Romance Junkies

The annual Romance Junkies writing contest has begun!

In this contest, writers submit the first chapter of a novel and each week a handful of entries are posted on the RJ website. Anybody can read the entries and vote on them, and even send comments to the author to let them know what they thought of their work! The top 18 finalists get a critique by one of the author panellists, while the top three will be read by Kara Cesare of the Penguin group (Signet/NAL/Eclipse). Kara Cesare will pick a Grand Prize Winner, who will receive an AlphaSmart 3000, but more importantly, I think, the chance of having a top editor read their work! There is still time to enter if you'd like to have a go.

Romance Junkies have issued a few rules for entrants concerning the publicizing of entry appearances. In previous years, apparently, some people announced that their entry was up and their friends then rushed over to the site to cast top votes for it. This was all very nice, but it meant that sometimes a more popular author would inch up the chart simply because lots of their friends voted for them, and not because passing readers were genuinely voting on the quality of the entry.

Therefore, I will say that I *have* entered the Romance Junkies contest, but under a pseudonym and with a false title. I'm not sure that I can even specify the week in which my entry will appear, so instead I'll post a quick reminder for you to check out the entries each week.

You can check out the first selection of entries here.

Good luck everybody!