Tell me about your books.   Following the Future World Prize shortlisting, I was contracted to write for the popular children’s series The Magical Unicorn Society and wrote eight short stories for their 5th book, The Dark Heart Unicorns edition in 2024. The book is filled with beautiful illustrations, fact pages and a quiz for readers aged 8 upwards.

These small presses were recommended to me. I am defining Small Press as presses that you submit to who publish in a similar traditional manner to the big five whose human numbers (as far as I can tell) are in single figures. It’s only my definition but I sometimes say if you fit in one regular sized car.

Tell me about your book(s) I currently have one novel published and working on three more right now because I can’t stop my brain from coming up with things. My debut is a horroromance urban fantasy, Z.E.R.O: Zombie Elimination and Rescue Operatives, set in an alternative Tampa Florida where monsters are real and there is a secret group of monster hunters that keep them at bay so that the greater population can live their lives carefree of knowing monsters exist. I’m working

Yesterday I found out Sandcastles, my short story collection, had been awarded a red ribbon being one point shy of being a finalist.

If you are a parent of a primary aged child or work in a primary school this is unlikely to be news. As a kidlit author I am, probably obviously, all in favour of anything that encourages children to read. World Book Day and the National Year of Reading in the UK are great initiatives that hopefully make a difference. Reading is fun and the benefits go way beyond falling into a fantasy world that won’t let go, amazing as that is in itself.

Tell me about your book It’s a YA reverse portal fantasy with a queer romance arc – a sweet, naïve mage from a ‘perfect’ world finds his way to ours and has to navigate it. Luckily, he has the help of an awkward, nerd who has always loved fantasy stories and believed in magic. It’s very cosy and wholesome, with lots of tea and libraries.

I am including Small Press Books as Indie Books. Given their small teams the members can be called to multi task and they do not have the reach of the larger and more well known publishers. Some are also authors themselves. As some of them told me 'they need all the help they can get'. I will talk about some of the presses themselves in another part of this series but for now here's some books you might like.

Thea is a queer writer of various types of SFF, including the Seer of York series published by Brigids Gate Press, and a number of short fiction works published by Eerie River Publishing, Bag of Bones Press, and others. She is currently querying cyberfae adventure Legend of the Bard. She’s also the British Fantasy Society Event Coordinator for Greater Manchester. See Thea’s upcoming events page for details of what they’re doing.

As an Indie author and a fan of Indie and Small Press books I am always keen to encourage others to read them. Throughout 2026 I will be sending a monthly newsletter with some examples you might want to take a look at. I have read or am reading the novels listed below. Having looked at this list I think I need to say I don’t always need a dead body in it to enjoy fiction!

Red - what is one of your favourite books?  Perfume by Patrick Suskind