July Competition Monthly!

Welcome to another great competition round-up from Francesca!

There's a bumper crop of competitions this month as the blogs having a holiday over August.

Five competitions were disregarded due to the stipulation that simply entering gave the company permission to publish the piece, with no guarantee of payment.

Unless there is some other, good advantage to entering, this is definitely not on. As far as I can tell,

the ones I've included don't have this clause, but it's always worth sifting through the rules to make sure.

You'll notice the entry fees vary enormously from £3 to £25. This usually reflects the prize money available. The prize money, in turn, might indicate how many people will enter the competition. Sometimes it's better to enter those with less prize money knowing there may be fewer entrants.

This month an article competition has been included. This should be right up all our streets, as it asks us to relate our 'writing day'. For some of us that might be 'night'. For many writers, one day is never the same as the next, but at least that should make the entries varied.

I'm sure there are those of you who like to dabble in poetry from time to time (I know I do!), so those comps that also have a poetry section have been highlighted.

See you again in September for the next round of comps. Have a good summer.

Happy comping everyone, and don't forget to let us know of any competition success you have.

**Reminder**
Mslexia Women's novel competition
Theme: Fiction for adults or YA, at least 50K. Send 5,000 word extract.
Prize: £5,000
Closing date: 18 September 2017
Entry: £25
Details 

The Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize
Theme: Open, 6,000 words max.
Prize: £1,000 or 12 months editorial support / 3 x shortlisted each £150 / 10 x longlisted £50 book vouchers.
Closing date: 27 August 2017
Entry: £10
Details 

The Willesden Herald New Short Stories Competition
Theme: Open, 7,500 words max.
Prize: £300 / £200 / 8 x £75. All published in anthology.
Closing date: 31 August 2017
Entry: £7.50
Details

The Exeter Flash Fiction Competition
Theme: Open, 250 words max
Prize: £100 / £50
Closing date: 31 August 2017
Entry: £4
Details 

The Scribble Article Competition
Theme: 'My Writing Day', 1,000 – 1,500 words.
Prize: £50 / £25 / £15
Closing date: 31 August 2017
Entry: £3
Details

Hammond House Short Story Competition
Theme: 'Eternal', 2,000 – 7,000 words. (Also poetry)
Prize: £600 / £100 / £50
Competition deadline: 31 August 2017
Entry: £10
Details

Aesthetica Creative Writing Award
Theme: Open. 2,000 words max. (Also poetry)
Prize: £1,000 and consultation with Redhammer Management
Closing date: 31 August 2107
Entry: £18
Details

Articium Short Story Competition
Theme: Open, 4,000 words max. (Also poetry)
Prize: £350 / £75 / £50 plus puplication
Closing date: 31 August 2017
Entry: £5
Details

Mags4Dorset 9th Short Story Competition
Theme: Using one of three photographs provided. 1,000 words max.
Prize: £150 / £25
Closing date: 31 August 2017
Entry: £4
Details 

Ely City Short Story Competition
Theme: 'Courage', 1,500 words max.
Prize: £50
Closing date: 21 September 2017
Entry: £5
Details

Erewash Writers' Short Story Competition
Theme: Open, 2,500 words max.
Prize: £100 / £60 / £25 / £15
Closing date: 21 September 2017
Entry: £3
Details

Kosta's Olive Tree Competition
Theme: 'Someone who stands up for what they believe in', 1,200 – 1,500 words.
Prize: £70 / 2 x £30
Closing date: 22 September 2017
Entry: £4 (All profits to charity)
Details 

London Short Story Prize (for writers with a London postcode)
Theme: Open, 5,000 words max.
Prize: £1,000 / highly commended and shortlisted entries will be paid for publication.
Closing date: Midday 9 October 2017
Entry: £6
Details 


About Francesca:

Francesca Capaldi Burgess has been placed or shortlisted in twenty student competitions and a dozen national ones including Winchester Writers' Conference, Retreat West, Meridian Writing, Frome, Twyford Writers, Flash a Famous Phrase, Wells Festival and Writing Magazine. She's had stories and a serial published in magazines worldwide and in three anthologies, including Diamonds and Pearls and 100 Stories for Haiti. She is a member of the RNA New Writers' Scheme and the Society for Women Writers and Journalists. Francesca runs a writing blog along with RNA member Elaine Roberts called Write Minds.

