In a recent blog post, I talked about Mark Lawrence’s brilliant idea to throw a slush-pile of self-published work at ten intrepid bloggers, and leave them to find just one from their twenty five to recommend. All ten bloggers would then read and review all the ten finalists.
The bloggers have been sifting through their slush-piles, and deciding how to tackle their task. Some have picked at random, some have chosen by cover/blurb/title (the time-honoured method), one has divided her pile into more manageable piles of five. The first reviews are trickling in. All the details are on Mark’s blog.
But there was an unexpected development. Another blogger, J R Karlsson of Fictiongarden.com, decided to join the fun, by looking at the entire pile of 250+ books. Quite a challenge! He eliminated some that he’d read already, or were on the site’s ‘recommended’ list. He eliminated some more on the (slightly arbitrary) grounds that he didn’t like the cover or felt he wasn’t the target audience.
The rest, he checked out the ‘look inside’ sample on Amazon, to see whether he could get through the first chapter. He found just 13 that met his personal requirements.
And – yes! – The Plains of Kallanash was on the list!
I was – hmm, how shall I put this? – quite pleased {SQUEEEEE!}. Of course, a lot of truly excellent books will have been eliminated by Karlsson’s process, so it doesn’t mean a huge amount. Still, being one of just 13 selected from a starting point of 250+ is quite something.
He’s now promised to buy, read and review each of the 13 over the course of the next year. I can’t wait to find out what he thinks about Kallanash.
Here’s the link to Fictiongarden (the website is flaky with NoScript, so you may need to deactivate stuff).
Congrats! I’m sure he’ll love it. 😀
Woohoo! Congrats!