The Last Dragoneer

15. January 2008 by The Chuck.

My first novel, The Last Dragoneer, has made it into the semi-finals of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest.

Charles D. Sutherland Speaks About The Last Dragoneer Learns to Fly - Official ABNA Entrant:
“Did an unknown daughter of a famous shipwright alter the course of human history? She lived in an ancient civilization that predates the pyramids of Egypt, yet it was more advanced than you could ever imagine. In a world that is now lost to us, dragoneers defended the ancient Garden of Eden from those who coveted it secrets. Come experience the adventures of Susah, the last dragoneer.”

You can download and read the first 14 pages of the novel and write a review at Amazon.com, if you like.   Amazon is running a side-contest on the reviews: 

“The three customers who provide the most high quality reviews will be qualified to win one of three customer prizes, including an Amazon kindle reader, $2000 in Amazon gift card value, and an HP photo printer.”

There will be tens of thousands of reviews written on the 1000 semi-finalists, so the field will be large, but good luck with that anyway. 

You can go straight to the page with my novel’s information at this link:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001200CF0

The number and quality of reviews will have impact on how The Last Dragoneer will be rated against the other 1000 remaining competitors.  Based on the judges and the reviews the field will be culled down to three survivors for a final decision later this year. 

This is a big deal for me.  I would appreciate it if you’d take a few minutes and experience the opening of my novel and then write whatever nice things you can about it.

 And I don’t mean on this Blog as much as I like seeing your thoughts, ideas, and dreams … for a critque to count it has to be made at Amazon at the link I gave. 

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001200CF0 

Here’s some guidelines to help you win the reviewers contest if you want to put the energy into it (this was copied from the Amazon rules page)

  What Makes A Good Review?

In the semifinalist round, we’re breaking new ground in our customer reviewing community: this is the first opportunity for customers to play an active role in the publishing process. The criteria for judging an unpublished book are a little bit different from the norm. Keep these pointers in mind as you’re reading and remember: your voice counts.

Be persuasive. Experts at Penguin will be relying on customer reviews as they prepare to select the finalists, so don’t hesitate to tell us what you really think. The reviews that provide the most thorough, thoughtful feedback are the ones that will help Penguin choose the Top Ten.

Quantity and quality help. The more reviews you write, and the more helpful each review is, the more likely you are to win one of our three prize packages.

Discuss. As with customer reviews for all our products, you can comment on others’ excerpt reviews and rate them. Any discussion and activity we see around specific titles will only keep us coming back for more, so feel free to speak up and banter with your peers.

One quick heads-up: Per the contest rules, every excerpt is a maximum of 5,000 words in length. As a result, you may find that excerpts vary in length or end unexpectedly. Consider yourself warned–and happy reading!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001200CF0 

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