Mega Awesome First Page Contest with Literary Agent Judge Judith Engracia - WINNER ANNOUNCEMENT!!!

I know you guys have been waiting with baited breath for my post containing the winners of the ten page critique from Literary Agent Judith Engracia, so without further delay, here they are!

Judith was so impressed with the entries that she picked not one winner, not two, but THREE winners (in no particular order)!

The WINNERS of the full manuscript request and ten page critique are:

Suzi McGowen

Title: Any Fae May Apply
Genre: YA Urban Fantasy
Word count: 90,000

I follow your blog and twitter, and spread the word on both. See http://suzimcgowen.blogspot.com/2011/05/in-which-there-is-another-awesome.html


I stood at the library door, itching for the sun to go down. The librarian was helping a kid get his first library card, so she didn’t give a second thought as to why I was lingering by the doors. 

Once the sun had set and it was safe for me to leave, I headed out for my nightly cuppa tea. A shooting star raced across the sky and I crossed my fingers to make a wish. It was a kid thing and I was too old for that now. How many times had I wished for friends? But I'd already crossed my fingers, it was too late now. I wished for something interesting to happen.

I walked in and out of the pools of light from the streetlights, the silver charms on my pockets jingling softly with each step. Sometimes car headlights would pick me out of the darkness, but I wasn't concerned. My glamour was up and I could pass for human. Tall, but human.

The telephone pole on the street corner was littered with signs and posters. Ads for weight loss, garage sales, a local band. The normal dross of human society. But the scent of magic caught my attention.

My nose twitched and I stopped to give the posters a more thorough look. There was one that was dusted with glamour. Humans probably only saw a poster for a lost pet, or something. What I saw was the flier that changed my life. It said simply, "Job opening: Night Hours. Any fae may apply."

Alison Miller

Title: Envious
Genre: YA Paranormal
Word Count: 73,000

I follow you here and on twitter. I blogged and tweeted about the contest.

Mookie’s suicide hit like a sledgehammer to my chest.

He didn’t leave a note. No call. Not even a farewell text. Not a single clue as to why he jumped off the top of our bleachers—over fifty feet up.

They found his body early Sunday morning. They being Mr. Graham, my tenth grade Geometry teacher with a pug nose and a body to match. He arrived at school for a pre-dawn run and spotted Mookie’s sneaker sticking out of the new fallen snow. Then a frostbitten hand nearby it. A frozen pool of blood.

A police car arrived shortly after, then an ambulance. Even a fire engine although I wasn’t sure what that was for. A fire had already been put out—a burning heat that used to fuel my existence was long gone.

Mookie lay on his stomach at the bottom of the bleachers, a short rusty stake the claim to his demise. The police concluded he hurdled the protective back, and the stake gouged his heart when he fell on it. Tox reports would take a week, but I knew Mookie’s system contained a combination of weed and booze—how much remained the question. Enough to delude my carefree best friend into thinking he should jump, ending what had seemed to be a great life with a bright future.

Yep. Mookie was my best friend. Most of the time—my only friend. And on January 3 he took his life.

This is where his story ends.

And mine begins.

Jami Gold

Title: The Resurrected
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Word count: 93K

***

Daniel’s switchblade clattered to the floor from his slackened fingers, the knife the least of his worries. He fell to his knees and ripped open the shirt of the man sprawled on the linoleum. The slash across Demetri’s skin ended at a bloody hole over his heart. Not good.

“I’m sorry, Demetri. I swear I didn’t mean to. But it’ll be okay, you can heal this.” Daniel fumbled to block the wound in Demetri’s chest. “You’ll be fine. Just fix it.”

Nothing changed.

The truth sank into his brain around the same time the pooling blood soaked through his pants. His hand clenched with the temptation to punch the body. This accident would ruin everything. Before his fears gelled, Daniel forced his mind to send a coherent thought to Renaldo, “There’s been a complication.”

