roommate were going out. They invited the two of us to join them on a trip to the Mall of America, about an hour and a half away. I actually wasn’t supposed to go with; another friend had dropped out at the last moment and they didn’t want their friend to be a third wheel. (In fact, when my wife and I first started dating, our roommates weren’t exactly pleased!)

As we drove, the other three people in the car belted out songs I didn’t know. Whatever the CD player sang, they joined in.

But as I sat in the back seat with this young woman I’d just met, I noticed her fingers. As she sang, she tapped her leg as if it was a piano. Her fingers moved with the melody she sang.

That’s how I knew she was a piano player. Later I struck up a conversation with her about playing piano. We connected on that level. And one thing led to another, and now we’ve been married nineteen years.

And this last week, as we sat in church together, I noticed her doing it again. She played the piano on her leg as she sang.

I fell in love all over again.

I share this not to present some sort of nifty romance. I love my wife, but I don’t expect you to! But when it comes to writing, it can be so, so good to pick out one detail. Just one. Focus the reader’s attention on it, and that one thing will make the entire rest of the scene come alive. It will help your reader connect, just like that one detail connected me to the woman who would become my wife.

Tell me the smell. By the river, the scent was somehow both fresher and more rotten than anywhere else in the city.

What did the air feel like? The cool breeze prickled your arms?

When she giggled, she hiccupped.

That one little detail can add so much to a scene. Please describe what’s going on and who is present. Don’t overwhelm the reader. The point usually isn’t to tell about every single element of every single person present.

But one detail. One detail can be enough.

Birthday for a Book

It’s been four years. Actually, four years and one week, but last week I was focusing on the last days of the Kickstarter campaign for Dragons of Londinium. So I’m celebrating a week late.

On March 1, 2021, Dark Owl Publishing released my first novel, The Keeper of Tales. I’m insanely grateful to Andrea there. She took a big risk. Sure, I had some short stories published, and more on the way, but an entire novel?

But on March 1, The Keeper of Tales was unleashed on the public. A relatively classic epic fantasy, with the twist that stories controlled the world. Stories forced people to take on the roles of archetypes, and punished any who resisted. In the end, stories themselves became the antagonists… kind of.

For so, so long, I’d wanted to be an author. Not “just” a writer. Not just someone who typed at a laptop and wanted to someday have a book. I had my own book! Look at it! My name’s on the cover!

It wasn’t enough. Of course it wasn’t enough. How would it ever be enough?

Andrea rolled the dice on me a second time and published Dragons of the Ashfall.

It… didn’t do well. Hardly anyone bought it.

By then, though, it was too late. I was writing and expecting my words to see the light of day. Yes, I knew that editing was necessary. Yes, I knew revisions were necessary. Rough drafting is hard work. It’s not the only work an author must do. No problem with that, though. My wife and I learned the tough process of self-publishing.

And now thirteen books later, and three more successfully crowdfunded, it seems so odd to me that The Keeper of Tales is only four years ago. Writing and publishing is just something I do now. It feels like my first novel was decades ago.

But it wasn’t.

I didn’t do anything to celebrate its birthday. I probably should have. Maybe next year? Half a decade of having books with my name on them? That seems like something good to do.

What do you do to celebrate a book birthday?

Oh, come on. You already know the answer.

You write some more. And then you go buy some more books to read.

Cause books.