Amazon Breakthrough Novel 2012

I just submitted Helen’s Daughter for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel 2012 contest, mostly because it cost nothing and could not hurt.  But I have no illusions that I will win anything.  I am not the type of person who wins contests, or is chosen first for anything.  Also, I have seen the novels which won in previous years: agents and publishers want the same kind of pretentious literary crap my college instructors tried to push on me twenty years ago.  But I am NOT a pretentious, abstract, literary crap-type writer.  Yes, I would like to win that $15k publishing contract, but it is not very likely.  Nor is it likely that I will ever win a Pulitzer or Nobel Prize, or have my books appear on a college course reading list.  But that’s okay.  I write what interests me, and I hope others are entertained, too.