Ok, guys, sorry for all the many steps. I can see it got confusing for lots of people, so let’s keep it simple. Here is the launching post. From today until Tuesday, August 9th, at 11:59 PM (EDT), you can post your entries in the comment section of this post only. Please don’t post them in any previous posts this is the one that counts. If the Mr. Linky didn’t work or you couldn’t get to all those previous steps, don’t worry. Just post your entry on the comments section of this post, that’s what really matters.
Here is how your entry should be formatted. Please pay close attention to this, we need this information.
Name: your name
Title: title of your manuscript
Genre: genre of your manuscript
Manuscript word count: Check to see if your judge has word count restrictions
Judge: Check the judge list below to see who is judging your genre
One-sentence pitch: No more than 30 words. For some help on how to do a great one, go to the post about it.
First paragraph: Enter your first paragraph (no longer than 170 words). If your first paragraph is shorter than 50 words, you may enter your first two paragraphs, as long as the second paragraph is not over 120 words. If your first paragraph is longer than 170 words… Well, you should probably cut some. That’s quite long.
That’s it. That’s all you need to enter. Name, title genre, wordcount, judge, one-sentence picth and first paragraph. Just fill up the blanks and post it on the comment section. Easy, right? An observation: You can enter as many novels as you want, but you can’t enter the same novel more than once. Everything you enter must be a finishid manuscript.
And here’s a summary of what judges are judging and what are their guidelines:
- Deb Werksman
Judging single-title romance (all subgenres) and women’s fiction.
Guidelines: For single-title romance, a minimum word count of 90K is required. Her criteria are: 1) a heroine the reader can relate to; 2) a hero she can fall in love with; 3) a world gets created; 4) a hook she can sell with in 2-3 sentences; and 5) the author has a demonstrable career arc.
- Leah Hultenschmidt
Judging Young Adult (all subgenres)
Guidelines: 60 to 90K words. Protagonists who are 15-19 and allow for potential adult cross-over appeal. Unforgettable characters readers care about and can relate to in some way. An authentic voice for the audience. Powerful, credible world-building (applies to non-paranormal/fantasy/dystopian too!). A fresh premise with a marketing hook that can be conveyed in 2-3 sentences. An age-appropriate romantic element, even if it’s not the main focus of the story.
- Peter Lynch
Judging commercial (both contemporary and historical) and literary fiction
Guidelines: No genre fiction (such as fantasy, sci-fi, etc.). He’s interested in all types of commercial fiction and literary fiction with commercial appeal, especially novels with a distinctive voice. He acquires both contemporary and historical fiction, and commercial and literary fiction with strong romantic elements are also welcome.
- Aubrey Poole
Judging Middle-Grade and children’s fiction
Guidelines: Up to 2k words for picture books and up to 40k for MG. She’s looking for strong and believable storytelling, exciting plots, well-developed characters and polished writing.
Easy enough? So post away! Just polish your entries and post them in the comment section of this post (no others, please) before Tuesday, August 9th. It’s launched! And entering has never been easier!
For info on prizes and the long-version of the explanation, go to the original contest post. To learn more about the judges, go to the interview.
Hope to see lots of entries here! Let’s not make it too easy for the judges! You may now start posting your entries on the comment section of this post!
Name: T.K. Bailey
Title: She Smiles
Genre: YA
Manuscript word count: 90,000
Judge: Leah Hultenschmidt
One-sentence pitch: A high school senior struggles with a small bra size, a bedroom door that won’t close, her addicted family and her boss. When they cross the line, she finds love.
First paragraph:
Chapter 1 – Tawnie
September 1, 1991
Dear Charlie:
I was told in the ninth grade that I would be a disappointment for a blind date as I had a beautiful name and was, at best, cute, but not beautiful. And if my date heard he was going out with a “Tawnie” he would have expectations that would be unfulfilled when he saw me. So, I apologize now.
Hey Tawnie! Sorry, the one-sentence pitch must be just one sentence. Could you redo that and post again as a reply to this same comment? Thanks!
Pitch: A high school senior struggles with a small bra size, a bedroom door that won’t close, her addicted family and her boss; when they cross the line, she finds love.
First Paragraph:
Chapter 1 – Tawnie
September 1, 1991
Dear Charlie:
I was told in the ninth grade that I would be a disappointment for a blind date as I had a beautiful name and was, at best, cute, but not beautiful. And if my date heard he was going out with a “Tawnie” he would have expectations that would be unfulfilled when he saw me. So, I apologize now.
Name: Laura C.
Title: The Black Ankh
Genre: YA Dark Fantasy/Mystery
Manuscript word count: 70,000
Judge: Leah Hultenschmidt
One-sentence pitch:
When burn-victim Rissa McCall’s Egyptian vacation turns deadly, she must find the Black Ankh, keep her own pyrokinetic power from killing her, save her family…oh, and get the guy.
First paragraph:
The Normies were staring again.
Rissa fiddled with her fork and avoided their eyes. Even in an Egyptian resort where everyone was a stranger, she was the strangest.
Name: Laura C. (entry #2)
Title: Starry Night Circus of Monsters
Genre: Picture Book (Halloween niche)
Manuscript word count: 650 words
Judge: Aubrey Poole
One-sentence pitch:
Lion-Tamer Zig quits the Monster Circus, but when the mean Circus Master locks him in a cage, he needs help from the lions, who aren’t likely to release their ‘tamer.’
First paragraph:
When Starry Night Circus rolled into the town,
The people yelled “Woohoo!” and hurried on down.
They snatched up the tickets and filled all the seats,
To see exhibitions and fabulous feats.
Green goblins rode bicycles on the high-wires.
The clowns and the jugglers were really vampires.
A zombie sold popcorn while demons with wings
Zoomed faster than rockets through flaming hot rings.
A werewolf did somersaults from the trapeze.
His partner, the boogey-man, caught him with ease.
Then Frankenstein tap-danced with clumpity shoes,
Disturbing the Mummy who wanted to snooze.
With trumpets and drums and a great cymbal crash,
The star of the circus arrived in a flash.
Zig waved to the crowd while they shouted and cheered.
A hush fell when lions and tigers appeared.
Name: Katharina Gerlach
Title: Urchin King
Genre: YA Historical Fantasy
Manuscript word count: 71K
Judge: Leah Hultenschmidt
One-sentence pitch: Despite an ancient law demanding the death of second born twins, street-urchin Paul battles a vengeful magician to save his life and his twin brother, the crown prince.
First paragraph: Paul felt the town’s outer wall against his back. Hunger still gnawed at his intestines like a wolf and made sleeping impossible, but that was not new to him. He coped with the pain by remembering his lucky day two weeks back. Lilla had given him a whole loaf of bread, and he had been able to steal another later. He had shared the last, moldy slice two days ago. Now he wished he had more. He pulled his skinny legs closer until the pain subsided. Then, he sat up and looked at his friends sleeping on the bare ground beside him. All of them were skinny, unkempt and reeked of stale sweat and dirt.
Name: Katharina Gerlach
Title: The Tootle-hen and the Goshawk
Genre: picture book
Manuscript word count: 688 words
Judge: Aubrey Poole
One-sentence pitch: Grain wants to sing in the woods but she is too chicken to go alone, and when she follows a tiny bird, she must overcome her fear of the goshawk.
First paragraph: Grain loved to sing but the other tootle-hens hated it. The woods on the meadow’s far end beckoned Grain to visit their lush green.
“The goshawk lives there. He will eat you,” Aunty said.
Name: Katharina Gerlach
Title: Terry and the Folding Rule of Time
Genre: MG Time Travel
Manuscript word count: 35K
Judge: Aubrey Poole
One-sentence pitch: Twelve-year-old Terry time-travels to 1866 Germany, causing her great-great-grandfather to forget about emigration; now, she has to get him on his way to America, or her future will vanish forever.
First paragraph: Second bell for science — I hated old Bodger on the best of days but most of all on a Monday morning. I slammed the door of my locker hard enough that it bounced open again. Chewing on a strand of my straw-colored bangs, I closed my locker more gently and sauntered to our classroom. I looked forward to old Bodger’s face when he plopped onto a cold, wet chair. I smiled a little. Not too much. That would alert him, and he’d guess right away it was me who snuck into class before first bell. I eased into my chair, stretching my gangly legs, feeling smug and satisfied until the door opened.
Name: Chanda Hahn
Title: UnEnchanted
Genre: YA
Manuscript word count: 62,000
Judge: Leah Hultenschmidt
One-sentence pitch: A family curse resurfaces turning Mina Grime’s life into a present day fairy tale, except that these are not the happily ever after kind.
First paragraph:
Yesterday I saved Brody Carmichael’s life! Mina penned the words into her spiral notebook with her favorite ball point pen. She always used the same pen in hopes that it would change her luck and she could write something good on her list, like today. She stared at the words written before her in her sloppy script and felt a pang of guilt. She started to draw a line through her entry but paused in thought. It didn’t feel right. It didn’t seem… truthful. With a heavy hand and a heavy heart she added in quotation brackets next to the entry. (Yesterday was also the day I almost KILLED Brody Carmichael).
Name: Pamela L.
Title: Jax and Crispen vs. The Monsters of Dartmoor
Genre: MG
Word Count: 26,000
Judge: Aubrey Poole
One sentence pitch: Thirteen year old Jax must save his brother from their Pixie grandfather with nothing more than a jacked up magical knife, an asthma inhaler and a little help from an ill tempered beast of Dartmoor.
First paragraph:
“Ya ought not go to Dartmoor.”