Francesca's Twitter

Thanks, Fran! Good luck to everyone and if you would like to write for the RNA Blog, then please contact us at elaineeverest@aol.com

This blog was prepared by blog team member, Louisa Heaton.

Helena Fairfax: Why Hotels Make a Wonderful Setting for Writers

Helena Fairfax is known to followers of the RNA blog for her interviews with literary agents. It's a great pleasure to welcome Helena to this side of the desk to talk about her novel Felicity at the Cross Hotel, which is released today.

Happy publication day, Helena, and welcome to the spotlight!

Thank you! I'll just pull up my chair...!

Hotels make a wonderful setting for writers. When I was a student I worked for several months as a barmaid in a hotel in the Bavarian Alps. I was trying to improve my German, and I did improve it…kind of! I came home knowing how to swear in dialect, knowing the Bavarian for a white wine spritz (ein Weissweinschorle, if you're ever in the Alps and urgently in need of one), and with an accent that the rest of Germany found side-splittingly funny. And because of the working environment, I also made close friendships with people I would never have met otherwise.

Hotels make a great setting for books because they bring together such a wide range of people. Everyone in a hotel has a story to tell and no matter what their background they are all forced to interact with one another - from the barmaid like me to the billionaire who drinks champagne for breakfast and leaves enormous tips in dollars.

View from my room in Bavaria

The hotel I worked in was in a remote spot right at the top of a mountain, but even in the heart of London the staff of a hotel can feel cut off from the rest of the world, especially if they live in. This feeling of isolation has provided the perfect creepy setting for some brilliant books like The Shining, or Pyscho, or Jamaica Inn. Being temporarily thrown together with someone else, in an idyllic setting far from others, can also make deep relationships grow quickly and provide the perfect setting for romance to flourish.

The Lake District (photo courtesy of Pixabay)

The hotel in my novel Felicity at the Cross Hotel bears a strong resemblance to my own hotel in the Alps. They are both on a mountain, in a romantic setting, and full of unlikely people thrown together. I even based my fictional head waiter – Johnny – on an Italian waiter in my hotel called Gionni. Gionni was desperately in love with one of the chambermaids. Sadly, his love was unrequited, and he would pour his heart out at great length to me as I poured out the Weinschorles and frothy beers during the evening shift. My fictional Johnny suffers in a similar way, and my heroine Felicity goes to great lengths to try and help him.

The friends I made in my Bavarian hotel are still really close friends today, many years later. Felicity at the Cross Hotel is about love and friendship, and feel good romance.

Blurb:

A quaint hotel in the Lake District. The Cross Hotel is the perfect getaway. Or is it?

Felicity Everdene needs a break from the family business. Driving through the Lake District to the Cross Hotel, past the shining lake and the mountains, everything seems perfect. But Felicity soon discovers all is not well at the Cross Hotel …
Patrick Cross left the village of Emmside years ago never intending to return, but his father has left him the family’s hotel in his will, and now he's forced to come back. With a missing barmaid, a grumpy chef, and the hotel losing money, the arrival of Felicity Everdene from the notorious Everdene family only adds to Patrick’s troubles.
With so much to overcome, can Felicity and Patrick bring happiness to the Cross Hotel … and find happiness for themselves?

Author Biography:

Helena Fairfax was born in Uganda and came to England as a child. She's grown used to the cold now which is just as well, since these days she lives in an old Victorian mill town in the north of England, right next door to the windswept Yorkshire moors. Helena walks this romantic landscape every day with her rescue dog, finding it the perfect place to dream up her heroes and her happy endings. Subscribers to Helena's newsletter receive news of free stuff, competitions with prizes, gossip, and links to cool websites she's been looking at when she should have been writing.

Helena's Website

Felicity at the Cross Hotel is released today - hooray! - and available here on Amazon 

Thank you for letting me sit on this side of the RNA blog's desk!

*

Thanks for dropping in, Helena, and many congratulations on release. We can't wait to meet the characters in the Cross Hotel!

