My favorite child, In My Time of Dying was named a semifinalist in Mark Lawrence’s eleventh annual Self-Published Fantasy Blog Off.
My favorite child was not named a finalist.
I couldn’t be happier with the results. No really. I’m as competitive as the next person but when I saw the books I was up against, I knew there was only a slim chance I’d be named a finalist. I’m good, the book is good. (Did I mention it’s one of my favorites? I love all my books but it just hits the spot.) However, occasionally a book comes along that is just the right shade of special. And I do believe that the book that was chosen as a finalist has that: a certain shade of special. So, I was a little sad when it wasn’t my book. But I’m a big girl, grown up, and Gen X. I don’t need a participation trophy, and I can be happy for the success of others. What’s that word? Sportsmanship? Yeah, that’s it. Good Sportsmanship.
Then I started thinking. There’s no prize money for SPFBO. Just bragging rights. I got a fancy sticker. But really, the reason I entered the contest was in the hopes of having complete strangers read my books. And that happened. They wrote reviews and everything. Some of them even gave it star ratings. People added it to their TBR piles. Soon more people will get to a certain point in that book and do a double-take and say “WTF?!” And then even more people will know I am out of my mind. And that’s all I wanted. It’s all I could have hoped for. Being named a semifinalist was even more than I’d hoped for.
And after realizing that I’d gotten exactly what I wanted out of the contest, that’s when I decided that semifinalist was just the right amount of attention. Now, I have the rest of the year off. I can cheer for the books that I like, I can read the ones that are in my own TBR pile, and I can write without worry. Oh, I do have two other books in contests but those won’t be decided for quite some time so I’m not even worrying about them yet.
More importantly, entering SPFBO gave me the chance to connect with people I never would have met otherwise. It showed me new paths that I could walk down and has inspired me to keep going and building my authorship when I was starting to feel that I was wasting my time and screaming into the void. I now have an interest in aspects of being an Indie Author that I hadn’t realized I was missing.
So yeah, Semifinalist is the Shizz. It’s where it’s at. … No cap.
So much to do, so little time! Darius and her Dragon have to save the world, Milia is on her way to New Orleans, and D’Mique is about to throw down with a certain tree daemon. …We won’t bring up Ralph yet. He’s lurking around here somewhere.