Thirteen year old Jackson and his little brother Crispen stopped chewing the gooey, still warm chocolate long enough to stare at the old man behind the counter. His head, mostly bald, gave the odd impression one was looking at a grapefruit with dark yellow dimples. Long, greasy, gray hair hung down the sides of his face. A weird looking guy, he stooped over, letting his chocolate stained apron drag across the shop’s cracked wooden floor as he spoke.
Hey there! That pitch is over 30 words. Could you rewrite and post it again on this same comment thread? Thanks!
Name: Juliana Brandt
Title: Rupert Reginald Robinson, IX & the Mysterious House Next Door
Genre: Middle Grade fantasy
Manuscript word count: 23,000
Judge: Aubrey Poole
One-sentence pitch:
Rupert hasn’t imagined the creatures haunting his neighbor’s house; he realizes he must defeat them- even if he has to do it with only the help of his trusty baseball.
First paragraph:
Rupert Reginald Robinson clutched a brand new book to his chest and his forehead rested against the glass of the backseat car window. The car bumped across the road. His head slid to a new place and left a smudge of grease on the glass.
“Ouch,” he said as his head whacked against the glass for a third time. He released his book and rubbed his forehead with two fingers. In his left hand he gripped a baseball. The ball looked as if a dog had chewed on the worn and frayed red seams. As the car bounced down the road the ball rotated around, his fingers moving methodically so it stayed in motion.
Name: Anne R. Allen
Title: The Gatsby Game
Genre: Commercial Fiction
Manuscript word count: 85,400 words
Judge: Peter Lynch
One-sentence pitch: A Fitzgerald-obsessed con man dies in a movie star’s bedroom, igniting a Mad Men-era Hollywood scandal—and a murder accusation for 19-year-old nanny, Nicky Conway.
First paragraph:
Some people still think I’m a terrible person because I didn’t call the police right away. If I had, we might have avoided one of Hollywood’s most notorious sex scandals, and I wouldn’t have spent a lifetime living down the whole “killer nanny” thing.
But seriously, when I saw Alistair lying on the floor of Delia Kent’s motel room that night in 1969, I had no clue I was looking at a corpse. The room was dark, and I didn’t see any blood on that brown shag carpet. I thought Alistair was sleeping off the Mandrax he’d stolen from Delia’s medicine cabinet. I admit the floor of your boss’s motel room is not the place most people would choose to take a nap, but Alistair Milbourne was nothing like most people—people outside of a Fitzgerald novel anyway.
Name: Kate Larkindale
Title: Chasing the Taillights
Genre: YA Contemporary
Manuscript word count: 87 000
Judge: Leah Hultenschmidt
One-sentence pitch: If Lucy doesn’t confess her secret about the accident that killed her parents, she might lose her mind – if she does, she may lose the only person left who loves her.
First paragraph: The darkness is absolute. I’m not sure if my eyes are open or closed. I strain to push the lids up, but they’re already wide. Something covers my mouth and nose, making breathing difficult. My lungs burn for air, but I can only suck in tiny mouthfuls through whatever smothers my face.
Name: Laura Chapman
Title: Hard Hats and Flip Flops
Genre: Women’s Literature
Manuscript word count: 96,000
Judge: Deb Werksman
One-sentence pitch: A Human Resources manager finds love and the courage to break from the mold while working in the Gulf Coast’s cut-throat chemical industry.
First paragraph:
Ten minutes into the investigation and one fact is quite clear: metal forks and knives are going to be a thing of the past in our lunch rooms.
I can’t believe this is my life. I am cramped into a stuffy office mediating a disagreement between two grown men. Who fought in their break room. With forks and knives. The Safety Department was going to have fun with this one. It’s not every day a major chemical company, like Gulf America, writes policy about cutlery.
Name: Cynthia
Title: Light Weight
Genre: YA
Manuscript word count. 74,091
Judge: Leah Hultenschmidt
One sentence pitch: When Tony is given the chance to win a college scholarship and leave the life of the gang, he finds that following his dreams has deadly consequences.
First Paragraph:
Chapter One The Fight#
I never saw it coming. The impact sent lighting bolts of pain through my jaw. I saw stars as the tunnel vision blocked my sight. Then I felt my body smashed against the brick wall behind me. I needed to defend myself. I lifted my arms to block my face. I knew I couldn’t stand much more. I thought about how I got here. It was stupid really, if you thought about it. All I did was try to do something right for once.
Name: Meredith Jaeger
Title: The Trouble with Twenty-Two
Genre: women’s fiction
Manuscript word count: 82,414
Judge: Deb Werksman
One sentence pitch: Natalie and Gabrielle, best friends as different as they are loyal, discover life after college isn’t easy, embarking on separate quests in the cities of Prague and San Francisco.
First paragraph:
Gabi took a deep breath, surveying the chaos around her. No lesson in lecture hall prepared her for this.
Shrieking children launched handfuls of strawberry and chocolate ice cream at each other, smearing their taffeta dresses with sticky streaks. A small boy, his nose wet with mucus, strangled Gabi’s balloon animals, bringing each one to its death with a pop. Gabi winced. The intricate poodle balloons had taken her hours of practice to perfect.
Name: Janet Johnson
Title: Brant’s Pants
Genre: PB
Manuscript word count: 150
Judge: Aubrey Poole
One-sentence pitch:
When three-year-old Brant escapes the public restroom in just his underpants, he wreaks havoc on the store as he uses his best maneuvers to evade his mom and the dreaded pants.
First paragraph:
“I see London, I see France . . .” [Brant singing as he escapes the restroom in underpants]
“Wait, Brant!”
Name: Anne R. Allen
Title: Sherwood, Ltd.
Genre: Commercial Fiction
Manuscript word count: 86,400 words
Judge: Peter Lynch
One-sentence pitch: A suddenly-broke American socialite becomes a 21st century Maid Marian, living rough near the real Sherwood Forest with a charming, self-styled Robin Hood—who unfortunately wants to kill her.
First paragraph: Anybody can become an outlaw. For me, all it took was a little financial myopia, an inherited bad taste in spouses, a recession—and there I was, the great-granddaughter of newspaper baron H. P. Randall, edging around in alley-shadows, about to become a common thief.
Name: Brenda Drake
Title: Library Jumpers (revised)
Genre: YA Urban Fantasy
Manuscript word count: 90K
Judge: Leah Hultenschmidt
One-sentence pitch: Yanked into a gateway book linking libraries, Gia is propelled into a secret world, learns she a Palidijn, and falls for a hot guy–perfect except she’s started the Apocalypse.
First paragraph: I swallowed my breath mint when some hot guy across the reading room busted me staring at him. I completely froze, unable to tear my eyes away from him. He totally stood out in the conservative atmosphere of the library with his messy brown hair and tight leather biker clothes. His intense gaze held me for several seconds before I shot my eyes at Afton. Submerged in a book on the Salem witch trials–a strand of her dark hair-weave all twisted around her finger–she hadn’t even noticed him. A gust of wind came from his direction and rustled the pages of her book. I swung my eyes back to him. He was gone.
Name: Mercy Pilkington
Title: Stalking Holden Caulfield
Genre: YA fiction
Word Count: 55,357
Judge: Leah Hultenschmidt
Pitch: Fifteen-year-old Caid heads off on the road trip Holden Caulfield never got to take, only to discover his craptacular life isn’t as bad as things can get.
Paragraph One (and Two):
Three huge things happened all on the same day: my grandfather died, my parents split up, and I got suspended from school for five days for being a terrorist. There’s a whole lot of explanations missing, but that’s basically what happened.
I was at school during all of this, so probably around the same time that my dad came home and found out my mom had been having an affair for ages with some random neighbor who lived next door to my grandfather, that was right about the time my science project exploded in my locker.
Name: Lori Lee
Title: Soul Without a Boy
Genre: YA urban fantasy
Manuscript word count: 80k
Judge: Leah Hultenschmidt
One-sentence pitch: 17yo London Howell must overcome betrayal and family secrets to save his dad from the magi after the power in his soul.
First (and second) paragraph: On his thirteenth lap around the block, London Howell spotted the monster watching him. It was crouched against the wooden post of a neighbor’s mailbox, little more than a shadow with large-knuckled fingers that raked at empty air.
London stifled a groan. Sprinting through his neighborhood at midnight was annoying enough without an unwanted audience. He stopped to catch his breath beneath a lamppost, his hand braced against the cool iron.
Name: Mike Chen
Title: Local Band
Genre: Commercial Fiction
Manuscript word count: 90,000
Judge: Peter Lynch
One-sentence pitch: When Pete’s band takes an unsavory fast-track to stardom, he must decide whether to sell out to the business of rock or accept his girlfriend’s notion of “growing up.”
First paragraph: The naked brunette snoring next to me represented a major step towards my two big goals for this year: one, become a rock star and two, move on from Diana. Tons of classic songs focused on sex, so a one-night stand would almost definitely spark my creativity for an instant hit single. As for Diana, it’d been two years, three months, and some change since she traded me for her fancy Seattle job. And though last night’s memory had disappeared into a giant black hole of alcohol, I was naked alongside the brunette, so the next logical assumption would be that yes, my first post-Diana sexual encounter had finally arrived.
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Name: Nina Smith
Title: Hailstone
Genre: Literary Fiction
Manuscript word count: 58,058
Judge: Peter Lynch
One-sentence pitch: Magda just wants to escape Preacher’s abuse – but his plan to convert Hailstone by force means her only hope of freedom is to bring down his whole church.
