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# Joel C. Scoberg

Science fiction and fantasy writer

## Sitemaps

- [XML Sitemap](https://joelcscoberg.com/sitemap.xml): Contains all public & indexable URLs for this website.

## Posts

- [Story sale: Who Are Ewe Calling A Cheat?](https://joelcscoberg.com/story-sale-who-are-ewe-calling-a-cheat/) - Get ready for an exciting announcement 📢 🥳 I’m delighted to finally announce that my story, “Who Are Ewe Calling A Cheat?”, will be featured in the ‘WERE-2’ anthology from Zombies Need Brains later this year. "It’s the night of the full moon, but there are more than mere werewolves skulking the streets. In WERE-2,
- [Why I love "The Lord of the Rings"](https://joelcscoberg.com/why-i-love-the-lord-of-the-rings/) - Book recommendation for July 2026: The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien The Lord of the Rings is probably my favourite book. I have read it multiple times and I fully intend to read it multiple times again. I suppose everyone is familiar with it (or the films) but what I'd say is, if
- [I'm on a panel! @ TBR Con 28 July 2026](https://joelcscoberg.com/im-on-a-panel-tbr-con-28-july-2026/) - Join me at TBR Con on 28 July 2026 (8pm to 9.30pm GMT) I'm very excited to announce that I'll be appearing on a panel at TBR Con 2026 alongside some terrific authors to discuss: "What's the difference between magic and superpowers?" This is my first time on a panel at a SFF convention so
- [Why I love "In Cold Blood"](https://joelcscoberg.com/why-i-love-in-cold-blood/) - Book recommendation for June 2026: In Cold Blood by Truman Capote Considered to be the first true crime novel, I've yet to read another better than this. And the story behind the book, of how Capote came to write it and his relationship with one of the killers, is so compelling that they've made two
- [Why I love "The Pillars of the Earth"](https://joelcscoberg.com/why-i-love-the-pillars-of-the-earth/) - Book recommendation for May 2026: "The Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follett If you thought an 1,000 page epic about the building of a fictional cathedral in 12th Century England would be dull, then, my friend, you'd be very, very wrong! What it's about: The story is set in the period of the 12th
- [Moby Dick and Me](https://joelcscoberg.com/moby-dick-and-me/) - I'm 175 years late to the party, but here's my take on Moby Dick Moby Dick by Herman Melville was this month's read for my book club. For those of you unfamiliar with the story, it's about Captain Ahab and his monomaniacal pursuit of the titular white whale, as told by Ishmael, one of the
- [I love a "100 best [anything] of all time" list](https://joelcscoberg.com/i-love-a-100-best-anything-of-all-time-list/) - I'm a sucker for a "Greatest [Anything] of All Time" list, even more so when it's about books. I'm not going to lie, I've always been fascinated by compilations of the greatest anything: greatest footballer, greatest military generals, greatest rock bands, and so on. As a kid, I even remember having books that listed the
- [Why I love "Into Thin Air'](https://joelcscoberg.com/why-i-love-into-thin-air/) - Book recommendation for April 2026: "Into Thin Air" by Jon Krakeur This is a firsthand account of the climbing disaster in which eight people died while trying to reach the summit of Mount Everest during a storm. What it's about: In 1996, the journalist Jon Krakeur joined a climbing expedition to write an article for
- [Hollywood Reflections, One Year On](https://joelcscoberg.com/hollywood-reflections-one-year-on/) - What I learned from my Hollywood experience was, "Just go for it!" I've been following the blog posts about the adventures of the 2026 winners of the Writers of the Future contest and it reminded me it's been a year since I had my own once in a lifetime trip to Hollywood. Man, how time
- [I'm on the BSFA Award Long List!](https://joelcscoberg.com/im-on-the-bsfa-award-long-list/) - "The Stench of Freedom" has made the British Science Fiction Association Award 2026 Long List for Best Shorter Fiction Well, 2026 has been quite eventful already! I'm on the Long List for the BSFA Award for Best Shorter Fiction 2026! Fresh from the exciting news that my Writers of the Future winning story, "The Stench
- [Why I love "The Martian"](https://joelcscoberg.com/why-i-love-the-martian/) - Book recommendation for March 2026: "The Martian" by Andy Weir What would you do if you were left behind, on your own, on Mars? If you read The Martian, then you’ll have a pretty epic how-to-guide to help you (including how to grow your own Martian potatoes). What it's about: Mark Watney is an astronaut
