Friday, February 25, 2011

How Do We Love Thee?

Let me count the days...


until March Mystery Agent! There are only four. I know, it's only the 25th, but February is a blessedly short month, which means I won't be waiting long for the pitch-reading fun!


It's been exciting opening up the Mystery Agent contest to match even more closely what our M.A.s want to see. It threw us all for a loop at the beginning of this month when Chris Richman asked for 25-word pitches! But weren't the resulting pitches amazing? I wrote one for my WIP, just for kicks and the challenge of it. It wasn't nearly as awesome as ones I saw in the entries, but it made me feel good about my story, being able to sum it up in 25 words.

NEXT month's Mystery Agent has asked for the following parameters for MARCH 1ST!

1) Entry limit: 75 entrants.

2) Pitch length: 140 characters. Think Tweet. Since we're talking 140 characters, Title and Genre don't have to be part of the pitch -- add them on to the comment somewhere.

3) Genres: YA (especially thriller, cyberpunk, horror, historical romance); MG; women's fiction; romance (especially with a strong, female heroine).




And we think it's going to be awesome! Not only has super generous March M.A. asked for a twitter-length pitch, which is just fun, but also raised the entry limit from fifty to seventy-five! That means we get to read 25 more pitches from you guys, and it also means we need you to spread the word so Mystery Agent can get what Mystery Agent wants. 


I'm curious to know your thoughts on the Mystery Agent contests. How can we make them even better?


Now for the end of my How Do We Love Thee poem:


We love thee like Lindsay loves a cookie fest,
and how Amparo loves Jensen Ackles best.
We love you like Kelly loves a fun contest.
And how Angie adores the Irish bles't,
We love you like Michelle loves lolcatz
And how Kristal loves write-a-thon chats
We love you as Katrina Squee!s and Woot!s


We love our blogger friends and wish you many hoots!


  

15 comments:

Matthew MacNish said...

I can't wait until my revisions are done so that I can start entering contests!

Angelica R. Jackson said...

I think you do a fabulous job with the contests as is: good mix of agents and genres, the MAs often go above and beyond in some way, etc.

I'm the kind of person who peeks at Christmas presents ahead of time, so the only thing I would say is that I'd love for you to reveal the agents ahead of time. But then what would that be called--UnMystery Agent Contest? DisMystery Agent Contest? Exhibitionist Agent Contest?

Katrina L. Lantz said...

LOL! Now I'm tempted to run an Exhibitionist Agent Contest!

Lindsay said...

Yay for the M.A contest. So excited! Love the poem. I do like a good cookie fest. :)

Amparo Ortiz said...

I'm all in favor of an Exhibitionist Mystery Agent, but can it be Jensen Ackles???? Oh please oh please oh please! ;)

Katrina L. Lantz said...

ROFL!

Lindsay N. Currie said...

Wow, what an awesome contest. New follower:)

Trisha said...

Hehe I like Amparo's suggestion of Jensen Ackles - though I'd take Jared Padalecki too. mmmmmm

Angelica R. Jackson said...

So you all are saying that they don't have to be an AGENT before they can be an EXHIBITIONIST AGENT? Cuz if the only requirements are a hot body to ogle, we could go on like this for days. So very many choices . . .

LizG said...

Question- do spaces count as characters? I've never used twitter so I don't want to assume they don't.

Thanks for these contests- they really do inspire us to dig deeper.

Katrina L. Lantz said...

Yes, they count. Needs to fit in a tweet, which counts spaces as characters. :) Good luck!

LizG said...

Thanks for your prompt reply! This is going to be a fun challenge.

Michelle McLean said...

hehe I do love me some lolcatz :D awesome poem! Can't wait to see all the entries!

Ruth Donnelly said...

Great contest! I linked to it on my blog.

Jessica L. Brooks (coffeelvnmom) said...

I've been practicing writing a few pitches on twitter just to see how short it needs to be (but not tweeting them). Needless to say, I've been pulling my hair out all weekend. ;)