Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Quarterfinals 2012—The Resurrection of Jonathan Brady!

The Resurrection of Jonathan Brady beat out 95% of the competition to make it through to the Quarterfinals of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award 2012!

While Round One (5000 entries) was based solely on the 300-word pitch,  Round Two was judged by Amazon top customer reviewers from ratings of a 5,000 word excerpt, about 16 pages.   

For the Quarterfinals, Publishers Weekly reviewers will read the full manuscript of each quarter finalist (250), and based on their review scores, the top 50 in each category (General Fiction and Young Adults Fiction) will move on to the semifinals, to be announced on 24 April.   

That’s when Penguin USA editors will read the full manuscript and review all accompanying data for each semifinalist and will then select three finalists in each category.  The Amazon customers will then vote on the three finalists resulting in the grand prize winner (one for each category) being offered a $15,000 publishing contract with Penguin USA and distribution of your novel on Amazon.com.

In 2010, an earlier version of The Resurrection of Jonathan Brady made it to Round Two (another novel made it in 2011). Then last year, after a major overhaul of the novel, and changing the title from The Lonely Affair of Jonathan Brady to The Resurrection of Jonathan Brady, it was shortlisted for 2011 Faulkner-Wisdom Award.  I knew I was on the right track, so I revised the novel last July/August 2011 and again January/February 2012 for this year’s competition.

So with 95% of the competition down, there’s 5% more to go (the best of the best)!  To reach the semi-finals, the odds are one out of five.  I like those odds.  At this point, all the hard work has been done, and for the rest of us left in the competition, all we can do is keep our fingers crossed and wait.   

For me, I’ll be spending that time advancing another novel, The Girl in the Bathtub, which was a shortlisted for the 2011 Faulkner-Wisdom Award for Novel-in-Progress, a follow up to my Penang novel, A Perfect Day for an Expat Exit, a semi-finalist in the 2011 Faulkner-Wisdom.

I’m getting closer to breaking out, and with Lovers and Strangers Revisited already translated into French, who knows what’s in store for this 2012 Leap Year.  All the best!

         —Borneo Expat Writer

*Here are six lessons I learned from joining Amazon competition.

Here are links to some of my author-to-author interviews of first novelists:

Ivy Ngeow author of Cry of the Flying Rhino, winner of the 2016 Proverse Prize.

Golda Mowe author of Iban Dream and Iban Journey.

Preeta Samarasan author of Evening is the Whole Day. 

Chuah Guat Eng,  author of Echoes of Silence and Days of Change. 

Plus:

Five part Maugham and Me series

Beheaded on Road to Nationhood: Sarawak Reclaimed—Part I