Happy July! It is the first day and the first Friday of the month, so it is time for another Black Author Spotlight! The goal of this segment is to highlight black authors who are often marginalized and ignored in the publishing industry. Black writers usually turn to self-publishing--an already densely populated industry--to have their stories seen, and it is said that we have to work twice as hard to get half of what our white counterparts have. Hopefully, shining a little light on these authors will help to signal boost the work they are putting out there.
Today, I am highlighting Samone "S.D." Johnson.
Samone is a self-published speculative fiction author, wife, and mother of three. She is also a mentor, beta reader, proofreader/editor, copywriter, and ghost writer, and she also helps promote other books! She actually has her own
author spotlight as well! Samone's website is equally as active as she is. You can view her
current read as well as books she's read previously, and watch her booktuber videos!
Her first series, The Fallen Scion Series, is currently available on Amazon, and if you visit her website, you might actually find a free sneak peek of Book 1: The Scion's Descent *wink*. Here are the awesome covers of all three books (peep the backgrounds!):
And here is the synopsis:
The Falling Scion Series is a coming-of-age story dropped at the crossroads of Mad Max and family deception. The year is 2305 in a post-apocalyptic dystopian United States. Our fragmented Scion Yoli has grown up regal and privileged in the Shore Delegation but is seemingly transformed overnight when she is kidnapped by a sister that she never knew existed and told the truth about her bloodline and pedigree. She can’t trust anyone and she’s full of resentment, and all she wants to do is run from all of it. She doesn’t have time to be smitten with Solomon the Post Trader or lose her best friend and Daily, Selah. Yet, with learning the truth, she’s forced to deal with it head-on or be consumed by the deceit.
Everything changed for Yoli, the day the men of the Pit and their heinous leader Santana got their hands on her. Santana tortures Yoli, in hopes to get information from her that could change the course of their history. Not to mention this evil man is revealed to be Yoli’s uncle and mortal enemy. After an all-hands-on-deck heist to get her back from the Pit. Yoli goes through a tragic drug-induced detox only to be forever changed from the sheltered heir of the Shore Delegation to a wild child still grappling with life after the enemy has sieged and destroyed her home. The once life-loving young lady has become a dark, brooding, life-hating, hedonist drowning her broken pieces in debauchery. Along with Solomon the Post Trader (the man she has come to swoon after), her new sister Stacia (the one she once admired and now loathes), the people of the Bottoms, and the bounty hunters, the group finds themselves at the Barnes Military Base with the Pit looming close behind them. This is where Yoli learns two of the most crucial parts of her existence and she realizes that she has to get her act together and her life in order if she is going to live to see another day. It’s this bit of information that her sister was hiding that took from a young adolescent girl to a woman that must make adult decisions. One of those things is that her traditional tattoo Scion markings that she received at the age of thirteen during her coming-of-age ceremony, hold the key to a “promised land” beyond the desert wasteland that they all know. It’s that map in her Scion markings that her greedy uncle Santana will stop at nothing to get his hands on.
It’s at this moment that Yoli rises up and uses the information that Santana was after to keep her loved ones safe. She decides that it's her time to lead and stop crying about a past that she cannot change. Yet even that causes a whole new set of problems. The Pit is hot on her trail and she still can’t shake the burden of lies that she has to carry every time she looks at her sister, but she perseveres with the little hope that she has left. It’s lead her people or die trying time.
Faced with the tragic loss of one of Yoli’s loved ones, she decides that enough is enough and heads out after the enemy on her own to put an end to the torment that her family has suffered. She wanted to look death in the face and conquer it once and for all. Will she succeed?
Sounds intriguing! I love a good complicated family narrative.
Once again, you can visit Samone's website at
http://www.authorsdjohnson.com/.
Follow Samone on Twitter and Facebook at authorsdjohnson.
Follow her on
Instagram.
________________________________________________________________________________
If you are a Black author who would like to be in the spotlight, email me the following information at debreneebyrd@gmail.com
Name or Pen Name
Genre
Website/Blog
Social Media handles
Book (if any) and where to buy
Permission to use photos