Chanticleer Book Reviews

Author: lindsay-schopfer

SPOTLIGHT on OZMA: October is for OZMA 2020 Book Awards – Fantasy, Magic, Other Worlds, and Other Creatures, Book Awards
Why do we love Fantasy now more than ever? With the promise of bringing new horizons, a grand new adventure, magical worlds, and perhaps even a treasure… with a flick of our finger and that which was not suddenly appears… with magical creatures and fantastical places waiting to be explored – what’s not to love?

Chanticleer International Book Awards is looking for the best books featuring magic, the supernatural, imaginary worlds, fantastical creatures, legendary beasts, mythical beings, or inventions of fancy that author imaginations dream up without a basis in science as we know it. Epic Fantasy, High Fantasy, Sword and Sorcery, Dragons, Unicorns, Steampunk, Dieselpunk, Gaslight Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, or other out of this world fiction, we will discover the best among them and award them an OZMA Book Award!

The last day to submit your work is coming up faster than you may think – October 31, 2020, is just around the corner. We invite you to join us, to tell us your stories, and to find out who will take home the prize at CAC21 on April 18th, 2021.

As our deadline draws near, don’t slip into an alternate reality and forget to enter your fantasy novel! We accept completed manuscripts and recently published works.

Enter today!

The OZMA Book Awards Hall of Fame:

The OZMA BOOK AWARDS Grand Prize Winner for 2019 is:

Manufactured Witches by Michelle Rene

Michelle Rene participated in our 10 question Author Interview series and this is a bit of what she has to say about writing… “It is a powerful and equalizing force in the world. As long as you can string sentences together, you have a voice. Your story can be told. It doesn’t matter how old or young you are. Your wallet and waistline have no bearing. You don’t even have to be formally educated. Everyone’s story is possible, and stories change the world.”

The First In Category Winners for 2019 are:
- Elana A. Mugdan – Dragon Blood
- Michelle Rene – Manufactured Witches
- Noah Lemelson – The Sightless City
- KC Cowan & Sara Cole – The Hunt for Winter
- Susannah Dawn – Search for the Armor of God
- Dan Zangari & Robert Zangari – A Prince’s Errand
- Tim Westover – The Winter Sisters: A Novel
2018 Chanticleer Int’l Book Award Winners!

The 2018 OZMA Book Awards GRAND PRIZE WINNER for Fantasy Fiction Novels:

Dragon Speaker by Elana A. Mugdan

Elana took home the OZMA Grand Prize Ribbon

Elana Mugdan, our Grand Prize winner, earned her title for Dragon Speaker, a story about a young girl who is charged with rescuing a dragon and, ultimately, saves her world in this wide-reaching fantasy conception of love, war, danger, and magic. Massive amounts of magic!

Congratulations to the 2018 OZMA Book Awards for Fantasy Fiction Novels First in Category Winners!
- Virtuous Souls by Pamela LePage
- RAGNAROK: Demon Seed by Ea Bishop
- Money Jane by T.K. Riggins
- Heart Of Shadra by Susan Faw
- Into the North: A Keltin Moore Adventure by Lindsay Schopfer
- Antler Jinny and the Raven by Chris Dews
- Luminess Legends: Dragon Ascendants by Paul E. Vaughn
The 2017 OZMA Grand Prize Winner is T.K. Riggins for How to Set the World on Fire ,
a coming-of-age School of Magic novel that readers will find hard to put down.

T.K. Riggins has this to say about writing, “I started writing because of a dare. My friend was searching for something new to read, but instead of recommending a book, I decided to write something for her. It was a ten-page short story that was based on a farming event from my past, and I turned it into a tale of fantasy. It was a fun experience, and my friend was so impressed that she wanted to read more, so I just kept going.” Find out more in his 10 Question Author Interview, here.

2017 First Place Winners include:
- Eva’s Soul by Sarah M. Morin
- Daughter of Aithne by Karin Rita Gastreich
- In Her World: The Dark-Winter War by John W. Lord
- The One Apart: A Novel by Justine Avery
- Runebinder by Alex R. Kahler
- The Engine Woman’s Light by Laurel Anne Hill
- The Bookminder by M. K. Wiseman
2016 OZMA Grand Prize Winner:

Mythborn II Bane of the Warforged by Vijay Lakshman

Where myths and legends are brought to life!

