{"id":984,"date":"2009-02-11T17:57:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-11T17:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bestfantasynovel.com\/2009\/02\/11\/secret-agent\/"},"modified":"2009-02-11T17:57:00","modified_gmt":"2009-02-11T17:57:00","slug":"secret-agent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/2009\/02\/11\/secret-agent\/","title":{"rendered":"Secret Agent!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I found out about a delicious contest on the blog of <a href=\"http:\/\/misssnarksfirstvictim.blogspot.com\/\"><b> Miss Snark&#8217;s First Victim.<\/b><\/a> <\/p>\n<p>The idea is so delightful, I couldn&#8217;t resist entering. Fifty (raised to sixty for reasons explained on the blog) aspiring authors submit the first 250 words of their completed novels. A agent, about whom we know nothing except what genres he\/she represents, reads them. At the end of the contest, the Secret Agent unmasks herself\/himseslf and picks &#8220;prizes&#8221; for the winners like a read of a partial or a full. Pretty sweet.<\/p>\n<p>In addition, everyone crits other entries, so, even if you don&#8217;t catch the Secret Agent&#8217;s eye, you still receive helpful feedback on your novel&#8217;s opening.<\/p>\n<p>I entered.<\/p>\n<p>Wow, though, the competition is intense. There are a lot of entries which I, personally, would love to keep reading.<\/p>\n<p>* * *<\/p>\n<p>UPDATE<\/p>\n<p>I just finished reviewing all sixty entries. Whew &#8212; and wow. There&#8217;s some really lovely prose and smashing hooks in that bunch. It&#8217;s intimidating, but also exhilarating. I also received some good feedback on my submission.<\/p>\n<p>With so many excellent submissions, I fear my chances of coming to the Secret Agent&#8217;s attention are not just slim, but downright anorexic. It&#8217;s depressing to realize that real slush piles are just like this, except with no cap on the number of submissions. I honestly don&#8217;t know how agents retain their sanity.<\/p>\n<p>However, I&#8217;m glad I entered, and so excited to find out who the Secret Agent is!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I found out about a delicious contest on the blog of Miss Snark&#8217;s First Victim. The idea is so delightful, I couldn&#8217;t resist entering. Fifty (raised to sixty for reasons explained on the blog) aspiring authors submit the first 250 words of their completed novels. A agent, about whom we know nothing except what genres [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}