It's Nano Read Moar!

a.k.a, Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes of Fame Game

Hello. Happy Saturday or whatever day it is now on your planet.

Today I'm more bored than usual because the world is going to hell in a hand-basket full of napalm, but I've decided to stop reading about that for a while; at least until the flames die down. (Yes, yes, I could be in for a long wait.)

Meanwhile... This spell of hunkering-downer-than-usual leaves me with some free time. I could nap excessively, but instead, I'm going to give away two and a half hours of focused reading time, divided into fifteen minute chunks. That's a total of 10 chunks because the decimal system is "in" this month.

This game is for authors I don't know, and whose work I have never read. Sorry, but if you're a writer and I already know you it's probably because I already read something you wrote.

If you're a possibly lesser-known author whose work I haven't read before, now could be your chance to pitch something to a random rodent who will spend at least fifteen minutes reading it. This could be a good deal, especially for authors who, unlike Sanguinity Hematode, haven't won any major awards.

This is me trying to "give back" because I know it's hard to get people to read new authors, even for fifteen minutes.

There are some boundaries, so please: no horror, religion, billionaires, BDSM, werewolves, vampires, zombies, boy wizards, schools for witchcraft, military sci-fi, works-in-progress, or dystopian cultures. (We already live in a bellicose dystopian nightmare, so I don't want to read about them while trying to avoid the news.) Other than that, show me what you've got. There are 10 open slots, and one of them could be yours, on a first-come first-served basis. (Feel free to send your friends a link to this blog, but please don't post in groups or mail lists; the danger for an overwhelming deluge is too great. Let's call this a under-the-grass-roots effort.)

Here's how the game works. You either send me a private message (not a public message/comment), or figure out how to e-mail the rodent @ SROP. In your message you point me at a copy of a book you wrote and which is listed here on GR. That could be an e-book (EPUB, MOBI, PDF), or a preview that will take 15 minutes or more to read. But whatever you send cannot already have more than a handful of ratings here on GR (a handful means five).

If, after fifteen minutes of reading, I like the thing you send, I might keep reading it. (If I decide to read the whole book, I'll probably buy a copy. In that case, I'd probably even review it.) And finally, here's the safety valve for you: if I have a strongly negative reaction after 15 minutes, I will let you, the author, know my true thoughts and feelings, but I won't post them in public. Life is hard enough without extra contributions to universal negativity, but spreading a little uplift is OK.

As I add items to my little list I'll update this blog and let y'all know if/when the list is full.