*** DEADLINE EXTENDED TO FEB. 11, 2025 FREE CONTEST FOR WRITERS! Welcome to the 2025 First Pages Contest. Contest #3 of this year is for writers of Adult Science Fiction & Fantasy (all types). If you write in this age category, keep reading and submit your work! This free contest ends on Feb. 11, 2025 [UPDATED, EXTENDED DEADLINE]. Here’s how it works: We invite awesome literary agents to judge the contest. The agents pick the genre(s) they want to judge. Writers in that genre are invited to send in their first page as part of the competition. Winners get a fabulous critique from your agent judge. It’s free to enter. Sound good? Then let’s get to some details and rules! (There are two other contests happening right now in January 2025 -- one for writers of young adult fiction and one for writers of romance /women's / historical.) DATES AND GENRE SPECIFICS: 2025 Contest #13 You have until Feb. 11, 2025 to submit to the contest. Feb. 11, 2025 [UPDATED, EXTENDED DEADLINE] This contest is only for writers of adult science fiction & fantasy (all kinds). The agent judge has three weeks from the contest’s end to judge all entries. Then we will inform the winners and post the names here on this blog post. PRIZES: The agent judge will pick three winners (in no particular order). All three winners are invited to send their first 5 double-spaced pages to the judge for a critique. If you've ever wanted to know what an agent is thinking when they read your submission, this critique is a great way to learn just that. OUR SOCIAL MEDIA REQUIREMENTS: Although the contest is free to enter, in order to be considered, you must fulfill our social media requirements. For every submission, you must spread word of this contest twice through social media — Twitter/X, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, or something comparable. In other words, you just have to share news of it online, twice, to spread the word. When you e-mail your submission, make sure you include some kind of way for us to understand you have followed these guidelines. If you have shared news on Facebook, include a link to your status. If you have shared news of it on BlueSky, you can take a screenshot or send us a link of that status update, etc. An easy way to notify us is to tag us. Here is my personal Facebook page to tag me. Or you can tag us on Twitter/X: @writingdaywksp Or you can tag us on Instagram: @writingdaywksp Find us on Blue Sky here. Find us on Threads here. If you use Twitter/X, put our handle at the middle or the end, not at the very beginning of the tweet, or else the tweet will be invisible to others. (Please note that simply tweeting me does not count. You have to include the contest URL with your mention; that’s the point.) If you want to share news of the contest on the same social media platform, try and spread your mentions out, because two mentions at the same time will not help spread the word. At least separate them by a day Here is text that can be copied and used: New FREE contest for writers of Adult Sci-Fi and Fantasy — https://tinyurl.com/2025wdwcon3 — Judged by agent Kesia Lupo, via @writingdayworkshops. Winners get an agent critique of their work. If you belong to a writing group that may be interested in this contest, feel free to tag them on social media by using their handle when tweeting the news. ![]() THE AGENT JUDGE: Kesia Lupo is a literary agent with Donald Maass Literary Agency. “I am actively building my list of primarily fiction writers. I have over ten years of experience in the publishing industry. In my last job, I was Senior Editor at UK children’s book publisher Chicken House, where I’d been working my way up from Junior Editor since 2015. Here, I acquired and edited children’s fiction for middle-grade and YA readers and worked with wonderful writers including Jasbinder Bilan, James Nicol and Emma Read (MG) and Ben Oliver, Molly Morris, Naomi Gibson and Mellissa Welliver (YA). I started my career as an assistant at Pan Macmillan London back in 2013, largely working for wonderful SFF/Horror imprint Tor – I loved the authors I worked with there who included Adrian Tchaikovsky, Adam Nevill and Genevieve Cogman. I’d love to return to my roots and represent adult genre fiction in SFF and Horror.” Here are some books she's represented and sold. Check them out! The Marriage Vendetta (a novel), by Caroline Madden. A darkly funny feminist debut about a resentful stay-at-home wife and her vindictive marriage therapist. Revenge is in session. Eliza Sheridan is at her wits' end with her husband, Richard. Not only did he uproot her and their daughter Mara's lives for his career, but he also hasn’t honored the one thing he promised before moving to Dublin: that he’d make more time for his wife and daughter. So when Eliza receives an anonymous photo of Richard with another woman, she's just about ready to file for divorce. As a last resort, she pays a visit to a marriage therapist, Ms. Early, who Eliza quickly learns is a bit…alternative in her approach. As their sessions unfold, Ms. Early spurs her on to commit a series of vengeful acts against Richard—each more bizarre than the last—all in the name of “re-training” her husband. But when therapy takes a risky turn, suspicions grow and alliances shift... How far is Eliza willing to go to save her marriage? Firstborn of the Sun, by Marvellous Michael Anson. Oru L'ore has a secret. She is the only one without agbára – the ability to harness power from the sun. On pain of death she must conceal it from everyone. Including her best friend, Alawani. But when the gods declare Alawani an Àlùfáà – a great honour where he will serve the gods and the Kingdom – he must be stripped of his power in a brutal trial likely to kill him. Unwilling to bear his death, L'ore vows to rescue him. When she desperately attempts to channel agbára an icy shadow magic instead pours from her hands; a power she learns originated from a forbidden, secret land beyond the six rings of Oru. One where she and Alawani must now seek sanctuary and discover a secret that could bring the Kingdom to its knees . . . SUBMIT TO CONTEST #3 OF 2025: Submit your manuscript’s first double-spaced page, via email, to [email protected] 300 words of manuscript text, maximum. Do not attach your page. Just copy and paste the page into the email submission. At the beginning of the email, before you paste your first page, this is what we need to know:
Self-published novels are not eligible for this contest. Unpublished (new) material only, please. You may submit more than one submission; however, you are encouraged to only submit your best work. FINAL NOTES: By e-mailing your entry, you are submitting an entry for consideration in this contest and thereby agreeing to the terms written here as well as any terms possibly added by me in the “Comments” section of this blog post. If you have questions or concerns, write me personally at chucksambuchino [at] gmail.com. The Gmail account above is for submissions, not questions. This contest buys no rights; so even if you win, you can still do whatever you like with the work. We do not acquire or own or publish anything. Good luck! Make sure you fulfill the submission requirements to be considered — i.e., do NOT skip the social media requirements. Attend a writers conference in 2025:
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