- [I'm a Finalist in the Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award!](https://joelcscoberg.com/im-a-finalist-in-the-jim-baen-memorial-short-story-award/) - I'm a Finalist in the Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award 🤩 I’ve been asked not to share the title or any details of the story itself because the contest is judged anonymously. However, I’ve included an extract from the press release below to give you an idea of what the contest is about and
- [Why I love "The Paper Menagerie and other stories"](https://joelcscoberg.com/why-i-love-the-paper-menagerie-and-other-stories/) - My favourite book of 2025: "The Paper Menagerie and other stories" by Ken Liu I'm a bit late posting about my favourite book I read in 2025, but here we are! It's been quite a busy few weeks since welcoming our third child into the world, so this post just slipped down my to-do-list. But
- [I made the Tangent 2025 Recommend Reading List!](https://joelcscoberg.com/i-made-the-tangent-2025-recommend-reading-list/) - "The Stench of Freedom" gets a double star rating on the 2025 Tangent Recommended Reading List In super exciting news, my Writers of the Future winning story, "The Stench of Freedom", was listed in the 2025 Tangent Recommended Reading List! Not only that, but it received a double-star recommendation (second highest) 🤩🤯 The Tangent Recommended
- [Why I love "How the Grinch Stole Christmas"](https://joelcscoberg.com/why-i-love-how-the-grinch-stole-christmas/) - Book recommendation for December 2025: "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!" by Dr. Seuss A Christmas classic first published in 1957 that has a truly timeless message at its heart. Not just for kids, it is at its brilliant best when read aloud (to children or adults). What it's about: The Grinch hates Christmas, the whole
- [Why I love "A Search in Secret India"](https://joelcscoberg.com/why-i-love-a-search-in-secret-india/) - Book recommendation for November 2025: "A Search in Secret India" This is one of the classic works on the search for a spiritual guru that left a profound impact on me. And the story of how I came into possession of this book taught me about the wonderful potential to learn and grow when we
- [I formed a book club!](https://joelcscoberg.com/i-formed-a-book-club/) - Blokes + Beer + Books = Good Times! I’ve been an avid reader for longer than I can remember, but I’ve never been a member of a book club. That changed this month! From a mental health and wellbeing perspective, it's important for men (and women) to socialise with friends and find a safe space
- [Why I love "The Colour of Magic"](https://joelcscoberg.com/why-i-love-the-colour-of-magic/) - Book recommendation for October 2025: "The Colour of Magic" by Terry Pratchett The start of the iconic, and hilarious, Discworld series. It’s not everyone’s recommended starting point for the series but I fell in love with Terry Pratchett’s stories from the moment he redefined the Big Bang Hypothesis in the opening prologue. Who doesn't need
- [A crash course in marketing for writers](https://joelcscoberg.com/a-crash-course-in-marketing-for-writers/) - Writer, editor...and sales and marketing team? While the age old advice 'The best way to promote your book is to write a new one" is still true (so I'm told), nowadays, even traditionally published writers are expected to market, promote and sell their own books. Gone are the days of the publishers doing everything. This
- [Awards Eligibility 2025](https://joelcscoberg.com/awards-eligibility-2025/) - The starting gun has been fired for the 2025 awards season, as BSFA members can now nominate their favourite science fiction or fantasy stories published in 2025 for the BSFA Awards long list. I’ve had a pretty exciting year so far and I’m delighted to now be an author with a list of published works
- [Beware of marketing scams](https://joelcscoberg.com/beware-of-marketing-scams/) - One of the things that surprised me after my story was published in Writers of the Future, was how quickly I was targeted by marketing scams. And, even in the few months I’ve been getting such emails, they are getting increasingly sophisticated. I just wanted to use this blog post to flag this as a
- [Why I love "A Game of Thrones"](https://joelcscoberg.com/why-i-love-a-game-of-thrones/) - Book recommendation for August 2025: "A Game of Thrones" by George R. R. Martin The first instalment in George R.R. Martin’s epic fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire, inspired by the Wars of the Roses, it's gritty and violent and driven by human greed and vanity, with tumultuous politics, backstabbing betrayals, and unexpected
