SeraDrake
I have cleaned up the contest categories and come up with a tentative schedule for reading/judging. Golden Age contestants, check the pod bay doors to make sure I put your work in the right categories.
SeraDrake
SeraDrake
Coffee was delayed today due to a lack of supplies, but coffee there was.
Most of today was spend updating the commercial editions of Ancilla. There are now two.
I decided to keep the original version, the one I launched in December 2023, rather than unpublishing it, but I am keeping it in a pared-down version that is devoid of art and most of the supplemental material. That reduces the size by about a hundred pages, which lets me mark the cost of the trade paperback down to $12.99. I rather like the way the redesigned cover came out, too. If all goes well, I'll be able to print it in matte rather than glossy, too, which I think would go better with the overall aesthetic.
The second edition, meanwhile, has all the art and supplemental material, and it's been subjected to some revision (thanks for the suggestions, Raven et al) so I can safely say it is NOT the same book that I published two years ago. Which means I can enter it in contests that require a 2025 publication date, but that was not the only reason I decided to launch a second edition while keeping the first edition available. Basically, now I have a deluxe version and a pared-down, budget-friendly, download-friendly version.
After dinner, I'll update the contest entries, figure out how to make space for all the Fantasy genre books that had to be temporarily parked elsewhere, and see if the contest book as a whole also needs updating.
One thing I have noticed is that while some people are entering book covers, nobody seems inclined to enter art portfolios, which is something of a surprise to me. I may just leave that category permanently open. It's not getting much traffic or interest, and I'm always happy to have an excuse to look at other peoples' art.
Speaking of art, I'm going to need to get back to figuring out just what to do with the cover to What Is Told (currently 1/3 to 1/2 done at 40K words). I swear, it's been a year, and I'm never going to get that thing just right...
SeraDrake
I will get to the contest forms tomorrow. Today my husband and I had to report to work, then we had a symphony to attend (Shostakovich's Tenth, and a more appropriate symphony for our current times I cannot think of, if you know anything about Shostakovich), then we went out to IHOP, and now I'm zonked.
random_gay_toad
hello, just wanted to say tysm for entering my contest fellow alphabet soup creature
SeraDrake
@random_gay_toad - Not a single person in my household is straight, and only half our six-person family (2 parents, 4 kids) is cis. We determined that if we flew every pride flag that applied to every person in the house, our front porch would have enough flags to look like the UN building. :D
Knighted_Rose
Hello!
I was wanting to toss my name in the hat to give you an excuse to catch up on We Give Unto Thee but obviously fantasy filled up super quickly. My secondary genre is certainly body horror but I wanted to make sure it didnt seem disingenuous to put it in Horror/Paranormal.
I might have just missed the boat but thought I would check!
SeraDrake
@Knighted_Rose - Park it in General Fiction/Soup. I'm going to be updating the slots per category this Sunday. There was a stampede, and Fantasy was the most popular category - but nobody's interested in spiritual fiction and I've only had one taker for litfic.
SeraDrake
The rubrics are up.
https://www.wattpad.com/1600611550-the-golden-age-awards-i-didn%27t-build-the-panama
SeraDrake
@CemeteryFaerie - I've been updating other sections, as well. At some point, I'm going to have to look at the word count. I suspect my contest book is going to be novella-sized by the end of the contest.
CemeteryFaerie
@SeraDrake You did a great job of breaking this down and explaining what each part means to you. I’m so excited for this contest. :)
Blue_the_Bard
Hey, I submitted thanks to your encouragement! I appreciate you :)
SeraDrake
@Blue_the_Bard - You did say you wanted to take part. :) I look forward to reading your book, although it's going to be a few months before I get to it.
lyttlejoe
@SeraDrake Thank you very much for choosing to follow my page, I hope rummaging through my bookshelves is worth your while.
SeraDrake
It looks like things might be leveling off a little for contest applications, and I only got about two or three hours of sleep last night, so I think I will tackle the applications tomorrow.
Fantasy writers and romance writers with stories that span multiple genres may be asked if it's okay to be moved to the General Fiction/Soup category or something adjacent. Alternately, I could make more spaces available in Fantasy and take spaces from less popular categories.
I'll think about how to manage it after I've had more sleep and can focus better. I will do my best to find a way to fit everybody in somehow, now that the initial stampede seems to be over (knock on wood).
SeraDrake
@morfusmax1 - Fair enough. If, by the time I get to your book, the cover has AI stuff on it, please create a page for the front-end material declaring it.
morfusmax1
@SeraDrake ...Okay, just got to the rubrics chapter, and I suppose I should say that my cover was AI-generated. For what it's worth, I went through a LOT of iterations with Bing image creator to make it, since Bing was throwing in weird things like beer glasses on their side and hybrid guns. So far, none of the graphic artists/designers I've approached have come through with something satisfactory as a replacement. I'm currently in the process of collecting stuff to make a photo cover. Ex: https://www.instagram.com/p/DTRgDIyDC9Z/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
Writer_TanuS
Hey, sorry buy I will have to take back my entries as unfortunately once again entrance exams are getting on my nerves ready to kill me.
SeraDrake
@Writer_TanuS -So thank you. Your timing is good. I'm very glad you bowed out NOW rather than several months from now.