And the winner is…

Well, the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award competition finally has a winner. And if you’ve been following along, you know it’s not me (otherwise, I wouldn’t be polluting my blog with my novel).

But do support the winner. Publishers Weekly asks if he’s the new Dennis Lehane. Buy it and see for yourself.

Over and Out…

…of the Amazon competition, anyway. It was fun while it lasted, and thanks again to everyone who reviewed my excerpt. I guess it’s back to the good old query-agents-and-publishers routine for me.

And there are still plenty of worthwhile entries in competition, so head over to Amazon to check them out and leave a review.

Expulsion from the Amazon?…

Well, folks, next Tuesday (February 19) is when Penguin makes another cut in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award competition. After that date, only 100 novels will be left in competition. I fully expect to be one of those crying in my beer, wine, or other adult beverage–there’s just too much good stuff in the competition. And I really hope to see many of the titles in print so I can find out what happens to characters and plot lines I’ve become attached to in just a few pages. But whether or not my novel advances, overall, I’ve really learned a lot about what I need to revise and how strong my novel was to begin with (which was actually a lot stronger than I thought).

And once again, I want to take some space to thank everyone who reviewed my excerpt. Your comments and suggestions were/are greatly appreciated, and I’ll put them to good use.

Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award

Okay. My apologies if you’ve already been burdened with this information via email or in person, but my unpublished novel, Commencement Exercises, is a semi-finalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award competition. On February 19, Penguin will narrow the current field of 836 novels to 100, and then will narrow that field to ten on March 2, at which time Amazon customers will choose the winning novel. Advancing through the contest is based on some mysterious algorithm of number and strength of customer reviews of a 5000 word excerpt of the novel combined with a Publishers’ Weekly review of the full manuscript. So if you haven’t gone over to Amazon to review my excerpt (click on the hyperlinked title above–see how easy I made that for you?), get on the stick before I am forever resigned to literary oblivion.

Reviewers (and you have to be an Amazon customer to review) can win cool prizes for reviewing excerpts, so I encourage you to read other entries as well–the caliber of work in this competition is quite good, if I do say so myself. To view other excerpts and read information about the competition, go to the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award home page.