Contests

I have decided to enter a contest with "Death at the Jungle-bunny Journal" early in the new year. And I may change the title.

This is a big decision for me and, while I will continue looking for an agent, it could complicate things in that area. The contest is called the 2009 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.

The last contest I entered was last year. It was the Writer's Digest annual contest and I entered my screenplay, "Loss of Consortium." And while I didn't win, I got an honorable mention in the screenplay category, which was quite something since it was my first screenplay. But at the time I was concentrating on finishing my first novel, "Fighting Chaos," and decided against pursuing anything with screenplays.

I didn't enter the Amazon contest last year with Chaos and I'm glad I didn't. It really wasn't good enough and still isn't. The story will need to be overhauled and I'm not willing to do that at the moment.

But I have grown since writing Chaos and Jungle-bunny is in much better shape to begin with. So I am going with it.

I will write more about the contest later but it runs for one week, Feb. 2-9. The entry form and related materials can only be submitted then. It must be fiction, 50,000 to 100,000 words in length, in English, by an individual author, unpublished. While free, the contest requires a 'pitch' letter (the requirements of which I am still trying to determine), biographical information and a 3,000 to 5,000 word exempt of the first part of the novel.

The grand prize, which will be announced by late may or early June, is a $25,000 contract with Penguin books for the publication of the novel, plus marketing of the work. Last year, a number of the 10 finalists who didn't win the overall prize got noticed in the industry and ultimately got publishing contracts.

I am not putting all my eggs into a single basket but this is a basket I can not ignore. the organizers -- Penguin and Amazon -- expect as many as 10,000 entries and the contest is judged in stages, starting with the pitch letter. But If I could make it to the quarter- or semi-finals I will have gone a long way.

This is going to require a lot of preparation and hard work pouring over the novel again and again and writing it yet one more time. Plus there is the pitch letter. I'm not sure what to expect with that. But I am going to get it done in time to submit all my material early in the morning on Feb. 2. I'm not going to wait.

This means, of course, that additional work on "The Death of Art" will be put on hold, or at least work will be dramatically slowed. The focus has to be on Jungle-bunny.

What to do with the title? I don't know. The content guidelines forbid 'offensive' or 'disparaging' material but that is still vague. It error on the side of caution I will probably rename the book.

Anyway, that is it for now. More later as additional information is available. Wish me luck.

Thanks for reading and keep writing.