Another Podiobooks Author in the Quarterfinals of Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest

Podiobooker Spencer Baum joins John Allen in the quarterfinal round of Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel contest.  Spencer’s novel, The Demon Queen and The Locksmith, is in the Top 250 of the YA category.  Here’s some info on the book:

Kevin panicked when his ears began to buzz. He couldn’t be a Hearer. The Hearers were the town freaks. Worse, his dad was one of them, and Kevin’s greatest fear was that one day he might turn into his father. In Turquoise, New Mexico, a small but notorious group of hippies believe that the mountain north of town emits a constant, resonant hum that is only audible to a chosen few. They call themselves the Hearers, and fourteen-year-old Kevin Brown has never trusted them. But when a carefree afternoon with his friends comes to a surprise finish at the spot where Kevin spread his mother’s ashes only a year before, a place where the open air seems to resonate in Kevin’s ears, he realizes he might be a Hearer too, and “The Turquoise Hum” might be much more than a sound.

Says Spencer, “The Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award turns the slog of the slush pile into an exciting spectacle over the course of six months.  The competition started with 10,000 manuscripts, and is now down to 500, half of which are Young Adult.  At the end of April, Publishers Weekly will winnow down the 500 to 100, and at the end of May, six finalists will be chosen by the editors at Penguin.  From those six, Amazon customers vote to select two winners.  The contest is yet another example of how your manuscript no longer has to sit unread while you wait for the Manhattan gatekeepers to let you in.  Only two people will win the grand prize (a Penguin contract) but for those 500 in the quarterfinals, excerpts of their novels are now available for download on Amazon.  Like Podiobooks and Smashwords, it’s yet another opportunity for writers, any writers, to find readers!”

Spencer is nearing completion of his first Podiobook recording, One Fall. 

Website: http://www.thedemonqueen.com/