FEBRUARY THEME: LOVE 

First of all, thank you to everyone for your patience. Thank you to our judges for their incredible, incredible work. All of you have been fantastic to work with, and we would love to have you again next month - as either a judge or a participant! 

awesomeSTG - thank you so much for the meticulous detail in your judging! You knew you'd be busy, and yet, you still volunteered to judge and you still managed to do it all in time with incredible detail. You are an absolute champion. 

EmberShy - thank you so much for being so incredibly prompt with your feedback and scores! It was so reassuring to have results sent in before the deadline, and your commitment and dedication has been just fantastic. 

SpillingTheLlamas - you are a legend. You stepped in at the very last-minute after another judge pulled out, and you didn't fuss at all. You were prompt, committed and positive, and your judging itself was incredibly fair and thoughtful. Thank you so much. 

And now, for the results! 

Unfortunately, not everyone can be in our top three. But a huge congratulations to everyone who made the shortlist! Here are the following books that made the shortlist (in no particular order), as well as a bit of feedback from your respective judges. 

STORY: Facades and Fallacies

AUTHOR: demidork25

FEEDBACK: 

Your grammar and spelling and mainly all the nitty gritty stuff is amazing, but here's where you fall short: your beginning confused me, and it might have just been me, but I'm really confused on a lot of things. One your characters is supposed to be friends, yet they act like they hate each other – sometimes this is okay, but not for that long. So why are they friends if they keep acting like enemies? Two: your setting is bothering me – characters keep coming from strange places in the first chapter and I can't get a clear view of where they are or what's going on. Next: your creativity, I'll try and put this lightly but, "I fell in love with a criminal." "I fell in love with my boss." "with the bad boy, the bodyguard, the wolf." It's very overused. I did though enjoy your book a little. It wasn't my favorite but I didn't hate it. I just think you should run through it and better organize it.

STORY: Frozen Grimoire: Nocturnal Silhouette

AUTHOR: Sarakel_14

FEEDBACK: 

You have a brilliant vocabulary, though that's one of my main reasons for rendering your score. Too superfluous and encompassing plenty of varying words strung together, but you were merely telling. You described a ton of things throughout the story, and it was chillingly detailed to the point I felt annoyed and irritated. In all seriousness, you DON'T have to describe everything. It would've been great if you included sensory images and a little bit of show, but no, you were just telling. I saw everything, yes, but I felt nothing. I also have a problem with your sentence structure. Some of them suddenly get cut off without notice, leaving the entire sentence hanging, as if you've forgotten that they weren't supposed to be finished just yet. Your tenses are clashing immensely, and there were some unnecessary italics pertaining to Sarakel's thoughts even though it's supposed to be written in first person. Also, I have some taboos regarding to 'different' languages. And by that, I meant when you let your characters speak backwardish. You didn't have to place a translation, you know. It defeats the purpose of the supposed 'different' language you were trying to build. There are a lot of ways to bend this without using the lazy translations, "torffe emos trexe dna naem I tahw wonk uoy fi." 

So be careful, your story is pretty prone to purple prose.

STORY: Heartless 

AUTHOR: Umeike

FEEDBACK: 

While I did not like your book, just mainly because it did not interest me, I was fair with your score. Your grammar and other conventions and un-fun parts of writing were very good – a few errors here and there but everyone has them. I think you should build more on the story instead of making diary entries and actually tell a story, instead of the entire thing being a boy crying about how terrible his life is. Other than that, your story was very much a tear-jerker.

STORY: The Beauty of Pain 

AUTHOR: Summersprit

FEEDBACK:

The summary was pretty short and straightforward, and I somehow liked it even though I'm more into detailed ones that display the writer's/poet's ability to conjure words right away. When it comes to poetry, I'm more into those others say 'old-fashioned' style, with dark and deeps words littered with rhyme schemes. Let's add the fact that I prefer voracious words... but I've been told that free/blank verses are the norm these days, so please forgive me if I'm shifting differently, unlike the other readers. The fluency of the words are a little stiff, and there were some grammatical errors I found along the first two or three chapters. You didn't have to place a comma in every single line. That depends on whether the next line can connect right away or not. I found a few parts of the poem strange, as if a link was missing, such as why in some instances you use 'he,' and then all of a sudden you switch to 'you'. Are you talking to the same person? This is more like a question since I have to admit that I'm not used to poetry with blank verses. I saw the words, but it's a little hard to make me feel them... but don't worry, this one's very subjective.

