Into the Fire

This from Brandilyn Collins’ blog:

Zondervan Fiction Writers Contest

Announced at the Christy banquet on Saturday night: Zondervan is sponsoring a contest for unpublished novelists. Full guidelines will soon be posted on the Z website. When they are, I’ll let you know. For now, here are the basics.

Unpubbed fiction authors, start getting your manuscripts ready now. There will be three rounds of judging for the contest. In the first round each author will submit a proposal for a novel. These will be judged and winnowed down. Those who make it through the first round will be asked to submit the complete manuscript. These will go through a second round of judging and be narrowed down to finalists. (Not sure how many–the guidelines will say.) The finalists will be judged by selected Zondervan authors to determine the winner.

The winner will be announced at next year’s Mt. Hermon Writer’s Conference, held over Palm Sunday weekend. Winning prize: publication of the novel by Zondervan.

Start polishing those wips!

. . .

If it can be arranged, Center Street, Hachette Book Group USA Inc., will be offering two free copies of James Scott Bell’s newest novels, Try Dying and Try Darkness, right here on Into the Fire coinciding with my CFBA review of Jim’s latest Try Darkness which will be posted here on Monday the 21st of July, 2008.
Details for my contest to win these two books will be presented on Friday and entries will be taken on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Winners will be announced late on Wednesday, July 23rd. If I need a tie-breaker, it will be posted on Wednesday.

A sidenote to these books: I’m less than 20 pages away from finishing Try Darkness, not having read Try Dying yet but plan to. I hope those who enter this contest plan on reading these novels themselves because Jim outdoes himself with these stories. It isn’t so much “just” the protagonist or “just” the story–it’s the total experience of the novel. So, please, if you enter, determine to spend time with these books. You won’t be disappointed.

*Please continue to pray for Kristy Dykes and her family.*