For all you YA or MG aspiring novelists...

Agent Mary Kole of the Andrea Brown Literary Agency is having another contest so grab your best game face and enter the first 500 words of your YA or MG novel.

The details from her site, kidlit.com, are listed below:

It’s too messy to have people post their entries in comments, so please don’t leave an entry there. Only use the comments to ask questions. This time, I’m going to let you enter by e-mail only, to mary at kidlit dot com, with the subject line “Kidlit Contest.” Copy and paste your novel text… do not send attachments. Your entry has to be for a children’s novel (YA or MG, sorry, no picture books this time around), it has to be for a manuscript that is FINISHED and could be sent out to an agent, and it must be under 500 words.

To be clear, you have to email your entry to me with the subject line “Kidlit Contest” by January 31st, 2010 in order to qualify.

Once I have all entries, I will deliberate for about a week, pick the most compelling openings, dissect what makes them so awesome on the site AND award you fabulous prizes:

Grand Prize Winner: A 15 page critique
First Place: A 10 page critique
Second Place: A 5 page critique
Third Place: A 2 page critique
Honorable Mention(s): A critique of the first page of your novel

Again, deadline for entries: Sunday, January 31st at 11:59 p.m., Pacific Time.

Not only do you have to email me your entry, you’ve got to do the following things to qualify. Send me links so that I can double-check your eligibility, per the rules, anywhere in your entry email.

Contest Rules:

1. Put a link to this contest page in TWO other places. Click here for an easy code you can copy and paste! (PLEASE AVOID THE VERLA KAY AND ABSOLUTE WRITE FORUMS… THERE ARE MULTIPLE POSTS HERE ABOUT THIS ALREADY!)
2. Link to Kidlit.com in your blog sidebar (or add my syndication feed to your Livejournal, if you have no sidebar)
3. Read and comment on at least one other Kidlit post.

Good luck!

FAQ About the Contest (easier than addressing things in comments, where they’ll get lost!)

1. If you have queried me and haven’t heard back yet, wait until you do to enter, since your query (if you followed the guidelines) will include a writing sample.
2. If you don’t have a blog, you can post links on writing forums, in a comment on another blog, on Twitter, on Facebook, etc. Email me the links to where you posted or say you posted on Facebook when you send your entry.
3. “Link to this contest page in TWO other places” means putting links in a writing forum, Twitter, another blog’s comments, etc., not all on your own blog.
4. Please do include some basic info about the manuscript with your entry — audience, genre, word count.
5. Yes, you can enter more than once… be sure to send one email per entry, though, so I can keep them organized on my end.
6. If you are using a prologue, send the beginning of that.
7. Sorry, this is for MG and YA only, not early readers and chapter books.

To enter, go to:
http://kidlit.com/kidlit-contest/ and mention you saw the info here at The Misadventures in Candyland in your email to Ms. Kole, please =)

I entered my prologue, so you'd better do the same if you ever want to get that book published. Good luck to all!