Manuscript Matchmakers

Because I know we have both readers and writers who follow this post, I wanted to share a huge opportunities for historical writers interested in breaking into Love Inspired Historicals! I've been writing for Love Inspired Suspense for a number of years now and really love working for them. For even more information, you can visit their forums here. So here is the information, straight from the editors!










Manuscript Matchmakers: Meet the perfect editor match for your inspirational historical romance manuscript

The Love Inspired editors are thrilled to announce our newest pitch opportunity, Manuscript Matchmakers (#ManuscriptMatch). We want to fall in love with some amazing inspirational historical romance novels. If you think your book holds the key to our hearts, we encourage you to pitch it to the Manuscript Matchmakers.

Over the years, Love Inspired has bought more than 30 authors through pitch contests. Last year, we found 9 new authors in our From Blurb to Book pitch, many of whom wrote their books during the contest. Four of their books will be on store shelves in 2016. This year, we’ve got times gone by on our mind. We want to find new historical romance authors to join our team. For this pitch opportunity, Love Inspired editors Tina James, Melissa Endlich, Emily Rodmell, Elizabeth Mazer, Shana Asaro, Giselle Regus and Dina Davis are looking for Inspirational Historical Romance stories of 70-75K words with great hooks. And to help you find those great hooks, we’ve outlined the ones we’re most looking for. We’d like to see stories that focus on one or more of seven hooks. The editors will be dividing ourselves into teams based on these tropes and mentoring authors as you write your books.

1. Team Amish
2. Team Mail Order Bride
3. Team Babies/Children
4. Team Cowboy/Rancher
5. Team Marriage of Convenience
6. Team Reunion Romance
7. Team Choose Your Own Hook (i.e. any other strong hook)
8. Bonus Category: Pony Express Fast Track. If you have a complete manuscript ready to go and don’t want to have to wait through the pitch deadlines to get it seen, submit your manuscript to our Pony Express Fast Track Category. Any full manuscripts submitted to the Pony Express Fast Track category by the initial submission deadline of March 2 will be guaranteed that an editor will look at your full manuscript and respond by May 2. You can submit any trope to this category.

But whether you have a full manuscript ready or just an idea, we want to meet you. If you think you are the perfect match for Love Inspired Historical, we invite you to show us that you’re the total package in these three stages:

1. Proper Introductions—Tell us a little bit about you and your manuscript by filling out a matchmaking profile card and painting a picture of your book by sending in the first page. (Pony Express Fast Track entrants send a Matchmaking Card and full manuscript at this stage.)

Matchmaking Profile Card
Targeted Team: Amish, Mail Order Bride, Pony Express Fast Track, etc.
Name:
Book title:
Setting and time period:
Hooks:
Conflict:
Describe your book in 1 sentence:

Authors who catch our eye will move on to Stage 2.

2. Courtship—Show us you have the plotting and writing skills to back up your profile by submitting a full proposal (synopsis and three chapters). Authors who show us their amazing plots, conflicts and writing will move on to Stage 3.

3. Betrothal—We’ve met the beginnings of your manuscript and like what we see so far. Convince us to make a commitment by submitting your full manuscript. The sky’s the limit for these authors. A contract could be within your reach if you bring it all together into a manuscript that we think our readers will love.

If you make it through, you could be the next contracted author for Love Inspired Historical. But we won’t leave you to do it all on your own. We’ll be sharing helpful master class blog posts along the way telling you exactly what is required in a Love Inspired Historical book. And once we decide who will be getting a proposal request, authors will be divided into seven teams based around the seven tropes we’ve listed (Pony Express manuscripts will be divided between editors and read separately). Each team will have an editor mentor depending on the number of submissions and finalists for each line. Mentors will be announced on the day that the teams are announced. So you’ll know exactly who is looking at your book throughout the stages, and you can ask questions directed at your mentor in the announcement thread. But don’t wait to get to know your fellow contestants. Feel free to start mixing and mingling in any open Manuscript Matchmakers thread or via the #ManuscriptMatch hashtag on Twitter. Every author who makes it to stage 3 will receive an initial decision (contract, reject or revision request) on their submissions by August 31.

Here’s our timeline:

ROUND ONE
February 22 – Submit the completed Matchmaking Profile and first page of your inspirational historical romance manuscript (or full for Pony Express) to ManuscriptMatchmakers@harpercollins.com starting today.
**Please read Formatting Guidelines before submitting**

March 2 – All entries must be in house. The editors will review the entries over the next week and choose the teams.

