Essays and Etcetera

I was up very early this morning. Actually, I got up a few minutes before 12:00 AM. You see (as I informed cousin A) I was chasing fame and glory and riches. This is also known as entering the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. Submissions opened at 12:01 AM Monday morning and submissions will stop being accepted as soon as 5,000 entries in each category are reached. As entries are still being accepted now at 12:00 PM, my early start entering was clearly unnecessary, but I wanted to play it safe. So many people were trying to enter that Amazon’s servers were bogged down, and as a result it took me an hour to get everything filled in and uploaded. Then I went back to bed.

Now I will just have to hope I entered the contest properly, and see how well I do. It should spice up the rest of winter, and spring, a bit.

It is not often a contest comes around that I can actually enter my writing into. Often there are stipulations and requirements which keep me from even entering. The rules for the ABNA contest this year were changed to allow previous self-published novels as valid submissions. This enabled me to submit The Stuttering Bard of York. This year there is also a separate category for Young Adult fiction, which means that my light-hearted and childish romp won’t have to compete with the likes of the next James Joyce.

The prize for this contest is a $15,000 book advance with a publishing contract with Penguin. The contest progresses by “rounds” with more manuscripts eliminated with each round. The first round ends February 25th, with the number of contestants in each category reduced to 2,000. The second round ends March 23rd with the YA category reduced to 250. The third round (quarterfinals) ends April 27th with the field narrowed to 50 entries. The fourth round (semifinals) ends May 25th with only 3 finalist left standing. On May 25th everyone can vote on who they want to be the winner, so if I make it that far I’ll be counting on your vote! On June 14th the winner will be announced.

So, anywhere between February 25th and June 14th I could find out I am a looser, but I won’t know if I am a winner until June 14th. I’ll keep you all posted as things progress.

For further info: https://www.createspace.com/abna