First paragraph:
There was no question about it. Preacher had to die.
She fumbled with the lock on the glove box. A bottle of vodka, packet of cigarettes and several crumpled packs of pills went flying into the passenger seat. She closed her hand around the handle of the gun. The slick of sweat on her palm made the metal slippery. She thanked God, even though she didn’t believe in him, for Hailstone’s black market where you could get anything you wanted for the right price.
Name: Elizabeth Arroyo
Title: Some Kind Of Trouble
Genre: Contemporary YA
Word Count: 60,000
Judge: Leah Hultenschmidt
One Sentence Pitch: After a drive-by shooting leaves Arianna with an unexpected boyfriend, she finds that love alone won’t save him from life on the streets.
First Paragraph:
I read somewhere that if you chant something enough times it eventually comes true. I once chanted one hundred and three thousand times in one night for my mom to get better. It didn’t happen. I’ve tried the wishbone, the eyelash, and the birthday candle. I’ve tried coins in all types of water: fountain water, holy water and well water…nothing. My mom was still dying. Chanting turned to praying at five bucks a pop and easily arranged through mail order. I stopped the mail order and extended the praying to just about anything. I didn’t discriminate and worked with a few deities.
Name: Puja S Borker
Title: Masterji (working title)
Genre: Commercial Fiction (multi-cultural)
Manuscript word count: 73858
Judge: Peter Lynch
One-sentence pitch: To let be or to control? To believe or to distrust? To enquire or to sermonize? The story unfolds as Hari recalls his days as a student, as a Master…his transformation from someone in search to someone content.
First paragraph:
Memories of Baba’s thick moustache arose in my mind each time I stared at the Krishna-Arjuna painting that hung on the deadened sand coloured walls in the sitting room of our house in the village; the painting, only recently framed in rose wood, has stayed with me all these years and my ageing eyes strive to trace the differences between the delicate sketches of the characters and the black stains accumulated over many years of exposure to the sea-breeze.
Hey there! Your pitch is over one sentence and over 30 words. Could you rewrite it and post it as a reply to this same comment? Thanks!
One-sentence pitch:
Let be or control? Enquire or sermonize? The story unfolds as Hari recalls his days as a student, as a Master…his transformation from someone in search to someone content.
Sorry, but, again, that’s more than one sentence. I’ll just cut the first two sentences, ok? Thanks
Blame it on nervousness … I missed to notice the ‘just one sentence’ pitch … ridiculous I know. But thank you so much for getting rid of the first 2 sentences. Perfect solution!
Name: Steena Holmes
Title: Finding Emma
Genre: Contemporary Women’s Fiction
Manuscript Word Count: 77,000
Judge: Deb Werksman
One Sentence Pitch: It took thirty seconds for Megan’s daughter to go missing and after two years Megan is frantic when she takes a random picture of her missing daughter at the town fair.
First Paragraph: A child’s scream shattered the peaceful silence of the Sunday afternoon. Megan sat up from where she lay on the grass, her heart hammering as she scanned the street in front of her. She groaned as two of her daughters squirted each other in a water gun fight as they came up the walkway. She’d dozed off. Again. The late nights working on Peter’s books had to stop. Yesterday she’d woken up to find Emma across the street at the neighbors’, half crawled into their dog house.
Name: Christi Barth
Title: Planning for Love
Genre: Contemporary single title romance
Word Count: 96,094
Judge: Deb Werksman
1 sentence pitch: In the harsh spotlight of reality television, a romance-a-holic wedding planner tries to snare the anti-Cupid.
1st paragraph: Ivy Rhodes lay sprawled at the bottom of the stone steps, feet tangled in the straps of a large black duffel bag. Everything hurt and to top it off, she thought she’d heard her dress rip. At the very least, the pale pink satin had to be smudged from her ungraceful slide to the floor down the sweep of old stones dominating the foyer of the Great Hall at Café Brauer. Worst of all, the round lens of a video camera bobbled less than an inch from her nose.
Michele Merens
Against That Day
Literary Fiction
62,590 words
Mr. Peter Lynch
A happily-married woman inexplicably leaves her psychologist husband after receiving a terminal cancer diagnosis–as Bree Durning fears her hardest trials lay not before her, but in her distant past.
The argument of our lives turns out not to be with God, or other people; against their politics or worldviews versus our own. The argument of life, it seems to William, ultimately comes down to no more than one main contention; an argument against that day.
Name: Tonja Drecker
Title: Just Justice
Genre: MG
Manuscript word count: 32,000
Judge: Aubrey Poole
One-sentence pitch:
A ten-year-old troublemaker discovers a ‘genie-in-the-bottle’ website, but every wish he makes pulls him deeper into the genie’s evil plan.
First paragraph:
An earthquake slammed through the cage at a violent 10.1 on the Richter scale. It was the largest in Earth’s history, but the losses were minimal. Tad’s tennis shoes hadn’t suffered a single scratch, and the rabbits were terrified, but they had survived. Hiding in the far, dark corners of the cage, they thumped their paws in loud protest.
Name: Melinda Williams
Title: CRIMSON
Genre: YA romantic suspense with supernatural elements
MS word count: 85,000
Judge: Leah Hultenschmidt
Pitch:
A naive teenage girl must unravel why the evil-fighting Remainders saved her life only to kidnap her and why she fits in so well some of them want her dead.
First Paragragh:
The alley reeked of cheap alcohol and rotting fish, but it made a stellar short cut. I checked my cell. Not even midnight. Perfect.
I rounded the dumpster at the back of the building and stopped short. A guy with straggly hair towered over another just as grimy. The glimmer of the moon shining off his red-stained knuckles turned me in retreat. A holler echoed off the buildings to my sides. Was he calling to me? Didn’t matter. My breathing quickened with my pace. I heard footsteps behind me, but my nerves had wound too tight to turn. A hand grabbed my shoulder, black dirt formed lines under the fingernails. Crap. I never should have snuck out.
Whoops! Accidentally hit enter before I was ready. Pretend there is a space between the paragraphs. <——— And look I DO know how to spell paragraph!
Sorry!
Name: Rachel M.
Title: THE DEVIL’S FOOL
Genre: YA Dark Urban Fantasy
Manuscript word count: 90,000
Judge: Leah Hultenschmidt
One-sentence pitch:
Eve learns to use her once evil wiccan powers for good, but when her past actions catch up to her, the consequences prove deadly.
First paragraph:
I always knew my father was a monster, but watching him torture someone other than me made me ill. A girl dangled before him, her pale hands clinging to the rope around her neck while her naked toes struggled to touch ground.
I leaned over, high on my perch of a Scotts pine tree, and drew in the crisp night air. Normally the smell of Switzerland’s dense woodlands, a rich earthiness laced with the aroma of an approaching storm, would’ve soothed my nerves, but nothing could calm the growing turmoil in my gut. The scene below wouldn’t allow it.
Name: R.C. Lewis
Title: Significantly Other
Genre: YA sci-fi
Manuscript word count: 68,000
Judge: Leah Hultenschmidt
One-sentence pitch: When telepathic Ziv’s newly normal life is interrupted by a military request, she must decide if she belongs in humanity’s war, or on Earth at all.
First paragraphs: Blades of grass brush my toes, forcing me to suppress a shudder. Textures like this still feel unnatural, wrong. Too irregular and unpredictable. Shouldn’t have worn sandals. Despite my physical reaction, I continue across the lawn toward school. If I force myself to endure it enough times, maybe I’ll finally get used to it.
A familiar voice calls out behind me. As I stop to let Khalil catch up, his golden-bronze skin seems to radiate the warmth of the sun back out to the world. Not for the first time, I wonder if he finds my pale face as cold as I do. The thought is interrupted by a tickle on my foot, different from the grass. A ladybug crawls across my toe, and I reflexively clench my fists, not letting myself fritz out.
Just so you know, your first paragraph was over 50 words, so I had to cut the second, ok?
Name: Eva Pohler
Title: The Mystery Box
Genre: Commercial Fiction
Word-Count: 90,000 words
Judge: Peter Lynch
One-sentence Pitch: When a box meant for her eccentric neighbor is delivered to Yvette, she is lured into a horrifying trap and must pacify the neighbor to save her family.
Yvette stepped up to her back-fence neighbor’s house and rang the bell. Her kids! She should have brought her kids along! They would want to meet Cruella De Ville. But it was too late; a woman opened the grimy front door and poked her head out.
She looked younger than Yvette had expected and had rings beneath her beady brown eyes, and her red frizzy hair danced in all sorts of directions, as if it hadn’t seen a brush in a few days. She was shorter than Yvette, even as she slouched on the stoop of her doorstep, and thin—too thin. Her ratty pink robe was secured at the waist, and her hands hid in the front pockets. Her dingy socks hung loose around bony legs and ankles. She wore no shoes.
A paragraph break should occur at “She looked younger…”
Name: S. Kyle Davis
Title: Blackbird
Genre: YA Fantasy Thriller
Manuscript word count: 89,000
Judge: Leah Hultenschmidt
One-sentence pitch: Teen spy Taylor Keaton must bypass a top-of-the line security system to steal an object before the sorcerers do in this “Mission:Impossible with magic” tale.
First paragraph (or two, per contest rules):
I sat in first period Bio II, my guitar pick scratching out the main riff from “Love and Vivisection” against my pants leg. After everything, the years of hiding, of keeping my head down, I was still going to die. They’d find me now, and then…
I gripped the pick tightly into my hand, the pain pushing the thought away. I shoved it into my pocket. James Loeper could be stopped. I had a plan. I stood up, slipping a test tube and a couple petri dishes into my hoodie as I did.
