I regret to report that if you had any money riding on Beneath the Lanterns making it to even the semi-finals of the Self Published Fantasy Blog Off No. 9, you've lost your bet. Once again, all I got of one of these contests was the thrill of hope and anticipation, the agony of defeat, and a nice review. Not that I'm complaining, mind you, as it was a thoughtful and positive review. You can read the review here or on the Goodreads page for the book here. Statistically, making it to the final 10 was a 1 in 30 chance and winning the contest was a 1 in 300 shot. But given that part of the fun for me of writing this story was avoiding all the fantasy tropes I could think of, the odds were likely a wee bit longer.
For the record, I did write Beneath the Lanterns as an attempt to widen my readership by appealing to fantasy readers. You can read my thoughts on how I came to write the book here in two parts; Part One and Part Two Suffice to say that it is a post-apocalyptic story with its science fiction backdrop so remote in time and unexplored in the story that it reads as a fantasy story. Mark Lawrence did a similar thing in his first fantasy series setting it in our post-apocalyptic world, and he's the founder of SPFBO, so I think it passes muster as a fantasy. Still, I must confess that part of the fun of writing this story, as I said above, was tweaking the nose of fantasy expectations. For example, it is probably the only fantasy book written in this century where no character dies in the story. Heck, there's not even a real sword fight, not to mention you'll find no dragons, no folklore beings, no teen princesses/assassins, no evil kings, no epic quest or endless battles, no nameless evil to fight, and no magic system in it. It is not modern fantasy. So, in short, I have only myself to blame for Beneath the Lanterns washing out of SPFBO 9. I can live with it. In the end, it is far more fun to have fun writing what you want rather than what you think readers want you to write.
You may recall a previous past blog in which I reported that I volunteered to write one quarter of a four part short story for the blog that was reviewing my book for SPFBO. The complete story has now been published and you can find the final part here along with links to the first three parts, if you care to read it. I wrote the third part, followed by Jean Gill, who took the story in her own way with her own twist, bringing it back around to the beginning. I haven't looked back on my manuscript, but I have a vague feeling they tweaked my ending just slightly to make her ending work. In any event, I told you how I would've ended the story in that blog post so you can compare it to Jean Gill's and decide which one you like better.
One final note; I didn't bother to enter a book in the science fiction version of the contest for self published authors (SPSFC), this year, as I have in the last two years, nor do I have any plans to do so in the future. It appears they received only 221 entries this year, short of the target 300. (Compare that to the fantasy version that filled its 300 slots in something like 47 minutes.) I'm not surprised, since there didn't seem to be a great deal of interest in the SF version of the contest outside of the authors who had books entered in the contest - if that. So, with little to gain, and a risk of receiving a bad review, entering another of my books didn't seem to be worth the bother. Besides my most straight SF book would be my space opera, The Bright Black Sea, and it is way too long for the science fiction version of the contest. Though I must say that the fantasy version routinely has books of that size. fantasy being fantasy. The fantasy version of the contest is six year older, and since there is a much larger fan base for fantasy, there seems to be a lot more involvement and interest in the contest - at least amongst the reviewers. Even so, I didn't see any bump in sales from it either. I suspect that for any book to see a significant jump in sales it would have to be one of the 10 finalist.
I will offer some more thoughts about my experience in the SPFBO in the coming weeks.
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