If you follow this blog you’ll probably be aware that I take part in the Self Published Fantasy Blog Off (SPFBO) competition as a judge.   SPFBO 6 finished recently – my wrap up post is here and SPFBO 7 will begin on June 1st.

What’s SPFBO?  This is a competition for self published authors of fantasy fiction.  It’s the brainchild of Mark Lawrence and it’s mission (other than to boldly go….) is :

‘The SPFBO exists to shine a light on self-published fantasy. It exists to find excellent books that might otherwise have gone unnoticed. It exists to help readers select, from the enormous range of options, books that have a better chance of entertaining them than a random choice, thereby increasing reader faith in finding a quality self-published read.’

Check out Mark Lawrence’s post here to look at this year’s entrants, judges and allocations list. 

The first announcement : 

For the purposes of SPFBO 7 : The Critiquing Chemist and I will be teaming up.  Our judging team will be known as LB=TC² (as displayed in the banner above).  Basically, we got to talking and before you could say ‘give our creation life’ – things had moved on and we were a team (woohoo):

We will be posting again shortly to outline our process in terms of the competition.

The second announcement :

Is in relation to the Cover Competition. 

Every year, as part of SPFBO, there is a cover competition.  Each of the 10 judges chooses 3 covers from their selection of books and these are then voted on by both the judges and the public.  Go ahead and take a look at all the lovely covers and make sure to vote on your favourites once the link becomes available (keep your eyes peeled here).

Below are the covers from LB=TC^2′s batch :

And, after deliberation, discussion and analysis, the three covers chosen for the competition by LB=TC^2′ are:

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wait for it….

Do you have a favourite??

Note to authors – if I’ve not displayed the most recent cover then please let me know.