Announcing the Winners of Spooktober 2020

So excited to conclude our first-ever article-writing contest at Books Are Our Superpower

Dearest BAOS family!

As you might be aware, today, we conclude the first-ever article-writing contest organised by Books Are Our Superpower.

We were thrilled to receive seven amazing submissions from seven super talented authors from all over the world. After a lot of deliberation, my co-editor, Ruchi, and I tallied the points and selected the top five stories with the highest points. This was decided on the basis of:

1. Did the review make us excited about reading the book?
2. Was the article spoiler-free?
3. How well-written and well-structured the article was.

After that, we sent the five entries with the highest scores to our panel of esteemed judges, who were kind enough to select two stories for us. Based on their observation, the two winning stories of Spooktober 2020 are (drumroll):

1. Nusrat Nisa for Of Mummies, Curses and Sleeping With Your Lights On
2. Anita Durairaj for 5 Terrifying Books Without the Gore

Heartiest congratulations to both our winners. It was an incredibly tough decision. Ruchi and I had to spend hours going over back and forth emails, reading and re-reading each article to make sure we missed nothing and tallying the marks to the last decimal point.

It was tough, but it was super fun. Here’s a special shoutout to all our other participants for taking part and being so awesome:

1. Dustin T. Cox for The Plague: A Terrifying Tale of Denial
2. T.J.Parker for Be Aware Of The Girl In Red
3. Harry Male for The Bloodiest Book to Read this Halloween
4. Ben Shelley for The Umbrella Conspiracy
5. Tucker Lieberman for Horror Stories by Ambrose Bierce to Take Your Breath Away

If your story didn’t make it this time, that’s not a reflection of the quality of your writing. At all. Keep writing because we’ve got some even more exciting contests planned for the future.

Hope you amazing bunch of writers had as much fun thinking up stories and writing them as much as we did organising this. Looking forward to the next ones!

The Prizes

As we announced in the previous newsletter, the winners will receive a book bundle of three books each. But, since the community of indie authors is super generous and insanely talented, we have seven books. Bundle one has four books and Bundle two has three.

Here are the seven awesome books by seven supremely talented authors.

Book bundle one

With Love, Forever

Genre: Romance

The vibrant 11th grader Bhavana had never believed that love was a powerful force until it happened to her — for the first time, towards a stranger who was as different from her as could be. A Tamil girl from a privileged background suddenly finds herself head over heels for a Marwari textile shopkeeper, Jairam, a stranger she knew precious little about.

Kavya Janani is a writer and poet who frequently publishes her poetry on Instagram. Apart from being a writer, she is a professional singer, bibliophile, Potterhead, and Rahmaniac (check out A.R.Rahman Therapy). She has also written a chick-lit series named Diya Rai, which is available to read for free on this blog and Wattpad. Kavya is a B.Tech graduate in Information Technology and works as a Customer Associate in State Bank of India. She is also a proud mom of a cute little princess. She currently resides in Chennai.

Butterfly Met Hurricane

Genre: Psychological fiction

For most of her life, Diana Britto’s parents were her entire world. Everything she knew and believed about her family is challenged when she visits her childhood home under changed circumstances and Diana discovers a box of letters that will forever change the way she looked at her parents.

This is the journey of a daughter, a mother, and a best friend through love, betrayal, death and preserved memories.

Balakarthiga M is a Blogger and a caffeinated Author born and raised in Madurai. She strongly believes she is at least seventy-three years old, but lives trapped inside a 25-year-old body. When she’s not drinking coffee or busy disciplining her fictional characters, she buys more books than she can fit in her shelf and stalks kittens on the internet. A hardcore fan of A.R. Rahman, she also likes to occasionally pretend her life is a Disney musical.

I’m So Hacked

Genre: Technological thriller

A hacker who goes by the internet handle @v! has turned rogue by taking down the internet services of the entire city. He and his friends M@DR1, S@M, K!LL3R are plotting plans to attack the technological units of the city they belong.