- [Why I love "The Broker"](https://joelcscoberg.com/why-i-love-the-broker/) - Book recommendation for September 2025: "The Broker" by John Grisham John Grisham is the King of legal thrillers and I’ve read easily a dozen of his books, if not more, and this is my favourite. He is a master story teller and he has never let me down, not to mention the list of excellent
- [Hello world!](https://joelcscoberg.com/hello-world/) - I must admit, I’m not a natural blogger. That’s perhaps a strange opening line for a blog. But it’s true. It’s not something I ever thought I would do. Then again, I never thought I’d be a winner of the Writers of the Future competition either. So, go figure. And that’s what’s led me here.
- [How to write a Writers of the Future winning story](https://joelcscoberg.com/how-to-write-a-writers-of-the-future-winning-story/) - Guest blog for the Writers of the Future contest I was asked by the good folks at WOTF if I would write a blog about the inspiration behind my story, “The Stench of Freedom”. I was, of course, more than happy to do so. The WOTF contest gave me one of the highlights of my
- [Interview on The Writing Community Chat Show](https://joelcscoberg.com/interview-on-the-writing-community-chat-show/) - A long chat about short stories I appeared on the Writing Community Chat Show (WCCS) on 6 August 2025, where I talked with the hosts CJ Aggett and Christopher Hooley about my writing journey and inspiration, what my publishing goals are, what story ending I would change, and why I chose Radagast the Brown (from the Lord
- [100 submissions in - time for a data deep dive](https://joelcscoberg.com/100-submissions-in-time-for-a-data-deep-dive/) - I hit “submit” this month on my 100th story submission. I love easy, round numbers, so 100 submissions feels like quite a milestone. And, when pulling this blog post together, I realised it is just over 10 years since my very first submission back in June 2015. This feels like a very appropriate time to
- [Why I love "The Hobbit"](https://joelcscoberg.com/why-i-love-the-hobbit/) - Book recommendation for July 2025: "The Hobbit" by J.R.R. Tolkien This is a true classic of childrens literature—though I would say literature full stop—which holds a special place in my heart because it is the book that made me fall in love with fantasy. I have reread it many times and once bought two copies
- [Preorder your copy of Volume 41 of WotF now](https://joelcscoberg.com/preorder-your-copy-of-volume-41-of-wotf-now/) - Exciting news! You can now preorder Writers of the Future Volume 41, which contains my winning story, “The Stench of Freedom”. It's available in paperback, ebook and audiobook, whichever you prefer. Click here! By preordering, you'll also get some cool freebies, such as two winning stories from Volume 1 published in 1985 as well as cover art
- [Illustrators of the Future portfolio submissions](https://joelcscoberg.com/illustrators-of-the-future-portfolio-submissions/) - You can now see the three illustrations submitted by this year's Illustrators of the Future contest winners. And you should. They are awesome! Click here. John Barlow has been commissioned to illustrate my winning story, though I won't get to see it until a reveal event at the workshop in Hollywood next month. I've had
- [WOTF41 is out now - go buy your copy!](https://joelcscoberg.com/wotf41-is-out-now-go-buy-your-copy/) - WOTF41 release day! Dial your excitement up to 11 because you can now go and buy your very own copy of Volume 41 of Writers of the Future from bookshops across the US and Canada (and online and ebooks too), which features my story "The Stench of Freedom", as well as the amazing stories from
- [UK Book Release: WOTF41 is now on sale!](https://joelcscoberg.com/uk-book-release-wotf41-is-now-on-sale/) - Writers of the Future Volume 41 is now available in the UK For everyone UK based, this means you can now read my story, "The Stench of Freedom", as well as the amazing stories from my Volume 41 cohort. Go grab yourself a copy today, you won't be disappointed. If you don’t believe me—I am
- [Who's that Joel C. Scoberg geezer in the news?](https://joelcscoberg.com/whos-that-joel-c-scoberg-geezer-in-the-news/) - I've been getting my face about! Upon getting home from Hollywood I was expecting to crash back to reality after my amazingly surreal experience at the Writers of the Future workshops, but the unexpectedness continued because I was on TV! What?! That's TV Swansea interviewed me about my trip to LA and the inspiration behind
