“The Speculative Fiction Indie Novella Championship (SFINCS, pronounced “sphinx”) is a yearly competition to recognize, honor, and celebrate the talent and creativity present in the indie community. We are a sister competition to both SPFBO and SPSFC, and we highlight greatness in the novella format in all areas of speculative fiction (fantasy, science fiction, horror, etc.).” – From the official SFINCS website.
MEET TEAM Readers of the Lost ARC!
Hello, entrants, readers, authors, and random people who have no investment in books, indie contests, or speculative fiction, but who for some reason have decided to read this blog post! I’m Steve Hugh Westenra, SFINCS 4 and SPFBO XI judge, academic, book reviewer, and author. I’m very pleased (and honoured!) to be returning as a team leader for this year’s contest. Returning to judge with me this year is the fabulous Helyna L. Clove, and we’re both excited to welcome SFINCS 3 semi-finalist Karen Lucia, and author-reviewer Cat Treadwell!
I’m late to the game posting this, but in my defense, Tabitha did a wonderful job posting our team into over on the official SFINCS website, where you can also see all our assigned books!
I’ve assigned each team member nine novellas to read from our team’s allotted books. Each entry will be read by a minimum of two readers to ensure all books get a fair chance (although most of us intend to read past our “official” nine books).
Most important to me as team leader is that each of our allotted books gets a fair shake, regardless of genre, age category, or the personal taste of reviewers. While any judgement or review is always subjective, as someone who has applied to judge in a formal contest setting, and who has been entrusted with your work, my goal is that every work be assessed according to its own merits and within its own context to our best ability.
Team Readers of the Lost ARC is excited to get reading (in fact, I’m sufficiently late posting this that we’ve already started), and as always, we’re honoured to have been trusted with your words. Whether or not you’re lucky enough to progress to the semi-finals or finals, I recommend taking advantage of the opportunities SFINCS offers, chiefly socializing with other authors, but using the contest as an excuse to chat about and promote your entries!
Who’s Reading These ARCs Anyway?
Helyna L. Clove
Helyna L. Clove (she/they) is an astrophysicist, science-fiction/fantasy novelist, and a lover of all types of storytelling, hot comfort drinks, and a universe full of stars. She was born in Hungary and raised in a small village a few miles off the shores of Lake Balaton, and spent the first fifteen years of her life consuming books from her parents’ home library, watching some great 90’s sci-fi shows, and working on her eclectic music taste. After several arduous years of obtaining her degree, then postdoc positions in France and the UK, she currently lives in Germany with her small family of a wonderful boyfriend and Puddle, the tortoiseshell cat. When not writing her stories, she can be found reading voraciously, cooking and baking cautiously, playing video games, or occasionally commandeering radio telescopes.
Cat Treadwell
Cat Treadwell is an author, reviewer and pagan priest from Derbyshire. Her latest book is an anthology arriving in Dec/Jan (exciting!), but meantime she’s usually to be found curled up with a pile of ARCs longer than her life expectancy.
Karen Lucia
Karen is a science fiction and fantasy author from Minneapolis, Minnesota. She has been an avid writer, reader, gamer, and all-around nerd core enthusiast her whole life. Having a passion for writing, she has published four full-length novels and four novellas, with more always on the way. Her taste in books spans genres, but there is a special place in her heart for indie books. When she’s not creating worlds or reading, she can be found chasing her children around the zoo, playground, or any other open space they happen across (and probably taking pictures of all the mushrooms they find).
Steve Hugh Westenra
Steve Hugh Westenra is the author of the queer horror comedy, The Erstwhile Tyler Kyle; the epic fantasy, The Wings of Ashtaroth; and the Sword and Sorcery novella The Barbarian at Dream’s End (Brackenbury Books). He has a PhD in monsters and grew up on the eldritch shores of Newfoundland, Canada.
The Books!
Sanguinaria, 1985. In a world partially based on our own, will one down-on-her-luck 30-year-old human manage to rebuild a vampire mafia empire?
