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. Affectionately referred to as ‘BabyBo’ in a play on its big brother, SPFBO, SFINCS is a competition aimed at promoting novellas across SFF, including fantasy, sci-fi, and horror.
To learn more about SFINCS, and when the next competition will take place, please visit the official SFINCS website.
In 2023-2024, Nils and Trudie took part in the very first SFINCS as judges in Team Jamreads. Along with our co-judges, we read through a batch of self-published novellas and chose our semi-finalists and ultimate finalists. There were five teams in total, and we chose these as our ten finalists:
But there can only be one winner! A huge congratulations to Sarah Chorn for winning the first SFINCS with her novella, A Sorrow Named Joy.
Finalists
These are the ten finalists of SFINCS 1. Each are fantastic novellas worth adding to your TBR:
A Sorrow Named Joy by Sarah Chorn
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Joy desires nothing more than her husband’s happiness. She spends her days creating the perfect life for him in their idyllic suburban home. Everything is neat, predictable, and in its place.
When Joy finds a picture that hints at a past she cannot remember, the facade cracks. As secrets are revealed, Joy realizes her blissful life is crumbling and to find herself, she must first lose herself.
Perfect, after all, is only an illusion.
Shattered Spirits by Cal Black
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Legends say a dead god is buried under the stone city of Ishcairn, protecting its inhabitants by dashing enemy fleets into the jagged coast of Craeburn. Adjunct professor Corrie Ecksley doesn’t believe any of that, but she knows from her work excavating nearby burial sites that the ancient Craeburn people believed it enough to name the city after their dead god, Ish.
When the ripples of a great war finally reach Craeburn’s shores, a terrifying new weapon is unleashed on the city that not even Ish can deter. A bomb that tears souls from bodies, driving anyone who witnessed the blast insane. But it is not the living that Corrie fears. Displaced spirits are hungry for a body, and care not if it already plays host to a soul.
No bullets can stop them, no walls are thick enough to keep them out.
No help is coming.
No one left but Corrie to stop the carnage, if she even can.
Dragonmeat by Angela Boord
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Dragonmeat is poison. But what if you’re starving?
Peri will do anything to keep her chronically ill father alive. Using her now useless scholarly talents to research thievery, she’s become a highly successful food thief—small, ordinary—invisible. In Medeas, gripped in the iron fist of its mad governor, ravaged by dragons, hiding is a way of life.
Then her stealing triggers a riot, and a mysterious stranger steps in to save her. Frost has food and he’s willing to share his secret…but talking to him might be the most dangerous thing Peri’s ever done. How can she find the courage to leave her safe shadows and take a stand when her father’s life hangs in the balance?
Dragonmeat is a fast-paced novella set in award-winning author Angela Boord’s Eterean Empire universe–a lush, dangerous world of empire and resistance inspired by Rome and Renaissance Italy.
Ruins of Smoke by João F. Silva
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The Usharian Empire rules the Known World with an iron fist. Imperials protect their world from the tainted hand of the Deceiver, but he is back with an avatar capable of breaking the Empire and grounding humanity into ash.
JEHA is a sentinel of the Empire, willing to fight and die for kinship and duty.
AGOR is an imperial general. Disgruntled by the darkness he sees seeping into everything he loves, he makes his move.
MATALA is a young smokesmith who sees his courage tested as Ushar burns.
ALAMAKAR is the world’s most powerful man, but even strong blood ties can hold him down and tear him apart.
As the Deceiver threatens the Usharian Empire’s heart, fiends walk the streets of the capital. Men and monsters clash in a battle fit for gods. And the smoke follows them.
Blackcap by Benjamin Aeveryn
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Detective noir meets The Witcher in a post-apocalyptic city reminiscent of Victorian London.
New London is protected by a stone shelter to keep out the rainwights–the monsters that tore down civilization. It is a dark city, choked with soot and crime. On these perpetually lamplit streets, Kade Blackcap was once a famous detective.
Overburdened with guilt at sending a man to the noose, Kade can’t bear to take a case for fear of the consequences. But with the taxman breathing down his neck, he has to find work soon, or he’ll lose the house his father left him.
He has one hope left.
Instead of chasing criminals, he turns to hunting the monsters of myth his peers refuse to believe exist.
A Wolf in Thief’s Clothing by Lily Anne Crow
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Phrai joins a crew to pull off a dangerous heist. Little do her fellow thieves know that the end of their job is just the beginning of hers.
The Collector’s Lost Things by Jessica A. McMinn
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Blind Those Who See…
Rei-Hai Shaw is a Collector, and he is very good.
At just thirteen years old, Rei became the youngest recruit ever to join the ranks of the Tower, the shadowy organisation that oversees the fulfilment of Whyt’hallen’s darkest requests.
Favoured by the masters but distrusted by his peers, Rei comes to learn the price of his accolades when the Tower demands more than the simple procurement of trinkets.
They want him to steal lives, too.
When his latest missions thrusts him back into the world of his childhood, Rei is painfully reminded of all he left behind—and what he can’t bear to lose again.
Includes additional short story, The King & His Shadow.
Dark Heart of Ilmoure by Cara N. Delaney
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Years ago, all she wanted was to leave. Now, a web of secrets might ensnare her forever.
When Iris Grey returns to her hometown of Ilmoure years after a bitter parting, she hopes for reconciliation in the face of a tragedy. Instead, she arrives to a town changed for the worse, a cold welcome from people she once loved, and a family that seems to be keeping secrets from her at every turn.
When those secrets become too heavy to ignore, Iris starts to dig deeper. What she finds leads her to question her very perception of reality. Faced with old wounds and new revelations, Iris finds herself mired in a plot that threatens to swallow herself, the town, and the people she once loved.
We’re All Monsters Here by Amy Marsden
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When Anna is invited to a secluded retreat full of selfish, greedy humans, of course she doesn’t say no. Not only did she manipulate the CEO of the world’s largest oil corporation, Peter Beyer, into organising the four-day getaway in the first place, but no self-respecting vampire would ever turn down such easy prey. Her weekend gets even better when she meets Saira, one of Peter Beyer’s employees, and they begin a whirlwind affair. Blood and beautiful women are Anna’s idea of a great time.
She should have known it was too good to be true.
Hunters are dangerous, deadly, and dedicated to eradicating vampires. When a group of them turn up at the retreat, Anna must use her centuries of experience to escape their ever-closing net. Will she get out unscathed, or will they finally catch up to her? Will she give into her intense and unexpected feelings for Saira, or will she leave her to burn as she destroys all evidence she was ever there?
A fresh twist on urban fantasy, with an added splash of sapphic romance.
The Re-Emergence by Alan K. Dell
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“It was just a myth. Just a damn legend passed down from corrupted databanks…”
A strange probe from a long-forgotten satellite network appears in the P’hori star system. Its message: a dire warning signalling the return of an ancient mythological evil. Imperator Da’kora Corasar and the crew of the Qesh’kal are sent to determine the probe’s origin, and find that the satellite is not as they had expected. Corasar trusts the satellite’s data, but not everyone aboard agrees. Tensions rise and loyalties are tested as they track down the source of the signal. Thrust into conflict, the crew of the Qesh’kal must chase their foe across the galactic arm and save their home from certain destruction.