First off, congratulations to SPSFC1 winner, S.A Tholin for Iron Truth.
As a quarterfinalist in SPSFC1, I was offered the chance to resubmit Nexus Point. I declined as I had decided to judge this year for Team Escapist.
As a judge, I’ll be looking at the critical functions of storytelling, not just genre and style. YA, romance, horror, dystopian, it doesn’t matter, as long as the story is written well.
I’ll be looking closely at story writing dynamics. How, and how well, is tension built. Is dialogue realistic? Does each chapter serve a purpose, and is there conflict? I hold self-pub almost to the same level as trad pub. You are both selling a ‘product’ to a reader. I don’t subscribe to the belief that self-pub is for writers who couldn’t get a trad deal because their book wasn’t good enough, therefore you still have to put the work in.
Most readers buy books not knowing if it was trad or self-pub. Don’t let them know!
I will be posting my reviews of all the books I read on my personal blog, but only books with higher scores will have their review posted on Goodreads or amazon.
Team Escapist Books
A Dream of Waking Life
Eric Feinberg
Aerovoyant
Patricia Tavormina
Alien Advantage
Lorain O’Neil
Colony
Max Florschutz
Debunked: Volume One of the Terravenum Chronicles
Dito Abbott
Entity
Shannon Lindsay
Escape First Contact
Tina Beier
Fallen
Patrick Abbott
Into Neon: A Cyberpunk Saga
Matthew Goodwin
NEANDER; A Time Travel Adventure
Harald Johnson
Night Music
Tobias F. Cabral
Of Mycelium and Men
William C. Tracy
Psycho Hose Beast From Outer Space
C.D. Gallant-King
Shepherds
James Brumbaugh
The Bygone Wars Book 1; Songs of Space and Time
Scott Robinson
The Calling
Branwen O’Shea
The Carnelian Fox
Kayleigh MacLeod
The Created
Michael McCloskey
The Dark That Dwells
Matt Digman, Ryan Roddy
The Drift
Casie Aufenthie
The Prometheus Effect
David Fleming
The Trouble with Love
Maurice X. Alvarez
Those Left Behind
Nicola Scrimgeour
Traitor
Krista D. Ball
Transference
Brandon Keaton
Transgressor: The Fated Sky
E.M. Swift-Hook
Zeroed Out
Jacob Markrof