What is the Speculative Fiction Indie Novella Championship you ask? SFINCS, pronounced “sphinx”, is a yearly competition to recognize, honor, and celebrate the talent and creativity present in the indie community. It's a sister competition to both SPFBO and SPSFC, and it highlights greatness in the novella format in all areas of speculative fiction (fantasy, science fiction, horror, etc.).
I'm excited to announce myself and Sue from Sue's Musings will be leading a team in the new Speculative Fiction Indie Novella Championship. Together our team Behind the Musings will read 20 of the 100 novellas entered into the contest. Out of those 20 novellas, 5 will move forward into the semi-finalists. All semi-finalists will be selected and announced by December 15, 2023.
To keep in the loop on announcements check out the Speculative Fiction Indie Novella Championship Twitter and Website.
Behind the Musings SFINCS 2023
Meet the Team
Sue blogs at Sue’s Musings (http://suelbavey.wordpress.com), where she champions mostly indie books. She is British, but lives in Massachusetts, where she works as a freelance proofreader/copy editor for Ant Press, Vine Leaves Press and self-published authors. Her non-fiction book “Lucky Jack (1894-2000)” just won a Readers’ Favorite gold medal. Her favourite fantasy reads range from comedic, cosy, through to angsty torture-ridden relationships. Not a big fan of epic, extra spicy or grimdark. Likes most Sci-Fi (as long as not too info-dumpy) and lighter horror. Loves cinematic world-building and evocative prose. Also loves great characterisation.
Fantasy Book Nerd is a book nerd that likes fantasy, a little bit of sci - fi and some horror. He lives on the other side of the sky and can generally be found writing about the books he's read on his cyber Frankenstein creation, http://fantasybooknerd.com. Although, sometimes he dons his other mask on and does the odd review on FanFiAddict's Fear For All. Then just for a little bit of extra exercise he also writes for Gingernuts of Horror.
Celeste is a book blogger at A Literary Escape (https://aliteraryescape.com) who lives in northern Virginia. She rediscovered her love of reading during the pandemic and decided to join the fray of bookish social media. Celeste primarily reads fantasy, though is known to dabble in nonfiction and other genres from time to time. When she's not reading she's gardening, traveling, or adding to her TBR list.
Jodie is the creator of the Witty and Sarcastic Bookclub blog. She either lives in Florida with her husband and sons, or in a fantasy book-she’ll never tell which. Jodie reads many genres from science fiction to mystery or horror, although fantasy is where she spends the most time. She has a special fondness for epic worldbuilding, magic, sword fighting, and dragons. When she’s not reading, Jodie balances her time between homeschooling her hooligans, playing tabletop role-playing games, and lamenting her inability to pronounce “lozenge”.
Quinn writes book reviews for Silverstones Blog to promote indie fantasy and sci-fi. Though a lifelong reader, he dove head first into the indie SFF community in early 2023 and started writing reviews around the same time. His favorite flavors of fantasy are epic and dark but he will read pretty much anything if it is fantasy or sci-fi. When he's not reading, watching Booktube, or scrolling book Twitter he is usually watching soccer.
Jelena aka Nessa is a big reader and baby turtle blogger who writes "In this essay, I shall..." type reviews on her blog Nessa's reading nook (https://narratricenessa.wordpress.com). She has a quirky sense of humour and really dislikes talking about herself because "I feel I either come off as a pretentious twat or an overcaffeinated Duracell Bunny" :-) She primarily reads speculative fiction (the weird, the strange, the dark, the adventurous, the cosy), but also enjoys historical fiction, crime, mysteries and thrillers along with an odd non-fiction book sprinkled here and there for faux intellectual superiority. When she's not reading she likes long naps, experimenting with makeup, learning about skincare products and drinking coffee.
Some legends say Max exists solely on one bag of rice a month due to the Broken Binding's special editions sucking his life's savings like some sort of money leech. Others tell tale that he has never DNF'd a book in his life. Still more say that he actually acted out the murders from Cain's Jawbone to attempt to solve the puzzle. One of these is a lie... If he's not reading fantasy or scifi, or sporadically posting on booksta (https://www.instagram.com/lessons_in_bookology/?hl=en) then he is running Fantasy Fellowship's Twitter and winding up authors online (I'm looking at you Richard Swan). Other hobbies include crying over killed off characters from DnD and memorising Simpsons s1-10.
Tabitha is an avid fantasy reader and the owner of Behind the pages, https://www.behindthepages.org/. She always has a book in hand, or an audiobook playing. She also runs a local Fantasy and Science Fiction book club where she shamelessly tries to make everyone read the indie books she enjoys. While fantasy is her favorite genre, she also enjoys science fiction and horror. When she isn’t reading you’ll find Tabitha playing video games or tabletop gaming.