The Benny Moon series by Salem Wolf Heart has been an IE fan favorite since the very first installment of this exciting middle grade story about racing, friendship, family, and the Native American Medicine Wheel. 

IngramElliott Publishing is proud to announce that Salem Wolf Heart's third book in the Benny Moon series, Benny Moon Saves the Standing People, has taken the top prize at the 2025 NYC Big Book Award. The awards received books from around the world, and from a number of well-known names, journalists and authors. NYC Big Book Award is committed to celebrated the highest quality in ​independently and traditionally published books.

The Millennium Paradox, the third installment in authors' Peter Berk and Howard Berks award-winning TimeLock series may involve a 'paradox' but it's no mystery why this series is beloved by readers - non stop action, a fun sense of humor, and lots of heart. 

Three years after releasing the award-winning sci-fi/action novel TimeLock – considered a “deftly crafted…compulsive page turner” by Midwest Book Reviews – IngramElliott Publishing will debut the much-anticipated second sequel,TimeLock 3: The Millennium Paradox, on July 24.

​Like its two predecessors, TimeLock and TimeLock 2: The Kyoto Conspiracy, TimeLock 3: The Millennium Paradox was written by father and son Howard Berk and Peter Berk. An award-winning novelist and film and TV writer, Howard Berk’s credits include “Columbo,” “Mission: Impossible,” “The Rockford Files,” and the feature film, “Target,” starring Gene Hackman and Matt Dillon. ​

Setting The Stage: TimeLock & TimeLock 2: The Kyoto Conspiracy
The original TimeLock novel told the riveting story of 23 year-old Morgan Eberly, who’s not only wrongly convicted of murder but selected to be among the first to undergo the radical TimeLock process in which prisoners are instantly aged the number of years of their sentence. During a prison uprising, however, Morgan manages to escape halfway through his 40-year processing and joins forces with FBI agent Janine Price – and the two eventually team up both professionally and personally to bring down the deadly TimeLock program – a program pushed through by the future president of the United States, Myra Winters.
  
In TimeLock 2: The Kyoto Conspiracy, we learn that now-President Winters has authorized the clandestine development of a new version of TimeLock’s cellular alteration process to be used on the battlefield in order to compromise enemy combatants. In a desperate attempt to stop the unhinged president, Morgan and Janine embark on a terrifying adventure that takes them from the nation’s capital to Japan and into the heart of Siberia. 

From The Page To The Screen?
Like the original TimeLock novel, TimeLock 3: The Millennium Paradox is based on a screenplay written by the late Howard Berk and his son Peter. The TimeLock screenplays, as well as First Line of Defense, a political murder mystery novel published late last year by IngramElliott and also available as a screenplay, are being represented by the Corvisiero Literary Agency, which is currently in contact with a wide array of film studios, television and streaming networks and independent producers to explore possible movie or television adaptations.

​Has ten years really passed us by? It seems like yesterday when we made the decision to kickstart a new vision in traditional publishing with IngramElliott Publishing. We are an award-winning, women-owned independent publishing company. We work hard for our clients and are happiest when their labors of love succeed. We have experienced ups and downs just like everyone else. Most importantly, we are proud of what we have accomplished in that time.

We're proud that we were founded and managed by writers and readers. We work side by side with our authors to discover their own unique voice and bring their stories to brilliant life. Our philosophy is one of partnership, in spirit and in our daily practice. 

Our mission continues to be to bring exceptional stories to light in print and on-screen with IE Snaps! and our IngramElliott (IE) imprint. We look forward to more exciting adventures for the next ten years and beyond as we bring great stories to life in film and television!

And IE is nothing without our authors and amazing partners and colloborators. We work with people from all walks of life and that live around the globe. We absolutely would not be here without you and we value our relationships above all. Thanks to all our writers, marketers, designers, editors, artists, and social media geniuses--you know who you are!

Here are some of our greatest hits over our first decade! Stay Tuned for what we will achieve in the next ten years!
 
Our first book baby is born! Pablo Prairie Dog and the WWCC Heroes by our very own P.E. Calvert, Charlotte Calvert Piel, and Kim Starkey Calvert (Illustrator) was published on November 30, 2015! Some friends are big and strong... Some are small, but the only thing that really matters in life, is being a good friend to all! In 2024, this very first title was transformed into WWCC Heroes: Pablo's Adventure, now a best-selling dual language book for kids ages 4-9.
 
