Down Under Wonderings: NestPitch submission window is NOW OPEN

The submission window for NestPitch is NOW OPEN!

It will remain open for 24 hours, from noon on 1st April to 11.59am 2nd April (USA EST). That’s 24 hours from this post going live, folks.

There’s no cut off number for entries. Everyone who submits during the window will make it into the contest. All entries will receive an email receipt. If you don’t, check with Nik Vukoja on Twitter @nestpitch and/or @nik_vukoja

Send your entries to nestpitch @ outlook .com (no spaces)

For formatting instructions and rules check this post out (although an excerpt is contained below).

NestPitch is a contest where participants email their 35-word pitches together with the first 300 words of their finished manuscript (or 100 words for picture books).

The selected pitches will be featured on these blogs (show them all some follow love – you know, if you want to):

Then agents, identities hidden, will leave a request for pages, partials or fulls of the featured pitches.

Entries must be embedded within email (no attachments) with following:

Name: YOUR NAME
Title: TITLE OF MANUSCRIPT
Genre: Category/Genre of Manuscript (i.e. NA Romance)
Word Count: (round to the nearest 1000)
PITCH: 35-word (maximum) logline
Answer to this question in one sentence of no more than 15 words: If my Main Character were an Easter Egg, what flavour would he or she be and why?
First 300-words of your manuscript. If the 300th word falls in the middle of a sentence, go to the end of the sentence. For picture book submissions please only submit 100-words. If the 100th word falls in the middle of a sentence, go to the end of the sentence.

Please ensure:
(i) your manuscript has not been featured in another Pitch Competition in the past 12 months – that’s ANY pitch competition (not including twitter pitches such as #Pitmad), from the period April 1st 2013 to 31st March 2014 (if you have entered but not made final rounds then you are eligible to enter)
(ii) your manuscript IS NOT published. This INCLUDES self-published.

Our Slush Bilbies and Nest Bloggers will read through the pitches and pick the top 72 pitches for the agent round: April 17th – 18th

We’ll try to get a good mix of various genres, but the writing comes first. If the submissions aren’t ready, it’s in your best interests that we pass. The last thing anyone wants is your manuscript to be old and tired from “doing the rounds” before it’s ready.

Example Pitch:

Name: Sharon Johnston
Title: DIRTY RAINBOW
Genre: YA Science Fiction
Word Count: 55,000

PITCH: The mindless drone cyborgs used for manual labour since the extinction of males freak out Jenna McBride. But she should be afraid of the person who ordered their creation and hunting Jenna’s girlfriend—her mother.

Answer to this question in one sentence of no more than 15 words: If my Main Character were an Easter Egg, what flavour would he or she be and why?

Jenna would be a Darrell Lea Nougat Egg, because she has a lot of substance and there's much more to her than meets the eye.

First 300-words of your manuscript.

A three letter word shouldn’t sting this much, but it does.

“Imp,” hisses Kiri Robyns as she shoulders into me. I try to deflect her jibe as she glides past, but her insult lingers on me like the pain in my arm.

“What did you say to her?” My best friend, Hetty, screeches to a halt.

For a moment Kiri and her glued-to-the-hip-side-kick, Rosetta, freeze. Wet clumps of hair stick to their foreheads and their hands tighten around their towels. They must be coming back from the water hole.

“Just leave it,” I murmur, pulling Hetty towards the walking track that leads to the lookout.

The two of them laugh as they continue in the opposite direction, back towards New Canberra.

“Why don’t you stick up for yourself more? Or at least let me?” Hetty complains, as she does nearly every time some shallow person points out I’m an imperfect.

“Because it doesn’t matter,” I reply between puffs as we start on the sharp incline. “If people are going to judge me on the colour of my eyes then –”

“They’re not worth it.” Hetty finishes my sentence for me with the words she’s heard me parrot a thousand times or more. Her voice labours as well. “I seriously don’t understand it though. I’d think they would want to kiss your butt with your mum and all that.”

“Oh, is that why we’re friends?” I tease, knowing there’s no truth in it. “So you can suck up to the Australian Ambassador’s daughter?”

She sticks out her tongue then laughs. “You know what I mean, Jenna.”

I smile at her, and then groan as we hit the steps that lead to our destination. My whole lower body protests in pain at the halfway point. But it’s so worth it once we hit the top.