that Harlequin Historical Romance are looking for good Viking, medieval, Australian western, Far Eastern, Egyptian that fits the Harlequin Historical guidelines, and that the RWNZ Clendon award - AKA “Finish The Damn Book!!” for a completed Romance Manuscript - is due to close soon.
Check out the Clendon award at:
http://www.romancewriters.co.nz/competitions.php
Those like cooee, in our end of the world, might find the Clendon really helpful, but it is open to internatinoal writers.
Is this the New Year boost you need, cooee?
Ooool, thanks for the link - I went and had a look at the Clendon guidelines and as with Harlequin guidelines my WIP as a whole the way it is written doesn't fit into their romance categories - (I do recall though mentioning on some of the threads on AW that I was considering rewriting it to fit more closely with the romance markets and to tell you the truth, although I haven't decided what to do, I sometimes think it would make my life easier - not because writing for the romance markets is easier but because it would give me good excuse to drop the many complications I have given myself with my subplots).
The way it is currently written, the romance does not drive the story - any part of it really, at least not in an obvious or in a clearly defined manner to the reader nor the MC. I think there is a strong romantic undercurrent from the second chapter, which is repeated briefly a few chapters later, that some romance readers recognise but become completely frustrated because they are denied clarification by deniying who they think is the hero space - until near the end (which has been most of my SYW posts because they were my favourite sections and the the majority of the first scenes written for this WIP).
By what I have been able to determine by hardcore romance beta readers is that I have to pull my main man in there every chapter or second chapter or they will lose interest in reading the story. This tells me I have a lot to decide, and how true I want to stay to the story I wanted to tell.
Although I think of it as a love story, to submit to Harlequin Historical I would have to chop a lot of words and change my plot - which might not be a bad thing LOL and completely change the entire focus of the story at least up till a certain section, and I could be cheeky though and rewrite parts of the book just for fun and enter the Australian and English sections as standalone books in the Clendon - not sure about it though because of time - unfortunately school holidays here until the begining of February so I won't have much time to play with it.
ETA: I greatly appreciate the link pdr because it made me realise another year could go by very quickly (add it to the last 2 decades for a similar story I have written) and I wish I had completed my rewrites of this WIP already so I could get to the stage where I can decide wether to rewrite it for the romance markets - (something I never intended to write for although I thought I was writing a romance - I never considered the stories I have spent writing for years set in the 1800s as historical until about three years ago LOL).
I currently have a gap in years that I can't decide wether to fill in or not. (trying to write a query or synpsis tells me I must - but I can be stubborn LOL) At the very least though you have given me a goal of completing my first rewrites by the end of February - and I gather because I can be indecisive that I will need to go through it again.
I noticed a few later competions on the NZ site and there are also some on the AU site of RW - one being, a first kiss, and now that I have changed the man who she kisses and introduced a face slap in it, before the next kiss, it might work
BTW as for the
Harlequin up the creek thread I have been following it here and elsewhere - and no (or should that be, yes? I personally don't feel it's a good idea and will just blur the lines to those who submit to them.
I realise I just ranted but you have one girl here who wishes she had thought about markets before she accidentially wrote the first scenes of the book set in one country, which reads like a romance, then was inspired to write a different story that I'm not sure what to do with LOL