2016 First Place Winners:
- Almost Mortal by Christopher Leibig
- Song Magick by Elisabeth Hamill
- Amaskan’s Blood by Raven Oak
- Camelot’s Queen by Nicole Evelina
- The Emperor of Babylon by Murray Lee Eiland, Jr.
- Darksea by Gary J. Hurtubise
Our 2020 Chanticleer International Book Awards feature more than $30,000.00 worth of cash and prizes each year!
- The 2020 Ozma Grand Prize Winner is named Chanticleer Reviews Best Fantasy Fiction Book of the Year and goes on to compete for the Chanticleer Overall Grand Prize Best Book of the Year
- The Overall Grand Prize Winner is named Chanticleer Reviews Best Book of the Year and awarded the $1000 prize
- All winners receive a Chanticleer Prize Package which includes a digital badge, a ribbon, and a whole assortment of goodies detailed below (winners outside the US pay a shipping & handling fee)
That’s more than $30,000.00 worth of cash and prizes! The Fine Print.

~$1000 for one lucky Overall Grand Prize Winner
~$30,000+ in reviews, prizes, and promotional opportunities awarded to Category Winners

Currently accepting entries. Deadline: Oct. 31st, 2020.

What are you waiting for? Enter today!
October 24, 2020
INTO the NORTH: A Keltin Moore Adventure by Lindsay Schopfer – Epic Fantasy, Steampunk, Action/Adventure

If Jack London had written about hunting fantastic beasts in a fantasy-tinged “Great White North” during a gold rush, instead of real animals in the Klondike, he’d have created a hunter like Keltin Moore and a beast like the Ghost of Lost Tap.

The adventures of Keltin Moore read a lot like London’s best adventure stories, only written as if they were inspired by Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter International series. The combination leads to a chilling story (in more ways than one) about a professional beast hunter and his companions on a quest to make some money and save a town from a beast that no one has survived. Still, everyone has seen the aftermath of its depredations.

They call it the Ghost of Lost Tap because it moves like a ghost. Or something supernatural. And no one has been able to catch it, certainly not the little band of shakedown artists calling themselves the Hunter Guild that has sprung up in the ramshackle boomtown of Lost Tap.

The story focuses on the character of Keltin Moore, the last of a long and storied family of professional beast hunters. Keltin learned his trade at his father’s knee, and like his father, is used to hunting alone. But in his second adventure, he is traveling with an apprentice, young Jaylocke, who needs to learn a trade to earn his place as an adult among his own people.

In Lost Tap, Keltin and Jaylocke band together with old friends that they fought with in the first book of Keltin’s adventures, The Beast Hunter. While they hunt the “Ghost,” Keltin finds himself meditating on the nature of leadership, his need to be alone versus his understanding that he needs others to bring down this unstoppable beast, and his feelings of responsibility to those under his care – and in his heart.

Keltin is a fascinating character. This second installment of the series provides a thought-provoking perspective on his profession, his responsibilities as a leader, and his desire to save people, often from their own mistakes.

At the same time, the world that Keltin inhabits, as much as it will remind readers of London’s tales of the Klondike, is a fantasy world and not London’s historical one. Except for the beasts themselves, with atypical and strangely asymmetric biology, there is little magic in this world or not that is seen in this story.

Beasts are killed with guns, not spells. No matter how unnatural they seem, a bullet to the brain, once Keltin manages to determine where a beast’s brain actually is, kills them just fine. But the places Keltin refers to, and the sentient nonhumans that he meets and befriends, remind the reader that this is a different world with its own history.

While these reminders are not enough to make the reader feel they have missed too much by starting with this second book in the series, they do serve to tease the reader that there are stories yet to be told. We love this adventure/fantasy so much, we happily recommend readers to start with the first book in the series and then move on.

Into the North: A Keltin Moore Adventure by Lindsay Schopfer is such a terrific story on its own that readers will feel compelled to pick up the other stories just to catch up on all the action! Highly recommended.

