One of my RWA chapters is the Northwest Houston RWA. They are the host of the prestigious Lone Star Writing Competition which is now open. Here are the details. 17th Annual Lone Star Writing Competition
Entry Fee: $20 NWH members; $25 non-NWH members
Postmark Deadline: June 5, 2009, arrive by June 12, 2009.
Electronic Deadline: must arrive by midnight June 5, 2009.
Any entries received after the deadline will be returned unopened or deleted unopened.
Finalists announced: August 20, 2009.
Winners announced: October 24, 2009, at the Lone Star Conference.
Eligibility: Unpublished may enter any category. Published may enter any category in which they're not published, or in which they've not been contracted for five years. Open to RWA and non-RWA members.
Enter: First 25 pages, including prologue, if desired. All entries must be in the standard submission form: 1" margins all around, 12 pt. font, double space, 25 lines per page.
Judging
All entries will be sent to three first round judges: two published authors and one unpublished author. The lowest score will be tossed and final round contestants will be chosen by the combined total of the final two scores.
Top three high scorers in each category will be category finalists. Those entries will be sent to both an agent and an editor for placement.
Final Judges
Inspirational Category:
Editor Jessica Barnes, WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group
Agent Tamela Hancock Murray, Hartline Literary
Young Adult Category:
Editor Kat O'She, The Wild Rose Press
Agent TBA
Romantic Suspense Category:
Editor Lindsay Nouis, New American Library
Agent Lois Winston, Ashley Grayson Literary Agency
Contemporary Series Category:
Editor Wanda Ottewell, Harlequin
Agent Sha-Shana Crichton, Crichton Literary Agency
Single Title Category:
Editor TBA
Agent Paige Wheeler, Folio Literary Management
Historical Category:
Editor Alicia Condon, Dorchester
Agent Michelle Grajkowski, 3 Seas Literary Agency
Fantasy, Futuristic and Paranormal Category:
Editor Deb Werksman, Sourcebooks
Agent Tina Wexler, International Creative Management
More Info
For any questions or for more info, contact 2009 Contest Chairwoman Melinda Porter at "bdogs80 at aol dot com."
Takeaway Truth
Contests judged by Editors and Agents are a good way to get your work in front of the people who can make things happen in your career.
Joan, you've been spammed.
ReplyDeleteThe above comment effectively says nothing. It would appear equally relevant no matter what the post was - except that the post was about a contest with a deadline six months past.
It's obvious that the comment wasn't made by someone who read the post. And while I have no objection to whores, even ones that call themselves "escorts" and charge for the hospitality they extend, I think they ought to pay fair prices for the advertising they do, instead of stealing from bloggers.
Thanks, Harl, for the alert. I've been doing the Christmas shopping thing the last two days plus meeting 3 deadlines so haven't even checked in at SlingWords.
ReplyDeleteI need to close blogs for comments after 30 days I guess.
I think the people who take jobs to post comments on blogs are despicable. I have a contact form on my other blog where it's sent to an email address rather than posting an email address, but it's been getting so much crap of late that I think I'll close it and go back to Askismet to filter it all.
Thanks for your vigilance.
Moderating comments hurts more than it helps. Letters to the editor are one of the best-read parts of a newspaper, and comments the best-read part of most blogs. It's better to simply delete them as they come in.
ReplyDeleteAbout 30 years ago, I had a clever idea, which I tried to promote to a supermarket chain.
Supermarkets spend a fortune to buy customers, but their ads and their specials really only rent customers. They run a smaller ad in the paper, and their customer count drops appreciably.
My idea was to publish a looseleaf cookbook, one page a week, with about three recipes per 8.5x11 page, They'd just be lying in a pile, and customers could help themselves, but if they didn't visit the store, they'd miss out on that page of the cookbook. It would be a cheap "loyalty program" in an era before google made it easy to find recipes for anything and everything.
They told me no - but severa; months later, turned around and used all the content of the sample page I produced in a magazine they mailed to customers. I tried to get them to pay me one week's royalties, but no dice.
It seems that if you steal a 25c loaf of bread from the store, you can end up behind bars, but the federal prosecutor won't touch copyright infringement for less than $10,000 in theft. Arrgh. And you can't sue in small claims court. It has to be in federal court, where it'll take a minimum of $10,000 retainer and a decade or more to actually collect what's yours.
Writers have a bullseye painted on their back, whether or not they realize it. If you worry too much about that, it'll eat you up. You can't do anything about it. But that doesn't mean you ever feel the same again about fairness.
People who take unfair advantage of writers deserve a special ring of hell.