25th Free “Dear Lucky Agent” Contest: Thrillers and Horror

Every so often, Chuck Sambuccino, the editor of the Guide to Literary Agents, runs a free contest called "Dear Lucky Agent." These contests allow writers to submit one page of their manuscript to be judged by an agent.

Winners of the contest have a more than good chance of getting representation. It's good to enter contests, not just because you may win one, but because they force you to write short summaries and synopses, and to polish your first few pages until they shine. These are usually the only pages an agent will see before making a decision. (Sometimes they only read a paragraph.)

The contest deadline is Tuesday, October 25, 2016. CLICK HERE for more details.

For hundreds of free contests organized by month see: FREE CONTESTS.

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From the Website:

Welcome to the 25th (free!) “Dear Lucky Agent” Contest on the GLA blog. This is a FREE recurring online contest with agent judges and super-cool prizes. Here’s the deal: With every contest, the details are essentially the same, but the niche itself changes—meaning each contest is focused around a specific category or two. If you’re writing any kind of thriller or horror novel (for adults), then this 25th contest is for you! The contest is live through end of day, Tuesday, Oct 25, 2016. The contest is judged by agent Alec Shane of Writers House.

WHY YOU SHOULD GET EXCITED

After a previous “Dear Lucky Agent” contest, the agent judge, Tamar Rydzinski (The Laura Dail Literary Agency), signed one of the three contest winners. After Tamar signed the writer, she went on to sell two of that writer’s books! How cool! These contests can’t be missed if you have an eligible submission.

HOW TO SUBMIT

E-mail entries to dearluckyagent25@gmail.com. Please paste everything. No attachments.

MEET YOUR (AWESOME) AGENT JUDGE!

Agent Alec Shane began his career at Writers House in September of 2008. He is now actively building his list and currently represents a fairly eclectic mix of children’s and adult fiction and nonfiction. On the fiction side, he loves mysteries, thrillers, bad-ass protagonists with a chip on their shoulders, beautifully told historical fiction (The Vietnam War, the Maccabees, and The American Revolution fascinate him), well-researched adventure stories, and great horror. In terms of children’s books, getting boys to read again is especially important to him, and thus he’s particularly on the lookout for a fun middle-grade adventure series, ghost story, or anything else geared toward younger male readers. On the nonfiction side, he is attracted to odd, quirky histories, military history, biographies of people he didn’t even know existed (but definitely should have), “guy” reads, humor, narrative nonfiction that sheds light on under-the-radar events and lifestyles, and all things sports. Find him on Twitter: @Alecdshane.

WHAT TO SUBMIT (AND OUR SOCIAL MEDIA REQUIREMENTS)

The first 150-250 words (i.e., your first double-spaced page) of your unpublished, completed thriller or horror novel. You must include a contact e-mail address with your entry and use your real name. Also note your city of residence (i.e. — the city you live in, not your full address). Submit the title of the work and a logline (one-sentence description of the work) with each entry. Self-published novels are not eligible.

Please note: To be eligible to submit, you must mention this contest twice through any any social-media. Please provide a social-media link or Twitter handle or screenshot or blog post URL, etc., with your official e-mailed entry so the judge and I can verify eligibility. Some previous entrants could not be considered because they skipped this step! Simply spread the word twice through any means and give us a way to verify you did; a TinyURL for this link/contest for you to easily use is http://tinyurl.com/zagnp4r.

An easy way to notify me of your sharing is to include my Twitter handle @chucksambuchino at the end of your mention(s) if using Twitter. If we’re friends on FB, tag me in the mention. If you are going to just use Twitter as your 2 entries, please wait one day between mentions to spread out the notices, instead of simply tweeting twice back to back. Thanks. (Please note that simply tweeting me does not count. You have to include the contest URL with your mention; that’s the point. And if you use Twitter, put my handle @chucksambuchino at the middle or the end, not at the very beginning of the tweet, or else the tweet will be invisible to others.)

Here is a sample TWEET you can use (feel free to tweak): New FREE contest for writers of thrillers and horror http://tinyurl.com/zagnp4r Judged by agent @Alecdshane, via @chucksambuchino