THIS I did not expect.

Every year, Goodreads runs an awards competition. Basically, Readers’ Choice Awards. I’ve been a finalist before (thank you!), but as Goodreads has tweaked which books are counted into which genres, it’s gotten significantly more difficult for my kind of work to land on the list. When hugely-popular crossover writers like Nora Roberts (400 million copies sold!) show up in your pool of competitors, a win simply isn’t going to happen.

Which is fine. Ms. Roberts works incredibly hard and has earned every fan she has.

Additionally, this year, THE BURNING WHITE published just a couple weeks before the end of the eligibility period. And as you may have noticed, THE BURNING WHITE also happens to be a rather lengthy novel, so it didn’t surprise me in the least that I didn’t appear on the longlist.

But then something happened that did surprise me.

Some of you wrote me in.

ENOUGH of you wrote me in that I made the Semi-Finals–despite not even showing up on the longlist!

Very, very cool. Thank you.

The cover image to The Burning White by Brent Weeks

Now, two things: one selfish, one not. First, I’m not winning this thing regardless, but it WOULD be sweet to be a finalist again, especially if Joe Abercrombie isn’t.

Second, even if you don’t vote for me (which is totally fair, so long as you don’t vote for Joe), the list is a great place to find books that OTHER readers are loving. Not just in fantasy, but in all genres. So it’s worth clicking through to find some great books for your TBR pile–and look up readers’ reviews of ones that sound interesting.

This round of voting ends Sunday, November 17, so check out all the Semi-Finalists HERE. And thanks again.

3 thoughts on “THIS I did not expect.

  1. Gary Gilbert says:

    LOL.. “so long as you don’t vote for Joe…” Congrats on the semi-finals and of course I will vote for the Burning White – I didn’t even have a good reads account until 2 minutes ago.

  2. Yagmur Emre Boluk says:

    I am not surprised at all you made the lsi and to the semis, the series is amazing and you managed to finish it with a great ending. I have reread all 4 books and finished TBW in the last 2 days, and as a reader who have read maybe over 250 books in the genre I can honestly say this was one of my favorites in terms of character depth and one of the few books that led me to deeper personal awareness.

  3. Jenny says:

    I was sad to see that TBW was not listed in the first round, but was pleasantly surprised to see it advanced to the next round. I voted now.

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