With Criminal Intent?

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Amy Lloyd, Good Housekeeping Novel Competition, Luigi Bonomi, Margaret Kirk, P D James, Penguin Random House, Red River, Sandra Parsons, Selina Walker, Shadow Man, Simon Kernick

Do you yearn to be the next P D James? If so, I understand that The Daily Mail First Novel Competition offers a previously unpublished crime writer a prize of £20,000 plus a publishing deal with Penguin Random House, one of the world’s most respected publishers.

Judges will be top crime writer Simon Kernick, leading literary agent Luigi Bonomi (who will represent the winner), top publisher Selina Walker (who will publish the winner) and Daily Mail literary editor Sandra Parsons (who, presumably, will provide publicity in her paper).

They’re asking for your first 5,000 words, a 600 word synopsis, and a covering letter about yourself. The deadline is May 5 and your entry needs to be POSTED, so give yourself extra time to visit the Post Office. The book, which must be for an adult readership, needs to be completed by November.

If you don’t read The Daily Mail and missed this do check the full terms online at dailymail.co.uk/crimenovel

This contest was launched last year and had more than 5,000 entries. The winner, Amy Lloyd‘s crime thriller Red River, has already been sold to publishers all over the world and film rights are currently being negotiated. It was published in January.

Ninevoices have two members working on crime novels, and a third whose short story about bodies buried on Tunbridge Wells Common was shortlisted in a magazine competition.

Competitions like this don’t come every day, especially ones that are FREE. In 2016 Scottish writer Margaret Kirk won the Good Housekeeping Novel Competition with her book Shadow Man and is now an established writer. The Good Housekeeping competition, incidentally, is open until the end of this month. See details in our post of February 9.

If you feel you’ve set yourself an impossible task with your writing, be encouraged by this, from Simon Kernick:

“It took 30 years, numerous unfinished projects, two unpublished novels and about 300 rejection letters before I finally got a publishing contract. Since then, I’ve written 15 crime thrillers, and I can honestly say I enjoy the process as much now as I did when I first began.”

Only thirty years and three hundred rejections? Why are we dithering?

 

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Read the Winning Entry in the Good Housekeeping 2016 Novel Competition

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Giovanna Iozzi, Good Housekeeping Novel Competition, Luigi Bonomi, Margaret Morton Kirk

I’ve just learned that the current edition of Good Housekeeping Magazine contains the opening of Margaret Morton Kirk‘s winning entry, Shadow Man, a gritty Scottish crime novel. Margaret has won a publishing contract with Orion worth £10,000 and will now be represented by Luigi Bonomi of LBA.

The first runner-up, who won an Acer Switch laptop, was Giovanna Iozzi, who impressed the judges with a domestic noir thriller, Black Worms.

Both books could well be gracing our bookshelves in the not-too-distant future and prove that entering competitions can make that all-important difference. If nothing else, they really help your productivity: pushing for the competition deadline had me churning out over a thousand words a day at one point, which wasn’t a bad consolation prize.

Well done to these two talented ladies, and to all those who made it onto the short list! Good Housekeeping Magazine is on sale now.

Get Your Novel Published!

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crime-thriller genre, Good Housekeeping Magazine, Luigi Bonomi, novel publishing opportunity, Orion Books, women's fiction genre

If, like me, you have the idea for a novel keeping you awake at night, Good Housekeeping currently have a competition you can’t afford to ignore.

Good Housekeeping, Orion Books and top agent Luigi Bonomi have teamed up to offer a writer who is unpublished and unagented the opportunity to see their novel in print. They are looking for entries in the crime/thriller and women’s fiction genres.

First prize is a book deal, a £10,000 advance, plus advice from Luigi Bonomi and the editorial team at Orion. In addition, ten shortlisted writers will be invited to spend a day in workshops with Luigi and Orion – and there are three Acer Switch 10E 2-in-2 tablet/laptops for the runners-up.

To enter, you need to send them a full synopsis of your story (no more than two A4 sheets), the first 5,000 words of the novel and a 100-word mini-biography, plus the entry form – which is available in the February issue.

I can find nothing about whether or not they expect the novel to be finished, either in draft or in a more polished form, but having a completed manuscript would do you no harm. Please study the small print, in case I have missed something about this.

The competition is now open, with a deadline of midnight on the 31st March.

My apologies for the exclamation mark – ninevoices have a habit of red pencilling such things – but in this instance I think I can get away with it…