Amazon Breakthrough Contest–I Made it to Round Two

It’s banana pancake drizzled in honey with vanilla ice cream good news.

I made it to the second round of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest!!

I didn’t mention entering because I’ve entered a few contests and never made it beyond the initial round. But this time out of 5000 possible entries, only 1000 moved on to the next round. And I was among them!

The first round was judged solely on pitch, which makes me so grateful to Backspace for helping me hone my pitch.

At the Backspace Agent-Author Seminar in November, the talented and insightful Louise Fury and Lois Winston dissected my query and helped me see what wasn’t working and why. I came back the next day with a revised query that a new set of agents said was very strong and my writing group complimented.

That pitch went on to the Writer’s Digest Conference to get me 5 partial. So a huge thanks to Backspace for bringing me one leap further in the query letter and the pitch. 🙂

By making it to the second round, I win the third prize which is an Amazon Editors excerpt review. I can use that for marketing materials if I decide to self publish and don’t materially change the book. That’s pretty cool. I’ve never won a prize before in a writing contest.

So what happens in round two? Expert reviewers (Amazon editors and one Amazon Top Reviewer) review and judge an excerpt of my novel. Only the top 250 move on to the quarter finals. They post the results around March 12th. *Fingers crossed I’m among them*

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I had a residual blonde moment while trying to figure out if I place in the 2nd round….

I open my email from Amazon announcing that they posted the list of authors who made it to the second round of the contest. Excited and nervous, I click on the link. It’s a huge pdf file where the contestants are listed alphabetically by first name.

I’m K so I start scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. Suddenly I get to J. My stomach plummets. I didn’t see any Ks. I guess I didn’t place. That disappointed feeling rolls over me.

Wait, something is off. I pause. But what? I recite the alphabet aloud. Ah, K comes after J. 😛

I scroll some more and see my name!!!!! Do my happy dance, print out the list of names, check it again and run to show Mom.

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