Nightmare on Query Street Submission Time!

The submission window opens at 4:00 pm (EST) on October 13th. Don’t send too soon or your entry will be deleted. You may resend when the window opens. There will be email confirmation. After the window opens, please don’t resend an entry unless you check with us. Sometimes the confirmation process gets overwhelmed. The window will close when we receive 250 entries or in two hours, whichever is first.

Michelle and Mike and Laura will make thirteen picks each, and those picks will go up on our blogs on October 31. Before this, there will be a mentor round to whip that entry into shape. We’ve already got amazing mentors lined up, so know that your entries will be polished for the agents.

We are accepting all age categories and genres, excluding picture books and erotica. The story does not have to be scary. But be sure to check our list of agents when it goes live to see if they represent your book’s genre.

If you plan on participating in the contest, you have to be following all our blogs (Michelle, Mike, Laura). If you can’t get the blog follow to work, just follow on twitter. You’ll want to be on twitter for the party anyway.

Send your submission to nightmareonquerystreet (at) yahoo (dot) com. Only one submission per email address AND person is allowed.

Here’s how it should be formatted (yes, include the bolded and everything!). Please use Times New Roman (or equivalent), 12 pt font, and put spaces between paragraphs. No indents or tabs – they mess up our formatting.

Subject Line: NoQS: TITLE, Age Category + Genre
(example: NoQS: GRUDGING, Adult Epic Fantasy)

INSIDE THE EMAIL:

Name: Laura Heffernan

Twitter Handle: @LH_Writes

Title:AMERICA’S NEXT REALITY STAR
Genre:Adult Romantic Comedy (Age category and genre. YA/MG is not a genre. Note #ownvoices here.)
Word Count:XX,XXX

My MC and MA (main antagonist) are dressed as:

Jen’s dressed as a great pun, something like Ruth Vader Ginsburg, the Supreme Court justice with a light saber. She’ll make the entire thing herself. Ariana’s looking to get noticed, so she’ll dress to impress: Sexy Supreme Court justice, anyone?

Query:

Here is my fantastic query! DO NOT INCLUDE BIO OR COMPS PARAGRAPH. Try to stay in the 250-300 word range. Please put spaces between paragraphs and don’t indent.

Please remember this is a query letter andNOT a pitch. Don’t send pitches.
First 250 words:

Here are the first 250 words of my manuscript, and I will not end in the middle of a sentence, even if I hit 255 words. Do not abuse and send 256. Keep it fair for all. Use Open Office/Word to determine your official word count.

Entries will be disqualified at our discretion for rule violation.

And that’s it! Send in that email during the submission window and you’re ready to go. There will be a confirmation email.

Topics for the twitter party are as follows:

October 13: All day, shout out the genre and age category you’re sending. After 4:00 shout out if you got in.

October 14: Share a scary line from your manuscript. It can be from any chapter.

October 15: What costume would your MC character wear for Halloween?

October 16: What’s the most fearsome thing about querying?

October 17: What’s your favorite candy to gorge while writing and what kind would you toss back to give out to the neighborhood kids?

October 18: What’s your favorite scary, or not so scary, Halloween movie?

October 19: What’s your main character’s greatest fear?

October 20: Picks released. Tell us how you deal with stress as a writer. What helps while you wait on query letters?

Best of luck to everyone submitting today. Competition will be fierce.