ABNA Update

The quarter finals are only six days away. There are thousands of entrants holding their breath, waiting to find out just how far they got before being cut.

A couple of stupid grammatical errors have been found in my excerpt, so I'm writing the contest off as a lesson learned. I did a panic edit, cut the first half of the first chapter, in the middle of an ice storm with only 20 minutes to edit before the laptop went dead. Not the brightest idea, I admit.

However, after not getting any response from the 'query holiday' agent website, I have to say that the old opening didn't work. But I was afraid of that from the beginning.

The raw stats are as follows: Rates out at 4 stars out of 9 reviews, 94 views.

My favorite review:

4/5 stars Anonymous February 19, 2009 Please rate this excerpt. 4/5 stars Do you have any comments for the author?

One of the best excerpts I've read on here. You do a good job establishing characters while mixing exposition and dialogue. Watch the overuse of adjectives, ie twinkling...my personal suggestion, if it occurs more than once in the book, replace it! Also, avoid contractions in the narrative, again a personal preference but the use of contractions detracts from the narrative voice while fine for character dialogue. Speaking of dialogue, if there are only two characters you don't need the "he said, she said". Good job using the active voice and third person POV...way too many people on here are using passive voice and first person yet if you go pull books from your shelf only a tiny fraction of them (excluding the Twilight Series, of course) are first person. Good luck with your entry, I think you will make it through a few cuts!

Ah, the sweet scent of praise! Well, the beginning of story has been read a almost a hundred times. I don't suppose there are many agents or editors wandering through this particular slush-pile looking for gems. (sigh)

However, I will continue to update, and should there be an 'offical' rating or review, I will post it here.