Who are they? What is the purpose behind their hacks? Will they accomplish their goals?

Gautam Mayekar is a Certified Ethical Hacker who works for the American IT company TIBCO softwares as a Product Security Engineer. He is born and brought up in Goa and when he isn’t hacking or writing, he likes to go fishing and give quirky commentary over Social Media. I’m So Hacked is his debut novel.

Poems I Wrote for Myself

Genre: Poetry

This is a collection of poems written by self-love coach Shreya Badonia. She penned these down over a stretch of 5 years while dealing with different falls of life. Every one appreciates himself when they succeed but it takes courage to accept ourselves when we fail. Each poem and prose in this book will remind you to love yourself during tough times and believe in the magic that we all carry.

Shreya Badonia is a blogger, author, and designer. She specializes in writing personal development advice to help people lead better lives. Writing since she was thirteen, Shreya wants her words to inspire readers. All the experiences she’s been through has been the source of her writing inspiration through which she wishes to cognizant her readers about the importance of self-awareness. A mindful life is what people are lacking today, a pseudo perfectness on social media is what we preach. Shreya believes in transforming our lives utterly by attaining our best version.

Book bundle two

Thank God I’m Fired

Genre: Contemporary fiction

What do you do when you think you are trapped in the wrong job? Leave the job and do what you love. Simple, isn’t it? But what if you neither have the guts to leave the job nor know what you love to do? Complicated, isn’t it?

Meet Raghav, who like millions of other software professionals, is stuck in a similar situation. But don’t worry, his destiny has better plans for him. What plans you may ask? Well, getting him fired.

This novella takes you on a light-hearted tour of the contemporary software industry where you can ask the haunting question loudly- is getting sacked a blessing in disguise?

Sandeep Pawar is an IIT Bombay alumnus but doesn’t brag about it unless a situation emerges. He is a software professional and has spent and sustained nearly half a decade in the industry. During this endeavour, he has mastered the art of connecting a projector to the laptop and smiling in awkward situations. He is accustomed to industry’s rituals and practices and thus has given himself a license to reveal its secrets for all.

Earlier he has worked in Gurugram (then Gurgaon), Bengaluru (Bangalore if you like it), and London. He currently lives in Pune with his insecurities. When he can’t find anyone to make fun of, he makes fun of himself and that is the case most of the time. Perhaps always.

Confessions Of An IT Employee

Genre: Romantic comedy

The book revolves around the lives of four engineers living in Bangalore, Sanchita, Alisha, Bhoomija, and Nishant, who are battling societal norms, overcoming depression, discovering their true calling, and construing the beats of their hearts!

Shalini P Sawkar is an Author of Crime Thrillers and Rom-Com Fiction from Bangalore, India. She has travelled extensively across Europe and Asia. Her books include Confessions Of An IT Employee, When I Find You, and The Murder Of Jay Shekhar. Her articles on lifestyle, creativity, and travel have appeared on popular blogs such as She The People.TV and The Post India.

How to Make Money with Breakout Trading

Genre: Nonfiction

It’s important to understand two herds that exist in the market: Smart Money and Dumb Money.

Smart Money refers to institutional investors, big sharks who have money and information power who give direction and momentum to markets. Dumb Money refers to nonprofessional traders, retail traders who often try to make quick money.

Do you agree that it’s always a good idea to follow smart money? Then you should know one thing. Participation from smart money creates a genuine breakout, and the absence of smart money participation results in a false breakout. Isn’t it? The answer is nothing less than a revelation!

Indrazith Shantharaj is a full-time intraday trader and author of a few best-selling books related to the stock market. He uses market profile concepts, price action trading, and a few other technical analysis aspects to manage his trades. His articles can be found at profiletraders.in.

Request to the two winners: please share your details via a DM (to me or Ruchi) on our Discord channel. The prizes will be shipped to you within a month. Happy reading!

That’s all from our end. We’ll see you again soon.

Lots of love,

Sai, Ruchi and Anangsha
Editors, BAOS