Well, the cat is well and truly out of the bag now – I’m going to be a guest judge for The Fantasy Inn in this year’s SPFBO competition! (Relevant links will be at the bottom of this post).
What is SPFBO?
It’s the Self Published Fantasy Blog Off! 300 authors have entered 300 books, to be whittled down to 1 book each by 10 blogs. After that, each blog reads and scores each of the 10 finalists, and the book with the highest score is the winner!
The process takes almost an entire year, so it’s a big commitment, but many great titles has been highlighted in the competition. The Sword of Kaigen is a particular favourite of mine, and several titles entered over the years have since been picked up by traditional publishers and well (not that is a goal of the competition).
Who are The Fantasy Inn?
The Fantasy Inn is a blog & podcast ran by some lovely people. There’s some great reviews, author interviews and general discussions, and the crew have a wide range of fantasy tastes between them. They also have a discord, which is a great place to discuss books and more with a friendly group of people.
What does this mean for the blog?
I’ll be frank – it’s going to mean less content. Hopefully not too much less. I read 129 books with an average page count of 400 last year, and I currently seem to be on track for a similar amount, if possibly a little less? At The Fantasy Inn, we’re splitting things between judges fairly equally, so the minimum amount of books I will be obligated to read for the competition will be about 14 (including DNFs). I may end up reading more, depending on the circumstances, but I don’t anticipate having to read any more than 20 in total. Any reviews for those books will be going on The Fantasy Inn blog, and I will link to those posts in the Weekly Roundup. So that mean in the worst case scenario, 1 in 6 reviews I write will not end up directly on this blog.
IF YOU ARE AN SPFBO ENTRANT I WILL BE READING, THIS BIT IS IMPORTANT – I’m probably also going to be playing it a bit coy with which SPFBO books I’m reading at any one time. Those of you that have read my Weekly Roundups know that I usually share what books I’ve been reading that previous week. From this point onwards, I will probably state that I’m reading an SPFBO book, but not say which one or give too many details. This is not to be cruel – quite the opposite. The fact is, my reading habits are quite erratic, and I think it best not to tease authors with the knowledge that I’m reading their book, when there’s a chance I’ll end up putting it off for a month or so to catch myself in the right mood for the tone.
The good news is, I have a decent backlog of reviews ready to go, so the hope is that I’ll be able to maintain a two review per week rhythm for the majority of the year (or at least three every two weeks) alongside my Weekly Updates and Monthly Retrospectives. I’ve experimented a little in the background with other possible content, but nothing has felt quite right to my style, and with SPFBO coming my focus will be a little more split, so I wouldn’t expect more than that.
Links!
Fantasy Inn SPFBO Landing Page (link to come)
Writings of a Doomscribe 
One thought on “Special Announcement (SPFBO)”