57. Breakthrough Novel Contest

Every year, Amazon.com and a cast of hundreds put on the AmazonBreaththroughNovelAward contest.  It's a great opportunity for new writers and offers terrific prizes for the winning novel and four runner-ups.  I have included more details about the contest below for anyone interested.

I had to stop writing blog stories to prepare submitting my first time entry in the contest.  It's a humorous mystery, "Eula May and the Flim Flam Nun," which runs about 70,000 words.  After the contest, it will be posted on amazon.com as both an e-book and as a Print on Demand book.   I thought you might like to read the 300 word  'pitch' that I wrote for the contest. 

Pitch:

Eula May and the Flim Flam Nun is a mystery laced with humor instead of arsenic and riddled with romance rather than bullets.

Eula May chokes back a shriek as she stumbles over the blackmailing nun's murdered body. Will this affect her wedding plans? Lance--rich, handsome, candidate for mayor—will dump a fiancee` involved with the police. And he's her last ticket to happy heaven.

After torching the chef's toupee on a Hollywood cooking show, she dragged her tutu home to Kentucky, doomed to teach dance. Lance's proposal opens doors she feared were glued shut. Would the nun's death slam them back on her fingers?

Eula May groans hoping no one learns the twisted sister made a pass at her and when spurned turned to blackmail for revenge. Who would believe a dancer against the lies of the strange, holy woman who brought a miraculous Weeping Madonna statue to town? Eula May flees the nun's trailer without finding the faked pictures showing her 'molesting' her students.

Gossipy neighbors accuse her of murder, resulting in her. Out on bail, she resolves to win back her faithless fiance who's ignoring her calls.

Seeking clues to prove her innocence, she's caught squeezing through the nun's back window. Threatened with jail again, Eula May struggles on. She's thwarted by thugs hearse-jacking the nun's body on its way to the cemetery, but outwits desperate strangers from the 'Hot to Trot' motel who kidnap her students. Vindication is almost hers when she pries the nun's medical secrets from an amoral pharmacist, solving half the puzzle.

At a deadly dinner, Eula May challenges the murderer, risking her life to save her future.

The End, or is it?

Contest information:
 
The contest is open to the first 10,000 submissions.  So, yes, there is a lot of competition.  When it closes on March 2, the judges will read 300 word pitches for each submitted novel and select 2000 from the original 10,000 to go on to the next level.  The next level is the 'excerpt', which is the first 3,000 to 5,000 words of the submitted novel.  Four hundred of those will be selected to have the entire novel read and judges.  Twenty-five of the four hundred will be selected and then posted on line for the general pubic to read and comment on.  Eventually a grand winner and four runners-up will be announced on July 21.  I'll keep you posted on the course of events.
The End