Thursday, May 17, 2012

"The Writer's Voice" Is Live!

“The Writer’s Voice” is a multi-blog, multi-agent contest hosted by Cupid of Cupid’s Literary Connection, Brenda Drake of Brenda Drake Writes, Mónica B.W. of Love YA, and me. We based the contest on NBC’s singing reality show The Voice, so the four of us selected projects for our teams based on their queries and first pages and coached the talented writers who wrote them as they polished their entries.

And TODAY we get to post our team members’ finished entries on our blogs!

Eight amazing agents are going to read these queries and first pages, then vote for their favorites on Monday, May 21. Each vote will count as a partial or full request depending on how many votes the entry receives. If an entry receives 1 or 2 votes, those votes will count as partial requests. If an entry receives 3 or more votes, those votes will count as full requests.

Our eight amazing agents:

Louise Fury of L. Perkins Agency
Susan Hawk of The Bent Agency
Tricia Lawrence of Erin Murphy Literary Agency
Kevan Lyon of Marsal Lyon Literary Agency
Lauren MacLeod of The Strothman Agency
Taylor Martindale of Full Circle Literary
Andrea Somberg of Harvey Klinger, Inc.
Roseanne Wells of Marianne Strong Literary Agency

But that’s not all! After the agents vote, the doubly delicious Tara Dairman, author of THE DELICIOUS DOUBLE LIFE OF GLADYS GATSBY (coming from Putnam/Penguin in 2014), will comment on all the entries and provide each one with her awesome feedback.

To read the other teams' entries, please use the following links:

Team Cupid
Team Brenda
Team Monica

Lastly, cheerleading is allowed, but only until Sunday! We want to leave the comments free for the agents to vote on Monday. (Also, we will only allow, well, cheerleading and/or positive feedback. Please don’t critique the entries before the agents vote. On the flip side, please don’t try to convince the agents that they want to vote for one of your favorites or, you know, threaten to douse the agents in silly string if they don’t vote for your critique partner. This is a silly-string-free site.)

Happy reading!

8 comments:

A.L. Sonnichsen said...

So awesome, Krista! Ra ra ra! (That's me being a cheerleader.) Good luck to all the participants. :)

Krista Van Dolzer said...

Yay, Amy! Thanks for shaking a pom-pom!

Ben Spendlove said...

Woohooo!

Okay, so I just read all the other Team Krista entries, and I'm blown away. Not only are they all very good, but they're all better than they were before. Awesome work, Krista. I'm so lucky to know you.

And if I were an agent, I'd love this contest. But I'd also have a hard times not voting for all of them.

Krista Van Dolzer said...

Ben, I hope they're all better, or at least as good as (because they were all good before). I really tried to help everyone bring their own ideas, their own voices, to the surface in the best possible way. I hope I succeeded--that is, I hope I didn't butt in too much. (Of course, you could probably tell me a thing or two about that... :) )

Melodie Wright said...

This is such a great contest, I'm a little wistful I can't join in. :) May the agent odds be ever in your favor, everyone!

Krista Van Dolzer said...

Thanks for stopping by, Melodie! Maybe you'll have to take a turn being a coach... :)

Betsy said...

Hi Krista - Just wanted to say thank you so much for the awesome comment on my entry. It was really kind of you to take the time to do that. I'm in complete agreement with all your advice. Can't wait to work on my query tonight! :) Go Team Krista! -#197

Krista Van Dolzer said...

Betsy, you're welcome. I know how easy it is to get discouraged in the face of the overwhelming amount of rejection that piles up during the querying process, so I just wanted everybody to know that there were so many more entries that could have made a team if we'd had more room. (And that's not even counting my short list, which included several dozen more entries (before I decided to stop keeping track).)

Good luck to you and ALIEN INVASION! I really do hope you find the right agent for it.