- [Dare to believe: five years chasing my writer dream](https://joelcscoberg.com/dare-to-believe-five-years-chasing-my-writer-dream/) - It's important to stop every now and then to reflect on what you've done in life, and to consider if you're content with where you're going. So, what happened to me five years ago this month? What triggered this new writing era in my life? I became a father. It's amazing what becoming a parent
- [Why I love "Frankenstein"](https://joelcscoberg.com/why-i-love-frankenstein-by-mary-shelley/) - January 2025 book recommendation: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley What better place to start than with the original science fiction novel? And forget what you've seen in movie and television adaptations, nothing comes close to reflecting how great this book is or even accurately portraying Dr. Frankenstein's "monster". What it's about: You all know the story,
- [Why I love "The Alchemist"](https://joelcscoberg.com/why-i-love-the-alchemist/) - Book recommendation for February 2025: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho I suspect most of you have heard of the global phenomenon that is, The Alchemist, as it's sold like 65 million copies or something. If you've not, then you are in for a treat. What it's about: Santiago is a young shepherd in Andalucia who
- [My first live interview](https://joelcscoberg.com/my-first-live-interview/) - I was invited onto “The Author’s Quill” podcast, hosted by Joe Montaldo, for an episode dedicated to meeting some of the winners of Writers and Illustrators of the Future Volume 41. John Goodwin (President of the publisher of Writers of the Future) co-hosted with Joe, and I was joined by Patrick MacPhee and Seth Atwater Jr. (writer
- [Why I love "A Thousand Splendid Suns"](https://joelcscoberg.com/why-i-love-a-thousand-splendid-suns/) - Book recommendation for March 2025: A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini This is a story that will break your heart, that will leave you cursing the cruelty of man, and make you wish you had never read it just so you could go back and read it again as if for the first time.
- [How I became a Writers of the Future winner](https://joelcscoberg.com/how-i-won-writers-of-the-future/) - If at first you don't succeed, try, try again (and then try some more). There are writers out there who get published right away, or who win the Writers of the Future contest with their first submission. I am not one of them. After my daughter was born in 2020, I committed to follow my
- [Introducing my "writing people"](https://joelcscoberg.com/introducing-my-writing-people/) - The lonely lot of being a writer The thing about being a writer is that it can be lonely and so I cannot overstate the joy I’ve felt in finding “my writing people” at the Writers of the Future workshops. I don’t mean to say I am lonely as a person, because I’m not. I
- [Why I love "Elantris"](https://joelcscoberg.com/why-i-love-elantris/) - Book recommendation for April 2025: "Elantris" by Brandon Sanderson I think this is the perfect place to start if you like fantasy books but have not yet read anything by Brandon Sanderson, who is perhaps the biggest fantasy writer at present. It's a standalone novel, which is quite rare in fantasy these days. What’s it
- [Why I love "Dune"](https://joelcscoberg.com/why-i-love-dune/) - Book recommendation for May 2025: "Dune" by Frank Herbert This is the most epic of epic science fiction novels and was a winner of both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award (as the inaugural winner). For me, Dune is to science fiction what Lord of the Rings is to fantasy; the pinnacle of the
- [The 41st Writers of the Future Awards Gala](https://joelcscoberg.com/the-41st-writers-of-the-future-awards-gala/) - Hollywood extravaganza! The climax of the Writers of the Future workshops in Hollywood is the annual awards gala, held in the rather grand Taglyan Complex. The whole day was very Hollywood; from the black tie dress code, the limo ride from our hotel, and arriving to an actual red carpet ceremony where we were the
- [Why I love "Writers of the Future Volume 41"](https://joelcscoberg.com/why-i-love-writers-of-the-future-volume-41/) - Book recommendation for June 2025: Writers of the Future Volume 41 For over forty years, the Writers of the Future contest has found the newest and most exciting voices and visionaries in science fiction and fantasy. It has an incredible track record of finding the next generation of speculative fiction writers and I am so