Into the North: A Keltin Moore Adventure won First Place in the CIBA 2018 OZMA Awards for Fantasy Fiction.

November 8, 2019
OCTOBER is for OZMA Book Awards and a Spotlight on ALL THINGS FANTASY – Fantasy Fiction Hall of Fame
Join the Magic!

Elana Mugdan and her dragon.

Chanticleer International Book Awards is looking for the best books featuring magic, the supernatural, imaginary worlds, fantastical creatures, legendary beasts, mythical beings, or inventions of fancy that author imaginations dream up without a basis in science as we know it. Epic Fantasy, High Fantasy, Sword and Sorcery, Dragons, Unicorns, Steampunk, Dieselpunk, Gaslight Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, or other out of this world fiction, we will put them to the test and choose the best among them and award them an OZMA Book Award!

Last year, Elana Mugdan, our Grand Prize winner, earned her title for Dragon Speaker, a story about a young girl who is charged with rescuing a dragon and, ultimately, saves her world in this wide-reaching fantasy conception of love, war, danger, and magic. Massive amounts of magic!

Elana has plenty of Magic going on these days, but how about you? Do you have what it takes to be the next OZMA Grand Prize winner? If you don’t enter, you’ll never know!

The last day to submit your work is October 31, 2019. We invite you to join us, to tell us your stories, and to find out who will take home the prize at CAC20 on April 18th, 2020.

As our deadline draws near, don’t slip into an alternate reality and forget to enter your fantasy novel! We accept completed manuscripts and published works.

Enter today!

We encourage everyone to attend our Awards Ceremony on April 18, 2019, that will take place during the 2020 Chanticleer Authors Conference . First Place category winners will be whisked up on stage to receive their custom ribbon and wait to see who among them will take home the Grand Prize. It’s an exciting evening of dinner, networking, and celebrations!

First Place category winners and Grand Prize winners will each receive a stunning awards package well worth the price of entry into the OZMA Awards competition!

2018 Chanticleer Int’l Book Award Winners!

The OZMA Book Awards for Fantasy Fiction

Hall of Fame

The 2018 OZMA Book Awards GRAND PRIZE WINNER for Fantasy Fiction Novels:

Dragon Speaker by Elana A. Mugdan

Elana took home the OZMA Grand Prize Ribbon

Congratulations to the 2018 OZMA Book Awards for Fantasy Fiction Novels First in Category Winners!
- Virtuous Souls by Pamela LePage
- RAGNAROK: Demon Seed by Ea Bishop
- Money Jane by T.K. Riggins
- Heart Of Shadra by Susan Faw
- Into the North: A Keltin Moore Adventure by Lindsay Schopfer
- Antler Jinny and the Raven by Chris Dews
- Luminess Legends: Dragon Ascendants by Paul E. Vaughn
2017 OZMA Grand Prize Winner

How to Set the World on Fire by T.K. Riggins is a coming-of-age School of Magic novel that readers will find hard to put down.

2017 First Place Winners include:
- Eva’s Soul by Sarah M. Morin
- Daughter of Aithne by Karin Rita Gastreich
- In Her World: The Dark-Winter War by John W. Lord
- The One Apart: A Novel by Justine Avery
- Runebinder by Alex R. Kahler
- The Engine Woman’s Light by Laurel Anne Hill
- The Bookminder by M. K. Wiseman
2016 OZMA Grand Prize Winner:

Mythborn II Bane of the Warforged by Vijay Lakshman

Where myths and legends are brought to life!

2016 First Place Winners:
- Almost Mortal by Christopher Leibig
- Song Magick by Elisabeth Hamill
- Amaskan’s Blood by Raven Oak
- Camelot’s Queen by Nicole Evelina
- The Emperor of Babylon by Murray Lee Eiland, Jr.
- Darksea by Gary J. Hurtubise
Our 2019 Chanticleer International Book Awards feature more than $30,000.00 worth of cash and prizes each year!
- All First in 2019 Category Winners receive a coveted Chanticleer Book Review Package (value $425) and go on to compete for the Ozma Grand Prize
- The Ozma Grand Prize Winner is named Chanticleer Reviews Best Fantasy Fiction Book of the Year and goes on to compete for the Chanticleer Overall Grand Prize Best Book of the Year
- The Overall Grand Prize Winner is named Chanticleer Reviews Best Book of the Year and awarded the $1000 prize
- All winners receive a Chanticleer Prize Package which includes a digital badge, a ribbon and a whole assortment of goodies detailed below (winners outside the US pay a shipping & handling fee)
That’s more than $30,000.00 worth of cash and prizes! The Fine Print.