Name: Michelle Fayard
Title: THE UNDERGROUND GIFT
Genre: Historical YA
Manuscript word count: 80,000
Judge: Leah Hultenschmidt
One-sentence pitch:
When Josepha, a slave, meets abolitionist Reeca Fitzgerald, she is persuaded to help conceal coded messages—until sadistic Bushwhacker Benjamin Michaelson becomes fixated with destroying the two teens.
First paragraph:
Josepha eased the brush through her mistress’ auburn hair. A draft threw light from the fireplace against the walls and into the corners. The woman’s sigh joined the shadows. “You have healing hands, child. I wish they could ease my worried heart.”
Josepha slid the brush closer until it reached the older woman’s temples. Her mistress turned to face her. “Josepha. My husband is selling you away.”
Name: Susan E. Kane
Title: In Preacher’s Creek
Genre: Literary Fiction
Manuscript word count: 70 K
Judge: Peter Lynch
One sentence pitch: In the rural town where there are no secrets, Kent and Ellen Jo Carter discover and explore the real secrets, forcing the town to confront prejudices and changes in 1950s.
First Paragraph: There are fragments of memories that float around in my head, things from the earliest years in Preacher’s Creek. There are the smells and sounds of a big family dinner, ham with scalloped potatoes. I remember being surrounded by giants, and seeing only their knees, or looking up their noses. I can feel my father’s soft aroma, being nestled into the crick of his elbow. The security of my little sweaty hand in my momma’s with her fingers caressing is something that tickles the back of my hand still. These quick snap-shot float through my brain with no words attached to them, only deep emotional reactions to events that swirled around me, before I had learned words and could attach meaning.
Name: Robert Edward Fahey.
Title: “Entertaining Naked People.”
Genre: Literary Fiction.
Manuscript word count: 104,000 words.
Judge: Peter Lynch.
One sentence pitch: Massaging celebrities (while living with psychics, lovers, hippies, and ghosts), Bob claws free of a childhood of despair, finding magic, healing, wisdom, and miracles; one naked truth at a time.
First paragraphs:
Here I was with my first naked woman ever, not a stitch on her, she kept moving closer, and I kept jabbing paint into her eyes. “Or maybe, ‘Crippled Innocence?’ ” she suggested. “Maybe you could call my portrait something like that?”
“Uhhh, Yeahhh …” My lips and jaw worked around for a while, but only that one word edged out. Trying to think of something charming or eloquent to say is like digging around through cooling street tar with a straw wrapper. In a borrowed white tux. I’m guaranteed to make a mess of things. – Well, at least I’d managed more than a grunt this time.
Name: Cary Neeper
Title: The Webs of Varok
Genre: Women’s Fiction
Manuscript Word Count: 95 k words
Judge: Deb Werksman
One-sentence Pitch: A woman’s mixed-species family leaves 21st Century Earth to illustrate steady state economics on a nearby planet, only to find its ideal economy disrupted and the family threatened by traitors.
First Paragraph: Nothing can grow forever. That’s the first thing I learned as a biologist. Put a few bacteria in a nice warm test tube bath with something to eat and watch what happens. In just a few days you’ll be lucky to find a few surviving mutants. The second thing I learned–problems in complex systems do not respond to sledgehammer rules, and butterflies don’t do well in tornadoes. A new tornado must grow out of fresh winds. Surely Varok could provide those fresh winds for its beleaguered neighbor in the solar system, Earth.
Name: Cary Neeper
Title: Conn: The Alien Effect
Genre: Women’s (Science) Fiction
Manuscript Word Count: 96 k words
Judge: Deb Werksman
One-sentence Pitch: A mixed-species family returns to Earth to teach steady state economics, but finds themselves hunted and their faith in the long-term effects they initiate challenged.
First Paragraph: Shawne sat on the edge of the algae pond in our family home on Varok, kicking water in the air and watching Conn unroll his tongue to catch tiny droplets falling thirty centimeters from his nasal gills. “I’m serious, Elll-dad,” the young human said. “I’m ready to go back to Earth. I know what to do. At less than two billion, the human population has dropped to a sustainable level. They’re ready to listen. Elll-Varok Science quit Earth’s moon eighteen years ago. We can go back now. They know they’ve got to make long-range sustainable practices work. Help me make the arrangements. Better yet, go with me. You can run workshops in the ocean, and I’ll teach steady state ethics.”
TITLE: THE RISE OF TEDDY.
GENRE: Commercial Fiction.
WORD COUNT: 97,000
JUDGE: Peter Lynch
PITCH:
Teddy thinks that losing fifty-pounds will get him everything that life has denied him; however, he learns that living is about a lot more than six-pack abs and pretty faces
FIRST PARAGRAPH:
The world laughed at him. It always had. Even alone in his car, it found a way to crush any hope for a day free of ridicule.
A group of high-school kids flicked cigarette ash onto the pavement outside. One pointed and the rest laughed. It wasn’t long before they had all joined in on the game. Their taunts were muted by his windows, but their lips were easy to read. Fat, they were calling him fat. And why shouldn’t they? Everyone else did. He wished he could say he’d grown a thick skin — that the constant barrage of asinine insults had grown stale with repetition — but nothing was further from the truth.
There should be a period on the end of the pitch. Not sure how it got deleted.
Name: Cary Neeper
Title: Shawne: An Alien’s Quest
Genre: Women’s Fiction
Manuscript Word Count: 110 k words
Judge: Deb Werksman
One-sentence Pitch:
First Paragraph: Stringer’s staccato throat sounds woke me from a pleasant dream of Ellason–succulent white moss dancing in waves just out of reach. I yawned and rolled over in the mud. Three times during the dark, our human daughter Shawne had come into the pond and roused us with pressure patterns we didn’t expect. “She’s just reacting to Stringer’s announcement,” I said. “She’ll get over it.” Then I felt the commitment in Stringer’s sonar explanation. He meant it. He needed to go back to Ellason, and Shawne felt she needed to go with him–”to find what life is all about,” she said. “What does it all mean?”
One Sentence Pitch for SHAWNE: AN ALIEN’S QUEST:
Searching for meaning on an alien planet, a young woman is challenged to save her mixed-species family from kidnappers while defining her faith in a complexity-based philosophy.
Name: Cary Neeper
Title: The Unheard Song
Genre: YA SF
Manuscript Word Count: 81 k words
Judge: Leah Hultenschmidt
One Sentence Pitch: A humanoid alien invader and a disabled aquatic native girl struggle to communicate as their commitment inspires peace and triggers recovery on a planet threatened by overpopulation.
First Paragraph: Lokan had an untamed face of burnt sienna-stained rubber, a face that stretched with laughter and sagged with disappointment, as if words of honest feeling would, at any moment, spill from his lips. When he arrived on Ellason he was a student of Ellasonian Studies, winner of a position as relief scientist to help address the crisis on that newly discovered planet. His dedication to the project was clear. “We can win over the ellls, if we find a way to communicate with them and understand them on their terms–not ours. Surely the Directorate will not overrule this approach. Surely.”
Name: Cary Neeper
Title: The Crystal Diadem
Genre: YA SF(spoof)
Manuscript Word Count: 60 k
Judge: Leah Hultenschmidt
One-sentence Pitch: A vicious silicon beauty–distracting everyone with her belief in the power of a Crystal Diadem–attacks a bureaucratic galactic federation as it is about to ask Earth to join.
First Paragraph: Silitone couldn’t sleep. With every bubbling of the nearby hot soda spring, his eyes popped up over his neck ring. Marndock Central hummed with a northerly wind that tore sand from the barrens and threw it across the niches on the west side of town with a pleasant hissing sound. Silitone couldn’t enjoy the storm, not when he was stressed to such a deep blue. He was sure that his bud-aunt Tenaricon had finally cracked apart and, worse, that Malicon, his peculiar young bud-niece, had helped the cracking along.
Name: Linsey Miller
Title: THE ASH PLAGUE
Genre: Young Adult
Manuscript word count: 75,000
Judge: Leah Hultenschmidt
One-sentence pitch:
Her country’s war started when the Heir was murdered, but Adalmund’s war started when she was ordered to kill the man responsible—Adalmund and her enchanted scarf against a nation.
First paragraph:
The soldiers locked his parents in the house and set it on fire in the night.
Climbing through the small cracks where the hinges used to be, Flynn grabbed his four-year-old sister, her matted hair sticking to his shirt as he carried her. He flew down the burning streets of the snowy mountain town and struggled to stay standing amongst the bloody slush beneath his feet. His country’s army, dressed in bronze and green, paraded the women through the streets while those unlucky enough to be trapped in their houses screamed and thrashed against the walls. He choked back a shout.
Name: Heather McCorkle
Title: To Ride A Puca
Genre: Young adult historical fantasy
Word count: 90,000
Judge: Leah Hultenschmidt
One Sentence Pitch: During the twelfth century invasion of Ireland, Emily, one of the last of the druids, must master her power to keep her kind from being annihilated.
First paragraph (first 126 words):
With a trembling hand, Emily adjusted the spyglass get a better look at the ship that marred the perfect blue horizon of the ocean. It was still too far away to tell much about it, save that it was large and imposing. Then she saw that the prow was carved to resemble the head of a dragon. Fear rose up and clamped an icy grip on her throat. Norsemen invaders had never come this far down the coast.
“This can’t be good,” she said.
