I got word today that my novel, Maven Fairy Godmother, is a semi-finalist in Amazon.com’s Breakout Novel Contest. By all means, go over a give it a free read, and tell me what you think. I am glad to have made it to the first round, and would like to move up. The comments so far have been very helpful and mostly positive. I am so excited.
I’m also concerned that there may be some serious re-writes ahead, but that is okay. I’ll have some good feedback before I take another look, and in the meantime, I can work on the sequel, already about 25% in first draft. I am doing more writing than I have in most of my life, now that I have two of my own blogs and one for my job. Research takes time, but it pays off in more ideas and more resources. Any by the time Maven is in print, I’ll have the platform up and going for her to stand on.
The comments so far indicate that Maven is not far enough from the stereotype of fairy godmothers in Disney movies to be interesting. I may reevaluate that, especially in the first 50 pages of the book, which is all that is presented at Amazon. If an editor reads that far into a book, then the writer has a good shot. From my own experience, I won’t read that much of a book expecting it to get better, and the few that I have read because it was required, never got better, and some that stated out with promise never delivered. So I am very glad to get this kind of feedback.
The semi-finalists collect votes, and from there the finalists are chosen. The final winner will get a publication contract, and the 9-runners up will be able to publish through Booksurge, the Amazon Print on Demand service.
The writers group that published Port Nowhere used Booksurge, back before Amazon bought them, and they do good work. Their templates are easy to use so that you can make a decent looking book with in a reasonable amount of time, although it helps to have a deep knowledge of some of Word’s advanced features.
I also have some other stories, though not about Maven, at my website http://charlottebabb.com , These are the stories from Port Nowhere, and are not fantasy but space opera. They were a lot of fun to do, and I hope sometime to revise the proprietary bits out and republish them in a new setting. Now to spam all my friends and get out the votes. This is one candidate I am completely behind–unless that means I am beside myself!
You must log in to post a comment.