Chicken House's Open Coop is another free manuscript mentor program I've not mentioned before.
I think it's mostly aimed at UK writers, but it doesn't exclude anyone, either, so it's worth a shot if you're considering a MS mentor contest this year.
You can find links to the more common MS mentor contests -- PW, AMM, WNDB, Revise and Resub, WriteCohort, Write Mentor -- in my post, A Writer's Feedback Toolkit.
Several, PW and WNDB, are gearing up to start in a few weeks. PW opens Sept. 26-30, so if you're interested, you'd better be preparing your first pages, query letter and 1-page synopsis for that. WNDB is the next month, but the window opens soon after PW's.
That said, this one was sent to me by a critique partner (TY Kassie!), and it's interesting in how small and intimate it seems.
First of all, Chicken House is owned by Scholastic, seen by many (if not most) children's writers as the Holy Grail of children's publishing. So I sat up and took notice.
This is more a chance to get your MS in front of their editors, specifically three mentioned for this year. And even more exciting, they claim your MS doesn't even have to be finished. Wow!
That struck me as either exceptionally brave on the editors' part, or that they're looking for high concepts they can work with and mold into something that will fit their imprint. That's just me speculating, mind.
It's only open to submission on one day, Sept. 20, in a UK time frame. Check carefully, do the math on the time zones if you're in the US. It'll be easy to miss.
Also check the website for what you need to submit, and more. They do "covering letters" in the UK, which is a slightly different format, and I'd recommend hopping over to FB group Queries, synopses, etc. to get feedback on how they're different from US QLs.
If you're wondering why I didn't post this earlier, prior to this week, the Chicken House site's been a bit wonky. It went down earlier, and I wasn't sure it was going to be available, or stay available, but it's been up all week, so… here we are and crossing fingers for you!
I'd love to hear from someone who's done it in the past and could talk about their experience with it.
Good luck and let me know if you enter!