Emily had never seen a Norseman and she didn’t want to. The horrible tales of what they did to entire villages was the stuff of legend. Her heart thudded with the intensity of a blacksmith’s hammer. Nervous energy hummed through her body.
This is three paragraphs, so I’ll have to cut the third one, ok? If it’s just two and the formatting wrong, please post it again on this same comment thread. Thanks.
Name: Claudio Tapia
Title: The Hand of Yemanja
Genre: Lit Fiction
Manuscript word count: 100k
Judge: Peter Lynch
One-sentence pitch: We all look for ways to shed our skins from time to time, for a chance to look at the world through borrowed eyes.
First paragraph: It would still be hours before the mist completely lifted from the bay. The surface of the water was calm, tear-choked; glass coloured black by the sky hovering right above it. Genoa was at half veil, a city poised in mourning.
Name: Mark Budman
Title: Mister Lenin
Genre: Literary Fiction
Manuscript word count: 63,000
Judge: Peter Lynch
One-sentence pitch: Lenin comes back to life in modern Russia, arrives in America, and runs for President, but the Right and the Left are not ready to abdicate in his favor.
First paragraph:
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, sat at the head of the table, surrounded by the Politburo members, and examined each face in order of its importance. A red banner with the words “All power to the Soviets” hung across one wall. Marx and Engels showed off their beards—they didn’t make bushy beards like that any longer—in the gilded portraits on the opposite wall.
This January was especially harsh. Frost painted intricate designs on the double windows. A red cavalryman pursuing an enemy. The tsar being shot in the basement. The meeting of soldiers, workers and peasants. Even a few bourgeois, abstract designs crept in.
Hey there! Just to let you know your first paragraph was over 50 words, so I had to cut the second, ok?
OK. Thanks.
Name: Kimberlee Turley
Title: NOTE TO SELF
Genre: YA Fantasy
Word Count: 75,000
Judge: Leah Hultenschmidt
Pitch: When Gracie Heart finds threatening notes in her circus costume, she doesn’t realize she’s the one trying to warn herself: she’s next.
Paragraph:
Gracie’s skin pebbled in the cold spring air while she waited for him to unlock the gate. She’d had years to prepare for this moment, yet the shivers still seeped through her skin into her resolve. What if she couldn’t find her way to the train station?
“That money is only to be used as a last resort.” Mr. Minchin wagged a liver-spotted finger at her. “Things are different in the real world. If you’re sassy with your supervisor, he’s going to garnish your wages rather than slap your knuckles with a ruler. And if you lose your job don’t bother returning here. Once I close this gate, you’re on your own.”
Name: Kimberly Miller
Title: TRUSTING TRINITY
Genre: middle grade adventure
Manuscript word count: 32,000
Judge: Aubrey Poole
One-sentence pitch: When aliens kidnap her best friend and demand diamonds, thirteen-year-old Trinity must find a way to comply that doesn’t involve grand theft, jail time, or his abduction.
First paragraph:
If I heard the words “anal probe” one more time, I was going to explode. Not the guts-all-over-the-place kind of explode, but close.
When I got home from the store with my mom, I slammed my bedroom door so hard it knocked the framed seventh grade class photo off the pink wall. I stomped on it, flung myself onto the bed, and buried my face in my pillow.
Name: Kandace Skolaut
Title: Coming Home
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Word Count: 47K plus working on sequel
Judge: Peter Lynch
One Sentence Pitch: After a terrible betrayal by her fiance, baker Sarah Macallan moves to her small Kasnas hometown for a fresh start- however, it will take the help from sheriff Brandon McCoy to overcome her past and find love.
First Paragraph:
Sarah Macallan perched on a tall white barstool in her parents’ kitchen.The midsummer sun slanted in from the windows behind her, highlighting her strawberry-blonde hair. She watched her mother as she wiped down the already spotless kitchen counters.
“So, what’s this all about?” her mother asked. Finally satisfied with her countertops, she put the sponge back in its place.
Sarah’s twin dimples flashed mischievously as she answered, “What? I can’t just drop in for a visit now that I’ve moved closer?”
Her mother’s matching dimples peeked out as she got lemonade out of the refrigerator. “As glad as I am that you’ve moved back, I still don’t expect to see you in the middle of the day on a Tuesday. Isn’t it about time to tell me what happened with that, that, that–twerp Tyler Thorne?!””
Hey there! These look like four paragraphs. Is that right? If they are four paragraphs, I’ll have to cut the last two. If not, please let me know the correct formatting. Thanks!
Hi! I’m so sorry. My characters are having a conversation which made it difficult to know when to cut it off and stay within the rules. I would like to leave the dialogue in to that point since I’m only indenting to show speaker change. If you feel this is still in violation of the rules, please change it accordingly. Thanks!
Name: Stephanie Thornton
Title: The Secret History
Genre: Historical Fiction
Manuscript Word Count: 100,000
Judge: Peter Lynch
One Sentence Pitch: Theatre tart turned courtesan, Theodora must decide what’s more important: pleasing the emperor who claims to love her or keeping the son he can never know about.
First Paragraph:
My life began the night my father died.
I lay on the straw pallet with my sisters and listened to Comito grind her teeth and Anastasia’s even breathing in the dark. An animal snorted, probably the scraggly new bear Father had acquired to train for the Greens, a beast scarcely fit for the spectacle of the Hippodrome. I scratched my stomach and poked Comito, none too gently. The fleas were bad tonight and Constantinople’s sticky heat made the stench of the nearby garbage heap especially pungent. I missed our old home in Cyprus, the salty smell of the Mediterranean and the cicadas’ screams amidst the olive trees. Our ramshackle house near Constantinople’s amphitheater could scarcely compare. There was a shuffle in the dark—possibly a rat—but then my father grunted.
Name: Kristin Contino
Title: The Cameo
Genre: women’s fiction
Manuscript word count: 84,000
Judge: Deb Werksman
One-sentence pitch: Three generations of women are tied together by love, loss and the secret behind one little necklace.
First paragraph:
My grandma died in the middle of “House Hunters International.” There I was, Googling properties in Europe like I inevitably do after every episode, when the phone rang. One minute I was busy calculating how much money I’d need to move to a remote village in Tuscany, the next I was sobbing uncontrollably on my hand-me-down floral couch.
Name: MarcyKate Connolly
Title: CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE CYBORG
Genre: YA Sci-fi
Word Count: 71,000
Judge: Leah Hultenschmidt
One Sentence Pitch: When Maggie learns she’s a cyborg, she runs away, accidentally kidnaps her nerdy neighbor, and hunts for her Maker—the only one who can make her human again.
First Paragrah:
Weightlessness is a funny thing. One moment ago, Dean and I were joking about the stupid, lime-green dress his ex-girlfriend wore to prom. His cheeks dimpled when he laughed.
Now his car skids over the embankment. Our bodies are a blur of pink satin and black tuxedo. My insides lurch and jerk, like knots trying to untie themselves. Dean’s face is a blank sheet of confusion and me, well, I don’t know how I look but I’m sure it isn’t pretty.
Name: Laura Barnes
Title: S.P.Y. Mission: Princess Protection
Genre: middle grade adventure
Manuscript word count: 38,000
Judge: Aubrey Poole
One-sentence pitch: When twelve-year-old super-spy-in-training Agent McKay is assigned to protect a bratty teenage princess, friendship emerges, but her lying and spying may be what hurts the princess most.
First Paragraphs:
A normal twelve-year-old girl on an ordinary day would probably not be two hours into her training at 6:52 in the morning.
This is what I’m thinking as I hit the wall and turn for my final lap. Holden finished like two minutes ago. That’s ok. He’s almost twenty years older than me and really in shape. It would be kind of sad if I beat him. Sad for him, that is.
NAME: Ishta Mercurio-Wentworth
TITLE: PENELOPE’S HAIRY PREDICAMENT
GENRE: Picture Book
WORD COUNT: 550
JUDGE: Aubrey Poole
ONE-SENTENCE PITCH:
Penelope is sick of her hair overshadowing everything she does, and after several outlandish attempts to tame it, she learns that your greatest flaw can also be your best asset.
FIRST PARAGRAPHS:
Penelope had the wildest, craziest, BIGGEST hair imaginable. Everybody loved it. Everybody except Penelope.
Penelope loved other things. She loved inventing things, and playing Bunny Invaders, and especially memorizing the dictionary. She was already up to the “G”s. She planned to have the whole thing memorized by the time the school spelling bee rolled around, because what she loved more than anything was being the best. But every time she got close to being the best at something, her hair got in the way.
Name: Laura Barnes
Title: Monday Morning Masy Monster
Genre: PB
Manuscript word count: 699
Judge: Aubrey Poole
One-sentence pitch: When Mother Mumphrey finds a monster in Masy’s bed on Monday morning, Masy’s family and friends have to survive the monster’s mood until the cheerful Masy returns.
First Paragraphs:
Monday morning, Mother Mumphrey found a monster in Masy Mumphrey’s bed. It wasn’t a very nice monster. It was a chomp and stomp and breath-fire type of monster.
Mother sighed. She’d met this monster before on other Monday mornings. It always arrived on the gloomiest of days, usually after Masy had stayed up too late the night before
Name: Nicole Zoltack
Title: Knight Peter and Sparky
Genre: PB
Manuscript word count: 270
Judge: Aubrey Poole
One-sentence pitch:
When the other knights tease him, timid knight Peter seeks out an adventure and finds a new friend in a spunky little dragon named Sparky.
First paragraph:
Knight Peter wanted to be the biggest, bravest knight there ever was.
But terrible lizards made him tremble in his armor.