## Pages

- [My short stories](https://joelcscoberg.com/short-stories/) - I write speculative fiction. That means you're likely to come across one or all of the following in my stories: aliens and monsters, robots, mythological folk, magic, space ships and stuff getting blown up. There may even be a dilemma that makes you question yourself. You might laugh. Dare I say it, you may even
- [Interviews and media appearances](https://joelcscoberg.com/joel-c-scoberg-media-appearances/) - This is the place to read or listen to my interviews and other articles about me where I have chatted about my writing inspiration and journey, my future writing goals and what I've got going on. Panellist at TBRCon 2026 (28 July 2026) This was my first appearance as a panellist at a SFF convention,
- [These are the books I love](https://joelcscoberg.com/joels-book-club/) - This is my book club, the space where I can tell you about the books I love and why I love them. I won't be reviewing any of these books, only telling you why I love them and what the books mean to me, or how they have influenced my personal life, beyond the words
- [Who is Joel C. Scoberg?](https://joelcscoberg.com/about-me/) - Author bio Joel C. Scoberg lives with his very supportive wife and somewhat feral children on the beautiful Gower Peninsula. He is a winner of the Writers of the Future contest (Volume 41), a Jim Baen Memorial Award finalist, and a BSFA Award nominee. His stories have appeared in Daily Science Fiction, 365tomorrows and Gwyllion
- [Newsletter & What I'm Reading](https://joelcscoberg.com/subscribe-to-my-newsletter/) - If you'd rather have updates on my writing journey straight to your inbox, then subscribe to my monthly newsletter. If you do subscribe, check your spam for a message asking you to confirm your subscription. I’m giving you an opt-out in case you get cold feet, though I’m not sure why you would. And, to
- [Follow my writing journey](https://joelcscoberg.com/blog/) - So, you want to know what life is like for someone trying to make it as a writer? Well, here's the place to find out. I'll keep you updated with regular(ish) posts about what I’ve been up to and how I’m getting on in my quest to become a full time science fiction and fantasy
- [Awards Eligibility](https://joelcscoberg.com/short-stories/awards-eligibility/) - I’ve had a pretty exciting 2025 so far and I’m delighted to now be an author with a list of published works eligible for awards. It’s quite amazing for me to think I am even in this position, and I hope someone out there has read and enjoyed my stories enough to consider recommending them
- [Contact me](https://joelcscoberg.com/contact-me/) - If you'd like to drop me a message, feel free to fill out this form and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

## Categories

- [Uncategorized](https://joelcscoberg.com/category/uncategorized/)
- [Blog](https://joelcscoberg.com/category/blog/) - An insight into the life of an unknown writer, my thoughts as I pursue my dream and what inspires me to write
- [News](https://joelcscoberg.com/category/news/)
- [Book club](https://joelcscoberg.com/category/book-club/) - My monthly book recommendations
- [Media / Events](https://joelcscoberg.com/category/media-events/)
- [#WOTF41](https://joelcscoberg.com/category/wotf41/)