My new novel just beat out more than 1,000 other books to become a quarterfinalist in the ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Competition.

This unique literary contest seeks book manuscripts with cinematic adaptation potential. Literary agents from The Gersh Agency, United Talent Agency and 3 Arts Entertainment selected 100 quarterfinalists from over 1,200 submissions.

While Real Girl did not advance to the next round, I am really encouraged that my still unpublished science fiction thriller even made it into their top 10 percent of books. It also reiterates this feedback I received from a professional developmental editor through Writer’s Digest:

“This is one of the best unpublished manuscripts I have ever read,” the editor wrote. “It also has strong movie/tv potential and should be pitched to movie agents as well as book agents. The strong vision of a coherent future world that is interesting and unique, coupled with enormous heart and emotional impact, could make this an attractive media project.”

Now that I’m done incorporating feedback from that editor, I’m going to start pitching my new book to literary agents in hopes that one wants to represent me to a traditional publisher.