When Morgan Holt’s grandmother passes away and she inherits her debt, Morgan has no choice but to join the vampire mafia, called the Syndicate, to pay off the exorbitant amount.
However, earning the approval of her ornery boss, Lys de Beauvau, is more difficult than she could have ever imagined, especially once sparks start flying between them. At the same time, underlying political conflicts between the de Beauvau Family and their rival, the de Sade Family, rise to a boiling point. Will Lys and Morgan make it out unscathed, or will the leader of the de Sade Family, Mauve de Sade, be their downfall?
Cassius, God of the Sea – Jaxon Charlton
After failing to save a mortal girl, Cassius, god of the seas is transformed into a mortal as a punishment. With his magic limited, the other gods attack his territories leaving his people downtrodden and helpless. A journey begins to end the war, and Cassius joins with the hope of regaining his power.
As a sailor aboard The Delphis, Cassius discovers that being mortal is far different from what he’d ever imagined. He sails the seas, learns to fight, and meets a mysterious captain. But no matter how far he sails, the ghosts of his past haunt him as he battles monsters and conquers storms. Alongside the crew of The Delphis, and with gods and mortals trying to stop him, Cassius must uncover the secrets of magic and the destiny of the world.
Pina loves Elias, and she’ll do anything to save him. When kitten Pina’s human Elias is hospitalised after a fight with his partner Tommy, Pina and her fellow cats Artichoke and Biscuit decide to scare Tommy away. But something goes horribly wrong…
CATFOOD is a graphic horror-thriller that explores the devotion between a man and his feline family.
Chivalry Will Get you Dead– Ed Robins
“All I wanted was to drink until I couldn’t remember Madelyn anymore, but a former detective can’t just ignore a murdered dame in his compartment. Why would someone kill such a beauty and why’d they choose me to take the fall?
“To find the murderer, and clear my own name, I gotta dive into the Starship Australis’ seedy underworld of prostitutes, dealers, assassins and one seriously pissed off crime boss. Then, maybe, I can make time with my gorgeous bartender, or at least get back to drinking enough to forget what a mess my life’s become.”
Inspired by the grit of Mickey Spillane and the concision of Elmore Leonard, Chivalry Will Get You Dead is a sci-fi / mystery mash-up devised in the best traditions of the dime store paperback. It is the first in the Starship Australis Mysteries series, itself part of the 10 Cent Universe – a genre-bending macrocosm.
A Prisoner.
A Past Forgotten.
A Fate Awakened.
Buried deep within the ruthless sprawl of Rakul’s prison, a man once known as Davga has severed all ties to his past—until a mysterious stranger rekindles the dormant magic within him.
Now, he must confront the fractured remnants of the life he left behind and unlock powers he believed lost forever.
But as his true nature awakens, one question
Who is the real Davga Tranfe’er?
The Night Sweeps the Mountains Away – Tanvir Ahmed
One evening at summer’s end, in a town where nomads and caravans prepare to cross the mountains, the day laborer Sado meets a young woman with a painfully familiar tattoo at the corner of her eye…
The two are drawn to each other by a shared history of rebellion and exile, and the mysterious woman begins to share her tale. It is a story of expulsion, forced resettlement, and the sainted creature that came to rule the woman’s fate: dervish, djinn, or maybe something more monstrous.
As the woman’s tale unfurls, Sado is further entangled in its warp and weft, even as it grows clear that his companion’s nature has been touched by the same hungry force of which she speaks. With the past bleeding into the present, the two must face a power as vast and overwhelming as the night — one that threatens not only their lives, but the very shapes of their selves.
Alida Perez had been living on her own for so long she was convinced that nothing could shake her anymore. She’d spent the last few decades building her farm out of the dead of the Wastes, and she’d seen it all: bandits, dust storms, rich folks from the next town over trying to buy out her farm to gain access to the mysterious flowers growing there. It’s a hard battle to fight, though, when gumption goes up against a monstrous snake appearing out of nowhere, size fit to eat the moon. Alida, her farmhands, and the mysterious gunslinger who fell into her raptor pen have a long and winding fight on their hands— will they hold out? Or will this finally be the thing to drive Alida from her land?
