Quarter Finals of ABNA

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

I like to start any discussion of contests with this excellent quote from Ecclesiastes. I've been a contestant and on occasion I've been a judge, so I know just how subjective any selection process is. But I'm still pleased that Ice Diaries has reached the Quarter Finals of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards. 500 novels have made it this far, out of an initial 10,000. Each had its first 3,000-5,000 words assessed by two Amazon Vine reviewers. This is my favourite:

The next stage, which takes two months, is for Publishers Weekly reviewers to read the 500 novels in full, write a review on each and choose 25 to move on to the semi-finals. 25 is 5% of the current 5%, so a hard mark to hit. But I'll have my PW review...

You can see Ice Diaries' ABNA page here - and how odd it looks without its cover.