2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award - Round Two

 The Boy Who Shot Santa makes it into Round Two of 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award! So glad I took another quick look at it just before sending it in.  That look took three days--the culmination of two frantic months of going through the novel six times, including a couple of all-nighters, revising it over and over, and also that pitch!  The first round judging was based purely on those 300 words!

Ok, 1000 novels from around the world made it through to Round Two, but 80% or 4000 didn’t!  8,000 novels if you include both categories (general fiction and young adult fiction).  

Here’s the final version of my pitch that made it through:

The Boy Who Shot Santa

What if your son accidentally shoots his dad dressed up as Santa Claus?

          Rachel Layton finds her fragile marriage shattered when her eleven-year-old son kills a burglar who turns out to be his drunken father in a Santa Claus suit.  The shooting sets off a chain-reaction of events that threatens to tear apart a small Pennsylvania town.

Cast as a villain and labeled trailer trash by the media, Rachel is determined to hold her family together, even as her son gets beaten up at school, her teenage daughter moves in with a low life twice her age, and an old boyfriend comes and goes. Tired of being on the defensive and utilizing the voice of reason, Rachel speaks out against hunters giving under-aged kids access to guns.  Despite threatening phone calls and a brick through her window, Rachel refuses to back off until Gordon’s Gunshop, located smack on Main Street, is shut down.

          While shopping at the mall for Christmas, Rachel overlooks one important detail.  Santa Claus.  To her dismay, her son Eric, still struggling from post-traumatic stress disorder, gets into line behind the other kids.  Sensing trouble, parents drag their kids, some kicking and screaming, out of the line.  Soon the whole town, it seems, is watching as Eric confronts Santa Claus.

Still trying to come to terms with her deceased husband and while holding onto one last chance for happiness, Rachel is all too aware that someone in the crowd is stalking her.  One thing is certain:  Christmas in Sharpton will never be the same.

            The Boy Who Shot Santa (97,700 words) is a short-list finalist for the 2009 Faulkner-Wisdom novel contest (as A Season for Fools), and the first book of a potential three-book series

And this is what’s in store for those of us who have made it this far:

Second Round (Feb. 24th): The field will be narrowed to 250 entries in each category (500 total entries) by Amazon top customer reviewers from ratings of a 5000 word excerpt.

Quarterfinals (March 22^nd): Publishers Weekly reviewers will read the full manuscript of each quarterfinalist, and based on their review scores, the top 50 in each category (100 total entries) will move on to the semi-finals.

Semi-finals (April 26^th): Penguin USA editors will read the full manuscript and review all accompanying data for each semi-finalist and will then select three finalists in each category (six total finalists).

Finals (May 24^th): Amazon customers will vote on the three finalists in each category resulting in two grand prize winners

Grand prize winners will be announced (June 13th)

And what am I doing now? Just finished revising all of the short stories for Lovers and Strangers Revisited for the French translation and in the midst of revising the first 50 pages of The Boy Who Shot Santa for the James Jones Fellowship Contest, deadline March 1^st.  Love those deadlines.  Though I'm wishing I could include the changes I'm making into what's being judged for Round Two!  

Wish me luck, and good luck to all the others in the Amazon contest who have made it this far. 

*Update: The Resurrection of Jonathan Brady just made Round Two 2012, so far (I included the pitch.)

**Update: The Resurrection of Jonathan Brady just advanced to the Quarterfinals of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award 2012!

*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

Wrriting Novels: Talent, Luck, and Discipline

I was leafing through my 2003 Novel and Short Story Writer's Market (which I'll be updating soon) and came across this quote from Michael Chabon:

"I like to say there are three things that are required for success as a writer: talent, luck, discipline. It can be in any combination, but there's nothing you can do to influence the first two. Discipline is the one element of those three things that you can control, and so that is the one that you have to focus on controlling. You just have to hope and trust in the other two."

This is so true and it gives those of us who may worry about our talent (am I good enough?) or question our luck (why is everyone against me!) Discipline also applies to many other areas. The discipline to write every day, to market your work, to remain focused on one task at a time. I wrestle with these on most days. It’s so easy while writing a novel to jump back and forth to other projects. For one, the novel takes so long and when you’re in the thick of it, you don’t see much progress, let alone an end in sight. Whereas an essay or a short story or even a blog post such as this, can be written fairly quickly. Finally, I finished something!

Many writers equate writing the novel to marriage, and short stories to the occasional fling or a one night stand. The temptation is always there (the grass is always greener on the other side…). But if you ever hope to succeed in completing, let alone selling your novel, it’s important to get back to the novel, if that is where your true heart lies, and not be tempted by all the other sideshows, too, whether it’s Facebook, twitter, blogs or email. All of these chew up your novel writing time.

Now and then, after you’ve locked in a couple of hours, you can reward yourself with a writing timeout to check all of the above. You’ve earned it. But keep it brief and then get back to your novel. If you don’t, you can kiss that sweet novel goodbye. Whatever urgency or excitement or enthusiasm you first had to get it going, will soon be gone. Out of sight, out of mind. Without that day in and day out discipline, your novel will never get written (and rewritten), let alone published and in the bookstores.

It also takes discipline to find that perfect balance for writing, for family and friends, and for living. Don’t play the martyr. Get your novel written but get a life, too!

*Update: I managed to turn that discipline into some luck, too. The Resurrection of Jonathan Brady just advanced to the Quarterfinals of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award 2012!  It was all those rewrites in 2010, 2011, and 2012 that got me there.

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