This is only the first chapter of the story.
Rattler’s Moon is part of the Starslinger Tales series of standalone novellas, all of which are set in a post-apocalyptic weird west world and follow a wandering, immortal, nonbinary gunslinger named Xal.
Hillbilly Vamp – R. E. Holding
Not all vampires are created equal…
Wyatt and Birdseed are two ordinary friends living in the small, idyllic town of Royal Lake. One evening, while responding to a complaint of strange activity in the deep woods, they stumble across an old, abandoned mine. Wanting to push aside his fears, Wyatt makes a rash decision that alters their futures forever.
Two outsiders, Kennedy and Jace, are traveling to a concert and take a shortcut through the middle of the hills of Royal Lake. When their car suddenly breaks down, they are at the mercy of the kindness of strangers to get them back on their feet.
What they don’t realize is the annual county fair has begun, and the denizens of Royal Lake have a special show that no outsider would ever forget.
If you like dark humor or horror comedies and the supernatural, you’ll love the antics in Hillbilly Vamp!
An ancient katabasis, retold.
Eurydice, a superstitious bard-turned-huntress living the good life with her sellsword wife, is compelled to venture into the depths of the Underworld to save the souls of her estranged once-lover and fellow bard Orpheus and that of his new wife after their royal wedding ends in tragedy. With only Hecate to help and guide her, Eurydice must survive not only taunting spirits, but her own psyche as well.
Nestled between Xena: Warrior Princess and the works of Madeline Miller, Well of Souls is a queer reimagining of the mythological tale of Eurydice and Orpheus—a novella filled with love and tragedy in equal measure, featuring a trans bi Eurydice prone to anxiety and a bi Orpheus.
Sisyphus, Eat Your Heart Out – Robert Northrup
There’s a boulder on the edge of somebody’s lawn. They found it while plowing a farm field or digging the foundation for a house. It was too big to haul it off so they pushed it out of the way and left it there. They grew flowers around it and stuck a flamingo in front of it. The boulder was deposited on that plot of land by glaciers during the last ice age, dragged for centuries over hundreds of miles as the glaciers froze and melted and flowed and froze again. Before that, it was part of a formation of standing stones in Canada. If you can find that boulder and move it back into position with the original standing stones, you can open a gateway to any time or place you want to go.
How the hell are you going to get it across the border? What magic words do you have to say to make it work? Do you have to do a dance or wave your hands around? How long is your boss going to let you off work to mess with it?
I know where the boulder is.
I know a guy with a truck. Are we doing this?
The Battle of Braxia – Alex S. Garcia
A young woman in a patriarchal society dreams of the stars.
When opportunity knocks, Exhi sheds her old life, trading rigid rules for freedom.
But freedom comes with a price when she finds herself tossed in the middle of a war. Now she has to pick sides: the Imperials who saved her, or the rebels who fight to destroy the very foundations of the Imperium.
As if that weren’t enough, there is something inside her, clawing and growing, feeding her visions…
Can Exhi pick a side and survive whatever’s gnawing at her soul?
The Battle of Braxia is a space opera novella combining space-faring action with questions about ethics, freedom, and fate.
Only the Living Feel Remorse – Ash Deza
Some mistakes will haunt you to the end.Imagine being haunted by a ghost. In life, he was your best friend. Now he wants you dead.
Who would you turn to for help? How far would you go to escape? How much would you be willing to sacrifice?
This is the gripping story of a flawed man who finds himself in a deep well of misery, haunted by his past, desperate for a way out. Will he be able to save himself? Or will the price prove to be too high?
“Only the Living Feel Remorse” is a suspenseful yet fast-paced horror novella. It tells the story of a friendship gone bad, a vengeful ghost and neo-pagan blood rituals which end up costing you much more than you bargained for.
