The BIG BANG! Prize Anthology is available to PREORDER!
In association with the Black Spring Crime Series in 2023, we ran the The Black Spring Prize for Best Opening To a Crime Book. Incredibly the judge for this new crime-mystery prize has been judged by Mr. Jack Reacher himself, world-famous, best-selling author Lee Child, whose books have sold over 100 million copies.
The winner of the prize, receives £200, a one-off, hour-long online mentoring session with Luca Veste and be offered a publishing contract to further support them if they should decide to complete the novel.
The Big Bang! anthology, a curated collection of entries to our prize, features the best 50-200 words of an ‘opening’ for a crime-mystery-thriller novel and it is available to PRE-ORDER NOW.
The prize highlights the importance of catching audiences within the opening pages. Lee Child says,
Long ago people would say, “This is a great book, but you need to give it fifty pages.” That's crazy now, in our hyper-fast world. Now readers give you fifty words. Your first paragraph, basically. That's where you win or lose. It doesn't always need to be slam-bam, but it does always need to give the reader absolutely no choice but to race ahead. Send your entry in to Black Spring's contest, I’ll judge the best... and if you win, I'll be first in line to buy your book.
It doesn't have to be connected to a completed book, BUT, we very much hope the prize encourages people to start a novel, with this first page – and maybe go on to complete it. Lee Child has read and judged the best final 50 entries, and leading crime writer Luca Veste is the sifting judge for the first stage of the competition.
