I purposely wasn’t writing about this because I didn’t want to jinx myself, but yesterday, I was officially jinxed. I’d entered Karin Tabke’s First Line Contest, and gotten through the first four rounds of judging (each, I think, by a different agent), but yesterday, my sentences were axed.

The contest started January 15 with 75 first lines. The first week, ten entries were eliminated. The next Monday, each entrant had to put up their first two lines, and only five entrants were eliminated. And so it went…and now I’m out. One less thing to worry about I guess…

The interesting thing is that I started from scratch for that contest, picked a new starting point, and just ran with it. And I like this version quite a bit better than the last one.

You should check it out…there are some good entries over there!

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A blog post from Karin just clarified…The first round judge was an agent, and the last round judge will be Hilary Sares. Pubbed authors do the in-between rounds.

I did my pitch yesterday and okay, it wasn’t really perfect, but it was really good. I’d worried over it for about a week and a half, I’d spent lots of time writing and rewriting a blurb and really thinking about my book (which was good), and I was really sort of starting to stress. But then my husband said something to me that really clicked, and it all fell away: I was thinking more clearly, writing more smoothly, and feeling less stressed and less nervous. He’s brilliant.

So yesterday, I had a few nerves and was trying to really learn my pitch so I wouldn’t have to keep glancing at my cheat sheet, or worse, get stuck and be forced to read it. And then I walked in and didn’t use any of it. It was all totally off the cuff, and it went great. And more than that, I feel like I can blurb my book to someone quite easily now, whereas I had trouble with that before.

She asked for the first three chapters and a synopsis, and I’m going on the assumption that that was just a courtesy that she accorded all the ‘pitchers’, but she did seem to find the general gist of the story interesting, so that’s good. I was completely happy with the experience except for one thing. After I pitched my WIP, she told me she was interested in anything else I was working on. So, I told her that I’d had some ideas for a series of books like my current one, with a little magical element to them. And I told her I was interested in writing another Regency historical–I’d already talked about my self-published book, and she’d seemed impressed. Anyway…after all that, she didn’t seem to have any reaction at all. Sort of a ‘Huh.’–I just don’t know what to make of that. At least I’ve got the chance to send my first three chapters as ‘Requested’!

Wanted to thank all of you again for your advice and good wishes. It was really helpful.