~$1000 for one lucky Overall Grand Prize Winner
~$30,000+ in reviews, prizes, and promotional opportunities awarded to Category Winners

Currently accepting entries. Deadline: Oct. 31st, 2019.

What are you waiting for? Enter today!
October 19, 2019
10 “Fantasy Gifts” for the Writer in Your Life by Lindsay Schopfer, Fantasy Author
Oh, if these gifts for writers were but possible — perhaps someday…

Writer’s Christmas List attributed to Debbie Ridpath Ohi at InkyGirl.com

Ten Holiday FANTASY Gifts for the Writer in Your Life by Lindsay Schopfer

1. A cat video filter for her internet browser

2. A “Cliff Notes” version of a book on the craft of writing

3. A word processor that auto-corrects telling instead of showing (Editor’s note: Why can’t magic wands be word processors, we are fantasizing after all.)

4. An instant-inspiration pill that is not harmful, habit-forming, or fattening

5. A mobile desk so she can pace and write at the same time (See gift item #9 below)

6. A voice-activated graphic design program that will take an infinite number of vocal commands to design the perfect book cover

7. A music app that syncs up the type of scene she’s writing with the appropriate mood music

8. Special glasses that can scan peoples’ brains and instantly know whether they’ll be interested in her book or not

9. An automated candy dispenser that will only release a piece of chocolate for each time she writes another 1,000 words (see Gift Item #5 above)

10. A keyboard that makes the writer typing feel like petting a dog (or a cat — editor’s note)

What would you add to the Fantasy Gifts for Authors List?

Leave your reply in the comment section below along with the best way to contact you. Ho! Ho! Ho!

Many thanks to Lindsay Schopfer (who is very qualified to write an article on fantasy gifts, as he is an acclaimed fantasy author and writing craft coach ) for sharing this blog post with the Chanticleer Reviews Community.

Lindsay Schopfer is the author of The Adventures of Keltin Moore, a series of steampunk-flavored fantasy novels about a professional monster hunter. He also wrote the sci-fi survivalist novel Lost Under Two Moons and the fantasy short story collection Magic, Mystery and Mirth. His short fiction has appeared in Merely This and Nothing More: Poe Goes Punk from Writerpunk Press and Unnatural Dragons from Clockwork Dragon.

However, until these fantasy gifts are available, may we suggest the following last minute gifts for the writer in your life:

Perhaps a gift certificate from Chanticleer Book Reviews… the gift receiver will receive a festive email notification within 24 hours — even on Christmas Day!
- Gift Certificates starting at $50 to be used on any of Chanticleer’s services, products, authors conference, or workshops. Gift Certificates are valid until Dec. 31, 2020. Click here for more information or to order.
We are also offering special discounts on two of Chanticleer Reviews services until December 31, 2017 or before the limited quantities at these special rates are sold out — especially for the Chanticleer Community members who have read this far!

Keep reading for special discounts just for YOU!
- a Gift Certificate for a Chanticleer Book Awards contest entry of the author’s choice $75 dollars per entry — Happy Holidays offer is $60 per entry. Limited to 5 contest entries per Gift Certificate purchase. Hurry! Quantities are limited at these special rates.
- A Chanticleer Book Review – Standard Delivery (six to nine weeks) $395. Special Happy Holidays Gift Certificate rate $325. Limited to 3 Chanticleer Book Reviews per person at the special discount rate. Hurry! Quantities are limited at these special rates. Gift Certificates valid until Dec. 31, 2020.
The Perfect Gift for the Writer in Your Life

Happy Holidays from all of us at Chanticleer Book Reviews & Media!
December 19, 2017