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| The Cornuta Curse, Book One in the Love Locks series by A.Scott. |
Indie Author, A. Scott’s debut novel, “The Cornuta Curse”, Book One in the Love Locks series, has been announced as a Round One winner in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contest for 2014.
Up to 10,000 novels were entered into the competition across
five different categories: General Fiction, Mystery and Thriller, Romance,
Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror and Young Adult Fiction. The top 400 novels in
each category will now proceed to Round Two, including The Cornuta Curse, which
celebrates its position among the best entries in the Romance category.
The romantic suspense novel is a cross cultural; from Australia to Italy, and across time; from today back into the 1500s, journey of one woman's determination to break a curse that may be responsible for generations of adultery in her family.
Entry into Round Two puts The Cornuta Curse on track
to follow the path of last year’s grand prize winner, “Timebound” by Rysa
Walker, who was awarded a contract with Skyscape Publishing and is currently
ranked number one in several Amazon Kindle Best Sellers lists.
Past recipients of this award also include “Fresh
Kills” by Bill Loehfelm, “Bill Warrington's Last Chance” by James King,
“Farishta” by Patricia McArdle and “Sign Language” by Amy Ackley, who all went
on to secure publishing contracts with Pengiun.
Novels entered into the competition are judged by a
range of expert reviewers from Amazon, CreateSpace and Publishers Weekly, with
the finalists also judged by Amazon customers. Open to unpublished and
self-published novels only, A.Scott, explains the importance of the Contest, to
new budding authors,
“The world of self-publishing can be daunting,
thrilling and almost always completely overwhelming. One day you’re lost in the
world of your characters, for me this means following Mara in her journey into
the medieval world of pirates, adultery and murder in the Cinque Terre in
Italy, and the next, designing book covers, drumming up sales and analysing book
rankings. I have to admit there have been occasions when I have signed off
correspondence to readers with Mara’s name not my own!
“The Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contest offers
Indie Authors the rare opportunity to share their imaginary worlds with a range
of influential publishing experts and most importantly, avid readers. It’s one
of the best bookshelves in the world to be on and I am thankful that The
Cornuta Curse has been granted a spot on the romance shelf for Round Two of the
competition.”
The next round will see the top 100 entries in each of
the five categories advance to the Quarter-Finals on April 14, 2014. Other key
dates include the customer vote between July 8 – 18, 2014 and the Grand Prize
winner announcement on July 21, 2014.
The four First Prize winners will each receive a
publishing contract with an advance of $15,000, while the Grand Prize winner
will receive a publishing contract with an advance of $50,000.
