Second Chances – SPSFC #2

I am very pleased to announce that Ad Luna is in the running for the second Self-Published Science Fiction Competition – the SPSFC. Or the Spacefic, as we’re apparently calling it now.

The elephant-memoried among you may recall that this is not the first time I’ve made this announcement. Ad Luna was a contender in the first SPSFC… briefly. It was part of Fantasy Faction’s intake but got eliminated in the first round. Such is life – I happily followed the rest of the competition as an outsider. (Iron Truth, the ultimate winner, looks bloody good.) I also appear to have forgotten to mention that it got eliminated on this blog – can’t remember if I just forgot or quietly swept it under the rug, forgive me.

But when the second SPSFC was announced, it came with an unexpected twist: books that were eliminated in the first round were given ‘A Second Chance at Love’ – namely, an opportunity to have another go with a different team. I squeezed in an application just before the competition deadline… and made it.

So, in summary: Ad Luna’s back, this time with the fantastically-named GSV Galactic Beards. The competition’s only just begun, and the whole thing will take a year to reach a conclusion, so I doubt I’ll have any updates any time soon. In fact I hope I don’t have any updates for a while, because that would probably mean I’d been knocked out in the first round again!

But it’s very nice to be back in contention, after not having had anything eligible to enter SPFBOs 6 or 8 (Ad Luna also having been eliminated from SPFBO #7 a few years ago). (Both competitions require the books to either be standalones or the first in a series – so Nightingale’s Sword is out). All being well I will have an entry for SPFBO #9, though…

The SPFBO and SPSFC are great representations of their respective bits of the self-publishing community – everyone’s very friendly and very welcoming. I’ve made some good friends through the previous competitions and found some excellent books. Not having entered anything for a few years, I’ve been more of an observer than an active participant for a while – but now I’m back, and a void I hadn’t realised was there has been filled.

And I’m glad to get Ad Luna back in contention for something again. Because as weird and niche as it might be, I’m very proud of it. I spent a long time writing about Lucian and his mad vision of space, and being able to write a version of it myself was a big moment – especially as I got to do justice to some parts of the True History that really don’t get enough attention in Lucian’s original. I like this book. I hope other people like it too. And if I’m lucky, this competition will get some more people reading it.

I’m glad to be back in the running. And who knows? Maybe I’ll get past the first round this year…