Blog Contest Featuring Literary Agent Joanna Stampfel-Volpe

Submissions are now open!

Contest: Can you sum up your book in one sentence?

Joanna Stampfel-Volpe of Nancy Coffey Literary will be judging your one line hook. That’s one sentence people. One period. Don’t compound yourselves to death. We’ve blogged about this (hooks, loglines, pitches, high-concept hooks) several times. Click on these links to read some examples.

Ms. Volpe is currently looking for a wide range of fiction from young adult, fantasy, science fiction, romance, thrillers, women’s fiction, middle grade, historical and commercial fiction as well as non-fiction in a few areas. Before submitting, please check out her profile on QueryTracker to make sure she represents your genre.

Please follow the guidelines below. If you don't, your entry will be deleted and we don't want this to happen to anyone!

The Finer Deets:

1. Your one line hook should be emailed to me, Elana Johnson. My email address is elanajohnson (at) querytracker (dot) net. Note the spelling of my name. The first vowel is an E. The second is not. Please don’t bombard me with repeat emails. I'm on Spring Break (finally!) today and will be sitting in front of the computer, anxiously awaiting your submission.

2. Please put "One Line Hook Submission" in the subject of your email.

3. With your submission, please include your real name and genre. Only completed manuscripts should be entered.

Like this:
Real Name:
Genre:
One line hook:


Things That Are Good to Know:

1. I will send you a quick “Got it.” email when I copy your entry for Ms. Volpe. Again, don’t send a repeat email. If you spell my name right, I'm going to get it.

2. The submission window will be open for 24 hours (until 9 AM Eastern time on Tuesday, April 14. ETA: the contest is now in the judging stage. Please don't send any more entries.). As of now, there is no limit to the number of entries, but watch the blog for updates.

3. Any entries longer than one sentence will be deleted without being sent to Ms. Volpe. Again, don’t compound yourselves to death.

4. You may only submit once, even if you have multiple projects. Go with your best one.

5. This is not an open critique. Your entry will not be published here on the blog for others to see. Only Ms. Volpe will be reading the entries and choosing the ones she likes (which then may be posted on the blog when the winners are announced. But no one will be shredding them).

6. The winners will be announced next Monday, April 20. Here's what Ms. Volpe has offered:
Grand Prize: Full submission of your manuscript
1st Place: 50-page submission
2nd Place: 30-page submission
3rd Place: 10-page submission


So what would we enter if we could?

Mary Lindsey: SOUL PURPOSE is a 68,000-word YA paranormal romance about a sixteen year-old reincarnated ghost hunter with past-life amnesia who is being pursued by a demon who wants her dead and a hot guy who just wants her.

Michelle McLean: Minuette Sinclair is a proper young Victorian lady who falls for the man of her parents' worst nightmares and becomes entangled in the search for a priceless necklace with a bloody past.

Elana Johnson: In a world where Thinkers control the population and Rules are not meant to be broken, fifteen-year-old Violet—who refuses to be brainwashed—does a hell of a job shattering them to pieces in her search for answers about her “dead” sister and not-so-missing father.

Carolyn Kaufman (Archetype): A man wants to eradicate magic from the world until he falls in love with a sorceress...and discovers he can use magic himself.

H.L. Dyer: Maybe if Beatrice knew someone faked her death as a child, she wouldn't be so desperate to remember the first decade of her life.

Suzette Saxton: Hallie knows the sounds coming from behind her bedroom wall aren’t cockroaches, but if she knew what was really back there, she might rethink her quest to uncover the truth in SECRET SISTERS, a contemporary coming of age MG mystery with a twist.

And...go!