Two Contests

Two exciting pitch fests are starting next week. On Monday, March 11th is the 'Luck 'o the Irish' pitch fest from WriteOnCon. Monday to Wednesday, YA and MG authors can submit their 200 word query letter for review. Twelve agents are involved and each will choose 25 pitches on which to comment.

The other contest is Pitch Madness from Brenda Drake. Entries will be taken during windows on March 15th. The genres can be Adult, New Adult, YA, and MG. For this contest you'll need a 35 word logline/pitch and the first 250 words of your completed manuscript.

Sounds like fun. Good luck to everyone.

Blogging Break

In light of the recent tragedy in Newtown, I don't really feel like chatting about movies or holding contests so I will be taking a blog break until later next week. Please enjoy your holidays with family and friends and keep the people of Newtown in your prayers. I am reminded how fortunate I am every time I go to work and see twenty shining first grade faces that are safe and healthy. Don't forget to thank the teachers in your life. They do their jobs out of love. 

Some notes:
The Memory of Light contest will start a week later than planned. 

I have a pitch for Dodge the Sun up at KTCrowley's blog as part of the Baker's Dozen Non-Chosen Entrants. It is number 37. 

If it should happen to snow before Christmas, I plan to share some pictures for friends in warmer climates. 

Pitch Woes

So I've been trying to come up with a snappy pitch for a contest this weekend. (See the official Hook, Line, and Sinker Contest announcement here.) It's been a struggle to put it mildly. I started by taking bits and pieces from my query letter, half a sentence here, a phrase here. Ugh, that got me nowhere. Why was I torturing myself? I had the query letter, done, finished, complete. It had produced results. Why did I need a pitch? I wasn't planning to use one. I'm not one to attend writer's conferences. Too shy. Can't take time out to travel. They are kinda rare in Indiana. So why?

Well, it's good practice for one. When those well-intentioned people ask 'what's your book about' a pitch would give me something to spew out. Plus, truthfully, it was a challenge. I wanted to see if I come up with something. I do love a challenge.

Back to the drawing board. A change of direction and help from a beta reader (You know who you are, thanks tons!), several more revisions, and I might have something I can live with. Still, I'll take any suggestions I can get. If you dear readers have better thoughts, please put them in the comments. Whether I make the contest window or press send a second too late, now I'll have a pitch.

Hook for my YA fantasy, Dodge the Sun: They didn’t have nursery-rhyming cannibals or super-sized possums on her farm—only cows. A deteriorating shield forces Little Bit to evade lethal radiation from the sun while she searches for New Chicago. Oh, and the mage back home forgot to mention she isn’t a hero, or even human—she started life as a rabbit.

The contest also requires one super stand alone sentence. So far I'm torn between two possibilities, which I  must decide soon because the contest is tomorrow morning.

Line 1: Better to be a corpse brought back to life, a Frankenstein monster of bits and pieces.

                 

Line 2: If Markus didn’t comprehend whether she was woman or beast, soulless or filled with grace, no one could.

Edit: I made it into the contest and I used Line 1 with the correction of Frankenstein's monster. (Thanks, Lori!) The results of the first round judging will be Tuesday afternoon--October 16th.