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Monday, October 5, 2009

October Secret Agent Submission Guidelines

Submissions for our next Secret Agent contest will open at 12:00 NOON EDT on Monday, October 12.

  • Submissions WILL NOT OPEN until NOON, EDT. Early submissions WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED.
  • Submissions are for COMPLETED MANUSCRIPTS ONLY. If you wouldn't want an agent to read the entire thing, DON'T SEND IT. If an "entire thing" doesn't exist, you shouldn't even be reading these rules.
  • Manuscripts THAT HAVE BEEN IN A SECRET AGENT CONTEST DURING THE PAST SIX MONTHS (April-September) will not be accepted.
  • You may submit A DIFFERENT MANUSCRIPT if you've participated in any of the 2009 Secret Agent contests.
  • Only ONE ENTRY per person per contest. If you send more than one, your subsequent entry(ies) will be deleted.
  • If you are PAST WINNER, please DO NOT ENTER THIS CONTEST. (Unless it's a different manuscript.)
  • Submissions are for THE FIRST 250 WORDS of your manuscript. Please do not stop in the middle of a
Your submission for this contest should be formatted as follows:

SCREEN NAME
TITLE
GENRE

(Followed by the excerpt here.)

  • No "chapter one," chapter titles, etc.
  • You will receive a confirmation email with your post number. I don't always get through quickly. Don't resend.
  • Submissions go to facelesswords(at)gmail.com. They DO NOT GO to my authoressmail address. Those of you who are subscribed to this blog via email will note the latter address as the "from." If you use this address for the contest, I WILL NOT SEE YOUR SUBMISSION.
This month's contest will include the following genres:
  • Adult fiction--all genres EXCEPT SF/F and erotica
(No, "Young Adult" does not belong in the "Adult" category. If your novel is a YA, please do not submit.)

Questions? Leave them in the comment box. Readers who know the answers should feel free to answer if you beat me to it.
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10 comments:

  1. ClaireOctober 5, 2009 at 9:00 AM

    If you entered the query contest can you enter the same manuscript in this Secret Agent?

    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  2. StinaOctober 5, 2009 at 11:01 AM

    Good thing you specified the YA rule. There was bound to be questions if you hadn't. ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousOctober 5, 2009 at 2:12 PM

    Oh yeah! Good luck to all those who enter. Looking forward to reading them. Thanks, Authoriess, for hosting these contests.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Vincent KaleOctober 5, 2009 at 4:19 PM

    A question has come up about the first 250 words.Is it better to give the first 250 words if it's a prologue or the first 250 words of the chapter that really starts off the story? I know it was mentioned before, but not sure if it was ever resolved.

    ReplyDelete
  5. JESSJORDANOctober 5, 2009 at 6:16 PM

    I think it's best not to include a prologue in your story, unless it really starts off your story, but that's just my 2 cents. I know I learned that the hard way when I entered the contest!

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousOctober 5, 2009 at 7:33 PM

    Yes, curious about query contest, too. Can we submit for the secret agent if that's the only one had the opportunity to submit for the query? Hope so--finally my genre! Thank you so much either way.

    ReplyDelete
  7. pj schnyderOctober 6, 2009 at 5:27 PM

    Not entering this round, but I definitely plan to pitch in - good luck to all!

    ReplyDelete
  8. AuthoressOctober 7, 2009 at 10:28 AM

    Clare-- Yes, you may.

    Vincent -- If you have a prologue, that is technically where your story begins, and what an agent (or reader, for that matter) will read first. So that's probably what should be sent.

    If you're not sure you're going to keep the prologue and would like to see how your first page fares as the opening of the novel, then send that.

    In short, it's up to you. =D

    ReplyDelete
  9. Barbra AnninoOctober 13, 2009 at 1:48 PM

    Thanks for this. Just discovered this blog.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Barbra AnninoOctober 13, 2009 at 2:53 PM

    I think the formatting got lost in transmission. When I looked at the mail in the sent folder, the graph breaks are off. Should I resubmit? Could have sworn I had it in rich text. Sigh.

    ReplyDelete