Enter our 25-4-25 Contest for 2023
and Get Vital Feedback on your First 25 Pages!
Here's your chance to get a developmental edit by published and soon-to-be-published authors of your first 25 pages, and it's only $25!
Our feedback can include tips on plot, pace, characterization, dialogue—whatever it might take to attract the interest of an acquiring editor. The most promising manuscript will win our grand prize: a premium one-year subscription to Querytracker.net, to help you find the perfect acquiring agents and publishers for your project and keep track of your submissions.
Below, please find the 25-4-25 Contest rules with links to required disclaimer, and judging criteria:
Contest General Rules:
Our feedback can include tips on plot, pace, characterization, dialogue—whatever it might take to attract the interest of an acquiring editor. The most promising manuscript will win our grand prize: a premium one-year subscription to Querytracker.net, to help you find the perfect acquiring agents and publishers for your project and keep track of your submissions.
Below, please find the 25-4-25 Contest rules with links to required disclaimer, and judging criteria:
Contest General Rules:
- Hudson Valley Scribes Membership is NOT required to enter the contest
- Cost is $25, nonrefundable, paid via PayPal.
- Entries will be limited to the first 50 received. All additional entries will be returned and the money refunded.
- If you use Paypal please click www.paypal.com. The PayPal email address is hudsonvalleyromance@yahoo.com. Put 25-4-25 in comments.
- All entries must be accompanied by the contest Disclaimer which must be copied and pasted in the body of the e-mail. Please also include the Paypal confimation in the e-mail.
- Entries should be a word document (PDFs are not allowed) and should include the first 25 pages of your manuscript along with a cover page with your name, e-mail and title/genre of your unpublished, romance book-length novel or novella. The cover page should be your first page (which makes the entire submiission 26 page.). Do not send cover page as a separate attachment.
- Manuscript should be professionally presented in 12-point Times New Roman font, double-spaced, with one-inch margins all around. Any entries that do not meet this criteria will be reformatted and only the first 25 pages will be edited.
- We run 25-4-25 twice a year: Entries sent between August 1, 2023 - November 30, 2023 - Winners will be announced in March 2024. Entries sent between January 1, 2024 - May 31, 2024 - Winners will be announced in September, 2024.
- Send entries to contest coordinator: Liz Mattila at hudsonvalleycontest@gmail.com
- For the purposes of this contest, the author’s name should not appear on the manuscript.
- We will return manuscripts within 3 months with edits. Scoresheets will NOT be sent to authors; they are for internal use only.
- Winners will be announced in September, 2022 and March, 2023. In the case of a score tie, manuscripts will be judged by a team of three published authors.
- Editing by HV Scribes authors in no way guarantees agent/publisher interest or action. Opinions are those of the HV Scribes member/editor only.
- The criteria on which your entry will be scored can be found here.
- Please direct any questions to hudsonvalleycontest@gmail.com
2023 Winner: A.L. Maze!
Hailing from Sydney, Australia, A.L. (please call her Annette) lives with her husband, two older daughters, and a parrot that enjoys laughing at her. During the day she works as a Bookkeeper, and spends her evenings writing about cheeky pilots and all the trappings of romance.
Annette has dabbled in writing since the age of 15 but never found anything she felt passionate writing about until 1986 when she saw the movie Top Gun. She fell hopelessly in love with it, thus beginning her search for similar works of fiction, but was sorely disappointed. No one wrote about people actively serving in the military and falling in love, so she starting writing it herself. The helicopter arm of those stores happened 10 years later when she found a secondhand book about a secret Army organization called The Night Stalkers.
After 36 years of research and numerous attempts to put a great story together, my entry is the result of all that hard work. I hope you enjoy it, as it is a joy to write. I look forward to the day I can share it all with you.
