After receiving over 70 applications from prospective mentees in Brenda Drake’s Pitch Wars contest, I have chosen my team of one mentee and two alternates. I wrote over 40,000 words of feedback and critiqued every query letter and set of sample pages that came into my inbox, but when all was said and done, there could be only one.

Congratulations to C.B. Whitney, whose urban fantasy QUEEN OF SHARDS sucked me in with its ex-valkyrie protagonist and its mythological fantasy with heart. He is my main mentee and I will be reading his entire book, shining up his query letter, and helping him craft a short pitch for the agent round of the contest.

Congratulations also to Ryan Glover and Jessica Harvey for becoming my two alternates. Ryan is the author of MCTAVISH, an urban fantasy about a very odd military academy that turns out to guard an otherworldly secret, and Jessica is the author of GYRE, a New Adult contemporary fantasy containing Atlantis myths and a hip protagonist with teleportation powers. I will be helping them with their short pitches for the alternate showcase.

The contest was so fun. I managed to trick my main mentee into thinking I wasn’t considering his book until he saw his name on the list. You can read the full story about how I tortured the poor guy–and all the fun we had–on my more whimsical version of the story on my blog.