I received my email announcing that I have made it into the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Semifinalist Round! Now the grassroots effort begins to rally friends and family to download the book and review it.
The link to my ABNA Contest entry is:
The following is from my congratulatory email:
“Thank you for participating in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. We received thousands of submissions and were impressed by the incredible talent and creativity seen in the entries. We are happy to inform you that you have been selected as a semi-finalist.
You can find your entry on Amazon.com via the following link: , and access the main contest page where all entries are located at http://www.amazon.com/abna ”
When you can, please download the excerpt and give it a read and review. Voters must have an Amazon.com account to download, rate and review excerpts. Voting ends at 11:59:59 p.m. on February 28, 2008.
The Official Rules of this next Semifinals phase are on the Amazon ABNA Web site. They also offer you, the Customer Reviewer, incentive prizes for reviewing, including an Amazon Kindle, a $2,000 Amazon.com gift certificate, and an HP photo printer) for providing the most–and the most high-quality–reviews.
I will continue to post more information here and on the main Web site.
Thank you for your support and stay tuned!
Shauna says:
This is great news! I hope that many get an opportunity to read your work, and better yet, vote for it. I know I will be 😀
Celine Shinbutsu Nisaragi says:
I am one of the many who got an opportunity to read the excerpt from Silence of the Trees, thanks to one of Valya’s Chicago friends’ “grassroots efforts” to rally support. She reached all the way to Tokyo, and I am reaching out to Amazon with a review.
Wishing you all the luck in the world!
“Chura”