Name: Nicole Zoltack
Title: Amy’s Unicorn
Genre: PB
Manuscript word count: 250
Judge: Aubrey Poole
One-sentence pitch:
Amy doesn’t want a cute kitten, lovable puppy, or a furry gerbil for a pet but will she ever find the pet she truly wants – a unicorn?
First paragraph:
Amy wanted a unicorn for a pet.
“How about a cute kitten instead?” her mom asked.
Name: Andrea Miles Martin
Title: Trespassers
Genre: Women’s Fiction
Manuscript Word Count: 70,000 words
Judge: Deb Werksman
Pitch: Melanie, haunted but determined to exorcise her past, must choose between revenge and forgiveness and the result could destroy her marriage.
First Paragraph:
The moment her mother pulled out of the driveway, her stepfather Carl thundered into twelve-year-old Melanie’s bedroom where she lay on her bed reading. She jumped in surprise.
“You think you’re so smart, don’t you?”
Name: Andrea Miles Martin
Title: Greenest Grass
Genre: Literary Fiction
Word Count: 70,000 words
Judge: Peter Lynch
Pitch: A married mother of three seeks a different, more exciting life, but soon learns the grass isn’t as green as she’d imagined.
First 170 words:
When you look back on an experience, you can see how it was significant. How it changed your life. But when you’re right there, staring at it, face to face, it doesn’t occur to you to pay attention. This is how it was when I first met Will.
A funeral is never a fun place to be. You never think of meeting new people at a funeral. You’re just there, wearing your sad face and your nicest set of somber clothes. You shake hands with the family, you make limited eye contact, you stare briefly at the deceased all rouged up in the coffin. But unless you’re in a movie, you don’t imagine having sex with the stranger who sits next to the widow.
Name: Andrea Miles Martin
Title: Abracadabra
Genre: Literary Fiction
Word Count: 50,000 words
Judge: Peter Lynch
Pitch: Abandoned at a desert gas station by her on-again off-again boyfriend, Veronica encounters an assortment of misfits that have turned their backs on the world, forcing her to decide if the society that has abandoned her more than once is worth being a part of or not.
First Paragraph:
Veronica slipped off her platform flip-flops and wiggled her toes. She hated going out in public without having her toenails painted. The ride from LA to Vegas was long and dull and so she had allowed Billy to rush her out of their apartment, planning to paint her nails during the drive. She reached behind the seat and grabbed her purse, a Kate Spade knockoff, without wakening Billy’s friend Bender who’d practically fallen asleep the minute they’d gotten onto the freeway.
Hey there! This pitch is over 30 words. Could you rewrite it and post it on this same comment thread? Thanks!
(Shortened) Pitch:
Abandoned at a desert gas station by her loser boyfriend, Veronica encounters an assortment of misfits that have turned their backs on the world.
Name: Andrea Miles Martin
Title: Hearts Collide
Genre: Single Title Romance
Word Count: 70,000 words
Judge: Deb Werksman
Pitch: A broken engagement causes Samantha to forgo seeking love and forever after and instead focus on playing the field, but will a chance encounter teach her that a forever kind of love is possible after all?
First Paragraph:
Samantha Remington quickly pushed through the revolving door of Gibson’s Steakhouse, hesitating for a moment as the ever-present Chicago wind whipped a few strands of dark brown hair into her eyes. Tucking them behind her ear, she shook her head at the approaching valet and glanced sideways at the traffic along Rush Street. Clutching the thick stack of magazines to her chest, she turned and headed south along the crowded sidewalk, not bothering to wipe away the tears that slid down her cheeks. She kept her eyes lowered, mentally counting her steps to keep from thinking of the scene she’d just left in Gibson’s lounge. Only it wasn’t working.
Hey there! Sorry, Deb has a minimum 90k words requirement for single-title romance. If it’s women’s fiction, you can enter it as such.
Name: Andrea Miles Martin
Title: Hearts Collide
Genre: Women’s Fiction
Word Count: 70,000 words
Judge: Deb Werksman
Pitch: A broken engagement causes Samantha to forgo seeking love and forever after and instead focus on playing the field, but will a chance encounter teach her that a forever kind of love is possible after all?
First Paragraph:
Samantha Remington quickly pushed through the revolving door of Gibson’s Steakhouse, hesitating for a moment as the ever-present Chicago wind whipped a few strands of dark brown hair into her eyes. Tucking them behind her ear, she shook her head at the approaching valet and glanced sideways at the traffic along Rush Street. Clutching the thick stack of magazines to her chest, she turned and headed south along the crowded sidewalk, not bothering to wipe away the tears that slid down her cheeks. She kept her eyes lowered, mentally counting her steps to keep from thinking of the scene she’d just left in Gibson’s lounge. Only it wasn’t working.
Name: Andrea Miles Martin
Title: Valentine’s Fortune
Genre: Single Title Romance
Word Count: 60,000 words
Judge: Deb Werksman
Pitch: V never thought she’d see her wealthy, semi-famous ex-husband again, but now that he’s back in her life, she fears his reaction to discovering they have a five-year old daughter together.
First Paragraph:
V walked quietly through the garage to the back office and paused in the doorway. Her father sat behind the old, scratched desk, frowning, his thick grease-stained fingers quickly punching numbers onto the adding machine in front of him. What kind of problems did they have now, she wondered. It seemed lately that there was always something they needed to worry about.
Hey there! Sorry, Deb has a minimum 90k words requirement for single-title romance. If it’s women’s fiction, you can enter it as such.
Sorry about that. Should I repost it completely?
Name: Andrea Miles Martin
Title: Valentine’s Fortune
Genre: Women’s Fiction
Word Count: 60,000 words
Judge: Deb Werksman
Pitch: V never thought she’d see her wealthy ex-husband again, but now that he’s back in her life, she fears his reaction to discovering they have a five-year old daughter together.
First Paragraph:
V walked quietly through the garage to the back office and paused in the doorway. Her father sat behind the old, scratched desk, frowning, his thick grease-stained fingers quickly punching numbers onto the adding machine in front of him. What kind of problems did they have now, she wondered. It seemed lately that there was always something they needed to worry about.
Name: Mary Jean Schiller
Title: Abandon All Hope
Genre: single-title romance
Manuscript word count: 88,698
Judge: Deb Werksman
One-sentence pitch:
Rock star Chase Hatton had spent eight years trying to forget Hope, his first love, who had disappeared on prom night, and now he would face her in an interview.
First paragraph:
Chase Hatton had been bewitched by Hope from the very start.
He was…ten…no, twelve…definitely twelve, as he was playing American Junior League baseball that summer. There had been a break in their schedule, so his mom had asked the new neighbor lady over for dinner, along with her ten-year-old kid. Chase’s mom had told him that he couldn’t go over to Bobby McGraw’s to play catch, as he was needed at home to entertain, of all things, the new neighbor’s daughter. A girl.
Name: Mary Jean Schiller
Title: To Hell in a Coach Bag
Genre: single-title romance
Manuscript word count: 110,000
Judge: Deb Werksman
One-sentence pitch:
When they set off on a cross-country trip, four Midwestern lunch ladies have an opportunity to learn more about themselves, and they also discover romance along the way.
First paragraph:
Danielle
Plan A to get backstage at the Chase Hatton concert was a dismal failure. By the time Chase took the stage, our sign was beer-soaked and trampled underfoot. I bent down, as best as I could in the space we had carved out on the floor of Chicago’s All-State Arena, and scooped up the poster-board, being careful to avoid Samantha’s “cheetah-skin” heels. The “Lunch Ladies Love Chase Hatton!” side had a size-eleven boot-print right in the middle of it, and the “We Have Access to Government Meat!” side was completely smeared.
Title: Lady of the Knight
Genre: single-title romance
Manuscript word count: 110,042
Judge: Deb Werksman
One-sentence pitch:
When two Knights of the Order are sent to the planet Faador to rescue a princess, they both fall in love with the gutsy woman, which changes their lives forever.
First paragraph:
Darrius Lee bolted upright in bed and listened intently to the darkness. What had interrupted his sleep and caused him to become so fully awake? Several seconds elapsed while he held his breath and waited, but he heard no noise. Still, he was aware that someone else was in the suite he shared with his young novice, Orrion Quinn. He focussed on his Spirit Within to get a feel for the level of danger they were in. He sensed at once that the outside presence he felt in the room was not threatening. Yet he knew something must be amiss for someone to enter their rooms unannounced in the middle of the night.
Name: Mary Jean Schiller
Title: My Name Is Peter
Genre: middle-grade fiction
Manuscript word count: 4,693
Judge: Aubrey Poole
One-sentence pitch:
Peter is a gregarious, fallible, big-hearted fisherman and he tells us about the day he met Jesus, and the days that followed.
First paragraph:
My name is Peter and I’m a fisherman.
It’s a hard life, up before the sun has breathed life into a new day and to bed long after the shadows have fallen across the land. And the work is physical, leaning over the edge of the boat to pull in nets full of streaming fish is hard on the back–and that’s on a good day. On a bad day we row and row in search of fish, putting our nets in and hauling them up, each time with precious little to show for it. It is work that brings you to God. You have to trust in Him when the sun beats down on you, and you’re hungry, and you know that your family is hungry, too.
Name: Teralyn Rose Pilgrim
Title: Sacred Fire
Genre: historical fiction
Word Count: 100,000 words
Judge: Peter Lynch
Pitch: A priestess of Vesta struggles with her faith until she is accused of losing her virginity. Now she must perform a miracle to save her life.
