At the OC Christian Writers Conference Susan will tell how she used ChristianManuscriptSubmissions.com to beat the slush pile to sell her first novel. She then will conduct a drawing to give away a subscription to CMS for those who sign up in March for the OC Christian Writers Conference.

When Susan first began to write fiction, she quit her full-time newspaper job as an editor to write her first book. Once she was finished, although she knew writing, she didn’t know anyone in the Christian fiction industry. She wasn’t known for her writing outside the newspaper circles in Minnesota. With no connections to editors, other fiction writers, or any access to conferences from her rural home, she began sending out query letters and book proposals only to receive her share of rejections. It was obvious to her she needed to expand her chances of being noticed, so when she found ChristianManuscriptSubmissions.com, she listed her first novel, Why the Sky is Blue, on it. It took eight months, but an editor from Harvest House finally read it. Within in two months she had received a two-book contract. She went on to write to write seven more books for Harvest House and then two more for WaterBrook Press.

ChristianManuscriptSubmissions.com was initiated as a cooperative effort of Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA), which almost every Christian publisher is a member, looking for good authors and desiring an efficient way to review unsolicited manuscripts. Many leading Christian publishers use ChristianManuscriptSubmissions.com as a primary source for unsolicited book proposals as they are unable to process the large amount of print manuscripts mailed to them each day. 

The OC Christian Writers Conference is now in its 26th year and will host a wide variety of editors, authors and literary agents. With three keynote talks and twenty-four different workshops to choose from, it’s one of the best one-day writers conferences in California. For more information go to www.occwf.org

REQUIREMENTS: To win the subscription offered at the OC Christian Writers Conference, just register in the month of March and be present at the event on Saturday, May 1, 2010 at Mariners Church in Irvine, California.