Bookish Bundles 📚 and Cat Pictures 🐱
Jul 25, 2025 5:01 pm
In my last email I said I'd talk to you again in a week, but here I am yapping into the cyber void of readers 2 weeks later. Typical. 🥴
In case you forget who I am—does anyone even know?—I'm C.L. Carhart, the weirdo indie author who writes mystical romance and magical adventures set in the Teutonic Fantasy Realm. An alternate version of southern Germany and western Austria where witches live among us in secret, weaving elemental spells into the world for the greater good.
Or for darker purposes.
Depends on the witch (or priest). 💀
If you've read any of my books and enjoyed them, I'd love to hear about it straight from you! Feel free to reply to any of my emails at any time to let me know which witchy character is your favorite. Is it Helena? Swanie? Ilsa? Zehra? Doro or Amira? How about one of the quirky side characters? Send me a reply and let me know; this author is super curious! 😍
I've got 4 series in the wild right now, and you can start any or all of them by clicking on the Book 1 covers below. All of my books are available on multiple retailers and on my book shop, as well as on library apps and Kobo Plus.
Complete series:
Series in process:
Introducing: Itch.io
In my last email I dropped some hints about a new-to-me retailer where I'm setting up shop in the cyber world. That retailer is Itch.io, and it's most well known as a gaming platform. It's been around for over a decade, and a wide variety of indie game developers upload and sell their products there.
More recently, itch has opened its storefront to sellers of other digital products, including eBooks. Some indie authors I know from Twitter/X and Discord started setting up shop there about a year ago, and I finally got my foot in the door earlier this month. Right now all of my standalone eBooks are available on my itch storefront, which you can browse here:
One of the great things about itch is that they don't take a major cut of sales. Most indie book retailers—like Amazon, Kobo, and Nook for example—take 30% of sales and pay 70% royalties. Itch.io, on the other hand, takes only 10% of sales, which means authors (and game developers) keep nearly 90% of the earnings for each product sold! 💰
Aside from my personal book shop, itch is where I'll see the biggest chunk of whatever you're paying to buy any of my books. So if you're tech-savvy enough to download and read an ePub (eBook) file without help from BookFunnel or another app, please consider trying out itch!
(If you usually buy from Smashwords, you can 100% buy from itch. You buy, you download an ePub file. Exactly like Smashwords.)
Book Bundles: Authors Collaborate
Now here's the great thing about itch.io. They have a system where authors (or game developers) can collaborate and sell bundles of their products for a sweet discount. This week I've teamed up with 19 other authors to present my first ever Itch Bundle in honor of Disability Pride Month.
In this bundle, you can get 20 stories from 20 different authors for only $30. Each author involved in the bundle gets 5% of sales, so for every bundle sale I'll receive around $1.10. To be honest, that's a HUGE amount for a broke indie author who usually makes around 33¢ whenever she's running a 99¢ sale on the major retailers. 🙃
Disability Pride, you ask? I only just found out that July is Disability Pride Month, and I suppose it's about time I celebrate it.
While I don't typically blare my health story through a tuba, if you know me in real life, you're probably aware that I have Type 1 diabetes. Insulin dependent since age 14, and trapped in a seemingly infinite struggle against the pharma companies who overprice treatments that actually work in my country.
(If you want the details, you'll have to email and ask. I don't want to waste your time with the weeds and thorns of being a Type 1 in the US.)
Since diabetes is considered a disability, I joined up with 19 other indie authors to participate in the Itch Bundle linked in the above graphic. You can also check it out by clicking the button below. I've contributed Gift of Air to the bundle, in honor of the fire priest Horst. 🔥
Want to toss a dollar to me and 19 other awesome disabled authors and get 20 stories for your efforts? Here's your chance to do it!
Cat Pictures!
As promised, I snapped a handful of updated photos of my two youngin's this week. And I'm sharing the best two with you. Below you can see Panther perched on the binder I used in high school and wondering why my husband is making weird noises at him (trying to get him to look at the camera, LOL).
Here we've got Mango (who's a year and 2 months old as of now) sitting behind my laptop and giving me a suspicious look. On the body pillow against the wall you can see all of Thunar except his head. Fuzzy gray old man is 15 this year!
July Book Fairs: Ending Soon
Here's your usual reminder about the BookFunnel events happening in July, along with the Smashwords Summer/Winter sale. If you haven't grabbed the giant boxed set of my debut series, His Name Was Augustin, you can get it for 50% off at Smashwords until the end of July. Act fast!
Other Books You Might Like
Found two intriguing stories for you to add to your TBR this weekend. We've got fated mates and wolf shifters waiting for you to sign up for an author's newsletter. And an otherworld awaits a half-fae dude unaware of his heritage—this one's available on all retailers and is free everywhere but Amazon. 🍀
Can a mating bond bridge the gap between feuding packs...or will it destroy them all?
Maya Wessex and Garrett Colvin were childhood friends until their pack rivalry tore then apart. When they meet again as adults, the mating bond roars to life, giving them a second chance at life, love, and mating.
But when a vicious attack on Maya’s pack threatens to ignite a war, not only is their mating at risk, but their lives and the lives of their pack.
It ain’t easy being fey--when you don’t believe in Faerie tales.
In the fey Otherworld, a half-faerie child is born. To protect him from evil’s crusade to scour impurities from the faerie race, he is abandoned in the human world, never to know of his magical heritage.
Now the boy is a man rooted in reality, and fantasy is merely foolishness from an undisciplined imagination. Successful businessman, Jaye Zeroun prides himself on his realistic, but lonely, view of life. Until Allyn Keely, Celtic artist and friend of Faerie knots her way around his heart, filling his life with fantastic tales he refuses to believe.
Allyn finally finds a man to love but first she must help him discover his heritage and destiny in the Otherworld. She’s fully human, older than Jaye, and once he returns to his fey family, he could never love her. When danger threatens Allyn, Jaye is forced to either accept the reality of a deadly, magical battle or lose the very things he never planned for in his life--family and a love beyond his wildest imaginings.
I'd better let you get on with your weekend plans. A certain Teutonic romantasy book is calling my name, because Konstantin and Helena are grappling with the implications of Wuotan's greed right now. It ain't easy loving a Black Priest.
Don't forget to check out the Disability Pride Bundle on itch.io at the first link below. No matter what you're reading this weekend, I hope it grants your life a dash of welcome weirdness!
Talk to you soon,
C.L. Carhart
Disability Pride Bundle:
https://itch.io/b/3173/disability-pride-month-book-bonanza-part-two
My books discounted at Smashwords:
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/clcarhart1066
Get Claimed by the Undead:
https://bf.clcarhart.com/fd9deoy799
Start the Elemental Bloodlines series for free: