Send Your Fighter Into the Ring

My experience with competition has, until now, been limited to Jiu Jitsu. I train. I work hard. I prepare. I map out my fight in its ideal form, so I won’t hesitate. I put on my gi. I shake out my nerves physically, with jumps and arm swings and jogging and swaying. I shake out my nerves mentally by thinking about real life heroic figures who have endured ACTUAL hardship for a FAR greater purpose, so I better not give some weak, half-hearted effort in this one small challenge. Gladys Aylward. Corrie Ten Boom. Joan of Arc. This is peanuts compared to what those ladies did. And don’t you forget it. And don’t you balk.

Then, breathing down the hectic feeling in my stomach, I get on the mat. Shake the ref’s hand. Shake my opponent’s hand. Then I try to take her down. Go for the pass. Go for the submission, go for the tap. I get to work, act with my muscles, make decisions, lose position, gain position, and give it my physical all until the timer goes off or one of us gets a submission.

But now I am in a competition where I am more like the coach, shouting from the sideline, but unable to actually do anything towards the outcome. I prepared my fighter as best I could. I sent them into the ring, confident in their strength skill. But the nerves still get to you. The heart can still race. And all you can do is watch.

Okay, okay that’s being a little melodramatic. It’s not quite that intense. But it’s not NOT intense…

I entered a competition. A book competition. The Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off competition, to be precise. Goes by SPFBO in the every day and SPFBOX for this year, since it its the tenth year running. It was plain luck to get in since it only admits 300 contestants, and these were randomly selected from 595 entrants.

Here’s the link to competition update page on author Mark Lawrence’s blog:

The competition began (officially) on the first of June. Here is how the thing works:

There are 10 Judges or Judge groups. Each group/judge is allocated 30 books. From these thirty books they must ultimately choose only one to send on to the final. For some of these judge groups, they have an internal mini-competition from which they select a handful of semi-finalists. The books get reviews, the authors get exposure, and after the first five months, each judge/group selects their finalist.

Then, for the next 6 months EACH Judge group will rate EACH of the 10 finalists. The scores are tabulated. And a winner is declared!

This is a phenomenal opportunity for people to hear from various Youtubers and bloggers about books they might never have otherwise heard about, and for hidden gems to be discovered.

It’s also NERVE-WRACKING for the authors. In fits and starts, I suppose.

Just the other day, eight books were axed from the competition in a matter of minutes. The bloggers left thoughtful reviews for these fallen warriors, and I expect more cuts will be coming soon.

My personal expectations for this competition are…tempered. I love my book (obviously). And so far, others have too! Even random strangers! I think the work is truly good, in a deep and meaningful sense of the word. But I’m sure many of the other books can stand on their own too, and there is always the matter of taste. My book is a low magic history-flavored (but not historical!) military fantasy. That may or may not be a given individual’s jam regardless of quality. It simply remains to be seen.

But I’m thankful to be a part of it. I’ll do SPFBOX updates every so often, as long as I remain in the competition.

Here is the intro video put up by the judge for my batch of books!

And just for good measure, if his description of my book sounded intriguing to you, here’s the goodreads for my book and the Amazon as well!