If you would like to write for the RNA blog please contact us on elaineeverest@aol.com

Ellie Holmes: Writers Rock!

Welcome to Ellie Holmes who writes for the blog on living up to the ideals of being a writer.

I recently had the good fortune to visit the Winchester Literary Festival.  The keynote speaker was the

charismatic and energetic performance poet Lemn Sissay.  If any of you are unfamiliar with this powerhouse of a talent do check him out on social media or better yet in performance – I promise that you will not be disappointed.

Lemn touched on many themes during his inspirational speech one of those being how hard it is to be a writer.  As he put it: ‘There are not many areas of life where you sit down to do your job and are faced with the prospect that you may be crap every day’. 

I know I am not alone in finding it a constant struggle to live up to the ideal of all that I hope to achieve with my work, to capture that perfect idea and wrestle it on to a page or to hit a self-imposed word count on a day when the words are harder to pin down than jelly to a ceiling.

So often we get caught up in the push and pull of deadlines, the demands of our work in progress, the desire to post, tweet, pin, blog and vlog our way to that elusive sunlit upland called success that we lose sight of who we are and why we started down this road in the first place.

It’s a tough gig this writing lark. The fact that we turn up and keep going, often in the face of adversity, is something we, as writers, do not give ourselves enough credit for, I think. 

Writers must have the soul of a poet, the hide of a rhinoceros and, above all, the heart of a lion.

The wounds inflicted by disappointment, rejection or broken hearts are subsumed into our writing psyche to feed the well as much as the joy, excitement and fun we experience. We then take that pain and re-live it, using it to inform our characters and plumb the emotional depths needed to reach out and touch others.

That is the reality of life as a writer and yet we still find the courage to sit down and do it anyway,

facing the fear, doubt and pain and working our way through it. Go, us!

As Lemn says, ‘Writers rock!’ and he’s right, we do!

About Ellie:

Ellie Holmes writes commercial women’s fiction with her heart in the town and her soul in the country. A member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Alliance of Independent Authors, Ellie’s latest book, White Lies is out now.

Link to Amazon

Thank you, Ellie and good luck with White Lies!

Would you like to write for the RNA blog? Contact us on elaineeverest@aol.com

Ask the Industry Expert: Literary Agent Diana Beaumont

It's a great pleasure to welcome literary agent Diana Beaumont to the RNA blog today. Diana joined Marjacq Scripts in 2017.  She started agenting with Rupert Heath Literary Agency in 2011 before moving to UTA. Before that she was senior commissioning editor at Transworld. Diana was chosen as one of The Bookseller’s Rising Stars of 2012.

Diana is chatting with Helena Fairfax. Welcome, both!

Hello, Diana! Please tell us a little about the Marjacq Scripts, how long it’s been established, and how you came to join?

Marjacq Scripts was founded in 1974 and is a full service boutique literary agency. There are five agents plus our MD and we all specialise in different areas, although there is some overlap which is incredibly helpful. We work in a very collaborative way and it’s an exciting time to be part of the team as we have expanded significantly in recent years. I joined this year. I have known Phil Patterson – who heads up the book department as far as there is a formal hierarchy – since I was a commissioning editor at Transworld. I like and respect him very much and the same applies to my colleagues, so it seemed like a good fit.

What genres do you represent?

Women’s commercial fiction (although it does annoy me that we have to specify this!), reading group fiction, crime, thrillers and cover memoir, cookery and lifestyle when it comes to non-fiction. As an agency we also cover literary fiction and non-fiction, genre and speculative fiction, true crime, children’s and YA.

What is it you are looking for when a manuscript lands on your desk? Are there any specific plots or themes you’d like to see?

I think the voice always has to resonate with you but the combination of a strong hook and plot is a winner for me. I get incredibly excited when it all comes together in that way. I am interested in motherhood, looking to take on more diverse voices and am drawn towards strong female/feminist central characters, but also like to keep an open mind.

Have you noticed any particular trends in romance in the past year or so, and if so, what do you think publishers are looking for at the moment?

