Let the One-Month Countdown Begin!

Crow's Rest releases on May 12, and that's only a month away! I spent yesterday leading a bird walk, but today I'm celebrating the countdown with a few posts.

Brenda Drake is hosting a reveal of the first five pages of Crow's Rest on her blog today--thanks, Brenda, for sharing my book!

On Operation Awesome, I have a post On Contests and Community, where I talk about how much the friends and connections I've made in the writing community have meant to me.

And there's more to come this week--watch for some other news on Wednesday, and then on Friday my post for Fearless Fridays will go up on the Fearless Fifteeners blog. You won't want to miss that, if you'd like to see me sing on camera!

Hot Pitch Opportunities

No, this isn't a post about escalating the hot candle wax trick from 50 Shades of Gray by using hot pitch. It's about some opportunities to pitch your book to agents!

But first, some of my own news on that front. Queries for Crow's Rest were sent out last week, plus I made it through to the agent round of Brenda Drake's Pitch Madness--407 people entered, but only 64 were picked. Ha ha, I missed out on some of the decision-torture by being clueless that the judges were tweeting about entries by genre; I went back and looked later and apparently mine was up against a YA paranormal romance and ultimately won the slot. But it was close! I generally don't have as much confidence in my one-line pitches (and this one had a max of 35 words) as my queries, so I think it was the first-page sample that swayed them. Here's the pitch I sent:

Avery wants to evict the creature who has taken residence in her boyfriend's body, but preventing the corbin from fulfilling his mission will plunge the world into another Dark Age.

Our pitch and first page go up tomorrow (mine will be on S.M. Johnston's blog) and agents will be placing blind bids. Then on March 28 they'll reveal the winning bids, plus any ties. It all sounds very complicated, but it's exciting and maddening to be a part of these contests!

If you didn't make it into this one, or found out too late to submit, you can still get in on some of the fun by participating in the Pitch Madness Twitter Party with the hashtag #PitMad on March 29. "So get your 140 character twitter pitch ready. Make sure to include the hashtag #PitMad and try to fit the genre (YA, MG, Adult, NA, and so on) in the pitch. We've had some success stories come out of our previous PitMads so shine up the pitches!" says Brenda.

The other upcoming pitch opportunity is Operation Awesome's Mystery Agent Contest on April 1. Details of the agent's wishlist will go up on Operation Awesome tomorrow, so look for that.

These are a great way to see how your pitch compares to others in your genre (does it stand out, or does it sound too similar?), so I encourage you to enter these pitch contests!

Show Me the Voice Contest Blogfest

I got a late start today, fighting a cold or allergies! Brenda Drake's Show Me the Voice Blogfest begins today, and I've already sent in my entry. We could either send it now, or wait until we got feedback and send it later; My book has gone through several betas and critiques so I felt comfortable submitting it now. But, in true blogfest spirit, I will still be making the rounds of those who posted their pages to give them some feedback.

I would have liked to submit my first 250 words from Crow's Rest, but the rules stipulate that your sample must be from a completed novel. So I submitted the first 250 from Spirits from the Vasty Deep (from the prologue, actually).

Name: Angela Jackson, writing as Angelica R. Jackson
Title: Spirits from the Vasty Deep
Genre: YA Historical w/ a ghostly twist

(From the prologue)

"Where are you taking me?" I tried to plant my feet, but Miss Bonney roughly pulled me into motion again.

"I'm taking you to the east wing, to put an end to this superstitious nonsense once and for all," she answered, holding my arm in an iron grip. "I will solve two problems with one fell swoop—get some use out of that room, and cure you of lying."

"But I don't lie," I said, my breath coming in puffs as I trotted to keep up.

Miss Bonney snorted. "I suppose you deny telling the other girls the ghost of the groundskeeper and his dog walk the gardens? Or that Tabitha's late grandmother wanted to speak with her? Some of those girls haven't slept in a week. You're nearly ten years old, Olivia, you're getting too old for such stories."

"They're not stories—there are shades all around us, all the time. And I told the others they didn't need to fear these spirits, they don't mean us any harm."

Miss Bonney turned left into a long gallery, raising her candle to get her bearings. Cold and disused, this wing of the school reeked of decay and mildew. Quiet reigned at this end of the building; all the students would be getting ready for bed in their dormitories by now.

My curiosity about the forbidden wing outweighed any misgivings—until we approached the door at the far end. "What is this place?" I whispered, trembling as
I felt the weight of a presence beyond it.
----------------------------------------------

Looking forward to reading people's entries, and "meeting" some new writing friends!

Contest Roundup

Marie Rearden dubbed me "The Contest Watcher" on her blog post yesterday--how did she know I had a few more contest opportunities this morning??? And I'm not sure if my title is valid, since a few weeks ago I missed that I had won 2 separate book giveaways. The bloggers had to email me to notify me {hangs head}

But enough of my shame--get to the contests! These are both great opportunities with agent Natalie Fischer of the Bradford Literary Agency.

The contest celebrating the anniversary of Adventures in Children's Publishing is more time sensitive (she doesn't say when it closes, just that she's announcing the winner Saturday) and a random winner gets a first chapter critique by Natalie. There's a great interview with Natalie as well.


And Brenda Drake is running a Show Me the Voice contest, where you could win a critique of your first 20 pages, first 10 pages, or query by Natalie! To enter, you need to sign up through the linky on the contest page, and on March 20 and 21, you post the first 250 words of your completed book on your own blog.

And then the really fun part: you hop around to everyone else's blog and give them feedback, and they return the favor. Once you have your entry spit polished, you email it to Brenda by March 22. If that sounds confusing, read the rules on her page, she lays them out better. Top 20 entries will be posted Mar. 24, and the winners announced by Mar.28.