This rather wonderful, FREE, competition gives you until 30 March to enter the first 5,000 words of your unpublished novel (in the women’s fiction genre), a 100 word mini biography of yourself, and a full synopsis (no more than two sheets of A4 paper).
The prize is a book deal with Orion Publishing and a £6,000 advance.
You also need an original copy of the entry form, from January Good Housekeeping. While this edition is no longer available in the shops, you probably know someone who still has a copy – or might even be able to scrounge the entry form from a copy in your doctor’s surgery or hairdresser’s (please ask permission first!)
The winner of their last competition, Margaret Kirk, whose entry, Shadow Man, set in atmospheric Inverness, currently sits on our own bookshelves, wrote this page-turning whodunnit ‘on a chair in the living room with the cat on my knee’. I have the chair; I have the cat; what’s stopping me?
Unusually the competition asks for a hard copy to be sent to Orion Books, so give yourself enough time to interact with your printer. I’m actually looking forward to the nostalgia of queuing up at the Post Office with my brown envelope…
Good luck!
