OFFICIAL ENTRY POST - Birthday Blowout First Page Contest with Literary Agent Judge Victoria Marini

UPDATE - THE WINNER WILL BE POSTED ON MONDAY, JULY 11TH

Today's my birthday!!!! 

And you know what that means....

Time to post your polished first page entry for my Birthday Blowout First Page Contest with Literary Agent judge Victoria Marini!

Photo by James S. Rand

We had a record number of participants sign up, so please only post once. If you decide to make changes, delete your first post and post your new one. PLEASE only do this once. 


All entries MUST be posted by 11:59 PM on June 27th, 2011. Comments will be closed at that time and no further entries will be accepted. 

In your entry, PLEASE Be sure to include ALL of the following: 

1. Your email address
2. Title, genre, word count
3. Your polished first page (250 words) Don't stop in the middle of a sentence.
4. Where you follow me
5. Where you spread the word

This contest is only open to YA, Middle Grade, memoir, pop-culture non-fiction, and women’s commercial fiction.

Contest rules:

1. You must be a follower of my blog and/or Twitter
2. You must spread the word, via twitter, fb, blog post, whatever.
3. Your work must be complete.
4. Your work must fall into one of the following genres: YA, Middle Grade, memoir, pop-culture non-fiction, and women’s commercial fiction.
5. You do not have to participate in the critique portion of the contest, but why would you miss the opportunity to polish that baby until it shines before Victoria reads it?

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.


**********************************************************************************************
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.”


**********************************************************************************************
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.

Birthday Blowout First Page Contest with Victoria Marini

To celebrate my birthday, I'm having another agent-judged first page contest! Rather than celebrate me getting a year older, I thought I'd pay it forward and give you guys another chance to get your work in front of an amazing agent.And who, might you ask, is the judge?

Victoria Marini of Gelfman Schneider Literary Agency!

Here's the 'About Me' info from her blog Rapid Progressive:

Photo by James S. Rand

BASICS
By day (and most evenings, and the occasional Saturday) I’m the newest associate literary agent at the Gelfman Schneider Literary Agency (www.gelfmanschneider.com). I began taking on clients in 2010 and I’m aggressively building my list. I’m looking for any and all kinds of YA (especially thriller, noir, horror, sci-fi/fantasy, dystopian and paranormal) Middle Grade, memoir (but I’m very picky), pop-culture non-fiction, and women’s commercial fiction (edgy contemporary, romantic suspense, or urban fantasy, please).

MY WISH LIST:
In YA I tend to go for the darker stuff. I love fast-paced, high-tension YA, but voice is paramount. I’m looking for the quadruple threat: voice, character, story, world-building.

I’m always on the lookout for Contemporary YA with a great commercial hook. I want a classic YA horror in the vein of Lois Duncan and Christopher Pike. I love Middle Grade with an element of magic, like Coraline, Juniper Berry, and Zombie Tag. I want to be frightened. I want a Gothic tale. I’d love a YA Noir mystery; something like Sam Spade in High School. If you’ve written a ghost story, I’m your girl! I want a tricky game of cat and mouse, a dystopian with an interesting hook, tension (of all varieties), a re-imagined tale, and another world so real I could live there.

I’m interested in time-travel and the intricacies of the space-time continuum, love, forensics, mythology, covert operations, medicine, engineering, nanotechnology, mysterious disappearances, weird science, awesome sidekicks, sexual tension, and all sorts of bits and bobs. I tweet about aforementioned bits and bobs, here

In commercial women’s fiction, I need a romantic element with an interesting hook. I tend to gravitate towards magic and/or mayhem. I’m into paranormal romances and thrillers, Urban Fantasy, and edgy mysteries. I love The Hollows series, for example.

Please note, that while I have my wish list, some of my favorite books (both published and unpublished) were ones that came by surprise. What you really need to remember is this: I want to read something I’m willing to lose sleep for.

MY STYLE
I think of myself as a futur-agent. This means that I am in the business of managing authors’ careers. I’m a saleswoman, a counselor, a consultant, a social networker, a marketer & branding assistant, a digital optimist, and whatever the changing market will require. I am highly collaborative and responsive. I do my best to maintain an open door policy and to make sure my clients know how valued they are.