The epiphany for IE Snaps! In June 2016, we wrote about the re-emergence of the novella (books from 20,000 – 50,000 words). It was James Patterson and Harper Collins’ foray into novellas – they called them “Book Shots” who brought the novella and short fiction back into vogue. And gave us a brilliant idea! IE Snaps has brought us the TimeLock series in action/sci-fi, The Cornbread Letters in paranormal, The Timestream Verdict in sci-fi, the middle grade series Benny Moon, and the award-winning Western series, Clown William, just to name a few. These short novels read like a movie and have been a fan favorite for IE over the years. 

Dear IE is better than Dear Abby
Authors needing advice? No fear. We are here! Over the years we have posted mountains of advice for authors. Everything from writing tips to the importance of editors to marketing resources. Check out our archives and pick a category. If we have not addressed your issue yet, wait. Or better yet, email your question to us. There is so much information available and so much confusion in the industry, allow us to be your roadmap.

And the Winners are…
Have we mentioned our authors are the best? Of course we have! We shout it from the rooftops every chance we get. From the prestigious Independent Publisher Book Awards (the IPPYs) to New York International Screenplay Awards (NYISA) to National Indie Excellence Awards (NIEA) and more, our authors rack in the accolades every year. Here are just a few examples of our utterly amazing, award-winning authors:

JuJu Justice for the Win!
The screenplay for JuJu Justice, by T.E. Lane placed in the top 20% at the Austin Film Festival (AFF) by being officially named as a Second Rounder in the AFF Script Competition. But that is not all, JuJu Justice was named a Finalist in the NYISA that same year (2024). And the hits keep on coming as JuJu Justice was named a Quarter Finalist in the 2025 Manchester Film Festival Screenplay Competition! This mystical action/drama set in the voodoo culture of New Orleans will be released in 2025.

We knew we had a winner on our hands with T.E. Lane. The author's previous book, The Cornbread Letters, won its own slew of awards: Winner of the Paranormal Mystery/Thriller Category in the 2024 Independent Press Awards, Finalist in the 17th Annual NIEA for New Age Fiction, Semi-Finalist for the Chanticleer International Book Awards (CIBA) CLUE 2023 Book Awards for suspense thrillers and placed as a Second Rounder (screenplay) at AFF.

Reaching for the Stars
The debut novel by M.M. Cochran, Between the Ocean and Stars was a Finalist in the 17th Annual NIEA for her young adult novel where high winds and passion collide. This book hit the Amazon Best Seller list in 2024. We are immensely proud of M.M. Cochran and her second book, The Button Collector, has topped our best-seller list since reaching #2 in Mystery and Detective fiction upon its release last fall. 

Even Our Series are Award-Winning
Vince Bailey won multiple awards for his paranormal historical fiction series, Path of the Half Moon, Courses of the Cursed, Merging Paths, and the entire Curtis Jefferson series claimed the honor of being announced the Grand Prize Winner of the CIBA 2022 Series Award, a category winner in the Paranormal category, and Merging Paths, the final chapter in the Curtis Jefferson series, was proclaimed the Winner of the 17th Annual NIEA for Regional Fiction.

​Political Drama at its Finest
Who says politics is dead? Don’t tell Peter Berk and Howard Berk, co-authors of the award-winning TimeLock series. The first book, TimeLock, was a 2023 CIBA Finalist for Science Fiction, Mystery, and Global Thrillers, as well as a Distinguished Favorite in the TechnoThriller category of the 2024 Independent Press Awards. To top it off, Peter Berk’s First Line of Defense, is a Semi-Finalist in the 2024 CLUE Awards for Suspense/Thrillers.

Cowboys Take Silver and Bronze
Robin Elno’s Clown William series came out guns a blazing with a total of six awards. Clown William (the first book in the series) was the Silver Winner 2018 IPPYs and Winner of Arizona Literary Award, Finalist in the 13th Annual NIEA for Western Fiction, and Finalist for the 2019 Next Generation (NextGen) Indie Book Awards. The second book in the series, Clown William and the Lincoln County War, won the 13th Annual NIEA for Western Fiction. While the entire series was proclaimed the Bronze Winner 2019 IPPYs Best Fiction Series and a Finalist in the 2022 CIBA Fiction Series Awards.

One of the Highest Honors for Independent Publishers Since 1985
Jeffrey Meyer’s first novel, A Call to China, was a Silver Winner in the 30th Annual Benjamin Franklin Awards, now called the Independent Book Publishing Association (IBPA Book Award) and a Finalist in the 13th Annual NIEA and the 2019 NextGen Indie Book Awards.