A complication? The understatement prompted a panicky snort. Welcome to the freak show his life had become in the past year. He waited, unmoving, unthinking. Running away and regret would both be pointless.

Renaldo entered the apartment, his usual poker face in place as he took in Demetri’s form. “This was not part of the plan.”

No kidding. But Renaldo would hear the truth in any excuses.

At Daniel’s silence, Renaldo’s gaze moved past him. “And the experiment?”

Right. Clusterf*** number two. Daniel looked behind him, where the apartment’s resident lay on a futon, the lone piece of furniture in the studio unit. Unlike Demetri, the stranger’s body appeared okay. Appearances were deceiving.


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In addition to picking three winners, Judith also picked two runners-up, who will receive full ms requests from Judith!


The RUNNERS UP, who will receive a full manuscript request from Judith are: 

Taryn

Title: PLAYING GOD
Genre: YA futuristic
WC: 75K

The inscription was faded and scratched, but Kalyn had never seen such potent words.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 

It had probably been there for centuries—one, at least, since no one had believed in the silly myths of religion for over a hundred years—but the weathered lines suggested longer.

Every time she came to this spot, it seemed bolder, deeper, more prominent than the last, as if time itself were going backward and erasing the very marks of age. At that ridiculous idea, Kalyn gave a rueful laugh, the sound echoing in the empty ruins of the old building. Progress. That was the key word of this era. Moving forward step by step and leaving behind anything that would suggest man did not have control of the world.

Her gaze slid from the thick gray wall and searched the sky above. Through a jagged hole in the roof of the crumbling structure they used to call a chapel, she saw the moon hanging like a fat fist amongst a glimmering array of stars. A burst of light cut the darkness in half, and for a moment Kalyn could almost bring herself to believe she’d seen a shooting star.

But no. Reality told her it was most likely a shuttle, or a passenger plane, or even a ship off to the colony on Mars. Not something as natural or uncontrollable or beautiful as a shooting star.

Sharon Bayliss

Title: Stormland
Genre: Urban fantasy
Word count: 67,000

“Why isn’t the sky blue anymore?” 

The man sat under a bridge with his niece huddled beside him. The black rain seeped through the cracks above and left little pools of ash on the girl’s pale skin. He moved her over in the hopes of finding a dry spot. The child reminded him of a doll that had been left out in the rain and ruined. He had cut the tangles from of her hair and now it rested around her ears in uneven clumps. She deserved something better than this.

“Why isn’t the sky blue anymore?” she asked again.

“Lena, dear, I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do.”

“The sky is a giant mirror that reflected the blue oceans. But someone threw a rock at the sky and it shattered. So now we just see what was behind the sky.”

“Can they fix it?”

“No.”

“I’m hungry,” she said.

The brush nearby crackled and in an instant the smuggler was there. Far too soon. The child pressed herself closer to him.

“Lena, I want you to go with this man.”

Her little green eyes went wide with fright. “I want to stay with you.”

He took a deep breath to hold back tears. “I am no good at taking care of you. He is going to take you to a better place. He is going to take you to a place where the sky is still blue.”

“Will Mommy and Daddy meet me there?”

Each time she asked about them, he felt like his heart would burst. But this would be the last time he would have to say it.

“You won’t see Mommy and Daddy for a long time. They will meet you in heaven.”


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If you are a winner or runner up and have not received an email from Judith already, please email your full manuscript to Judith at jengracia (at) lizadawsonassociates (dot) com and mention your winner status from my contest.

If you didn't win, you can always query Judith the old fashioned way. She is currently open for queries. Please follow the submission guidelines on her website.

Congratulations to all the winners and runners up. Thank you to everyone who participated in my contest and made it such a huge success. I was thrilled at the response and the talent that was exhibited was spectacular! I'm so proud of all of you!


And if you didn't win this time, you can enter my contest with Agent Judge Victoria Marini see this post for details.