12th Free “Dear Lucky Agent” Contest (Mysteries)
Welcome to the 12th (free!) “Dear Lucky Agent” Contest on the GLA blog. This is a recurring online contest with agent judges and super-cool prizes. Here’s the deal: With every contest, the details are essentially the same, but the niche itself changes—meaning each contest is focused around a specific category or two. So if you’re writing a mystery (either adult fiction or YA) novel, this 12th contest is for you! (The contest is live through Sept. 15, 2012.)
Welcome to the 12th (free!) “Dear Lucky Agent” Contest on the GLA blog. This is a recurring online contest with agent judges and super-cool prizes. Here’s the deal: With every contest, the details are essentially the same, but the niche itself changes—meaning each contest is focused around a specific category or two. So if you’re writing a mystery (either adult fiction or YA) novel, this 12th contest is for you! (The contest is live through Sept. 15, 2012.)
(** If you were wondering, the past 11th DLA Contest run by agent Sara Sciuto of Full Circle Literary (all about middle grade) in summer 2012 is now closed and is being judged. Winners will be notified by email and posted on this blog.)
WHY YOU SHOULD GET EXCITED
After a recent “Dear Lucky Agent” contest, the agent judge, Tamar Rydzinski (The Laura Dail Literary Agency), signed one of the three contest winners. After Tamar signed the writer, she went on to sell two of that writer’s books! How cool! That’s why these contests are not to missed if you have an eligible submission.
HOW TO SUBMIT
E-mail entries to newluckyagent5@gmail.com. Please paste everything. No attachments.
WHAT TO SUBMIT
The first 150-200 words of your unpublished, book-length work of your mystery. You must include a contact e-mail address with your entry and use your real name. Also, submit the title of the work and a logline (one-sentence description of the work) with your entry.
Please note: To be eligible to submit, you must mention this contest once through any social media. Please provide a social media link or Twitter handle, etc. and notes with your entry so the judge and I can verify eligibility. Some previous entrants could not be considered because they skipped this step!
WHAT IS ELIGIBLE?
Mystery novels -- either adult fiction or young adult fiction. (No middle grade works please.)
CONTEST DETAILS
- This contest will be live for approximately 14 days—from Sept. 1, 2012 through the end of Sept. 15, 2012, PST. Winners notified by e-mail within three weeks of end of contest. Winners announced on the blog thereafter.
- To enter, submit the first 150-200 words of your book. Shorter or longer entries will not be considered. Keep it within word count range please.
- This contest is solely for completed book-length works of mystery.
- You can submit as many times as you wish. You can submit even if you submitted to other contests in the past, but please note that past winners cannot win again.
- The contest is open to everyone of all ages, save those employees, officers and directors of GLA’s publisher, F+W Media.
- By e-mailing your entry, you are submitting an entry for consideration in this contest and thereby agreeing to the terms written here as well as any terms possibly added by me in the “Comments” section of this blog post. (If you have questions or concerns, write me personally at chuck.sambuchino (at) fwmedia.com. The Gmail account above is for submissions, not questions.)
PRIZES!!!
Top 3 winners all get: 1) A critique of the first 10 double-spaced pages of your work, by your agent judge. 2) A free one-year subscription to WritersMarket.com.
MEET YOUR (AWESOME) AGENT JUDGE!
Sarah LaPolla is an associate agent at Curtis Brown, Ltd. She studied creative writing at Ithaca College and has an MFA in creative nonfiction from The New School. She started working in the foreign rights department at Curtis Brown, Ltd. in 2008 and became an associate agent in 2010. Sarah represents both adult and YA fiction. For adult books, she is looking for literary fiction, urban fantasy, magical realism, dark/psychological mystery, and literary horror. On the YA side, she welcomes all genres and is drawn to unique voices and strong, complex characters.
See below for several awesome books that Sarah and her co-agents have repped!
Cracked (Simon Pulse, Jan. 2012), by K.M. Walton
Empty, by K.M. Walton
Trainwreck (find it as of now on Goodreads), by Christa Desir
The Philadelphian, by Richard Powell.
Chuck Sambuchino is a former editor with the Writer's Digest writing community and author of several books, including How to Survive a Garden Gnome Attack and Create Your Writer Platform.
