Guide to Literary Agents Contest

"Dear Lucky Agent" Contest:

Urban Fantasy & Paranormal Romance



Welcome to the third "Dear Lucky Agent" Contest on the GLA blog. This will be 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 novel-length work of urban fantasy or paranormal romance, this third contest is for you!

HOW TO SUBMIT

E-mail entries to thirdagentcontest@gmail.com. Please paste everything. No attachments. (Also note that I do not check this account. Only the agent does. Looking back over old e-mails, some people have wrote to say hi to me, or perhaps ask a question. Contact me at literaryagent@fwmedia.com.)

WHAT TO SUBMIT

The first 150-200 words of your unpublished, book-length work of urban fantasy or paranormal romance (adult or YA - both accepted).

Joanna says: "Please keep it to these two subgenres specifically. While you can incorporate a variety of fantasy elements, they still have to fall under these two categories. For those of you who are unsure, keep in mind that both urban fantasy and paranormal romance have a strong base in a real world setting (like Jim Butcher's Dresden Files or J.R. Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood or Richelle Mead's Vampire Academy). So no stories that take place solely on another planet or world!"

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, I ask that you do one of two things: 1) Mention and link to this contest twice through your social media - blogs, Twitter, Facebook; or 2) just mention this contest once and also add Guide to Literary Agents Blog (www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog) to your blogroll. Please provide link(s) so I can verify eligibility.

More Details at site. Good luck!

Ok blog, seriously now.

I've been neglecting this fledgling attempt at a blog. But no more. Today I promise that I will update this blog on a regular (ie every other day basis). See I'm not afraid of commitment. Life does occasionally interfere, like today, when I stayed home with my darling 16 month old son. This is what we were able to accomplish.



1. Walked from A(Darling 4 y/o daughter)'s classroom to my car.

2. Taken the foulest smelling poop ever.

3. Tasted his own poo (I think it had oranges in (?))

4. Attempted to murder the penguin inflatable.

5. Tried for 20 minutes to slide off the bed and then cried when he (quite safely) succeeded.

6. Attempted to gouge out my left eye. Luckily I have quick reflexes and dodged. However I will now forever bear a scar next to my left eye which I shall henceforth call "the night J(darling husband) got crazy and hit me with a broken bottle of Mike's Hard Lemonade" scar.

7. Typed the collected works of Shakespeare. Turns out MS Office 7 has a feature where if you press Ctrl, Shift, Caps Lock, &, F*, and Backspace all at once this will happen. (It's encrypted though).

8. Took a nap- oh wait, not yet.

Contest for aspiring authours.

For YA or MG ms.
You could win
Grand Prize Winner: A 15 page critique
First Place: A 10 page critique
Second Place: A 5 page critique
Third Place: A 2 page critique
Honorable Mention(s): A critique of the first page of your novel

Again, deadline for entries: Sunday, January 31st at 11:59 p.m., Pacific Time

there are more details so please check out: http://kidlit.com/kidlit-contest/

Thanks!
Brandy

Securing an agent.

I am attempting to query agents, and thus ignore my poor children. I attepted to explain my actions to my 4 year old, who suggests that we throw a party, and have everyone bring a phone, and we can all call the agents and tell them how good the story is. My 4 year old understands the importance of word of mouth and social networking. Brillant.

It's Christmas time again!

Well the holidays have rolled around. Today I'm going to put up my Christmas tree, and yes I know it's a little tardy. Don't get me wrong I love the holidays if I can stay locked up in my house, but what is it about Christmas that makes people so crazy mean? Seriously, you venture outside and people are trying to run you out of the road, or hip check you in shopping aisles. Why the mass hysteria?

The New Yorker

If you're going to dream should you dream big? Is it absolute lunacy to consider submitting my first short story to The New Yorker?

First Post

My doing this is an act of optimism. I'm being optimistic. Having a blog, is like having faith in myself. Of course I don't actually plan on letting anyone ever read this, but that's a different story. So I'll tell myself about myself, I'm a 30 year old writer. I have several works in progress and one finished project that I just keep staring at trying to get the nerve to send out. I am revising and researching but eventually the planning must stop so that the living can begin. I think that's it for now.
B