Epic Follower Blogfest/Contest

Well it finally happened! I hit 100 followers on my blog. And ironically, I hit 500 twitter followers the same week. So rather than having two smaller contests, I thought I would have one mega epic contest!

First, let me introduce you to our awesome, spectacular, fabulous, super ninja agent judge!

Drum roll please......

I'm humbled to announce that the judge for this epic contest will be literary agent Suzie Townsend of Fine Print Literary Management!

No, you're not dreaming. It's the real Suzie! I knew you'd be as thrilled as I am to have her! I did an interview with Suzie a while back, which you can find here.

"Suzie represents adult and children’s fiction. She is actively looking to build her adult list and specifically interested in romance (historical and paranormal), and fantasy (urban fantasy, science fiction, steampunk, epic fantasy). She also loves Middle Grade and YA novels (all subgenres, but particularly literary projects)."

And the grand prize for one lucky follower? A FULL MANUSCRIPT REQUEST. You read that right. For the lucky grand prize winner, Suzie Townsend will request a full!

Thank you so much Suzie for offering up such an amazing prize!

One of the hardest things to do as a writer (in my opinion) is to take your beautiful tens-of-thousands of words manuscript and sum it up into a short, succinct summary. A synopsis is a 2(ish) page summary of your book. A query is a three paragraph tantilizing summary of your book. A pitch is a one or two line summary of your book. It's hard. And as Suzie says on her bio, synopses are evil. But, having a concise pitch is really important. How can you expect someone to want to read your book if you can't tell them what it's about in one or two sentences? So, for my contest, I'm asking you to write a Twitter pitch - a 140 character (or less) summary of your book. It's hard, but so much fun (and useful!)

Here are some helpful sites in writing one-sentence pitches:
Nathan Bransford's blog post
Rachelle Gardner's blog post
Query Tracker blog post
Tawna Fenske's blog post

Okay guys - here's the rules:

As this is a contest to celebrate hitting blog follower milestones, to be fair, only followers of my blog or twitter (@Shelley_Watters) are eligible to participate (but you CAN follow me now & enter! :) )

1. Follow my blog and/or twitter (@Shelley_Watters)
2. Sign up for the blogfest using the link below.
3. Spread the word about the contest (via blog/twitter/etc).
3. On April 1st and 2nd, post your 140 character twitter pitch on your blog.
4. Go visit the other contestants and provide comments/critiques on their pitch.
5. On April 3rd, in the comments section of my contest blog, post:

• Title, Genre and Word Count
• Your polished 140 character twitter pitch
• Where you follow me (blog/twitter). Please include your twitter handle.
• Link to where you spread the word (twitter/blog etc)
• Your email address where you can be contacted.

So get polishing your 140 character Twitter pitch!

And while we're waiting for Suzie to select a winner, I'll be picking out additional winners to recieve a query critique (from me - not Suzie).

Disclaimer:

• Contest is only open to unagented writers with completed manuscripts.
• You do not need to participate in the critique portion of the contest, but you do need to be a follower and stay within the 140 character limits (I will be checking all entries). But why not use the opportunity to hone and refine that pitch before Suzie looks at it?

Good Luck!