Aubrie Dionne

Hey writers of YA! Here's another great contest. I'm going to enter my young adult sci fi novel: Colonization.

HOW TO SUBMIT
E-mail entries to seventhagentcontest@gmail.com. Please paste everything. No attachments.
WHAT TO SUBMIT
The first 150-200 words of your unpublished, book-length work of young adult fiction. You must include a contact e-mail address with your entry and use your real name. Also, submit the title of the work and a logline (one-sentence description of the work) with your entry.
Please note: To be eligible to submit, I ask that you do one of two things: 1) Mention and link to this contest twice through your social media—blogs, Twitter, Facebook; or 2) just mention this contest once and also add Guide to Literary Agents Blog (www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog) to your blogroll. Please provide link(s) so the judge and I can verify eligibility. Some previous entrants could not be considered because they skipped this step!
CONTEST DETAILS
1. This contest will be live for approximately fourteen days—from Oct. 21 through the end of Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2010, EST. Winners notified by e-mail within three weeks of end of contest. Winners announced on the blog thereafter.
2. To enter, submit the first 150-200 words of your book. Shorter or longer entries will not be considered. Keep it within word count range please.
3. This contest is solely for completed book-length works of young adult fiction.
4. 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.
5. The contest is open to everyone of all ages, save those employees, officers and directors of GLA's publisher, F+W Media.
6. 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 literaryagent@fwmedia.com. The Gmail account above is for submissions, not questions.)
PRIZES!!!
Top 3 winners all get: 1) A critique of the first 10 pages of your work, by your agent judge. 2) A free one-year subscription to WritersMarket.com.
MEET YOUR (AWESOME) JUDGE!



Tamar Rydzinski is a literary agent
at the Laura Dail Literary Agency in NYC.

Who's going to enter???

Paradise 21 got two more partial rejections over the last week. It's not looking good for this one in query land.

Here are the stats:

Queries: 55
Partials: 6 (4 rejected)
Rejections: 31

This makes me even more eager to finish my latest YA spin off, Colonization. With double the agents to query for YA, I think I have a better chance. Then, maybe I can use Paradise 21 as a prequel. If not, I'm sending it to one of my ebook companies. I will keep writing novels until my fingers don't work anymore, or until I get an agent. Let's just see how many it will take!

Thank you for all of your votes on my short story, Rainbow's End. It definitely helped cheer me up after those two big partial bombs!

Now for some good news:


My short story, Malicifer, has just come out at Gypsy Shadow Publishing.

This tale has everything from zombie sailors to sea monsters to epic battles.

As always, I'm looking for reviewers. Please let me know if you'd like to review it in a comment below and I can provide you with a reviewer's copy. It's only a short story, so it won't take long :)

A Fly in Amber just posted my short story, Rainbow's End. My worst fear is that no one will vote for it, or they'll give it zero stars out of five. Could you go over and vote on it for me?

Here's what it's about:

Apprenticed as a weaver to her mother, Tora yearns to follow in her footsteps and complete the Tapestry of History for their village's yearly Festival of Ancestors. Tora only sees the world in monochrome and struggles to discern the patterns on the loom. In desperation she consults a witch woman, who instructs her to follow the rainbow's end to find what she seeks. Tora journeys with a friend from her childhood and together they learn that life is not black and white and all it takes is a rainbow to see.

After over a hundred days of waiting I heard from Pill Hill Press last night! They accepted my necromancer story, Queen of Bones, for their fall anthology: Flesh and Bones, Rise of the Necromancers. I've sent a few stories to Pill Hill for their anthologies, and this is the first one to get in!

Everyone should check out their website because they have many more anthologies going on: a apocalyptic one, a Dixie undead one, a bloody carnival one. Writing short stories has improved my novel writing skills immensely. You have to pack everything into 3k-10k words, and the action can never slow down too much.

On the query front, I received a rejection on a partial *sad face* this week. That leaves only 3 more partials out there with agents. I try to keep working on my fifth book, but after a while I feel like these rejections are wearing me down.

