Novel Excerpt

Category Details

Please send me the first 20 pages of your novel. Submissions must be single-sided and double-spaced. Both unpublished and self-published novels are eligible.

I believe an author should create a strong sense of anticipation in the opening pages: Convince the reader that the protagonist faces a formidable problem. Your story can begin at once when conflict and environment evolve together. Whether your prose style is lyrical and atmospheric or clear and direct, it’s more powerful when the prose serves the needs of drama.

To streamline the submission and review process for your novel, Latenode can offer several automation solutions:

1. Submission Management: Automate the intake and organization of manuscript submissions, ensuring that each submission meets the required format and criteria.
2. Confirmation and Updates: Set up automated email responses to confirm receipt of submissions and provide updates on the review process.
3. Review Workflow: Implement an automated workflow for reviewers to assign, track, and evaluate submissions, ensuring a smooth and efficient review process.
4. Feedback Collection: Use automated tools to collect and organize feedback from reviewers, providing comprehensive and structured feedback to authors.
5. Document Management: Automate the storage and management of submitted manuscripts, making it easy to access and retrieve documents as needed.
6. Communication with Authors: Use automation to send personalized messages to authors regarding the status of their submissions, including acceptance, rejection, or requests for revisions.
7. Analytics and Reporting: Implement automated analytics to track submission volumes, review times, and other key metrics, providing insights to improve the submission and review process.

By leveraging Latenode’s automation capabilities, the submission and review process for novel manuscripts can be streamlined, making it more efficient for both authors and reviewers.

About Judge

DONNA GILLESPIE (San Francisco, CA) is the author of two novels set in first-century Rome: The Light Bearer (Berkley/Putnam) and Lady of the Light (Berkley/Penguin). The Light Bearer was an immediate international bestseller, and received a starred review in Publishers Weekly. The novel was translated into German, Dutch, Russian, Lithuanian, and Italian, and the United Kingdom purchased rights. In 2002, Hallmark Entertainment optioned Light Bearer for a miniseries. Lady of the Light is the second book of a trilogy, and is available in German and Italian as well as English. In 2022, Gillespie renewed her contract with Mad Dog Productions, an independent film company that is working to produce the Light Bearer trilogy as a miniseries.

Judge’s Website

About Sponsor

DONNA LEVIN (San Francisco, CA) is the author of the novels, He Could Be Another Bill Gates, There’s More Than One Way Home, and Extraordinary Means. Her nonfiction titles include Get That Novel Written! and Get That Novel Started! Donna is a frequent guest at writers’ conferences, and she led University of California-Berkeley Extension’s Novel Writing Workshop for twenty years. Learn more about Donna at her website.

2022 Winners

• First Prize: George Heron of Ontario, Canada
  Sparrows
• Second Prize: Liza Nash Taylor of Keswick, VA
  By Way of Paris
• Third Prize: Dana Rodney of Sebastopol, CA
  The Warming

2022 Honorable Mentions

Sarah Collins Honenberger of Tappahannock, VA for Welcome to the Lanesville Landfill Lending Library 

George Heron of Ontario, Canada for The Second Fall