Living Dangerously: Blood Ocean Bracketology (Road to the Final Four)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Weston Ochse is a former intelligence officer and special operations soldier who has engaged enemy combatants, terrorists, narco smugglers, and human traffickers. His personal war stories include performing humanitarian operations over Bangladesh, being deployed to Afghanistan, and a near miss being cannibalized in Papua New Guinea. His fiction and non-fiction has been praised by USA Today, The Atlantic, The New York Post, The Financial Times of London, and Publishers Weekly. The American Library Association labeled him one of the Major Horror Authors of the 21st Century. His work has also won the Bram Stoker Award, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and won multiple New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards. A writer of more than 26 books in multiple genres, his military supernatural series SEAL Team 666 has been optioned to be a movie starring Dwayne Johnson. His military sci fi series, which starts with Grunt Life, has been praised for its PTSD-positive depiction of soldiers at peace and at war. Weston likes to be called a chaotic good paladin and challenges anyone to disagree. After all, no one can really stand a goody two-shoes lawful good character. They can be so annoying. It's so much more fun to be chaotic, even when you're striving to save the world. You can argue with him about this and other things online at Living Dangerously or on Facebook at Badasswriter. All content of this blog is copywrited by Weston Ochse.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Blood Ocean Bracketology (Road to the Final Four)

I'm a big fan of March Madness. I love college basketball. Well, really I love watching Tennessee Vols college basketball. But with the NCAA looking into possible violations last year and the loss of their top ten coach and two best players, this year was a tough year to be a fan. Still I watched my team and had Tennessee won one more game, they might have been in the Big Dance (what us fans call the NCAA College Basketball Tournament). Instead, they are in the Little Dance, a regional Number 1 seed in the National Invitational Tournament (NIT or the also rans).

But Irony of Ironies, where my basketball team didn't make the bracket for the Big Dance, Blood Ocean did.

Fantastic Reviews did this. I guess what happened is they receive so many books that they can't review them all, so they created the Battle of Books. Here are the official rules:

Every 16 review copies we get will be placed in a bracket.

For the first round, the Fantastic Reviews judge (usually me, Aaron Hughes) will read the opening 25 pages of both books. The winner will be the book I most want to continue reading (not necessarily the better book -- how would I even know that after only 25 pages?). The winners advance to the second round.

For the second round, I will read through page 50. The winners advance to the semifinals.

For the semifinals, I will read through page 100.

For the finals, I will read through page 200.

The winner of each bracket will be read completely and reviewed at Fantastic Reviews.

At the end of 2012, the judges' favorite book out of all the winners will be named Fantastic Reviews Battle of the Books Champion.

This is an odd but somewhat cool sort of review. I'm looking forward to it. I'm crossing my fingers. I hope Blood Ocean does better than the Vols.