There have been a number of novels coming out that would appeal to fans of Jojo Moyes – they cover dark subjects with a light touch so that humour sits alongside the sadness. They play on the emotions so that you laugh and cry. I am looking forward to seeing How to be Happy, by Eva Woods, launch in February 2018 from Little,Brown which is perfect for that audience. I can’t wait, either, for the paperback publication of Hot Mess, by Lucy Vine, from Orion which subverts the traditional rom com and reassesses attitudes to being single amongst millennials in a hilarious way and is, I hope, ahead of the curve, as well as providing a much needed laugh. Look Magazine said it was even better than Bridget Jones!  There seems to be an interest in what could have been: from Kate Atkinson to Kate Eberlen’s Miss You and Laura Barnett’s The Versions of Us. Publishers are also keen on upmarket sagas with family secrets or an element of mystery at the moment and the line between romantic fiction and psychological suspense is sometimes blurred, as the latter has been so successful of late. I wonder also whether there will also be a desire for pure escapist fun in such uncertain times.

Do you ever find authors outside the slush pile? If so, how?

Yes. Sometimes clients are kind enough to recommend others but I have also taken on a crime writer, Roz Watkins, who I met at The Festival of Writing in York. When it comes to non-fiction I have approached people direct.

What advice would you give someone submitting to you?

Take a look at my list and see if it fits, broadly, with the other books I represent. Follow the submission guidelines. Put lots of effort into your cover letter and make sure that the title, elevator pitch, further information about the book and author biography are as strong as possible – we get hundreds of submissions, so a good letter really makes a difference. It is also important to have a sense of where your book fits into the market. We don’t expect you to be experts but to show professionalism and savvy – it is both a business and creative relationship after all. It’s always worth looking round bookshops and reading as much as you can. Spell my name correctly. And, finally, make sure you’ve finished the book and that it is as polished as it can be.

What’s your favourite romance novel of all time?

I have an abiding love for The Pursuit of Love, by Nancy Mitford, but must also throw in Jane Eyre and Rebecca for good measure.

What do you like to do in your spare time?

I wish I indulged in wildly imaginative pastimes like flamenco, potholing or skydiving but I most enjoy eating, reading, bathing, films, theatre and the company of good friends.

If you could describe your working-day in just three words, what would they be?

Never the same.

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer our questions, Diana. We love your list of spare time activities!

If you've enjoyed Diana's interview, or have any questions or comments at all, please let us know. We'd love to hear from you!

About Helena

Helena Fairfax is a romance author and editor. Her latest release is a feel good summer romance called Felicity at the Cross Hotel. You can find out more about Helena's books and her editing services on her website www.helenafairfax.com

If you would like to write for the RNA blog please contact us on elaineeverest@aol.com

Catherine Garbera: Tips and tricks for acing your editor/agent appointment.

Do you have an appointment to speak with an Industry Professionals at the RNA conference? Perhaps you are attending a writing festival and may just bump into an agent or publisher? We welcome Katherine  Garbera to the blog today to show us how to perfect our pitch.

If you don’t have a scheduled pitch appointment learning to speak concisely about your book is still

useful when anyone asks you what you are working on.

Since you only have a limited amount of time think of your story in terms of the high concept and boil it down to one sentence that gives the flavor of what you are writing.

Here are my tips:

1.     Give us a high concept, one sentence blurb about your story.  Leave out the character names unless they are important most of the time editors don’t remember the name.

2.     Tell us who your characters using a few words and tags that create an image.

3.     The story elements, start with the beginning.  Where does your story start?

4.     Then break down the conflict and your plot using goal, motivation and conflict.

5.     Tell us how the plot moves forward in a sentence or two.

6.     Then describe the black moment—again using only a sentence or two.

7.     Finally tell us how the black moment is resolved.

Example from my upcoming Mills & Boon release The Tycoon’s Fiancée Deal:

High Concept, Blurb

A modern retelling of a friends-to-lovers story where the hero has to marry to keep his lecherous boss at bay.

Who is the story about?

Remember not their names because unless your hero is Mr. Darcy, the name is probably not relevant to the editor/agent you are pitching too.

Hero: Bachelor heart surgeon who is good at fixing hearts but not so good at love.

