I did it

Last night, I stayed up until midnight and entered the Amazon Breakthrough Novel competition. Probably a thousand people had the same idea, because the server was bogged down and it took an hour to do what should have taken 10 minutes.

I am both thrilled that I did this and unbelievably paranoid.

The contest is free to enter. The prize is a $15,000 advance and contract with Penquin. (Keep in mind, I made $10,000 at my job this year.) They accept the first 5,000 entries in YA and another 5,000 in adult. Contest closes Feb. 7 or when they receive the number of entries they want.

The sponsors are Amazon.com's self-publishing division and Penguin. That's part of what makes me uncomfortable. The other part is their demand that you provide a .doc, .docx, or .rtf of your entire manuscript. I would have preferred to provide a .pdf with password-protected copy function.

But that was not an option.

The only friends who have offered an opinion on this have said to do it. And technically I did copyright a previous book with these characters with the Library of Congress about seven years ago. With my blog, my facebook page(s) and my friend who's archived ever draft of every chapter I have written in the last six years... This story is mine.

But it makes me uncomfortable.

On the other hand, uploading my materials like my description, pitch and author photo looked really cool. I used one of Tracy Chafin's photos of me (and made sure her watermark was visible so all the world could see if there's ever reason to use it).

This is my book description I entered:
Manhattan, August 2002. H. Galen Sorbach has manipulated magick for four hundred years. Until Adelaide. The supermodel exudes mystical feminine healing powers that Galen wants, but he can’t touch the all-American girl who sacrificed her adolescent to launch ready-to-wear for French designer Étienne d’Amille. Adelaide stayed in fashion for the easy money, glamorous clothes, celebrity and, mostly, her undying adoration of Étienne, the only man who does not treat her like sex object. A senior citizen on the runway, Adelaide struggles to survive as a fashion executive in Étienne’s company. Étienne considers himself a humble tailor but his ambitious wife, Basilie, propelled him onto the world stage and divorced him when she could not breathe in his shadow. Yet, she never left. Now, at nearly 45, Basilie conceives a child, a feat the doctors claimed impossible. Meanwhile, Étienne hopes Adelaide might lose herself in a romance with Galen. Instead, fist fights and magickal brawls ensue leaving Adelaide bruised and desperate to master her own powers to end Galen’s perilous manipulations of the universe before she inadvertently hurts the one she truly loves—or worse, in her jealousy, would Adelaide harm his wife?

But the first round is judged solely on pitch. They get rid of 4,000 entries in each category, just on the pitch. So I wrote this:
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. Fashion meets paranormal forces, as if Stephen King rewrote The Devil Wears Prada. There’s more at stake than the right outfit, the story challenges our definition of normal relationships and how people love. A supermodel with self-esteem issues has more power than she realizes, if she'd stop giving herself away and assert her magick. She must defeat blood-sucking witches and their violent rituals, but first she has to stop fighting herself.

Wish me luck.

Synopsis

Our critique group took a break from the normal 'story edits' stuff and we looked at each others' synopsis. We've been critiquing together for about six months, and in some cases, the manuscripts created confusion about what we're trying to do. We thought a synopsis, and 'revealing' the end, might help us as critiquers.

This brought up the question of what really is a synopsis. I thought, based on my experiences, that a synopsis summarized the main events and characters of the novel and told the ending. You can't hide the surprises. It's not a type of publicity blurb that might go on the back cover or the inside jacket. It's something the editor or publisher wants to read to know your concept, test your writing skills and judge how original your whole treatment is without actually taking the time to read the book. They want to judge how good your book is, without reading it.

As writers, we're also told to have a concise, ten to thirty second long elevator pitch. My elevator speech/pitch is easy. The first book is Stephen King rewriting The Devil Wears Prada. The sequel is less flashy, but is something like "Fashion designer must defeat supernatural villains to heal the fractured soul of a dead friend in order to save her, and himself."

The trick of the synopsis is to maintain your writing voice and not to write a ninth-grade book report. Sometimes, it helps to read as you type. There seems to be something conversational about this endeavor...

This is an excerpt from mine synopsis for Book Two of the Fashion and Fiends series, Courting Apparitions:

Mount Bethel, Pa., February 2003. Etienne d’Amille hasn’t felt much like himself lately—not since he suffered a heart attack after finding his surrogate daughter Adelaide Pitney dead of suicide in his bathtub. He’d always worried about the prospect of dying young like his father, but the reality of it hadn’t sunk in until that day. Five months later, the frenetic French fashion designer and his 32-week pregnant ex-wife, Basilie, return to the United States to sell the house where she killed herself.

It’s only a matter of days before they discover Adelaide left something behind—her ghost.
So, while heart medication and depression have stifled Etienne’s joie de vivre, creativity, and legendary capacity to reduce any woman to putty, he now must deal with voices in the night, eerie dreams, premonitions, and visions of Adelaide. The d’Amilles quickly learn that Adelaide did not clumsily end her own life. Instead, mysterious photographer Galen Sorbach murdered her for her magickal powers. Etienne doesn’t believe in ghosts, and he sure as Hell doesn’t believe in magick.

Etienne isn’t the only one freaked out by Adelaide’s earthly return. When Galen coerced Adelaide into surrendering her water-based elemental powers, he thought he’d gained the final segment to master his magick. But, Galen noticed his aptitude in fire magick didn’t return as it should have with Imbolc and its promise of spring. Then, Etienne saw something that had disturbed Galen for months: Adelaide’s traits surfacing through Galen’s body.

Now I'm going to skip ahead to the very end:
Each member of the d’Amille family must offer Adelaide what they carry of her, and Etienne must place the final kiss on Adelaide’s unembalmed year-plus-old corpse to give her rest. Adelaide has one last act before she goes, she reaches into Etienne’s chest and heals his troubled heart.

This particular synopsis is three pages.