27th Free “Dear Lucky Agent” Contest: Women’s Fiction

Welcome to the 27th (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 a women’s fiction novel, then this 27th contest is for you! The contest is live through end of day, Thursday, Nov. 25, 2016. The contest is judged by agent Irene Goodman of the Irene Goodman Literary Agency.

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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 dearluckyagent27@gmail.com. Please paste all text. The only time to include attachments are when you have to attach images to show your social-media sharing (more info that below).

MEET YOUR (AWESOME) AGENT JUDGE!

Irene Goodman has been a leading member of the publishing community for over 30 years. She has sold more than 1,500 books and counting. Her clients are regulars on the New York Times, USA Today, Publishers Weekly, and Bookscan bestseller lists. She began her career as the assistant to the agent who represented Stephen King, and established her own agency shortly after that. Her fiction list includes upmarket women’s fiction, middle grade, young adult, thrillers, historical fiction, and mysteries. Her nonfiction list includes pop culture, Jewish interest, science, self-help, Francophilia, and lifestyle.

Irene has written columns and articles for a number of writers’ publications, and is also a frequent speaker at writers conferences, including keynoting at the Historical Novelists Society and Novelists Ink., and workshops at the San Francisco Writers Conference, the Surrey International Writers Conference, the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference, SEAK, the South Carolina Writers Workshop, Malice Domestic, and many regional events. Originally from the Midwest and still trying to lose the accent, Irene has a B.A. and a master’s degree from the University of Michigan. She and her husband divide their time between New York and the Berkshires, and have two grown children.

WHAT TO SUBMIT (AND OUR SOCIAL MEDIA REQUIREMENTS)

The first 150-250 words (i.e., your first double-spaced page) of your unpublished, completed women’s fiction 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! In short, 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/2fs74lS

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 Women’s Fiction http://ift.tt/2fs74lS Judged by agent @igagency, via @chucksambuchino

Check Out These Great Upcoming Writers’ Conferences:

Nov. 19, 2016: Las Vegas Writing Workshop (Las Vegas, NV)
Feb. 11, 2017: Writers Conference of Minnesota (St. Paul, MN)
Feb. 16–19, 2017: San Francisco Writers Conference (San Francisco, CA)
Feb. 25, 2017: Atlanta Writing Workshop (Atlanta, GA)
Feb. 26–March 3, 2017: Writers Winter Escape Cruise (conference/cruise departing Miami)
March 25, 2017: Michigan Writers Conference (Detroit, MI)
April 8, 2017: Philadelphia Writing Workshop (Philadelphia, PA)
April 22, 2017: Get Published in Kentucky Conference (Louisville, KY)
May 6, 2017: Seattle Writers Conference (Seattle, WA)
May 19-21: PennWriters Conference (Pittsburgh, PA)
July 22, 2017: Tennessee Writers Workshop (Nashville, TN)
Aug. 18–20, 2017: Writer’s Digest Conference (New York, NY)
Sept. 9, 2017: Chesapeake Writers Conference (Washington, D.C.)

WHAT IS ELIGIBLE?

Any completed women’s fiction novel. Note that this contest is for adult novels, not YA or middle grade of any kind. Sometimes this category can also be called upmarket women’s fiction or book club women’s fiction.

If you’re confused as to what women’s fiction is (and its differences to romance), agent Scott Eagan says this “I have always tried to define [women’s fiction] as a story that shows the female journey. The goal and the intent of this genre is to be able to relate to the character and understand her own life. We want to know what it is to be a woman. Like romance, this can occur in any time period, but the goal is still the same – to understand the female psyche. The story can be multicultural, like Amy Tan, or historical, like Philippa Gregory. It really doesn’t matter other than making the heroine the central focus of the story. Many stories are contemporary.”

CONTEST DETAILS

This contest will be live through the end of November 25, 2016, PST. Winners notified by e-mail within three weeks of end of contest. Winners announced at the top of this blog post at the same time.
To enter, submit the first 150-300 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) Their choice of any of Chuck’s two new books out in September 2017 (the Guide to Literary Agents 2017 or the Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market 2017).

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