"Dear Lucky Agent" Contest: Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Fiction

 They have another contest at Guide to Literary Agents! This one is for Urban Fantasy and Paranormal fiction for teens and adults. Follow the instructions below to enter.

HOW TO SUBMIT
E-mail entries to thirdagentcontest@gmail.com. Please paste everything. No attachments. (Also note that I do not check this account. Only the agent does. Looking back over old e-mails, some people have wrote to say hi to me, or perhaps ask a question. Contact me at literaryagent@fwmedia.com.)
WHAT TO SUBMIT
The first 150-200 words of your unpublished, book-length work of urban fantasy or paranormal romance (adult or YA - both accepted).
Joanna says: "Please keep it to these two subgenres specifically. While you can incorporate a variety of fantasy elements, they still have to fall under these two categories. For those of you who are unsure, keep in mind that both urban fantasy and paranormal romance have a strong base in a real world setting (like Jim Butcher's Dresden Files or J.R. Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood or Richelle Mead's Vampire Academy). So no stories that take place solely on another planet or world!"
You must include a contact e-mail address with your entry and use your real name. Also, submit the title of the work and a logline (one-sentence description of the work) with your entry.
Please note: To be eligible to submit, I ask that you do one of two things: 1) Mention and link to this contest twice through your social media - blogs, Twitter, Facebook; or 2) just mention this contest once and also add Guide to Literary Agents Blog (www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog) to your blogroll. Please provide link(s) so I can verify eligibility.
CONTEST DETAILS
      1. This contest will be live for approximately fifteen days - from Feb. 27, 2010 through the end of Sunday, March. 14, 2010 EST. Winners notified by e-mail within seven days of end of contest. Winners announced on the blog thereafter.
      2. To enter, submit the first 150-200 words of your book. Shorter or longer entries will not be considered. Keep it within word count range please.
      3. This contest is solely for completed book-length works of urban fantasy and paranormal romance (either adult or YA). To know more about what falls into these genres, look at the bold text above.
      4. You can submit as many times as you wish.
      5. The contest is open to everyone of all ages, save those employees, officers and directors of GLA's publisher, F+W Media.
      6. There are more rules (most of them dealing with legal stuff) that you can find in the comments section of this post.
      7. 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 the terms added by me at the beginning of the "Comments" section of this blog post.
PRIZES!!!
First place: 1) A critique of 20 pages of your work, by your agent judge. 2) A one-year subscription to WritersMarket.com.
Runner-ups - second and third place: 1) A critique of 10 pages of your work, by your agent judge. 2) A one-year subscription to WritersMarket.com.

Study, Study, Study

It has been two weeks since my last post. In that time we have lost a beloved family member (my father-in-law) and my course from the Graduate School has arrived. I have been working hard to get through it. I'm working on lesson 3 already. The first came back from my instructor with a decent grade and my second has already been sent to her. Luckily, I seem to know most of it after all, but there are details that I am absorbing.

I'm reading and editing four manuscripts for fellow writers at no cost. I hope to help them and add the experience to my repertoire. I have been told it is tough out there for freelance editors right now... but what else is new? I am hoping fervently that I will succeed anyway.

I am enjoying editing very much. :) I'm enjoying refreshing my memory on all the rules of grammar. How many people have you heard say that? I'll be ready to start accepting clients in a couple of months. Anyone out there writing a book? How about a website?

FTC Rules for Blogs

I recently read of a new rule set by the FTC for bloggers. If you write reviews or any copy about products, books or services, you have to reveal if you got something in return. Did you get paid? Did you get a review copy? Did you get a kickback when someone bought the product through an affiliate program linked to your site (like Amazon, for instance)?

I haven't been paid for writing reviews, but I have gotten some review copies of books. I also have a website with affiliate links to Amazon. I have to be sure and put a disclaimer on my sites that explain how I was compensated.

If you visit this link http://michaelhyatt.com/2010/01/five-ways-to-comply-with-the-new-ftc-guidelines-for-bloggers.html you can learn more about the ruling. Michael Hyatt also offers free usage of the disclaimer blurbs he has written.