25th Free “Dear Lucky Agent” Contest: Thrillers and Horror

Welcome to the 25th (free!) “Dear Lucky Agent” Contest on the GLA blog. This is a FREE recurring online contest with agent judges and super-cool prizes. Here’s the deal: With every contest, the details are essentially the same, but the niche itself changes—meaning each contest is focused around a specific category or two. If you’re writing any kind of thriller or horror novel (for adults), then this 25th contest is for you! The contest is live through end of day, Tuesday, Oct 25, 2016. The contest is judged by agent Alec Shane of Writers House.

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WHY YOU SHOULD GET EXCITED

After a previous “Dear Lucky Agent” contest, the agent judge, Tamar Rydzinski (The Laura Dail Literary Agency), signed one of the three contest winners. After Tamar signed the writer, she went on to sell two of that writer’s books! How cool! These contests can’t be missed if you have an eligible submission.

HOW TO SUBMIT

E-mail entries to dearluckyagent25@gmail.com. Please paste everything. No attachments.

MEET YOUR (AWESOME) AGENT JUDGE!

screen-shot-2016-10-11-at-9-58-59-am Agent Alec Shane began his career at Writers House in September of 2008. He is now actively building his list and currently represents a fairly eclectic mix of children’s and adult fiction and nonfiction. On the fiction side, he loves mysteries, thrillers, bad-ass protagonists with a chip on their shoulders, beautifully told historical fiction (The Vietnam War, the Maccabees, and The American Revolution fascinate him), well-researched adventure stories, and great horror. In terms of children’s books, getting boys to read again is especially important to him, and thus he’s particularly on the lookout for a fun middle-grade adventure series, ghost story, or anything else geared toward younger male readers. On the nonfiction side, he is attracted to odd, quirky histories, military history, biographies of people he didn’t even know existed (but definitely should have), “guy” reads, humor, narrative nonfiction that sheds light on under-the-radar events and lifestyles, and all things sports. Find him on Twitter: @Alecdshane.

WHAT TO SUBMIT (AND OUR SOCIAL MEDIA REQUIREMENTS)

The first 150-250 words (i.e., your first double-spaced page) of your unpublished, completed thriller or horror novel. You must include a contact e-mail address with your entry and use your real name. Also note your city of residence (i.e. — the city you live in, not your full address). Submit the title of the work and a logline (one-sentence description of the work) with each entry. Self-published novels are not eligible.

Please note: To be eligible to submit, you must mention this contest twice through any any social-media. Please provide a social-media link or Twitter handle or screenshot or blog post URL, etc., with your official e-mailed entry so the judge and I can verify eligibility. Some previous entrants could not be considered because they skipped this step! Simply spread the word twice through any means and give us a way to verify you did; a TinyURL for this link/contest for you to easily use is http://ift.tt/2ec1ibp.

An easy way to notify me of your sharing is to include my Twitter handle @chucksambuchino at the end of your mention(s) if using Twitter. If we’re friends on FB, tag me in the mention. If you are going to just use Twitter as your 2 entries, please wait one day between mentions to spread out the notices, instead of simply tweeting twice back to back. Thanks. (Please note that simply tweeting me does not count. You have to include the contest URL with your mention; that’s the point. And if you use Twitter, put my handle @chucksambuchino at the middle or the end, not at the very beginning of the tweet, or else the tweet will be invisible to others.)

Here is a sample TWEET you can use (feel free to tweak): New FREE contest for writers of thrillers and horror http://ift.tt/2ec1ibp Judged by agent @Alecdshane, via @chucksambuchino

Check Out These Great Upcoming Writers’ Conferences:

Oct. 28-30, 2016: Writer’s Digest Novel Writing Conference (Los Angeles, CA)
Nov. 5-6, 2016: ShowMe Writers Masterclass (Columbia, MO)
Nov. 19, 2016: Las Vegas Writing Workshop (Las Vegas, NV)
Feb. 26 – March 3, 2017: Writers Winter Escape Cruise (conference/cruise departing Miami)

WHAT IS ELIGIBLE?

Any completed thriller or horror novel. Note that this contest is for adult novels, not YA or middle grade.

CONTEST DETAILS

This contest will be live through the end of October 25, 2016, PST. Winners notified by e-mail within three weeks of end of contest. Winners announced at the top of this blog post thereafter.
To enter, submit the first 150-250 words of your book (i.e., your first double-spaced page). Shorter or longer entries will not be considered. Keep it within word count range please.
You can submit as many times as you wish. You can submit even if you submitted to other contests in the past, but please note that past winners cannot win again. All that said, you are urged to submit only your best work.
The contest is open to everyone of all ages, save those employees, officers and directors of GLA’s publisher, F+W: A Content and E-Commerce Company, Inc.
By e-mailing your entry, you are submitting an entry for consideration in this contest and thereby agreeing to the terms written here as well as any terms possibly added by me in the “Comments” section of this blog post. If you have questions or concerns, write me personally at chuck.sambuchino (at) fwmedia.com. The Gmail account above is for submissions, not questions. This contest buys no rights, so even if you win, you can still do whatever you like with the work. We do not acquire or own or publish anything.

PRIZES!!!

Top 3 winners each get: 1) A critique of the first 10 double-spaced pages of your work by your agent judge. 2) A free one-year subscription to WritersMarket.com ($50 value)! 3) Their choice of any of Chuck’s two new books coming out in September 2017 (the Guide to Literary Agents 2017 or the Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market 2017).

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