First Paragraph: The sun set over the river Tiber, turning the currents into flowing pink ribbons. Tuccia gasped and clutched the edge of her seat. Whenever their carriage passed over the Tiber, Rome was close.
Tuccia jumped out of her seat and pounced onto her father’s lap. “We’re almost there!” she squealed. This trip was such a rare and anticipated treat, she could hardly sleep the night before. Her family only made the half-day journey to Rome to see the festivals, when wreaths of flowers hung from every door and yellow lamps transformed the city into a glowing religious spectacle. The only other time they went to the city was as a gift for Tuccia’s sixth birthday.
Name: Christie Koester
Title: Wanted: Groom for my $100K Wedding
Genre: Contemporary Women’s Fiction
Manuscript word count: 85,000
Judge: Deb Werksman
One-sentence pitch:
When a heartbroken 35-year-old wins a $75K wedding without a groom, the stakes keep rising and she has eight hectic weeks to find love and plan her fairytale ending.
First paragraph:
The cellist plays the first strings of Canon in D, causing my heart to pound against my chest like a boxer high on adrenaline. I close my eyes the minute the organist presses the keys and I inhale the heavy scents of sweat pea and cologne filling the sanctuary. Memories awaken of being a little girl twirling in an old wedding gown ten sizes too big about to walk down this very aisle at Gram’s church with my makeshift bouquet of origami roses in hand. Tony, my best friend, would wait for me at the altar drowning in Gramp’s blue suit as Gram’s practiced her beloved organ. Then there was the promise he made years later. “Promise my ass,” I mumble and swallow the lump of my past rising to my throat like lava. Am I strong enough to hold it in? My eyes blink open as Tony coughs and faces the mahogany doors. The ushers swing them open and Tony glows at Tammy, his beautiful bride.
Name: Nicole M. White
Title: Stars Bright
Genre: Romance
MS word count: 93k
Judge: Deb Werksman
Pitch: Straight-laced farmer, Sophia, is hardly a perfect match for reformed Hollywood bad-boy, Ryan, yet a romance sweet like chocolate, tangy like citrus with a hint of spice grows between them.
First paragraph:
The sleek, silver sports car slid to a stop. Running his fingers through his windblown, chocolate brown hair, the Good Samaritan climbed out of his car, his mouth spread in a wide smile. “Can I be of help?” His warm, subtle, sexy voice matched the way he moved.
Sophia shrugged, “There is no hope for it.” She tapped the vehicle besides them. “It’s a rental. the company is bringing a replacement in about an hour or so.” Sophia stood a deep breath and bit back the fear that threatened to engulf her. A part of her brain knew she should be afraid of this stranger, but the unreasonable panic that kept building with each car that raced by made his presence a relief.
Name: Lindsey Carmichael
Title: Moon Dancers
Genre: YA fantasy
Word Count: 65,000
Judge: Leah Hultenschmidt
One-sentence pitch: Between hiding his dancing ambitions and dealing with his female best friend’s sudden romantic inclinations, Chris thinks things can’t possibly get worse… until unicorns draft him to save their world.
First Paragraph:
“December 21 is supposed to be the shortest day of the year,” Chris muttered, “not the longest day of my life.”
With ten minutes left, many teachers would concede and call it quits; Ms. Hartford, undaunted by the rising murmurs, rustling papers, and scraping chairs, continued to inflict calculus on twenty pairs of unwilling ears. Didn’t she realize it was the last class before Christmas break? Probably, Chris reflected, but it wasn’t likely she cared: the Psychosatanical Hosebeast was notoriously single-minded. He sighed, leaning back in his chair as his gaze wandered to the clock above the door, willing the minute hand to increase its speed. Nine more minutes… no, make that eight.
Name: Ann H Barlow
Title: The Guardian’s Chronicles – A World Without Faith
Genre: Young Adult
Manuscript word count: 93,500
Judge: Peter Lynch
One sentence pitch: Barak strips the world of faith bringing it to its knees then takes his revenge on Go’el at the highest price leaving Sahara determined to destroy him at any cost.
First paragraph:
There was a strong breeze and as the combination of sun and wind caught her hair it flowed in the air like golden threads. Her grace and beauty took Go’el’s breath away. She was in his every thought now and although she was unaware of his presence he spent much of his time by her side.
Hey there! YA should be directed to Leah Hultenschmidt. Thanks!
Name: Shelley Watters
Title: AWAKEN
Genre: YA Fairytale retelling/reimagining
Manuscript word count: 63,500
Judge: Leah Hultenschmidt
One-sentence pitch: Seventeen-year-old Tori gets in a car accident, wakes up in a fairytale, and must rescue the prince, slay the dragon and bring down an evil queen or be trapped forever.
First paragraph:
If I she touched the volume one more time, she’d pull back a bloody nub. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched her little fingers inch towards the dial.
“Casey!” I snarled.
“But I love this song!” Casey said in that whiney, nasal tone all ten-year-olds used when they wanted their way. But I wasn’t giving in.
“Seriously kid! I have a headache. Could you please behave until we get home?” I cringed. I sounded just like mom.
She slumped back in the seat, crossed her arms over her chest, and thrust out her bottom lip. “You sound just like mom.”
“Yeah, well you are acting like a spoiled little brat.” When I got my license, my adventures sans parents were supposed to be filled with hanging out with my friends and cute guys. Not chauffeuring my annoying little sister to and from ballet practice.
“I’m telling mom you called me a brat.”
“Whatever.” I leaned forward and turned the volume all the way down.
(162 words)
That’s a whole lot of paragraphs! I’ll consider the first two, ok?
Name: Shelley Watters
Title: Wait For Me
Genre: YA Paranormal Romance
Manuscript word count: 78,000
Judge: Leah Hultenschmidt
One-sentence pitch: Anna meets Alex, a gorgeous yet oddly-familiar intern at her dad’s Egyptian archaeological dig, has visions of their romance in ancient Egypt, and must find Osiris’ tomb before the death god is unleashed.
First paragraph:
The jagged rocks on the edge of the cliff sliced into my bare feet like razor blades. The roar from the water crashing on the rocks below drowned any other sound. Hot wind whipped my long, dark hair around my face, drying the tears that fell down my cheeks.
“Wait for me, my love,” I whispered. I closed my eyes, and with one breath, stepped off the edge. The wind roared past my ears. I spread my arms and my linen wrap trailed behind me. The sound of the frothing blue-green water crashing against the rocks built until it was the only sound, its beat mimicking the frantic galloping of my heart.
Name: Kalen O’Donnell
Title: Shades of Adrian Gray
Genre: YA Contemporary
Manuscript Word Count: 67,000
Judge: Leah Hultenschmidt
One-sentence pitch: After his equally closeted boyfriend dies in an accident, Evan struggles to grieve and move on from the boy nobody even knew was his friend, let alone his first love.
First paragraph:
This is how the story ends.
A room with a view: three walls coated with tacky beige wallpaper, a fourth with floor to ceiling windows that overlook the bay. The squeak of hardwood floors echoing under heels and up to the rafters. Fans humming, the air circulating. Brisk and chill and making everyone shiver. Not that I think anyone minds. Helps keep the corpse from smelling too bad.
Name: Kalen O’Donnell
Title: Dust to Dust
Genre: YA Fantasy
Manuscript Word Count: 80,000
Judge: Leah Hultenschmidt
One-sentence pitch: Magically gifted siblings are cursed to be the instruments of each others’ deaths – as long as the mysterious enemy that cursed them doesn’t kill them first.
First paragraph:
For my sixteenth birthday, my oldest brother tried to kill me again.
I was at Starbuck’s getting a celebratory scone when the shadows peeled off the walls and came for me. I didn’t notice at first, preoccupied as I was with the hot chick standing in line in front of me. Tall, blond, with a wardrobe that suggested killer taste in music – a vintage Grateful Dead t-shirt – she was heaven. Perfection. She turned towards me, lips parted, and for a second I fantasized she was about to ask what I was doing later. Story of my life, I’ll never know if I was close to scoring or not. Her shadow chose that moment to grow a snout and elongated claws that slashed through her shirt, narrowly missing skin.
Name: Suzanne E.
Title: Count Draculamb’s Midnight Adventure
Genre: Picture Book
Manuscript word count: 600 words
Judge: Aubrey Poole
COUNT DRACULAMB’S MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE is about a rambunctious little lamb named Vladdie, who, unable to fall asleep one night, embarks on a secret midnight adventure and eventually discovers his own unique way to fall asleep.
FIRST PARAGRAPH: Every night, right after the lights had been turned down in his room, Vladdie the Lamb opened his bedroom window and began to howl at the full moon. As you can imagine, this ruckus made Vladdie’s mom and dad quite mad.
“You stop howling right now, young lamb” Vlad the Ram gruffly said, “and get your fluffy little rumpus back into bed!” “And if you can’t fall asleep,” his mother sternly added with a bleat, “then close your eyes and count sheep!” “Yes ma, yes pa,” Vladdie softly baahed.
Name: Lora Rivera
Title: DARK METTLE
Genre: YA Thriller/ Urban Fantasy
Manuscript Word Count: 74K
Judge: Leah Hultenschmidt
Pitch: (29 words)
Foster teen Ava Harris fights PTSD by policing drug gangs; when the streets teem with Infected instead of dealers, she must master her rage to save those she loves.
First two paragraphs: (117 words)
Ava flattened her body against a wall, peering sideways into the vaulted living room beyond. It was gray and desolate, just like all the other rooms—empty but for the shift of air and streak of chalky dust slowly resettling over the concrete floor.
