The Book Bazaar 2026 is an exciting collaborative crowdfunding event on Backerkit of 39 indie authors who have come together to raise funds for their campaigns. In celebration, and to help promote these authors, we’ll be featuring spotlights through the fundraising period for you to check and out and support! Within The Book Bazaar, you’ll find a variety of genres, including fantasy, sci-fi, horror, queer, and romance, as well as a variety of formats such as novels, novellas, series, anthologies, and audiobooks. There’s something for everyone!
The fundraising period runs from October 29 – November 19. Back 3 or more projects to earn unique bookmarks, and 10 or more projects to receive an exclusive anthology. Want a taste of these projects? Check out the free sampler bundle on Itch.io!
Please welcome MELT: Refrain by Subvertebra in the spotlight!
MELT: Refrain is the first book in a queer, trans Gothic horror series about toxic corporate vampires reinventing what it means to be alive—to live—and the pieces of themselves they lose along the way.
The London-based biotech company Ichorous Innovations was founded, ostensibly, sometime in the 1900s by René Louvel, a man determined to not only research, but build, a better life for people like himself—vampires, that is. Surely the specific year is on the wall-length plaque by the ground-floor lift or something, but Hector can never remember it. He’s preoccupied with other, more important things, like the next time he’s going to get laid, the satisfying shock waves up his arms when he cracks someone’s skull, or, most recently, hazy memories from his thirty-ninth birthday party that ended in sharp glass being plucked from his forehead by cold, gentle hands.
The fact that it took two decades of animosity is impressive, he’ll give himself that much. Not his fault the worst person in the office has an explosive fuse and a mean left hook.
The company was founded, for the record, in 1922, though it didn’t get off the ground until several years later. The date is burned into Simon’s retinas, courtesy of a keen memory and too many hours staring at the plaque on Lee’s wall proclaiming as much. Same goes for the image of blood streaming down Hector’s face, and the knowledge that Simon can’t let something like that happen again. Managing the tension grows more difficult by the day, though, as being a turned vampire is just as taxing during its eighth year as it was on day one.
Simon’s always thought immortality was the short end of the stick. Being proven right has never tasted so sour.
MELT: REFRAIN is the first book in a queer, trans Gothic horror series about toxic corporate vampires reinventing what it means to be alive—to live—and the pieces of themselves they lose along the way. Dipped in noir and drenched in subtle terror, MELT urges you to remember that, much like hate and love, sex and death are eternal bedfellows.
The author is raising funds to bring this project to life with physical copies, with some fun rewards for backers, including portrait cards, bookmarks, stickers, and editing services for authors.
Vert is a cruel and clever cryptid living in the woods somewhere between here and oblivion. He spends his time constructing webs to contain terrible people in even worse circumstances. You can find his horrific tales wherever bones are sold; you can find him in the ache beneath your spine.
Hey, I’m Vert, and I do a whole lot of wild stuff on and off of the internet. The weird indie fiction space is my main haunt, where I’ve worked as an editor for nigh on a decade, a formatter for about half of that, and a glacial-pace author for longer than both those tenures combined. Crafting stories with rough edges, stories that refuse to pull punches, stories with characters that leave a reader feeling two ways about being seen, with endings that don’t sit comfortably—these are my bread and butter, the threads I cherish most when spinning a yarn.
Being an Indigiqueer and disabled creative, my work inevitably ends up with layers upon layers of how its characters and its world fit together in imperfect ways. I love exploring the why, homing in on what conditions and mental states might force someone’s hand, and reminding readers there is no such thing as a perfect victim—tapestries are made far more interesting by a few flaws in the weave.
Trudie Skies is a non-binary author based in North East England, though they have been living inside fantasy worlds ever since they discovered books and refuse to return to reality. Within Trudie’s daydreams you’ll find SPFBO and BBNYA finalist The Thirteenth Hour, a gaslamp fantasy described as obnoxiously British and best read with a cup of tea.
When not conjuring new worlds, Trudie spends their free time exploring the realms of indie books and video games, staring at clouds, and chasing after their fluffy companions.
