2025 K.M. Shea Book Awards

As a "just for fun" event inspired by the official Academy Awards in early March we opened up voting for various categories across the K.M. Shea community, and here are the voting results!

First up, here's what the newsletter voted for:

Award: The Book with the Best Animal Sidekicks

Winner: Court of Midnight and Deception (Nightmares, Glooms, Shades, and Bagel the donkey) (this one won by a landslide with almost 400 votes!)

Honorable Mention goes to the Fairy Tale Enchantress series (Pegasus) and Second Age of Retha series (Pax, Trash Panda, Sinistre, Chester the pony)

The Facebook group voted for two categories:

Award: Favorite Supernatural/Magical Race

Winner: Elves (from Timeless Fairy Tales + Elves of Lessa series)

Very close second place goes to Vampires!

Award: Favorite KM Shea Physical Combat Heroine

Winner: Jade from Magic on Main Street series

Honorable Mention goes to Angelique and Gwendafyn!

Discord voted for two categories:

Award: Best Book World to Live in

Winner: Magiford

Honorable Mention: Second Age of Retha game world and the Timeless Fairy Tales

The also voted on a Magiford Beverage Brawl where participants pick their favorite beverage that matches a Magiford heroine (Coffee, Tea, Hot Cocoa, and Smoothies) and whichever gets the most votes wins!

Winner: Hot Chocolate

Runner Up: Tea

And finally, as a special bonus, I asked the audio team to pick a category and winner for one of the audiobooks and here is what they decided on!

Award: One Man Audiobook Show

Winner: Nathaniel Priestley (in King Arthur and Her Knights series)

Swoony Awards 2024

Have you heard of the Swoony Awards? It's and event run by readers for readers and it focuses on finding the best books each year in clean secular romance across several sub-genres. And it's been running since 2015 so there have been a LOT of great books nominated and voted on for the past 10+ years!

The first book in the Magic on Main Street Series, The Lies of Vampires and Slayers, was nominated for the 2024 Swoony Awards and I'm absolutely thrilled to announce that it pushed through three rounds of reader voting to win the title for the Urban Fantasy category!

Thank you so much to each and every Champion who rallied to support Jade and Considine with your vote! The organizers mentioned that they received a record number of votes per round (in the thousands!) and I'm so honored and proud to know that the Champions had a large part in that! Thank you!

In case you are wondering the Champions also clinched the Swoony Award for Gate of Myth and Power (2023), Pack of Dawn and Destiny (2022), and Court of Midnight and Deception (2022)! It's pretty clear that the Champions are a force to be reckoned with!

Are you looking for some clean fantasy romances for your 2025 TBR pile?

The best part of the Swoony Awards is you can always go back and look at the nominations to find new books from familiar or new-to-you authors to read!

To find all the 2024 nominations I recommend checking the Swoony Awards Facebook group (it's public, so you'll be able to see the posts) or their Instagram account:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/theswoonyawards

https://www.instagram.com/theswoonyawards/

If you want to look at the 2022 or earlier nominations you might find it easier to review the list on their blog:

https://theswoonyawards.blogspot.com/

And please support the Swoony Awards organizers by giving them a heart/like and a comment on social media. They were considering skipping the awards this year due to lack of time (it takes them a ton of work to put all of this together) but the overwhelming support from readers is what convinced them to move forward!

French Fry Appreciation Week

Today kicks off the first ever Character Appreciation Week starring the ever loveable unofficial Magiford mascot: the pigecoon/trash griffin named French Fry!

This week we are bringing you a FREE ebook on Amazon and three separate fun games you can enter or just revel in the hilariousness of the entries!

The community moderators will be picking multiple winners for each game and the prizes will be sticker swag envelope including a sticker of French Fry himself!

Here's the schedule of events:

Monday, September 9 - French Fry (the character) meme game on the Discord channel

• Get your meme ideas ready for this ultimate battle to find the best French Fry themed meme!

• The Discord group are the Champion meme experts so you have to join the Discord server to participate in this game!

• (If you want to participate but haven't joined Discord yet, follow the instructions on this webpage.)

September 10 - 14 - The King's Captive, which is the first book in French Fry's trilogy (Gate of Myth and Power) will be FREE on Amazon!

• Get the book: Amazon.com | All other Amazon stores

  
  

Wednesday, September 11 - French Fry (the food) Photo Challenge on Facebook Group and Instagram.

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• Any type of potato fry can be used for this game and sweet potato fries or veggie straws are also acceptable!

• Pose the fries with a book, hold them up to the sky (to feed a hungry pigecoon), make a nest, get creative and have fun!

• Add your entry to the Facebook Group game post or upload it to Instagram and tag my profile (so we can find it!)

• The game will end at Midnight EDT (Eastern Time)

Saturday, September 14 - French Fry (the character) Art and Craft Game on Facebook Group and Instagram

• Draw a picture of French Fry or make a craft featuring our beloved little pigecoon!

• You don’t have to be artistic! A new coloring book page featuring French Fry is now live on the website and you can use it to participate!

• Add your entry to the Facebook Group game post or upload it to Instagram and tag my profile (so we can find it!)

• The game will end at Midnight EDT (Eastern Time)

Thanks to the Facebook Group moderators and Discord Mod Squad for helping to bring this silly and fun event to life. We can’t wait to see what the Champions come up with!