Kenai advances!
Jan 16, 2024 3:48 am
Welcome, new folks!
Hi, there. If you've joined the mailing list recently, I want to make sure you get your free Frosthelm book, Traitors Unseen. If you haven't gotten it, you can get it free here (the site will ask you to sign up for this newsletter, which you're already getting) or here from Smashwords. It's also on Apple Books, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble. Please, enjoy with my compliments.
SPSFC success!
I have some cool news to share. My latest book, Kenai, has advanced to the semifinals of the SPSFC, an indie science fiction competition run by Hugh Howey of Wool fame. There will eventually I think be 18 semifinalists, shrinking to 6 finalists some time near the end of March, out of a starting pool of 221 books, with the final winner announced in July.
Each judging group is made up of book bloggers and other volunteers.
Here is a link to my team's post where Kenai was named a semi-finalist:
The hub page describing their whole process is here. It's been going on for several months now, since August:
- Hub Page
My other sci fi novel, Daros, reached the semifinals in the 2021-22 competition, and it's a huge honor to be there again.
Here are the three reviews for Kenai from the judges (two other judges on the team rated it without posting a review):
More on the competition here: TheSPSFC.org
I am very grateful to the judges for all their work and to my fellow authors for theirs. I'm excited to see what the next round brings!
What Grows From the Dead
I'm working now on revising my second thriller, What Grows From the Dead. It is the story of an out-of-work former college professor who gets embroiled in a decades-old family drama, complete with mysterious weapons, legal threats, and murder. I have notes now from five of my early reader team to work on, and I've got one more set of comments on the way soon, I hope. After revisions, I'll run it by my copy editor, Tami, and then get it ready for release, hopefully in February.
After that, I'll dive into my NaNoWriMo 2023 project, a comedic fantasy novel, and try to get the first draft of that done and edited. Sometime in the middle of all this, I'll get 1080 puzzle card games from India and have to send out a bunch of them to my Kickstarter backers. So, a busy time for me coming up!
Some stories to try
I'm part of several author collectives, and we share each other's work to try to help all of us reach more readers. In many cases, the books we share are are free or discounted. Sometimes, they ask that you sign up for a newsletter like this one. Here are some new books I have to share this month:
First, I have Once We Flew by Nikky Lee. This is a novella telling the story of Marsa, part of a society of survivors from a crashed colony ship on a distant world where the native biota can grant you special powers. Sounds like great stuff!
Next up is Last Frontier, a military sci-fi story about a doctor aboard a warship in the middle of an interstellar conflict. It sounds like there's a potential romance brewing as well. This is a full novel on sale for $0.99, so check it out!
Next is The Birth, a free prequel to Shane Shepherd's Nexus series, where future spacefarers train on Earth to fly into conflict among the stars. You can give it a try for zero money.
Next up is I, Magus, a free story by Troy Young about the subject of his Companions of the Stone series. This tells of a son of a wealthy family shipped off to a school of magic against his will. You can get a preview of the series here for free.
Finally, I have The Survivors by Richard Rimington, another free prequel that sets up the Infinite Void series. This one is pure space opera, set in a far future time among spacefaring races. See if it's up your alley here.
Thank you!
Thanks so much for being part of my little literary community. I'll let you know when I've got new releases coming, and I'll let you know how SPSFC goes. I hope to enter SPFBO (the fantasy older sibling of SPSFC) this year too, so there will be even more contest news. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time.
May the Bloodmother watch over you -
Dave