Do you get worn down by rejections?
Is anyone going to try for a Pill Hill Press anthology?

My Ebook, Messenger in The Mist, comes out today at Lyrical Press! You can read my interview over at Surrounded By Books.

Here's the blurb:

Star Nightengale is one of only a few riders fast enough to elude the mysterious beasts lurking in the moors. She has trained her entire life to be a messenger for the Elite Riders of Evenspark and races on horseback through the misted countryside, delivering correspondence to the bordering Fortress of Ravencliff. She risks her life for the gold to relocate her parents from their precarious home in the outskirts, for her illustrious career, and for an unrequited love.

On an important mission, Star discovers that she carries plans for the assassination of the one man who has captured her heart, Prince Valen of Ravencliff. Star must weigh her love against the livelihood that she has spent a lifetime to build and the country that she once thought was peaceful and just. To make matters worse, she learns that Prince Valen is secretly betrothed to Princess Vespa of Evenspark. Consequently, loving him would mean sundering already unstable relations between the two kingdoms.

Meanwhile, the mist is rising, enabling the Elyndra to gather in numbers and threaten the borders of both kingdoms. Star must unravel the mystery of their existence and forestall the war before they fall under invasion. In her search she uncovers the secret origins of her ancestors, revealing untold truths about the history of humanity.

As always, I'm looking for reviewers to read it! Let me know if you are interested in looking at it and I can send you a free pdf.

So I opened my email two nights ago and had two acceptances and one big old rejection.

First the acceptances:

My short story, Rainbow's End, has finally found a home. A Fly in Amber accepted it for their next issue. They actually vote on the stories over there, so I'll let you know when it's up so you can go over and vote for me!

And, Gypsy Shadow Publishing accepted my short story, Malicifer as a ebook.

This is the image I'm going to use as a cover, (thanks to the lovely artwork of Inertia at www.enchantedcanvas.com)



Now the bad news, one of my partials came back as a rejection. It was a big time literary agency, so I wasn't expecting them to like it, but it stung all the same.

Here are my query stats now:

Queries sent out: 46
Partials Requested: 3 (1 rejection)
Rejections: 14

Two small wins today and one large loss. Do they balance out? What do you guys think?

Good news and bad

So I didn't win the Dear Agent Contest. You can click here to see who did.




But that's okay. This week I had two requests for partials!!!

Here's my query status on Paradise 21:

Queries sent out: 35
Partials requested: 2
Rejections: 5

Not bad!

I'm up to 6,368 words in my new WIP: Colonization. Thank you for all of your comments and advice. I've decided to make it a stand alone novel, so it doesn't need the first one to make sense. That way, if Paradise 21 doesn't do well, I can still shop this one around. And then, if this one does do well, I can publish Paradise 21 later as a prequel. What do you think?

I am so excited to report my first request for a partial!!!! I'm so relieved someone actually liked my query letter and it's one of my first choice agencies. Thank God.

Phew! Now that my moment of celebration is over, I want to tell you about my new WIP: The sequel to Paradise 21 (formerly known as Desert Nomad). Told from the perspective of one of the main character's great granddaughter, it continues the story of the Ark as it arrives on Paradise 21 and their colonization attempt.

What should I name it? I'm thinking of going with: Paradise 21: Colonization. And then I'll name the first one: Paradise 21: Voyage. Or can you think of something better?

The only problem is that the sequel is definitely YA. The granddaughter is in her teens, and it's told in first person. This is a major difference from the first book. What do you think? Can I have a spin off in another age group?

The "Dear Lucky Agent" Contest

I've been stewing over this for awhile now, and I decided today I would enter. I don't usually do big time contests like this, but this one is specifically fantasy/sci fi! The deadline is May 26th, and I should hear back within 7 days. I'll keep you all posted on the results.

Is anyone else going to enter?

My story, Song of the Bard, is up on MindFlights today!