ROUND TWO
March 9 – Editors will announce which entries will be joining a team and which editors will be mentoring each team. The authors on the teams will be invited to submit their proposal by April 6 to the email box.
April 6 – All proposals must be in house. Editors will review the submissions from their team over the next week and a half and narrow down the ones that seem most promising to move on to the next stage.

ROUND THREE
April 18 – Editors will announce which team members will be going on to the final round. Qualifying authors will be invited to submit their complete manuscript. Authors who are not moving on will privately receive personalized feedback. Authors who are moving on will have until July 15 to submit their full manuscripts.
July 15 – All entries must be in house. Editors will review the submissions from their team and decide next steps (reject, request a revision, or offer a contract). By the end of a month and a half, decisions will be made to contract, send a revision letter or reject each of the stories. All authors who submit full manuscripts will receive notification of our decision within this time frame.

Final Results!

August 31 – We will announce the results in a blog post that wraps up the pitch, shares our thoughts on the highs and lows, highlights any sales and gives stats on the results for the full manuscript submissions.

Sound exciting? If you think you could rock this pitch, get ready to show us your stuff. Read our team bios, the info on formatting guidelines, the inspirational success stories and the blogs on what LIH is looking for, writing a standout first page, and examples of how to fill out the matchmaking card, then start those books. Be sure to follow the guidelines for Love Inspired Historical. Only one entry per author, please. If your book fits in more than one category, feel free to list more than one. We will randomly place entries with multiple hooks into one category based on number of entries. Deadlines are tight, so keep writing while you’re waiting to hear back. And if your book is complete now, don’t miss the fabulous Pony Express Fast Track opportunity.

Best wishes,
Tina, Melissa, Emily, Elizabeth, Shana, Giselle & Dina    

I'd love to know if you're considering submitting so we could encourage you!!

Lisa Harris

The Contradictions of Life as a Writer

Writing is such a fickle thing. I've been at this for a good many years, and you'd think by now I'd have it all figured out. Strangely, the only thing I am sure of, is that to live as a writer is to live with contradictions, things that aren't logical no matter how you look at them.

Productivity is a perfect example. For the longest time I bewailed (real wailing, not just the metaphorical kind) the fact that I couldn't just stay home and write. Imagine how many books I'd write! All the best seller list scalps I could hang on my belt!

Here's the reality - as a painfully slow writer I can spend a few hours writing and produce around 700 words. If my day turns busy and I can only squeeze in an hour? 500. What if it goes completely pear-shaped and I only get 20 minutes? Still 500. That makes no sense right? But there you have it. Turns out for me, 90% of writing is thinking before I go near my laptop. So to 'stay home to write all day' will probably never work for me.

The distraction of real life is another thing I used to kick against. The sink full of dishes, ironing for five, school runs and homework. Wow, just think how much I could write if I didn't have to do all that stuff! And yet it is all that 'stuff' that gives me my best material. For one thing, it doesn't use up much brain space to wash a batch of dirty dishes. Ironing isn't exactly rocket science. So while my hands are busy, guess what is going on in my brain? Plotting, scheming, character arc'ing. The other thing is how much actual material real life dishes up for you. Remember the time you locked yourself out the house in pouring rain or had to roll start your car because the battery died? Dress those up and parade them through your stories and your reader will be going Oh my word! I can relate! 

To be published means you've arrived is just not true. I don't think I'm the only one that lived for that one email to land in my inbox offering me publication. And yet after that happened, I had to face the reality that landing a publishing contract doesn't guarantee that the next book you write will find a publishing home. Getting a contract doesn't rocket you into becoming a household name, or selling millions of copies of your wonderful book. What it does do though, is establish a relationship with a team of people who are in the publishing business. It gives you access to editors who will grow your craft way beyond where you could grow by yourself. It moves you closer to the top of the slush pile for the next book you write. 

Those are just some of the contradictions that I've had to make peace with. How about you? Can you relate? Are there others that you've discovered along the way? I'd love to hear from you.

Dianne J. Wilson writes novels from her hometown in East London, South Africa, where she lives with her husband and three daughters.

Finding Mia is available from Amazon, Pelican / Harbourlight, Barnes & Noble and other bookstores.

Shackles is available as a free ebook from Smashwords.

Find her on Facebook, Twitter and her sporadic blog Doodles.

Feels Like Midnight

Running and I are not friends. There are reasons for this. Good reasons. For now, let’s just say I am anatomically incompatible with the sport. My hubby, however, loves running. So much so, that he will sacrifice sleep to be out pounding the tar. Some days he gets up so early, the birds and worms are all still tucked under their duvets, snoring.