ON THE FLIP SIDE
By night, I am a lover of music, sleep, baked goods, friends, animals, travel shows, exercise, food and beer. I’m your friendly neighborhood positive thinker and purveyor of quirk.

You can also check out her bio on the Gelfman Schneider website here and Casey McCormick's Agent Spotlight on Victoria here. You can also follow Victoria on Twitter @LitAgentMarini.

This contest is only open to YA, Middle Grade, memoir, pop-culture non-fiction, and women’s commercial fiction.

So here's how the contest will work:

1. Be sure your work fits into one of the following genres: YA, Middle Grade, memoir, pop-culture non-fiction, and women’s commercial fiction.
2. Sign up on the link below.
3. On June 25th, post your title, genre, word count and the first 250 words on your blog for critique.
4. From June 25th through June 26th, hop around to the other contestant's blogs and critique their first 250 words.
5. On June 27th, come back to my blog and post your final entry on my dedicated contest entry blog post. Be sure to include:
1. Your email address
2. Title, genre, wordcount
3. Your polished first page (250 words) Don't stop in the middle of a sentence.
4. Where you follow me
5. Where you spread the word

That's it!

Victoria will read all of the first pages and select one for a full request (which will include at least a partial critique). She will also request partial for the runners up that she selects!

Contest rules:

1. You must be a follower of my blog and/or Twitter
2. You must spread the word, via twitter, fb, blog post, whatever.
3. Your work must be complete.
4. Your work must fall into one of the following genres: YA, Middle Grade, memoir, pop-culture non-fiction, and women’s commercial fiction.
5. You do not have to participate in the critique portion of the contest, but why would you miss the opportunity to polish that baby until it shines before Victoria reads it?

Book Recommendation: WILDEFIRE by Karsten Knight

So I recently got the privelage of reading an e-ARC of WILDEFIRE from the amazing people over at Simon and Schuster. You can preorder Wildefire, which comes out on July 26th, 2011 at Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble.

First off, let me say that I have been waiting for this book forever. Seriously. The gorgeous cover alone had me salivaing to read Wildefire. And then I met Karsten on Twitter.

Yeah... He looks like this:

 

But does hot author + hot cover=hot book? Well before I give you my opinions about the book, here's the synopsis from Goodreads about Wildefire:

Every flame begins with a spark.

Ashline Wilde is having a rough sophomore year. She’s struggling to find her place as the only Polynesian girl in school, her boyfriend just cheated on her, and now her runaway sister, Eve, has decided to barge back into her life. When Eve’s violent behavior escalates and she does the unthinkable, Ash transfers to a remote private school nestled in California’s redwoods, hoping to put the tragedy behind her. But her fresh start at Blackwood Academy doesn’t go as planned. Just as Ash is beginning to enjoy the perks of her new school—being captain of the tennis team, a steamy romance with a hot, local park ranger—Ash discovers that a group of gods and goddesses have mysteriously enrolled at Blackwood…and she’s one of them. To make matters worse, Eve has resurfaced to haunt Ash, and she’s got some strange abilities of her own. With a war between the gods looming over campus, Ash must master the new fire smoldering within before she clashes with her sister one more time… And when warm and cold fronts collide, there’s guaranteed to be a storm.

Now I had my doubts. Pretty faces & pretty covers don't always add up to great books. But Karsten not only lived up to my expectations with WILDEFIRE, but blew them out of the water. I couldn't put it down. I read it in two nights (all 393 pages). I wanted to read this book long before I got my hands on an ARC. And I want to read it again. And when it comes out on July 26th, you can bet that I'll be standing in line next to the screaming girls to get my hands on a copy.

Karsten does a great job entwining myth with 'real' life. I loved his new take on old mythology, and how he spun that into his story. I had my opinions about the characters, and he completely surprised me with what he did with them. Every time I thought I knew where he was going, he ran off in a new and exciting direction. Oh, and did I mention there are hot boys in it?

Wildefire is well worth the wait. And the sleep-deprivation induced hangover for two days as a result of not being able to put it down.