"Happy Birthday Evil Mastermind, Happy Birthday to you..."

     Once upon a time there was a very helpful author who had a page on Facebook. Unlike some authors (cough, cough) he didn’t use his page to promote his own work, instead he posted rather amusing photographs and asked his ‘fans’ to caption them. They were enormous fun and soon this particular fan became addicted and popped over regularly to see what had been written.

     The friendly author also encouraged us to ‘like’ struggling author pages to help us increase numbers. When this struggling author asked the friendly author to promote her new page, he did so immediately and she soon had some new fans to chat to.

     Eventually, the friendly author decided he needed more of a challenge and asked his fans if we thought he should start up a website to do something more to promote authors. Would it be something we would enjoy, appreciate or indeed visit?

     Lots of us said we would definitely visit a magical place like that and a few weeks later we had invites to see his new castle website. It was magnificent. The articles were well written and very helpful covering all sorts of topics that authors need to get their heads around. The friendly author had changed his name to the Evil Mastermind which was not at all what he was like and had employed henchmen to guard the gates to the castle website and beautiful princes and princesses who wrote entertaining and useful articles which could only serve to help budding authors. 

     The site grew rapidly in popularity and began to give hope and help to all Indie authors all over the world.

The End...Or is it?

     Today is the first 'birthday' or anniversary of that site - Indies Unlimited. It really is a sort of a Fairy Tale or rather more of a success story. It recently became a finalist in the IBBA Awards and has attracted attention from all over the world. Authors regularly write in for help or to have their work reviewed or showcased. It now boasts a team of twenty-seven award-winning good-looking authors and contributors from all over the globe. There are some 559 Staff articles, 41 tutorials, 173 guest posts and 83 Flash Fiction Challenges among other gems on the site.

     It was all the brainchild of one man, Stephen Hise, author and extraordinary kind-hearted man who for some unfathomable reason has been nicknamed the Evil Mastermind. I, for one, learned more about promotion, marketing, writing and reviewing in a few months than I had ever learned before thanks to reading the posts on the site. 

     This year I was asked to join the team. It was an extremely proud moment as you tell from my daft expression above as I sport my new Indies Unlimited t-shirt.

     Sites like this are invaluable to writers and readers. The team is exceptionally talented (okay, I am not blowing my own trumpet here. I am referring to everyone else) and everyone works very hard to ensure quality posts are submitted.

     Not been to have a look? Then you really should.

     Is this a Fairy Tale? Maybe it is because it serves to show that if you have a dream you should go for it. It also proves that if you work together you can achieve a lot more.

Happy Birthday Indies Unlimited. Congratulations to Stephen, his beautiful blogging partner Kat, Minion controller Laurie and all the minions people who make it such a brilliant place to hang out.

MY 'BIRTHDAY' VIDEO FOR INDIES UNLIMITED

-check out Mr Pish