Pitch Onnnnnn!

(This post graciously donated word for word by Marieke, also hosting Pitch On!, in my time of most intense dayjob mania. Love you, Marieke.)

Hey sweet readers!

In case you haven’t heard yet, there’s an awesome new contest in the blogosphere: Get Your Pitch On! Hosted by Down Under Wonderings and YAtopia on October 15th, during Get Your Pitch On! Commissioning and Managing Editor of Hardie Grant Egmont, Marisa Pintado, will be poised and ready to take your YA pitches.

Marisa is looking for YA in any genre and is accepting submissions from any where in the world. It’s your chance to skip the slush pile and put your pitch right under the nose of a fantastic editor. There’s even better news – there is no limit on how many requests Marisa will make from the contest.

Here are the rules:

• Your manuscript must be complete, polished and ready to query – this means no first drafts or almost finished manuscripts.
• It must be YA.
• When the contest goes live on October 15th, post your entry details in the comments section of either YAtopia or Down Under Wonderings – each blog is accepting 100 entries only.
• Your entry detail needs to include a 50 – 70 word pitch.
• You can enter more than once if you have more than one complete, polished, ready to query manuscript.

Your contest details should be formatted like this:

Name: Sharon Johnston
Email: smjohnston [ @ ] live.com.au
Country of residence: Australia
Title: SLEEPER
Genre: Speculative Fiction
Word-count: 58,000
Pitch: Seventeen-year-old Mishca Richardson is a sleeper soldier with a weak heart. She has no idea that a life saving heart transplant has accidentally triggered her programming. In the search for answers, she discovers the truth and that her creator, Wirth, has classified her remaining “sisters” from her experiment group as defective, scheduling them for termination. Mishca sets out to save them before they’re eliminated.

All a bit daunting? No fear! Dozens of blogs around the ‘sphere will help you whip your pitch into shape. And (surprisingly) I am one of them! Workshops for Get Your Pitch On will start on October 1st*, but you can send your pitches through now to secure your spot with a host blog.

There is no date deadline for the workshops. Each blog has allocated a set number of pitches that they can host and once those spots are full then no more submissions will be taken. I’ll be hosting 10 pitches here on my blog!

Important Rule: If you want to participate in a workshop, you must be pay it forward by commenting on at least one other pitch. Not so difficult, right?

Also! For each critique you leave in the comments, you get an entry in the draw for one of eight 10-page critique from contest host Sharon Johnston and workshop hosts Larissa Hardesty, Stephanie Diaz, Catherine Scully, Jodie Andrefski, Paula Sangare, Talynn Lynn and Kaitlin Adams. Please use the exact same names for all of your critiques. The opportunity ends October 14. 

How to submit: Email your draft pitch to pitchonws@gmail.com and include PitchOnWS and the title of the manuscript in the subject line. Pitches must follow the formatting as specified for the Get Your Pitch On contest. If you missed if before check out this post here and you can see the list of blogs participating here.

Draft pitches will be evenly distributed between host blogs.

An interview with Commissioning and Managing Editor of Hardie Grant Egmont, Marisa Pintado, so that you have an idea what she’s looking for before she takes your pitches will be coming up soon on Down Under Wonderings. The exact contest opening times will be included in that post.

Have fun honing your pitches!