Do I even have to mention that feeling when you challenge yourself to meet a goal that seems outside your comfort zone? In my case, my ears ring and I get queasy.
I'm preparing materials to enter the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest. Contest begins at 12:01 a.m. January 25 and continues until they reach 5,000 manuscripts or Feb. 7 or something. Whatever happens first. Being more neurotic than I care to admit, this means I will be staying up late tonight.
I have all sorts of fears about my work ending up in the wrong hands, or getting stolen, because you have to provide the ENTIRE manuscript in a .doc or .rtf. I would be more comfortable if I could submit in a .pdf that allowed me to block copying the words.
But it's a chance at a contract with Penquin.
It literally makes me want to vomit from worry and fear.
The contest has specific needs. Like the 300-word pitch and a 300-word description. Most writers have problems reducing their words. Not me. I seem to max out at 200. Even with my bio.
My bio:
Angel Ackerman—francophile, aspiring fashionista, and journalist (in that order)—has used most of her words on the Lehigh Valley (Pennsylvania) newspaper scene,with 15 years in weekly and daily journalism.
Her professional career includes developing and running a technology literacy program for urban pre-teen girls and public relations.
She also serves on three non-profit boards: president ex-officio of the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group, trustee of the Mary Meuser Public Library, and board member and former executive committee officer of the Advisory Board for the Penn State Cooperative Extension of Northampton County.
She recently joined Romance Writers of America and its local affiliate, Pocono-Lehigh Romance Writers.
She holds a BA in English Language and Literature from Moravian College and attends Lafayette College studying International Affairs.
Her favorite authors range classic greats Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and Alèxandre Dumas to modern writers Stephen King and Joyce Carol Oates.
She spends her free time writing, watching French television, and spending time with her crazy family: one husband, one five-year-old daughter, two cats and one tortoise.
My blurb (still working on pitch/description):
In Manipulations (93,000 words), Adelaide Pitney, fashion executive and supermodel, cannot escape her attraction to “aspiring photographer” and elemental witch H. Galen Sorbach, launching her into a destructive spiral.
Four hundred-year-old Galen exploits Adelaide’s untapped healing powers to temper his lack of feminine power. Adelaide wants her magick gone, before it irreparably alters the life of her best friend, designer Etienne d’Amille.
Adelaide must master her power to end Galen’s perilous manipulations of the universe before she destroys the relationship most dear to her.
Something I'm working on:
Fashion meets paranormal forces, as if Stephen King rewrote The Devil Wears Prada. There’s more at stake than the right outfit, Manipulations challenges our definition of normal relationships and how people love.
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