Faithful followers know I’m not terribly fond of contesting my manuscript. This is because I don’t write very contestable manuscripts and I’m not a huge fan of losing. I already know my voice is very historical and poetic, and I already know my heroine isn’t your average Regency miss. I already know my hero is so beta he can hardly stand up straight, and I already know their story isn’t the usual get.

I drive judges crazy, or maybe I make them feel really good about themselves because I give them a chance to exercise their inner editor. They point out all the dozens of things that need to be revised to make If You Asked the Devil to Dance more marketable (i.e. boring). Obviously, I don’t agree, or by now I would have changed those things. I think the manuscript is far more marketable than the washed-out story they’d have me write, so inevitably, I’m left with the heavy, disappointed despondency of being misunderstood, yet again.

Now you know why I prefer to put my money into postage and printing instead of contest fees. See, it’s all well and good for Contest Judge A to love or hate my manuscript, but in the scheme of things, she’s not the one who can get me published. A contest loss hurts just as bad as a real rejection. I see no need to go through all that suffering just to possibly/ maybe/ probably not/ end up on an editor’s desk.

Hmm… Will all this contest-bashing, I wonder if you can guess what’s coming next?

If you guessed LACEY GOT FABULOUS CONTEST NEWS!!, then you may treat yourself to a cookie. (I shall absorb the calories for you, while achieving none of the benefit. Or maybe it can’t work that way. Hey, I’m no nutritionist, just like Contest Judge A is not a publisher.)

So yeah, I got some pretty fabulous feedback from the Reveal Your Inner Vixen Contest, which Tessa Dare, who just SOLD HER MANUSCRIPT IN A 3-BOOK DEAL TO BALLANTINE BY AUCTION (had to work that in there somehow), finaled in.

No, I didn’t win the RYIV. I didn’t even final (did the context clues give it away?) . But none of that matters because I didn’t expect to win. (I wanted to win, but I didn’t expect it, seeing as how I usually blow big monkey chunks in contests. <– Perhaps one of the reasons I don’t final?) But what I really didn’t expect was for the judges to get it.

They never do! For once, even the judge who didn’t really understand the point of the scene DID, she just didn’t like it. She thought my hero had “given up on the relationship” (to be fair, he totally has) and that ”he should be a man of action, not a brooding, introspective man.” (Which is true, but he’s a wallflower. We’re here to watch him grow.)

So those comments were good in the sense that at least she was reading the book I wrote, not some edit-DTD-to-suit-your-taste version. But my favorite comments were the ones that told me I finally nailed “dark.” One judge was concerned the story could be TOO dark to be sexy (the Mavens will tell you: not so!), which pretty much had me dancing around the room. Too dark? Nay! Never dark enough! Another said, “You are a master of your scene. I get goosebumps at times and my heart races at others.” I ask you, who wouldn’t be hitting the ceiling after a comment like that? (And again, I say: never dark enough!)

So will I be entering contests in the future? Probably not. I know my opening tends to lose the judges and that I benefitted from the fact that this contest allowed us to submit any scene in the book and set it up. Yet despite the clear handicap advantage, I’m feeling more motivated to finish up my Romance with Color trilogy than I have in a long time.

How’s your writing mojo fairing?