Moonbeam Magic
IngramElliott authors are not just for adult readers! The middle grade magical adventure Ms. Mulligan and the Enchanted Ice Cream took several awards including: Silver Winner 2018 Moonbeam Awards Preteen Fiction-Mystery, Bronze Winner 2018 Moonbeam Awards Preteen Fiction e-Book, Finalist 13th Annual NIEA for Juvenile Fiction, and Finalist 2018 NextGen Indie Book Awards.

And we are just getting started!
Stay tuned for more exciting times ahead as we at IngramElliott Publishing along with our incredible team and authors continue to reach for the stars and bring you high-quality fiction in books, films, and television. ​

The 2024 Austin Film Festival celebrates the best films and screenplays the industry has to offer. The mission of the AFF is to further the art and craft of storytelling by inspiring and championing the work of writers, filmmakers, and artists who use written and visual language to tell a story. 

The screenplay for JuJu Justice - a forthcoming novel by award-winning author T.E. Lane - was just named an official Second Rounder in the AFF Script Competition. It's a thrilling win for the author and a notable achievement as only the top 20% of screenplays are awarded the honor. 

This is the second honor for the screenplay as it was named a Finalist in the New York International Screenplay Awards earlier this year. 

JuJu Justice is a mystical action/drama written by award-winning writer T.E. Lane. The author’s debut novel, The Cornbread Letters, was a finalist in the 2023 National Indie Excellence and Chanticleer International Book Awards and the Winner of the 2024 Independent Press Awards for Paranormal Thriller. JuJu Justice will be published in 2025 by IngramElliott Publishing. ​

Vince Bailey writes about the journey. In the case of African-American youth Curtis Jefferson, the protagonist of the award-winning series of the same name, it's been a journey filled with ghosts, both real and imagined. There's a running theme in Curtis's journey: evil, in whatever form it may take, can never really be destroyed; rather it takes a new shape. ​

Vince's original vision for this story also took a new shape—it transformed from a single tome into three individual novels. Path of the Half Moon—the first book in the Curtis Jefferson series—was the Winner of the Arizona Authors’ Association Literary Award and the Chanticleer International Book Awards for Paranormal and Supernatural Fiction. Book two--Courses of the Cursed—was a Finalist in the 15th Annual National Indie Excellence Awards. Merging Paths is the exciting conclusion to the colorful, intricate world presented in this unique paranormal series. 

We caught up with Vince for a Q&A session that sheds some light on his intentions behind the series. Merging Paths is available in print and e-book on October 11, 2022. 

​African American youth Curtis Jefferson’s supernatural saga of restless spirits and ghostly vendettas continues as Curtis escapes from Fort Grant—the remote detention facility to which he was unjustly sentenced. As he sets out upon a dangerous journey, Curtis realizes quickly that the century-old curse of Fort Grant has not been extinguished by the brutal demise of his nemesis, as was hoped.

This final installment in the award-winning Curtis Jefferson series follows our hero through his escape from the cursed reformatory, his struggle to survive a perilous desert crossing, and his attempts to evade a fierce lawman—one whose aim is not to capture, but to kill the young fugitive.
​
Meanwhile, in a parallel story related to the curse of Fort Grant, Isabel and Ray Cienfuegos continue to elude their spectral stalker, the murderous demon-spirit Ezra. Former chief of the Aravaipa Apache and self-appointed avenger of the mass murder of his people, the old shaman’s tireless pursuit of his quarry provokes a defensive instinct in Isabel, who refuses to be cornered. Merging Paths presents an alliance of protagonists who grapple with the forces of evil in its various forms, and concludes with a riotous climax that is sure to gratify readers who have followed the journey of good versus evil in Path of the Half Moon and Courses of the Cursed.

We caught up with Vince upon the release of this final novel in the series for a behind-the-scenes look at the end to Curtis's long journey. 

Tell us a little about your book’s title and what it represents.
As the final installment of a three-part series, Merging Paths, recaps its predecessor books, Path of the Half Moon and Courses of the Cursed, and brings the trilogy to its raucous conclusion. Each of the titles suggests a journey, rather than an experience. But I have to confess that, while I worked hard at presenting each of the three as a stand-alone work, the series was originally written start-to-finish as a single effort. Consequently, there are a number of sought-for resolutions held in abeyance for book three, including Curtis’s coming together with the characters and subplots evolving through the first two books—thus the title Merging Paths.

