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Pitch Madness … submission deets

Monday, 27 August 2012  |  Posted by Brenda Drake

 

It’s here! Well, not quite yet. The submission windows for the semi-annual Pitch Madness go live on Saturday, September 1 at 12PM EDT (NY time) and 6PM EDT (NY time) and another window has bee added for Tuesday, September 4 @ 10AM EDT (NY time). The game theme this time is Paintball (Great suggestion SM Johnston of YATopia!). What’s Pitch Madness, you ask? Well, its a game where we bring together a bushel of agents to compete for your pitches. There’s three other blogs joining me in this funtastic event. So I guess I’ll start by introducing them first.

YAtopia 
                                   YATopia Blog 
Shelley Watters
https://twimg0-a.akamaihd.net/profile_images/2401199576/oz84kbx6abqol6ipy5jt.jpeg
Erica M. Chapman
                 

 

 Here’s the crazy awesome agents participating…

Dawn Frederick – Red Sofa Literary
Brittany Howard – Corvisiero Agency
John Cusick – Scott Treimel NY
Victoria Marini – Gelfman Schneider Lit.
Judith Engracia – Liza Dawson & Assoc.
Louise Fury – L. Perkins Agency
Sarah LaPolla – Curtis Brown Ltd.
Brooks Sherman – FinePrint Literary Management
Molly Ker Hawn – The Bent Agency
 
We’ll have more about the agents up in our Meet the Agents’ post coming September 4 and 5.
Now, here’s the submission deets …
Shine up your 35-word (exact-anything over will be disqualified) pitches and the first 150-words (if the cut-off falls in the middle of a sentence, go to the end of that sentence) of your finished Adult, Young Adult, and Middle Grade fiction. We’ll pick 60 entries to move on to the Agent Pitch Match. 

We’ve doubled the number of entries we’re taking in this time. There will be a percentage of what genres make it in based on all the agents likes. You guessed it, there will be more YA in the contest than Adult, but the main thing we’re looking for is the WOW factor. Only one entry per person.
We have two submission times, and this year we’re holding it on a Saturday. 
The windows open on September 1 …

1ST SUBMISSION TIME: 12:00 pm EDT (EST-NY time) first 100.
2ND SUBMISSION TIME: 6:00 pm EDT (EST-NY time) first 100. 

And we’ve added another submission time for September 4…

3RD SUBMISSION TIME: 10:00 am EDT (EST-NY time) first 100.

Submissions will be emailed to brendadrakecontests@gmail.com. All email submissions received before the submission times will be deleted.

Only the best of the best will make it to the final round.

Submissions will be emailed to brendadrakecontests@gmail.com. 

Here’s how to format your entry …

Subject line: Pitch Madness: TITLE

Name: Brenda Drake
Title: The Britanika Journals: Around the World in 80:45:07
Genre: Middle Grade Adventure
Word Count: 50,000

Max and Annika use a transporting globe to find her missing father. With evil men in an airship on their tails, Max must use his sleuthing skills with Annika’s inventor ones to rescue her father.

Maximilian Drayson knew that a masterful sleuth had to pay attention to one crucial thing—the details. He tightened his grip on the white apron he had snatched from the Britanika’s laundry room. It took several hours into his investigation to find it, and most would think it was just a soiled apron, but he believed it to be a clue.
He paced the manicured lawn of the Britanika’s residence, scratching the back of his neck and searching the ground. This particular mystery came about after he had overheard one of the Britanika’s housemaids, Molly, sobbing to another servant about losing her mother’s brooch. At hearing Molly’s distress, he went into action.
Before beginning his investigation, Max interrogated Molly, asking her a series of questions: When had she last seen the brooch? Did she wear it while she worked? What were her household duties? He needed every bit of information he could obtain if he wanted to mark this case as solved.

For those that don’t make it into Pitch Madness we’ll be hosting a twitter pitch party on the hashtag #PitMad on September 13 from 8AM to 8PM EST. So get those twitter pitches ready!

That’s it. We’re so excited!

 
A couple of announcements for my blog…
The query workshop was great fun, and hopefully informative. A huge thank you to all the participants and critiquers. I know how hard it is to put yourselves out there and I’m so pleased with everyone’s comments. You all are so kind and helpful to each other, I love it. Hug it out. You all deserve pats on your backs. And, most importantly, a gigantic thank you to my co-hosts. Drop by their blogs, read their critiques, and show them some love!


The winners of a first chapter critique for the Query Workshop by Random.org are:

KL Layton
Andrew Patterson

Laurie Litwin

Please email me the first chapter of your manuscript to brendadrakecontests@gmail.com.
  
Coming up after Pitch Madness… 
The Teenaged Nitpick critiques by John Hansen (@ABoredAuthor). John will critique ten lucky winners in a drawing to receive a first page critique from him and posted on my blog the week of September 24. This is for young adult finished/unfinished manuscripts any genre.

John is a high school student and an intern for Pam van Hylckama of Larsen Pomada Literary Agents. You may have seen him answering questions on Leigh Ann Kopan’s Ask A Teen hashtag #YAWritersAAT. He brings the teen perspective to his critiques. You can get more information about John on his site The Incessant Droning Of A Bored Writer.
Look for more details and for the Rafflecopter to go live on the blog on September 17. 

Filed: Misc

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