SPFBO 7 started off on June 1st and as many of you know, the Asylum is not a judging blog anymore. But not all of us stepped back from the competition. In this post I’d like to talk about why I made the decision of stepping back, how SPFBO affected my (blogging) life, and highlight all the gems I got to find thanks to the competition. It will be a long post, so buckle up. I’ll try to keep the rambling to a minimum, but no promises…
In April we finished up SPFBO 6, we posted some reviews, a lot of spotlights, and fun stuff, toured books and showed off covers, so buckle your belts, and let’s see what we were up to in April!
Here comes the fourth and last part of the second SPFBO Special Edition To Be Continued… story, The Blade of the Gods, written by Justin Lee Anderson. Find out how Marten’s story ends!
February went away way too fast. I WANT MY BIRTHDAY MONTH BACK! *ahem* We’ve been busy with SPFBO reading and SoT and a lot of other things. Though, to be absolutely honest, I’m struggling with reading a lot these days, so it’s probably about time for me to take a nice long break.
But fear not, we still had quite a lot of content in February including reviews, author spotlight, book tours and a lot of other things.
Now that we entered the fourth month of the SPFBO 6 Finals, we continue reviewing them. Our next one up is The Lost War by Justin Lee Anderson, chosen by the BookNest team.
February is my favorite month, even though I hate winter, but I was born in this cold, gray and well, weather-wise not really flattering of a month, so, you know… I’m kinda obliged to love it. We have a lot of content coming your way this month: reviews, features, SPFBO stuff, an interview, cover reveals, book tour encores. Check it all out!
Well, you guys can’t say I don’t know how to kick a year off. In the first days of January, I dropped the news of changing the blog’s name to Queen’s Book Asylum. Then went on and launched my own music-themed reading challenge, The Sound of Madness (still not too late to join). It both feels like it’s been a long time ago and yesterday. Weird. Anyway, thankfully we had a lot of other content up on the blog your reading pleasures.
After some debate, we decided that instead of doing one short (top 3 reads each which would have been downright cruelty to ourselves), or one very long (top 10 reads each, squeezed together) post on our favorite reads in 2020, we’ll do three separate ones. Mainly because we’d like to highlight as many books as we can, regardless of when they were released, if they are indie, self-published, or traditionally published. The only criteria were that we had to read it in 2020. And maybe like it too. A tiny bit. Maybe. Last but not least it’s time for Jen’s Top 10 Reads of 2020.
September is around the corner which means that Self-Published Fantasy Month, organized by our friends (Jason Aycock, Justine Bergman, Beth Tabler and Calvin Park) is about to kick off. To help you get ready, we offer you 15+ underrated self-published fantasy books we think you shouldn’t miss!
July, thankfully was a much calmer/quieter month, although this might be because I pretty much kept to myself. I had some ups and downs in my mood and had a lot of things to think about. And I was also busy with the blog, Storytellers on Tour and SPFBO. I promise I’ll stop fiddling with the blog design one day… But I quite like the new header images, so… *shrug*