Like the 2011 ABNAs, once the submission window opens (23 January this year), the contest will accept 5,000 entries in the General Fiction (my category) and Young Adult categories; each submission consists of a 300-word pitch, a 5,000-word excerpt, and the entire manuscript. Based on the 300-word pitch, they'll make the initial cut from 5,000 to 1,000 for the Second Round. From there, they'll cut from 1,000 to 250 for the Quarterfinals, from 250 to 50 for the Semi-Finals, and from 50 to 3 for the finals. The lucky winner gets a publishing contract from Penguin Books...
Last year, my novel THE COMING made it to the Quarterfinals round (top 250), which I thought was WAY COOL! This year, I'm entering THE MENGELE EFFECT. I'm still editing the pitch, but here's what it looks like right now:
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What began as a quiet, peaceful evening in America’s Heartland quickly became—as the few remaining survivors would later recall—the last night humanity ruled the planet. The sudden mutations began in a Kansas City salvage yard, erupting forth like a wind-blown wildfire across the sleeping metro. Hours later, daybreak revealed a dead city, stripped of life by creatures that had once been animal, once been human, the end-products of perverse, decades-old genetic research performed in Auschwitz’s twisted labs, refined by Cold War enemies, and finally, on this night, perfected by nature.
Carolyn Ridenour, a member of the government’s super-secret Vanguard bio-warfare research team, fights a daily battle to keep America safe from the world's tiniest, most fearsome weapons. Ordered to Kansas City to investigate the unfolding horror, she barely escapes the creatures' nocturnal onslaught, saved at the last instant by Colonel Garrett Hoffmann, a man who'd helplessly witnessed the slaughter of hundreds of his troops—and innocent civilians—under the creatures' horrific advance. President Andrew Smith, former Navy Admiral and battle-scarred hero, watches as city after city is literally eaten alive, the military’s conventional might useless against a swarming foe that inexplicably—and exponentially—replenishes its numbers every twenty-four hours, slowed only by the sun's killing light. Frantic for answers, the President is pushed towards the unthinkable by members of his own government…trusted advisors who have long prayed for this day, each members of an ancient order sworn to destroy civilization in order to save their own souls.
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We'll see how it goes!
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