It was one of those mornings about a week ago that I was up with him. The race he'd signed up for started on the road to Stutterheim and ended 42km’s away on the other side of town. I suggested that he run back to fetch his car afterwards but strangely he wasn’t too keen on that idea. (Odd, hey?)  

As we drove to the start, a profound realisation hit me. The clock told me that it was 5am, but if I looked out the window, it might as well have been midnight. The streetlights, the moon... the odd car driving around. It looked, felt and sounded exactly like midnight. Even my bed-missing body agreed. Yet within half an hour, everything changed. The sky drifted from pitch to dappled pastels, bird-noise filled in the silence and the temperature climbed a few degrees. 

I could almost hear Jesus clear his throat... 

When we live hoping for our dreams to be realized... waiting for the publishing contract to land in our inbox, the email from a reader who found transforming Truth in the folds of our words... it often feels like midnight. The darkness hangs thick around us - rejection letters, working a regular job each day when all we want to do is write. Some days one simply cannot see how things could ever change. I remember feeling like fool for hoping for something so far out of reach. 

Here's the thing: 

Today could be your 5am. You could be one email away from your book contract. One sentence away from changing someone's eternal destiny. One word away from throwing a line of hope to someone with nothing left to hold onto.

So don't give up just because it looks like you'll never come out of the dark. 

Don't stop because it feels as if He has forgotten you.

Everything He promised, He will do.

He is faithful and perfect in his faithfulness.  

Dianne J. Wilson is a freelance writer and novelist from East London, South Africa. She is mom to three girls and wife to Scott, who, being the only male other than the St Bernard, is horribly outnumbered and has learnt to dodge flying hormones.

Her first 'official' novel, Finding Mia, releases from Pelican / Harbourlight in June 2015.

Website    Facebook    Blog    Twitter    Goodreads   

A note of encouragement

I’m wondering if there are any authors reading this blog who feel they could do with a little extra encouragement right now. Some of you might be riding high on a wave of writing success – perhaps you have a book due for release this year and other exciting speaking and writing opportunities happening. But perhaps some of you are still waiting for that elusive publishing contract or struggling to finish that work that is there in your head but just doesn’t seem to want to take shape on the page. Still others of you might have that publishing contract but are hard-pressed to know how best to promote your book and achieve better sales figures. There is no doubt that, alongside the joy and fulfilment of being an author, the challenges and frustrations abound.

Yes, we need encouragement – but I have found I often need to ask God to open my eyes and ears to see and hear it! It might be my strange personality, but sometimes I find myself so ready to hear the negative comments and allow the difficulties inherent in the whole writing journey to drag me down. I can even miss completely the encouraging word someone is trying to say to me by listening instead to that cynical voice in my head that says, ‘They can’t mean that! That can’t possibly be true about your writing!’ Do you, like me, need to choose to focus on God and receive his encouragement more often, both directly and through others?

I love reading God’s word each day. I keep reading until I believe I have found that particular message of challenge or encouragement or comfort God has for me at that point and I try to meditate on and interact with that word as my day unfolds. For example, recently I read the following words from Isaiah 51:16 that are particularly apt for those of us who speak and write:

I have put my words in your mouth and covered you with the shadow of my hand – I who set the heavens in place, who laid the foundations of the earth, and who say to Zion, ‘You are my people.’

As God’s people in 2011, how encouraging it is to know God will put his words in our mouths as we listen to him and that we can then allow them to flow out to others!

But I believe God also delights to use friends and family – even strangers – to bring unexpected snippets of encouragement our way. In one day recently, I received a phone call and two emails that had all the hallmarks of a loving, understanding God about them! First off, the phone call was from a ninety-seven year old lady I have met only once who had finished reading my third novel ‘Laura’ and, in her words, ‘just had to phone me’ and say how much she had enjoyed it. Then an email arrived from another lady I have met only once who had just read my first two novels, ‘Heléna’ and ‘All the Days of My Life’ straight through in a couple of days and couldn’t put them down. This email was followed soon after by one from a lady in New Zealand, who had gone to endless trouble to try to get hold of my second novel, having enjoyed my first so much, and finally was contacting me here in Australia to send it to her. I was touched by her keenness and perseverance and greatly encouraged yet again.

So as I write this, I am praying God will open your eyes and ears too to receive the encouragement you need for your journey. May 2011 be a year of great joy and fulfilment as you write what God has laid on your heart and gifted you to write!

Jo-Anne Berthelsen lives in Sydney, Australia, and has four published novels, ‘Heléna’, ‘All the Days of My Life’, ‘Laura’ and ‘Jenna’. For more information, please visit her website, http://www.jo-anneberthelsen.com/.