Heroine: Single mom who had the fairytale and isn’t interested in romance.

Where does the story begin?

And it’s okay to say the story opens with or they meet when.

They meet when she is dumping her blind date and he realizes he needs to find a way to convince the hospital board that he’s settled and ready to be chief of surgery.

He needs a fiancée to convince everyone he’s not the arrogant playboy many assume him to be and she wants to stop going on blind-dates but can’t say no to her meddling mother.  He makes her an offer that she should refuse, be his fake fiancée for three months until he gets his promotion.

Goal, Motivation, Conflict

Next talk about the conflict (in genre fiction conflict is the engine that drives your story). You need to do this twice, once for the internal plot and once for the external. 

Goal: What does the character want?

Motivation: Why does the character want it?

Conflict? Why can’t they have it?

External conflict

Hero:

He wants to be chief of surgery at the hospital.

His life is medicine and he knows he can do a great job as chief if he’s just given the chance.

He can’t have it because the head of the selection committee is one of his ex-girlfriends who doesn’t want to admit things are over between them. 

Heroine:

She wants to raise her son and move on from the fall out of her “fairytale” marriage.

She lost pieces of herself when her deceased husband cheated on her and convinced her it was because of who she had become.

She can’t move on because her family are determined she needs a husband to help raise her son.

Both of these characters see their arrangement as a way of getting what they want.  So on the surface the solution of a fake engagement is perfect. But the internal conflict is what is feeding the fire of the story.

Internal conflict:

Hero:

He has always had a crush on her from the time they were teenagers, but she friend zoned him and he let her because he was determined to be the best surgeon he could be.

He has convinced himself that friends are all they will ever be and that by asking her to be his fake fiancée they will continue their friendship.

He learns he’s completely wrong when they share a kiss to seal the deal and sparks of attraction fly between them.

Heroine:

She’s tired of men promising her the moon and delivering nothing.  She likes him because he’s honest about what he wants from her and she tells herself she expects nothing from him.  But he shows her in little ways that who she is matters and the passion between them drives her into his arms but it’s the affection that she sees him showing her and her son that make her start to fall for him.

How does the plot move forward?

They commit to be honest with each other since they are lying to the world and once they become lovers both of them come to realize that they might want this to last.

Black Moment and Resolution

But having been hurt once before by her lover, she is reluctant to trust her heart.  He convinces her that he is trustworthy and is in love with her.

Putting it all together.

The Tycoon’s Fiancée Deal is a fresh take on the friends-to-lovers trope where a playboy, heart surgeon who is good at fixing hearts but not so good at love falls for a single mom who had the fairytale and isn’t interested in romance.

They meet when she is dumping her blind date. He needs a fiancée to convince everyone he’s not the arrogant playboy many assume him to be and she wants to stop going on blind-dates but can’t say no to her meddling mother.  He makes her an offer that she should refuse, be his fake fiancée for three months until he gets his promotion.

He has always had a crush on her from the time they were teenagers, but she friend zoned him and he let her because he was determined to be the best surgeon he could be. He convinced himself that friends are all they will ever be, but learns he’s completely wrong when they share a kiss to seal the deal and sparks of attraction fly between them.

She’s tired of men promising her the moon and not delivering.  He’s honest about what he wants from her and she tells herself she expects nothing from him.  But he shows her in little ways that who she is matters and the passion between them drives her into his arms but it’s the affection that she sees him showing her and her son that make her start to fall for him.

They commit to be honest with each other since they are lying to the world and once they become lovers both of them come to realize that they might want this to last.  But having been hurt once before by her lover, she is reluctant to trust her heart.  He convinces her that he is trustworthy and is in love with her.

About Katherine:

Katherine Garbera is the USA Today bestselling author of more than 90 novels. She has learned to stop saying this sounds crazy but trust me on the page it makes sense when pitching her ideas to editors.  J Her current release is SUMMER IN MANHATTAN from HarperImpluse. 

Links:

Amazon UK

 Facebook

 Twitter

 Blog

Thank you, Katherine. We should all now be prepared for the moment we meet an Industry Professional!

If you would like to write for the RNA blog please contact us on elaineeverest@aol.com