First Page Critique!

Our next Pass or Pages Query Contest will be accepting applications in exactly one month.  Yay!  Something other than a pandemic to think about!

Are you hoping to submit your query and first page?

No, we haven't revealed the genre yet, but if you're hopeful that your WiP will qualify, why not submit your First 50/100/250 for critique?  We started this last year and then took a break.  Let's start again and see if any of you are ready for eyeballs on the first page of your manuscript.

We are accepting entries this week!  Category – Anything.

If you want to submit your First 50/100/250 for critique [no more than the first page], here's the entrance requirements: (1) send us no more than one page [no query, just the first page], (2) it must be your first page, and (3) you must have commented on at least two posts on the OA blog in the past year.  Send us an email formatted as follows:

[Subject:] First Page Critique – [insert category and genre, for example Adult Romance or YA Fantasy or whatever]

The following 50/100/250 [however much you sent] words are my own work and I give OA permission to post it on the OA blog for the life of the blog.

I commented on OA posts on DATE and DATE as [your online ID].

My submission:

[Copy/paste your submission here.]

Entry period opens now and closes at the end of the day on Friday May 15, 2020. All entries will receive a confirmation email from us by Sunday May 17, 2020 that acknowledges receipt of your entry and, if you've complied with all requirements, lets you know what date it will be included on the blog for critique. If you do NOT receive a confirming email by Monday May 18, 2020, send us a DM on Twitter and we'll give you alternative instructions for sending us your entry.

We don't have any entries to critique for this week, so let's have some fun and guess the book titles of the following famous first lines.  To keep it fun for everyone, only post ONE book title answer, to leave the rest for others to guess.  That way more people can play.  And, NO GOOGLING!

1. Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.
2. 124 was spiteful.
3. The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
4. I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.
5. There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.
6. In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.
7. You better not never tell nobody but God.
8. In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.
9. Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small, unregarded yellow sun.
10. This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.

Remember, only post your guess for ONE of the above first lines.

Have fun!