First Chapter Competition

Do you have a story you need to tell, maybe you have started writing it, or maybe it’s being edited or even written already and just hidden in that desk drawer. Whatever stage it we would love to read your first chapter!

This year, we’re thrilled to reveal that celebrated authors Liz Fenwick, Roz Watkins, Emma Timpany, Jane McParkes, and Sam Stone will be on our judging panel for our first Falmouth & Penryn FRINGE Festival competition:

The submission window will open on August 20th and close at midnight on September 20th. And our winner will be announced, with a prize giving, on the 22nd of October by Liz Fenwick.

GUIDELINES:
FREE to enter
Submissions will be accepted from unrepresented local authors within the South West of England (born or residing) over the age of 18.
Submissions must be in English.
Fiction only – any genre
The first chapter (up to 3 pages, A4, 12pt double spaced, Times New Roman only).
Unpublished work only.
One submission per person.
Brief cover letter including, name, email address, and phone number
Summary of your book, including genre.
Entry by email only.
Submissions in PDF format (i.e NAME – BOOK TITLE.pdf).

Send entries to info@thewriterscollective.co.uk by midnight (GMT) on the 20th of September. Early and late arrivals will be deleted.
We do not discriminate on the basis of age, ancestry, disability, family status, gender identity or expression, national origin, race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation, or for any other reason.


AWARDS:
First place will receive a FREE pass to the Falmouth & Penryn FRINGE Book Festival, a read-through with feedback from Hermitage Press, and a collection of books from this year’s festival – presented by Liz Fenwick.
Second and third places will receive a FREE pass to the Falmouth & Penryn FRINGE Book Festival and one book of their choice by one of the speakers at this year’s festival.
Extracts from the top three excerpts will be published online by The Writers Collective along with a short bio for publicity purposes.

GUEST JUDGES:
LIZ FENWICK is an award-winning author of nine novels, dubbed ‘the queen of the contemporary Cornish novel’ by The Guardian. Liz was born in Massachusetts but now lives in Cornwall with her husband and two mad cats. She made her first trip to Cornwall in 1989, bought her home there seven years later, and found her muse. Her heart is forever in Cornwall, creating new stories.

ROZ WATKINS is the author of the fabulous thriller The Red House.
She has penned four books and is working on her fifth. When writing her first three books, she lived on the edge of the Peak District, where the series is set. Before she started writing, Roz worked as a partner in a firm of patent attorneys in Derby, but of course, this has nothing to do with there being a dead one in her first novel! Roz has recently moved to Falmouth, Cornwall where she wrote and launched her latest book.

EMMA TIMPANY was born and grew up in the far south of Aotearoa New Zealand. She now lives in Cornwall.
Her publications are the short story collections Three Roads (Red Squirrel Press, 2022) and The Lost of Syros (Cultured Llama Press, 2015). Her novella Travelling in the Dark (Fairlight Books, 2018) is part of their series of Fairlight Moderns. Emma also works as a ghostwriter, book reviewer, and mentor. She offers short story critiques and manuscript assessments.

JANE McPARKES was always destined to be a crime writer. As a child, she was an avid reader of the Famous Five and any other mysteries she could find at the local library. Her first commercial success came when she was 8 years old with the publication of a letter to the Bunty comic. From that moment she wanted to be a writer. However, life, a career, marriage, motherhood, and illness all got in the way. After years of secret scribbling and a lot of reading, Jane began writing ‘A Deadly Inheritance’. Her latest books The Olivia Wells Mysteries are set in the fictional Cornish creekside village of Penbartha.

SAM STONE is the director of The Writers Collective and a freelance art, travel & lifestyle writer A former graduate of Falmouth School of Art & Reading University. She has had a diverse career in the creative arts industries in both France and the UK. Sam also script reads for competitions, writes screenplays (TV, short & feature) and has penned but not published a few novels.

CONTEST PARTNER:
HERMITAGE PRESS is a small, traditional publishing house based in Cornwall, UK. Their mission is to give a home to writers that currently live and work in the region. The team consists of a range of freelance writers, authors, editors, formatters, cover designers, illustrators, photographers and printing specialists with many years of experience in the industry and is in the process of launching its first portfolio of local authors, covering adult and children’s fiction, as well as poetry. 

All entrants are entitled to reduced-cost weekend Falmouth & Penryn FRINGE Book Festival tickets

Categorised in: Uncategorized, Bookclub

This post was written by samstone