A snake of ash brown hair had come loose from her braid. It tickled the back of her neck and she fought the urge to scratch. Soon now. Melissa Carter was doing far better than Ava had expected or even hoped. True, she didn’t think her foster sister would need ninja stealth skills as a rule. But just in case… Just in case Ava wasn’t there someday….
Name: Suzanne E.
Title: Abraham Lincoln and Three Little Kittens
Genre: Picture Book
Manuscript word count: 600 words
Judge: Aubrey Poole
One sentence pitch: Based on actual historical events, this picture book is about three orphaned kittens who are saved by Abraham Lincoln shortly before the end of the Civil War.
First Paragraph: In an old log cabin, on a hard dirt floor, three little kittens were born in Virginia near the end of the Civil War. For the first three weeks of their lives, the kittens’ mother never left their side. She purred as they gently kneaded her belly while drinking her milk through the cold winter nights. And she lovingly cleaned them, one by one, licking each kitten with her rough, pink tongue.
Name: Kalen O’Donnell
Title: Most Likely to Survive
Genre: YA Sci-Fi
Manuscript Word Count: 80,000
Judge: Leah Hultenschmidt
One-sentence pitch: When his whole class mysteriously disappears, everyone believes Matt knows more than he’s telling, but his classmates’ secrets are more than even a telepath like him can unravel without help.
First paragraph:
It kinda sucks being a mind reader in a town where everyone hates your guts and wishes you were dead. Sucks even more when you can’t really blame them for feeling that way.
Ms. Hutchins had owned the small corner store down the street from my house longer than I’d been alive. I grew up with her son Caleb – we played Little League together. She baked cookies for us after games and drove the carpool home from practice. Her smile was always kind; carefree and with genuine affection for me. Now that same smile is tired and hides pure loathing as she bags my groceries and pushes them across the counter at me. Her thoughts say the words she won’t. Why are you still here and not my son? I mutter thanks and run out the door, memories of cookies and carpool fresh in my mind. I have a sudden need to puke.
Name: Ann H Barlow
Title: The Guardian’s Chronicles – A World Without Faith
Genre: Young Adult
Manuscript word count: 93,500
Judge: Leah Hultenschmidt
One sentence pitch: Barak strips the world of faith bringing it to its knees then takes his revenge on Go’el at the highest price leaving Sahara determined to destroy him at any cost.
First paragraph:
There was a strong breeze and as the combination of sun and wind caught her hair it flowed in the air like golden threads. Her grace and beauty took Go’el’s breath away. She was in his every thought now and although she was unaware of his presence he spent much of his time by her side.
Name: Suzanne E
Title: MELTDOWN
Genre: Upper YA Thriller/Problem Novel
Manuscript Word Count: 55K
Judge: Leah Hultenschmidt
One Sentence Pitch: When high school senior Sylvia Plath goes to a fraternity party for a night of fun with her friends, she wakes the next day in the frat house naked, bloody, and with no memory of what she did or didn’t do – only to discover three weeks later that she is pregnant with a due date that falls on what should have been her first day at Harvard.
First Paragraph: So here’s a question: do all actions have consequences or at least consequences that actually matter? Like, say, you dye your hair from mousy brown to dishwater blond and now it’s a slightly different but equally unflattering color. Or you book a flight for a Sunday morning instead of a Monday and maybe you get to your destination a day later. Or you get totally shit-faced one night and pass out at a fraternity party. So what? I mean, what are the consequences there except for maybe an earth-shattering hangover the next day from too many kamikaze shots and warm glasses of wine from a box?
This pitch is over 30 words. I’ll just go ahead and cut it, ok? Thanks.
Name: Sarah Wedgbrow
Title: A GIRL NAMED JACK
Genre: YA Contemporary
Manuscript Word Count: 60,000
Judge: Leah Hultenschmidt
One Sentence Pitch: A cagy and creative fifteen-year-old girl overcomes adversity in herself, and defeats the neighborhood bully, with the help of her imaginary cinematic heroes Bruce Lee and Mr. Miyagi.
First Paragraph: Until now, I’ve survived high school by being Invisible. You know, blend in with the crowd, don’t speak to anyone, move out of the way if anyone gets too close. Never make eye contact. It’s a trick I learned a couple of years ago in middle school when Cliff Cower, for the hundredth time, threatened to bash my face in. I was showing William Blake (not the poet, the new kid at school) around the building like a good nerd when Cliff huffed and puffed his way over to me. He bent down to get in my face as I backed up against the lockers. Wondering at the growth rate for middle school boys, I squeezed my eyes for impact. But after a few seconds nothing happened. When I opened them, I heard Cliff’s distant laughter echo as he rounded the corner and into the stairwell. It was then that I knew what I had done. It was miraculous! I had made myself Invisible.
Name: Robert Lamirande
Title: Someone Worth Knowing
Genre: Commercial/Literary Fiction
Word Count: 42,200
Judge: Peter Lynch
One Sentence Pitch: An embittered alcoholic stumbles into a volunteer position for children with special needs (encountering both autism and detox for the first time), where he scrambles to survive the week..
First Paragraph: I got as trashed as I possibly could before my flight. Any semblance of balance I’d struck in the preceding weeks was chucked out the window the night of my red eye (having never been much of an air dozer, the last thing I wanted was to arrive in Jersey without having slept). So I drank and smoked, sipped and spliffed, glugged and tugged until, as my mom would have said back her in paranoid, accusatory phase (a.k.a. my high school years), I was “so pie-eyed I had cherry cheesecakes for eyeballs.”
Name: your name
Title: By Design
Genre: Single-Title Romance
Manuscript word count: 105,000 words
Judge: Deb Werksman
One-sentence pitch: Emmie has owned her title, “Doormat,” for thirty-mumble years, but now she has to find the guts to steal her dream man from her oh-so-perfect rival from high school.
First paragraph: The blue wool socks with white cats on them made her ankles itch. Emmie Brewster knew this and cringed when she pulled them out of her sock drawer, but she was too lazy to dig out a different pair. Besides, she thought, as she always did when she ended up with this pair of socks, having selected them without looking, as if she were pulling a card from a deck for a magic trick, maybe they weren’t all that bad. Maybe she was remembering the itchy feeling as worse than it really was. Maybe she should give the socks another chance. Maybe it wasn’t a good thing to be so forgiving. Maybe she thought too much about socks.
Whoops–my name: Jayne Denker
Name: Suzanne E.
Title: Thomas and James
Genre: Historical Fiction Picture Book
Manuscript word count: 800 words
Judge: Aubrey Poole
One sentence pitch: THOMAS AND JAMES is a historical fiction picture book about Thomas Jefferson’s relationship with his young slave named James Hemings, who was sent to Paris in 1785 for the “particular purpose” of mastering the art of French cooking and later became head chef at Monticello
First Paragraph: Right from an early age, James Hemings dreamed of being free to do as he pleased. He dreamed of rafting down the Potomac with his brothers and sister’s on a warm summer day. He dreamed of going fishing with his father on the Chesapeake Bay. He dreamed of climbing the old Mulberry trees just beyond the stables. And he even dreamed of learning how to read. But James wasn’t allowed to do any of those things because he was a slave.
Name: Donna Sturgeon
Title: A Little Ditty
Genre: Romance
Word Count: 105,500
Judge: Deb Werksman
One Sentence Pitch:
Olivia was born in prison, and it only got worse from there.
First Paragraph:
The first time Olivia Hanson fell in love it was with a boy named Paul Peters. He was a few inches taller than her, had blonde hair and blue eyes, could hit a baseball over the back fence at Harris Field, and had the unfortunate nickname of Pee-Pee. His parents weren’t rich, but they were on their way. He lived on the good side of town, which, in Juliette, Nebraska, was anywhere north of the tracks. When Olivia fell in love for the final time, it was with another sandy-haired, blue-eyed boy. In between the two there was Mitch.
NAME:
Chelsea Beam
TITLE:
Genesis
GENRE:
YA Sci-Fi/Fantasy
MANUSCRIPT WORD COUNT:
80k
JUDGE:
Leah Hultenschmidt
ONE-SENTENCE PITCH:
When Kali decides to become a soldier despite their “Males Only” policy, she must find a way to keep her identity secret amidst rampant espionage, murder plots, and human experimentation.
FIRST PARAGRAPH (Although it’s not a paragraph format, it’s only 70ish words… I hope it’s not a problem!):
He placed a finger to his lips and reached for his sword.
The air teemed with anticipation. Half-hidden by the bushes, she glanced up at her father. Her hand traveled to the handgun at her side.
They didn’t have to wait long.
The monster stumbled into the clearing, a white haze in its eyes. She gasped.
Bacis sent her a quelling look, silver eyes flashing.
She clapped a hand over her mouth. Oops.
I made a slight change if it’s OK, Gabriela. Thank you.
Name: Mark Budman
Title: Mister Lenin
Genre: Literary Fiction
Manuscript word count: 63,000
Judge: Peter Lynch
One-sentence pitch: Lenin comes back to life in modern Russia, is brought to America, and runs for President, but the Right and the Left are not ready to abdicate in his favor.
First paragraph:
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, sat at the head of the table, surrounded by the Politburo members, and examined each face in order of its importance. A red banner with the words “All power to the Soviets” hung across one wall. Marx and Engels showed off their beards—they didn’t make bushy beards like that any longer—in the gilded portraits on the opposite wall.
Sorry, the entries have already been sent to the judges. Good luck!
Thanks. I need that.
Nonsense! Trust your talent and hard work!
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