I'm A Voracious Reader : Self-published Authors Appreciation Week: Melissa Bowersock

Self-published and small press authors always seem to get a lot of shit, so a bunch of book bloggers decided to get together and share our love for the self-pubbed and small press authors who entertain us with awesome stories. I don't know why certain people out there in the book blogging sphere keep insisting on saying that self-pubbed = crap writing because, while I may have hit a dud or two, most of what I've read over the last decade have been pretty fucking good! So, go click any and/or all of our posts all week long over on Witty & Sarcastic Bookclub run by the fabulous Jodie. Many thanks to her for organizing this and for Anca Antoci over at Summon Fantasy for creating the banners and badge.

For Day 2 of Self-published Authors Appreciation Week, I want to feature an author I found on Kindle Unlimited (big surprise there lol) at a time when I was completely burnt out and needed something that could hold my attention and yet be easy to read. If that makes any sense whatsoever. A fellow reviewer, ?wazithinkin, who reviews over on Big Al's Books & Pals, had posted on Facebook about how much she loves the Lacey Fitzpatrick & Sam Firecloud series by Melissa Bowersock, so I decided to check out book 1, Ghost Walk. At the time there were maybe 20 books in the series, so if I enjoyed book 1 then I figured I was set for awhile. Enjoy? Ha! I plowed through the entire catalog (at the time) in a very short time. Thank the Book Gods they were in KU.

The premise is great. Lacey Fitzpatrick used to be an LA cop and now she's a private investigator. Sam Firecloud works construction, but he can sense ghosts who, for whatever reason, have gotten stuck here on Earth with us. He helps them move off our plane and on to wherever people go when they die. Lacey and Sam meet and the rest is history with ups and downs and all that messy life stuff, but not too much because conflict is good, but so is harmony. Especially when I just want a paranormal cozy mystery that will rest my brain.

The books have a mystery that's not easily solved, but also not incredibly twisty-turny. Lacey does all the background research and Sam does his paranormal woo-woo stuff. The ghosts will break your heart. I may have teared up and sniffled for many of them. Okay, all of them. Each story is unique, with interesting back stories, and they just flow so easily they are relaxing to read. I'm not sure I'm explaining them correctly, but that's how I feel. I've enjoyed each and every story (although some more than others) and I'll keep picking them up as long as the author continues to write them.

There are currently 31 books in the series at the time of this post. I've read 28 of them so far. Are you ready for my review links? I'm not. Oh, boy that's a lot of them. *takes huge breath*

Just FYI: The "Walk" part of the title will make sense after you read the first book.

Melissa Bowersock is an eclectic, award-winning author who writes in a variety of fiction and non-fiction genres: paranormal, biography, western, action, romance, fantasy, spiritual, and satire. She has been both traditionally and independently published and is a regular contributor to the superblog Indies Unlimited. She has a tattoo on the inside of her left wrist that says IMAGINE. In her next life, she plans to be an astronaut. She also writes under the pen name Amber Flame.

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