Wednesday, May 11, 2016

#SPFBO 2016

What is it, you ask? It is the “Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off”!

Last year, organized by author/blogger Mark Lawrence, 10 brave bloggers took on the responsibility of reading and reviewing 273 self-published fantasy novels, with the ultimate goal of choosing one ring to rule them all. Er…one winner. You can read all about last year’s competition here!

It was such a huge hit that they’ve decided to do it again, and guess what, I’m participating! I’ve submitted The Music Box Girl, one of 300 entries into this year’s contest. (that’s right, 300 entries. They had to cap the submissions because it was so popular). Now, we (the authors) don’t win anything, other than some good word of mouth, but I’m really mostly excited about learning about OTHER people’s books. My new favorite might be in there, and I don’t even know it yet!

My book got slotted into the group to be read by The Qwillery, and if you didn’t already know about them, you should totally check them out. They do really good book reviews, as well as fascinating interviews, and I’ve found quite a few new reads through them.

If you want to see a list of all of the submitted books, as well as the bloggers who have taken on the herculean task of wading through 30 books a piece, you can visit Mark Lawrence’s blog post about the contest. He keeps a running list of posts there as the bloggers talk about their assigned books. He has also started another post where each blogger picks their three favorite covers, and it will be updated as they all respond.

SO, if you see the hashtag #SPFBO, that’s what I’m talking about, and I’m hoping to be able to read a few of the submitted titles as well over the course of the summer.

Happy reading, everyone!