Tell us something in your book that is not in the summary.
Like its two parent novels, Merging Paths continues as a “frame story,” that is, a tale within a tale. We find Curtis feeling inclined to share his harrowing Fort Grant experiences with his friend, Vince. It is Curtis who tells the story while it is fresh in his mind, but it is Vince who absorbs the tale and commits it to ink, presumably years later. The tale-within-a-tale device introduces a number of intermittent points of clarification I call “interludes.” These interludes are presented by Vince in the first person, relating his dialogue with Curtis. But when the tale transitions to the narrative, it is offered in the third person. It is still Vince, channeling Curtis, so to speak, but from an omniscient perspective. With this background in mind, the ever-shifting points of view that punctuate the series should be quite simple for readers to navigate.

Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
I try to be subtle in my writing with regard to themes—I don’t think readers need to be hit over the head with pretty platitudes. However, there certainly are a number of recurring themes in the Curtis Jefferson series that run just under the surface. One theme that merits mentioning involves the notion that evil can never really be completely vanquished. We see it all the time: whenever a wicked plot or evil actor seems to be extinguished, it invariably reincarnates itself in some other way. J.R.R. Tolkien said it best in the opening pages of Fellowship of the Ring: “Always after a defeat and a respite, the Shadow takes another shape and grows again.” In order to avoid spoilers in Merging Paths, I won’t cite examples—just a heads-up for readers to watch for it.

Do you plot your stories or just get an idea and run with it?
I have to laugh at myself over this one. As I said, I wrote the trilogy as one epic tome—1,200 pages blooming from the seed of an excerpt from another (ongoing) writing project. I think that effort was fueled in part by a need for me to know what happens next. Clearly, I leave the plotting to my characters, and I seem to have little control over what they do or say.
​
Tell us how you became a writer—what inspired you to write your first book.
​I was always a daydreamer in grade school—these days they’d call it ADD—always scribbling down all the tales and vignettes that my wandering mind would conjure in order to distract me from long division. Later, I took up journaling as an extension of my adolescent scribbling. As a young adult, I authored a number of letters to my local newspaper, taking issue with home-grown matters that struck me as unjust or worthy of comment. Eventually, the paper hired me to pen a weekly column. In time, I began to write for magazines on a freelance basis (I still write a monthly column for a nationally distributed trade mag). I embarked on the Curtis Jefferson journey at the behest of my young sons who convinced me that I was (am) a pretty good yarn spinner.

Congratulations to our author Vince Bailey as the second book in his award-winning Curtis Jefferson series was just named as a finalist in the 15th Annual National Indie Excellence Awards. Celebrating excellence in independent publishing, the NIEA named Courses of the Cursed as a finalist in the Regional Fiction category for Southwest-focused fiction. 

Vince Bailey grew up in central Arizona, starting in the late nineteen-fifties. His youthful experiences there contribute significantly to the nostalgic aspect of his fiction writing. Courses of the Cursed is the second book in the award-winning Curtis Jefferson series. His debut novel, Path of the Half Moon, is the Winner of the Arizona Authors’ Association Literary Award and the Chanticleer International Book Awards for Paranormal and Supernatural Fiction.

Vince Bailey's award-winning Path of the Half Moon is the first book in the Curtis Jefferson series. Set in a remote detention facility for wayward boys in the early sixties, Curtis is tested by a murderous inmate and a century-old Native American curse.

Winner of the CIBA Paranormal Book Awards and the Arizona Authors' Association Literary Award, Path of the Half Moon presents an edgy and thrilling escape from the ordinary.   

 
More Praise for the Curtis Jefferson series:

Bailey's voice sparkles in this gritty tale about injustice, survival, and the mysterious world of angry ghosts and dark magic. Don't miss it."   —Todd Fahnestock (bestselling author of The Wishing World, Fairmist, and Wildmane)

"Curtis does what all great storyteller’s do—he creates a suspension of disbelief, granting the listener the right to believe.”
                       —5 Star Rating, Chanticleer Book Reviews

Vince has also been published in several college and local newspapers, and for the past ten years he has penned a column for a nationally distributed trade periodical. Mr. Bailey currently resides in Arizona with his family. He's currently working on the next book in the Curtis Jefferson series.

Connect with the author at VinceBailey.com

IngramElliott Publishing is proud to announce that three of our titles have been named as Finalists in the 2019 NextGen Indie Book Awards! The Next Generation Indie Book Awards is the largest international book awards program for indie authors and independent publishers. In its thirteenth year of operation, the Next Generation Indie Book Awards was established to recognize and honor the most exceptional independently published books in over 70 different categories.

We congratulate our winning authors!