The tap-tap-tapping of the typewriter pays…”

For the past 16 months, I’ve relentlessly hawked my own book—which, in case you hadn’t heard, is now available in a compact, affordable paperback and even a Kindle edition—but as I glance over at my blogroll, I see an impressive roster of authors, novelists, and scholars whose productivity I admire and whose work deserves attention and praise.

Michael Drout at Wormtalk and Slugspeak is the author of How Tradition Works: A Meme-Based Cultural Poetics of the Anglo-Saxon Tenth Century, an intriguing study of the Benedictine Reform. He also edited The J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, to which a certain D.C.-based blogger contributed the first and last word on Tolkien and postage stamps.

Alexis Fajardo, the cartoonist who created the all-ages comic Kid Beowulf, has an online shop full of goodies, including Book One of Kid Beowulf, a preview of Kid Beowulf and the Song of Roland, and an anthology of mythological action tales.

Matthew Gabriele at Modern Medieval is the editor of the forthcoming The Legend of Charlemagne in the Middle Ages: Power, Faith, and Crusade, a collection of articles I am rather eager to read.

My Garden State broheim Steven Hart is the author of The Last Three Miles: Politics, Murder, and the Construction of America’s First Superhighway. He also wrote a much-needed piece debunking the hallowed George Lucas-Joseph Campbell connection.

Michael Livingston, who teaches medieval lit at The Citadel, is a prolific writer of short stories. He also edited John Gower’s In Praise of Peace and The Siege of Jerusalem for the invaluable TEAMS Middle English Texts series. (His intro to The Siege of Jerusalem is an enlightening primer on a highly unpleasant medieval poem.)

The very busy C.M. Mayo, who divides her time between D.C. and Mexico, has written a traveler’s guide to literary Mexico, an award-winning story collection, and a forthcoming novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire.

My pal Scott Nokes at Unlocked Wordhoard co-edited Global Perspectives on Medieval English Literature, Language, and Culture, a new collection of articles about such wide-ranging subjects as Chaucer, Narnia, and the Popol Vuh.

Last fall, I met Work-in-Progress blogger Leslie Pietrzyk at a fundraiser in Virginia. She’s the author of two lovely novels, A Year and a Day and Pears on a Willow Tree. (The latter, which focuses on several generations of Polish-American women, recently won the Jeff’s Mom Seal of Approval, an honor not lightly bestowed.)

Alan Sullivan, the poetic helmsman of Seablogger, co-translated a strong and highly readable version of Beowulf for Longman.

The authors at Contemporary Nomad have more books to their credit than I can list, but I particularly recommend the haunting series of Eastern European spy novels by Olen Steinhauer, who writes literary fiction disguised as genre fiction.

I hope you’ll decide to learn more about these hard-working writers; please support their efforts by purchasing some of their books.