The Final Chronicle of Yeneh – Jo Miles
Alien first contact tangles up with portal fantasy in this lush, adventurous tale, perfect for anyone who grew up dreaming of visiting Narnia or traveling to the stars.
Lady Ada Quintrall, heir to her grandfather the Duke of Corbridge, wants nothing more than to see her family’s new planet successfully terraformed, restoring their fortune and ensuring them a stable future. That means shutting away her whimsical side (including the beloved Chronicles of Yeneh, a children’s portal fantasy written by her own ancestor)—and refusing the requests of Dr. Zamora, the xenobiologist who is begging to study the planet’s native life before it’s driven extinct.
Ada’s own encounters with the native life are vicious and unsettling. But when Zamora trespasses into an Infested Zone, Ada goes after him and discovers the astonishing Not only does this planet have native sentient life, but those beings share a connection to her family that’s older, deeper, and closer to her heart than she could have imagined.
The Khartoum Caper – W. E. Singh
This spin-off novella, delves deeper into two of the characters from the upcoming fantasy novel A Djinnfernal Bargain but predates the main storyline by several hundred years. It can be read as a stand-alone. A Djinnfernal Bargain, the first installment in the Saga of the Seal Bearer, will be published in May 2025.
When Jan Stridsoks invites London’s most famous medium over for a séance, she could never have imagined that her evening of fraud-busting would turn instead into a quest through 1914 Sudan with her elder sister Fran in search of an ancient artefact that just might pose a threat to the world.
The Drowned Man’s Daughter – C. J. Lavigne
Award-winning novelist C.J. Lavigne returns with a strange and startling new vision of the future…
Naia never wanted to be a goddess. But the legend of her as the miracle child of the ocean and a drowned man who washed up on the shore has overtaken her life, forcing her to lie to survive. Desperate to escape from the stalwart adoration of the people she loves, Naia longs to leave the island. But the ocean, filled with deadly mer, and the mainland, filled with noxious moss that drives anyone it touches to madness, block her way on either side.
There’s nowhere for Naia to go. She can’t keep pretending, and soon she is going to be found out…
Troubled Bodies – Jake Vanguard
We can be monsters together.
Curiosity has led Payne down a path of experimentation filled with corpses, connections to the underground–and a dead partner. When he finds Blaze, broken and lifeless, on a crime cleanup scene, Payne’s knowledge of anatomy and his created serums assist in bringing Blaze back to life…
The only hitch in this plan? They come back different.
Together, Payne and Blaze must navigate their new life, filled with a ravaging hunger for fresh meat and opioids, while keeping their urges secret from a powerful don.
And things get even more complicated when they find themselves entangled with a third unexpected person who has more to give than financial freedom.
Care to take a bite?
Troubled Bodies is a tale of obsession, of devotion and addiction, of care and primal urges – and, above all, of love.
The Rune of Flight– Darrin J. Maconi
Nel, an Alari who wields a Flight Rune, takes her final trial to be inducted into a special group of Windriders—Alari who have proven themselves especially gifted fliers. The Alari are a race of people born with runes that imbue them with certain powers. Among those with Flight Runes, becoming a Windrider is a high honor rarely achieved. Nel must use all her strength, skill, and cleverness to pass the Windrider Trial and take her place among her peers, but when unexpected danger arises, the flock must pull together to survive, or perish.
The White Ribband – Mason Hawthorne
Lost, alone, amnesiac; all that is left to him are a few tokens, and his name…
Sir Gaheris cannot remember who his friends are, who he serves, or where he has come from. But he knows he must find his way back, whatever the cost.
When he rescues Sir Medraut from certain death, the two swear an oath to help one another escape the enchanted woods that trap them, though it isn’t only the strange forest that they must worry about…
Something is hunting them.
If they cannot escape, they will lose themselves—and each other—in the wandering woods.
