#SPFBO X Introductory post
3 June 2024
Filed under Book Reviews
Tags: #SPFBO X, Books, Critiquing Chemist, Fantasy, Introductory Post, Mark Lawrence, SPFBO
Today’s post is going to be fairly short and sweet. SPFBO X is now underway, the books have all been allocated and so I wanted to quickly introduce myself and let authors know a little bit more about my process.
For those who don’t know about SPFBO (the Self Published Fantasy Blog Off) – this is a competition created and run by Mark Lawrence. The competition is now in its tenth year and you can find more about all the other entrants and judges over on Mark Lawrence’s blog.
So, each judge/team is allocated 30 books. This year I am again teaming up with the Critiquing Chemist and we have allocated 15 books per blog.
This year I am planning on reading the first 25% (or for those larger books the first 100 pages) of all the books in my allocation. This way I will quickly gain an idea of the books that I want to continue to read. If the book doesn’t grab my attention within those pages then it will be cut (although if in doubt I will obviously read some more). I realise this probably sounds harsh but we can only have one Finalist and so, likable or not, these tough decisions have to be made.
I will review all the books that I read fully. The books that are cut I will also highlight and provide a quick synopsis of my thoughts up to the point I cut off.
Here are the books in my batch (for more information these can all be found on Goodreads):
Good luck to all the authors. My only advice, use the competition to make contacts and friends with other self published authors. This is such a great community and although the ideal is to win – there can be only one. So, make the best of the competition to find friends. As with every year, I go into my batch of books with high hopes – let’s see if that winner is among my batch.
If you have any questions leave me a comment.
#SPFBO 7 Announcement and Cover Competition
20 May 2021
Filed under Book Reviews
Tags: #SPFBO, Cover Competition, Critiquing Chemist
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=TC2′s batch :
And, after deliberation, discussion and analysis, the three covers chosen for the competition by LB=TC2′ 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.
Books and travelling with Lynn 