Welcome to the 17th (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 women’s
fiction, this 17th contest is for you! (The contest is live through EOD,
Friday, Oct. 17, 2014.)
WHY YOU SHOULD GET EXCITED
After a previous “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 dearluckyagent17@gmail.com. Please paste
everything. No attachments.
WHAT TO SUBMIT
Your query letter, as well as the first 150-200 words of your
unpublished, completed book-length work of adult women’s fiction. 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 each entry.
Please note: To be eligible to
submit, you must mention this contest twice through any any
social-media. Please provide a social-media link or Twitter handle or
screenshot or blog post URL, etc., with your official e-mailed entry so the
judge and I can verify eligibility. Some previous entrants could not be
considered because they skipped this step! Simply spread the word twice through
any means and give us a way to verify you did; a tinyURL for this link/contest
for you to easily use is http://tinyurl.com/of5zgqz. An easy way to
notify me of your sharing is to include my Twitter handle @chucksambuchino
at the end of your mention(s) if using Twitter. If we’re friends on FB, tag me
in the mention. And if you are going to solely use Twitter as your 2 times,
please wait 1 day between mentions to spread out the notices, rather than
simply tweeting twice back to back. Thanks. (Please note that simply tweeting
me does not count. You have to include the contest URL with your mention;
that’s the point. And if you use Twitter, put my handle @chucksambuchino at the
middle or the end, not at the very beginning of the tweet.)
Here is a sample tweet you can use (feel free to tweak): New
FREE contest for writers of women’s fiction http://tinyurl.com/of5zgqz
Judged by agent @PaulaSMunier - via @chucksambuchino
WHAT IS ELIGIBLE?
Women’s fiction (also called upmarket fiction when
dealing with women’s stories). If you’re wondering what falls into this genre
specifically, this is how our agent judge explains it: “These are stories that revolve
around women, women’s roles as mothers, daughters, grandmothers,
granddaughters, caregivers, friends, community leaders, etc., and a woman’s
place at home, at work, and in society at large. They are for the most part
domestic dramas. What separates them from love stories is that the heroine’s
relationships with her friends and family are as important if not more
important to the storyline as her love relationship. These stories explore
women’s relationships—with each other, with men and children, with the world,
and with herself. The themes are those that strike a chord with women: love,
family, friendship, sisterhood, motherhood, self-actualization, and what it
means to be a woman in the world, past, present, and future.”
CONTEST DETAILS
This
contest will be live through the end of Oct. 17, 2014, PST. Winners
notified by e-mail within approximately three weeks of end of contest.
Winners announced on the blog thereafter.
To
enter, submit the first 150-200 words of your book as well as your
one-page query. Shorter or longer entries will not be considered. Keep it
within word count range please.
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. All that said, you are urged to only submit your best work.
The
contest is open to everyone of all ages, save those employees, officers
and directors of GLA’s publisher, F+W Media, Inc.
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 ($50 value)!
Follow the contest page link to meet the Lucky Agent Judge for 2014.