STORY: Breaking Rules with Him 

AUTHOR: laughingpearls

FEEDBACK:

This book wasn't the most enjoyable to me, just because I couldn't get behind it and the idea, but it's not a fundamentallybroken book. I just didn't find it the best. My first comment on the book is the constant changing of tenses (past, present, or future tense). Your commenters have pointed out the issues so I won't dig into you about it. Next: the cover has a scary feel to it. Have it more of a horror feel to it. Somesentences were awkward and not very well worded. Sometimes there were characterbreaks, where the character dropped their personality for another, but theywere minor and inconsequential.

STORY: Loving Edyth Swan 

AUTHOR: footnoteofhappiness

FEEDBACK: 

I like the idea of the book a lot. It was very beautiful and I think most will find it very enjoyable. I personally don't like how slow the book is (I like more fast paced books). But others will probably enjoy the slowness a lot more. Also, the summary for the book is very confusing to me. I didn't understand what you were trying to say and it repelled me more than attracted. Anyways I love the way you write the characters and your writing style is very beautiful. The cover, to me, was okay and didn't really do anything for me. I didn't find any grammatical errors. My only real complaint is the summary. 

Congratulations to the shortlisted authors! A special shout-out to footnoteofhappiness - you were only one point away from placing in the top three. Either way, the competition was very tough and all authors should feel very proud of both themselves and their work. 

And now, to our winners! 

IN THIRD PLACE: 

STORY: The Forgotten Stepsister

AUTHOR: pluviophile_bookworm

FEEDBACK: 

This book was well done and I personally enjoyed it (as I enjoy most retellings). I found the book very intriguing. There were a few grammatical errors, but they weren't big and should be easy to fix in your next edit of the book. I found the POV of one of the stepsisters very nice and Ithink it could be worked on - I liked it. I also like the way each character interacted with each other. It felt natural and easy to digest. I think the book is good for a fun read.

SCORE: 77/100

IN SECOND PLACE: 

STORY: For Your Love 

AUTHOR: GryffindorsLoneWolf

FEEDBACK: 

One thing I loved is the simplicity but overall uniqueness of your story! You've already revealed a few points in your summary that made me think cliché, however. The only downside is that childhood friends getting back after a long, long time is a pretty common concept, but no sweat! People differ when it comes to their inspirations. You need to separate some of your dialogues from the other paragraphs, and you weren't describing the scenario vividly enough. Most of the words you used only explained telling, but I'm sure a few revisions will help balance your 'show and tell'. I also think that you didn't have to go through the lengths of dehydration and stuff in the author's note at the end of chapter one, since a lot of people already know the pain of fainting (not to mention the nausea and embarrassment) and since your setting is that of a pretty warm climate, we can understand the gig perfectly. I really loved the way you described Vishnu, however, other characters like Meena might need a little more polishing.

SCORE: 79/100

IN FIRST PLACE: 

STORY: More To Life

AUTHOR: Voyageavecmoi

FEEDBACK: 

I'm afraid I can't relate that much when it comes to romance, and I'm not so fond of them either (then why am I judging??) but this one is clearly different! Maria is a woman whom everyone else (yes, even me!) can relate to. Their problems and struggles can be clearly connected to those in real life. They have a lot going on in their plates and you've made me realize how complex a relationship could get, definitely not like those cheesy bad boy romance stories. When I read the prologue, I was frowning because they looked so happy. After all, you've already hinted us the things that happened to Maria in the summary, which is a bummer.

You created Adrian in such a way that I was pissed off just by reading his every movement, especially about him using Maria's money to buy a guitar. The best friend of Maria (Kelsy, I think?) and the boyfriend cheating and getting caught while 'doing the deed' is a little cliché though. This is the realistic side of life, and I wholeheartedly agree with your choice for a title! Cover needs some work though, and you're using two hyphens at once, but it's nothing a few editing can't fix.

No doubt that this is a story that teaches us not only about romance, but also about independence and responsibilities. I really enjoyed your work — and that's pretty much saying something since I'm not into romance!

SCORE: 90/100

And, that's a wrap! 

Congratulations to everyone involved, particularly our three winners! The competition was very tough and very close, so you should all feel very proud of yourselves! And remember: writing is a very subjective thing - so not everyone will feel the same way about your story. Take whatever feedback you received with an open-mind, and I hope these awards have been constructive but also fun! 

Also, we would LOVE to have you all back next month. Winners: while you may not resubmit your winning book, we would absolutely love to have you as judges next month! It would be lovely of you to come back as judges. In fact, that goes to everyone on the shortlist - we would love to see you again next month as judges, or even as participants again. 

If you would like to give me feedback, please leave below a comment below! Let us know what you liked and didn't like - was the host too bossy? Did it feel disorganised? Did we spam your notifications too much? Do you want the theme next month to be about dancing noodles? Please let us know. I promise to take every piece of feedback into consideration. 

See you all next month (tomorrow) with our new theme!