America’s Next Best Celler Contest – And Me!

This Saturday, I finally (contest started back in June) took the plunge and entered the America’s Next Best Celler Contest, sponsored by Dorchester Publishing and Textnovel.com. The purpose of the contest is to find “the next new voice in romance,” according to Dorchester’s site.

The contest will run until November 1, 2009. By then all entrants should have posted twenty chapters of their novel or a total of 6,000 words and the top 20 semifinalists will be chosen. On November 15, 2009, the top 10 finalists will be chosen. Finally, on January 31, 2010, the overall winner of the contest will be announced.

And the prize?

A guaranteed contract with Dorchester Publishing and a $2,000 prize. Not too bad a deal. And with the success of other voting-based contests, such as Gather.com’s First Chapters contests and Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel awards, it is certainly a positive step in the path toward publication for aspiring novelists. If nothing else, the contest will serve as a barometer for how viable a story is and will help the author build a following and readership.

What is my entry?

Here’s the short description I wrote for the introduction on Textnovel:

Athena Willoughby is a cynical gossip columnist with a passion for Jane Austen novels. So what happens when she wakes up one morning in Regency England, in a scene that could have come straight from one of her idol’s books? She learns how gossip was spread in a time without the internet, of course!

So how did I come up with that particular idea?

Like many of my ideas, it was inspired by a simple phrase I read on Twitter, “What would Perez Hilton think of Catherine?” The question was followed by a link that to the site for a new book about Catherine de Medici. Well, of course, that phrase inspired the inevitable “what if” questions in me and it wasn’t long before an idea began to formulate.

What would happen if a modern day gossip blogger found herself in a time before the Internet, or even the television and radio? How would she get her gossip and, more important, how would she report it?

Now, with idea in mind, I had to decide on a time to send her back to and since my favorite historical time period is the Regency, it was only natural that I would send her there. Why did I choose Jane Austen for the theme and Athena’s inspiration? One, I’ve always been fascinated by Jane Austen and have seen each of her stories interpreted on film, some with more than one rendition; and Two, nobody else wrote so keenly of their world and society as did Jane. Plus, I am participating in a Jane Austen reading challenge, so it all sort of fell into place. The Jane Austen Society Pages was born. Whether or not Athena actually meets Jane…well, you’re just going to have to read it to find out!

So, if you’d like to become a part of Athena’s misadventures in Austen’s world and follow me on my journey through the process, please check out my story and let me know how I’m doing. I would love to hear from you. For more on my reasons for entering the contest, you can read my post on Serializing the Novel. ~ Margay

The Everything Austen Challenge

As if my life isn’t busy enough with preparing to send one daughter off to college and the other in for surgery to straighten her spine, not to mention all of the stories I am working on for publishers and contests, I have decided to participate in the Everything Austen Challenge. For a more concise explanation of the challenge, just follow the link, but basically, it is to read, listen to, or watch things to do with Austen, be it her books, movie adaptations of her books, or even sequels to her books. Listed below are my goals for the project:

1. The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen by Syrie James

2. Cassandra and Jane: A Jane Austen Novel by Jill Pitkeathley

3.  Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict by by Laurie Viera Rigler

4. Jane Austen for Dummies by Joan Elizabeth Klingel Ray (don’t let the title fool you; it’s turning out to be a great resource)

5. Rewatch as many versions of Jane Austen movies as I can find

6. Write about Jane Austen in a submission for the America’s Next Best Celler contest on Textnovel.com

Number 6 is an ongoing project. You can check it out here.

Wish me luck!

Everything Old Is New Again – Serializing The Novel

Some of the forefathers of literature did it, the most notable of which is Charles Dickens. Serialize their novels, that is. Back in his day, the obvious medium was the newspaper, in which he told his story, one chapter at a time. Today, with the technology of the internet at our disposal, there is a new venue opened to writers who might wish to follow in the footsteps of Dickens. It is called Textnovel and as the name implies, authors have the option of adding chapters to their stories via text message or even email.

Ever since I first became aware of this site, I was intrigued with the concept and flirted with the idea of submitting something myself. But I held back, returning to the site again and again to take a peek at what other participants were doing. When I had the opportunity to pick the brain of a Textnovel contest winner, Saoirse Redgrave – whose winning entry 13 to Life, A Werewolf’s Tale, will be publsihed by St. Martin’s Press in 2010 – during an online discussion following her win, she encouraged me to try my hand at creating my own story on Textnovel.

Still, I hesitated. Did some research on cell phone novels. Flirted with the idea of creating one myself. Hesitated some more. What was holding me back? I’m not certain. Maybe it’s just that the format is so foreign to me. Write and post a chapter at a time, have people read and rate it – possibly comment on it – as I write it? You have to admit it’s a pretty daunting prospect.

So what would make me decide to finally take the plunge? A couple of things, actually. First, a highly motivating factor is that Dorchester Publishing is running a contest on Textnovel for The Next Best “Celler” and the prize is a guaranteed contract with Dorchester and $2,000.00 in prize money. Not bad. But the other thing that finally made me take the plunge was the fact that, after much brainstorming over all of the story ideas I have in my repertoire, I finally came up with a new one that would best fit the situation.

Entitled “The Jane Austen Society Pages,” it centers around a classic what if situation. What if the most notorious gossip for hire suddenly found herself living in the Regency period? Cut off from modern technology, how would she procure her daily fix of gossip and, more important, how would she report it to others? If you want to find out, check out my entry at Textnovel here.

If you like what you read, you can give it a thumbs up and sign up to receive updates when I post new chapters. You can even leave comments to tell me how I’m doing. I would love to hear from you.