First, I hope you are safe and well.
Second, it has been a very busy week.
There I was, happily putting the finishing touches to book one of the series The Souls’ Abyss when I saw a Facebook notification about the SFPBO. In case you don’t know much about it – and I didn’t until Wednesday night – it is a competition that runs each year specifically for self-published fantasy novels.
Some winners in recent years – The Grey Bastards and The Sword of Kaigen – are superb and I asked myself could I do the same? Could I enter and win? But firstly could I get The Dark Crown ready to enter in 3 days?
The brief answer is yes. I was able to source a cover the next day and get everything sorted to enter on Saturday along with 299 other authors. The competition is now closed, and I am in. It takes about 5 months to judge – via a mammoth effort of various bloggers and fantasy book lovers – to whittle it down from 300 to a top 10. Then a further 4 months to decide on a winner.
This also means my book is now available. I’m very excited and rather scared all at the same time. After five years of writing it is now freed from my laptop, and it’s rather liberating. I now have to concentrate on marketing book one and get book two ready for release.
It just goes to show that you can get anything done with a deadline.
scgowland.com 