The Cosmos Awards are sponsored by sillverr89, author of A Mage's Choice, which I read as my first payment.

AS A CONTESTANT

I entered Ancilla into... erm. It's complicated. I think I originally entered it as Erotica, but some miscommunication or other made me think it had been placed in the Romance category, which was being judged by LMNTrix117, so I read Mysteries of Riverwood as payment, although that turned out to be unnecessary because LMNTrix117 was not judging me. Oh, well, it was still a good read. I was then asked if maybe I oughtn't put it into the Vampire category, which at the time was more urgently in need of entries than Romance, and I thought about doing that, but Ancilla is not really a vampire novel so much as it is a work of highbrow literary erotica that just happens to have vampires as main characters. So I think it's in the Erotica category; if it is, sillverr89 is the judge. I think?

AS A JUDGE

The best way to manipulate me into doing anything is to beg for my help and tell me how necessary I am. I'm a sucker for that.

And that's how I wound up being the Fantasy judge.

Because Ancilla is erotica, I am not going to require anybody to read it as payment - I consider forcing someone to read erotica to be the literary equivalent of sexual assault. Two of the writers whose works I judged said they were uncomfortable with that sort of reading material. Three read some of my work. I doubt anybody read the whole novel, but that's okay because I'm about as wordy as Victor Hugo. 

The five books I read were:

Fates Converged: A Witch's Vow - EnigmaEpic

Within The Mist - AlphaSheWolf

The Four Realms - Book One: TRUTH - Caitlyn-Blayne

We Give Unto Thee - Knighted_Rose

Collateral - Anunimouse96

UPDATE: 3/21/2024

I won first place in the Erotica category. 

Words of 

It's a LONG read, Sillverr, but I hope you stick around and read it to the end. Things get more intense with every chapter. So does the learning. That might be a good thing or a bad thing, actually...