A Little Success

We'd like to congratulate Lindsay Bamfield, one of the Greenacre Writers, who has just won Authonomy's The Pitch Writing Competition. The competition was launched last month for authonomy authors. The premise? Pitch your novels – Authonomy selected the strongest pitch and the author will receive personal writing advice from bestselling women’s fiction author, Claudia Carroll, based on the first 20,000 words of that novel. After lots of toing and froing, Claudia and the authonomy team managed to whittle down to 5 finalists, and after some more whittling, one overall winner and four runners up were chosen.

We’re delighted to announce that the winning pitch was Do Not Exceed Fifty, by Lindsay Bamfield.

Here’s what Claudia had to say about making the decision: I had a great time reading through all the pitches, and I have to tell you, selecting a 'favourite' really was an incredibly tough job! The standard was unbelievably high and after a LOT of deliberation, I narrowed it down to two; then spent the weekend mulling it all over in my mind. Anyway, at the end of the day, I really thought there was one absolute stand-out and that was DO NOT EXCEED FIFTY by Lindsay Bamfield. The criteria I used to make the final choice was, which pitch would immediately make me want to run out and buy the book? And Lindsay's pitch was not only fresh and totally original, but also I thought totally unlike anything else that's out there at the moment.

Do Not Exceed Fifty - Pitch

It’s not thirty-something chick-lit, or forty-something mummy-lit. This is grown-up fifty-something, thinking-more-about-menopause-lit. Meno-lit has arrived.

Independent as she is, Xanthe, 50, divorced with an empty nest, would quite like to have someone special in her life, and more to the point someone who thinks she’s special. But it’s no good sitting patiently waiting for gorgeous, single, fifty-something men to turn up like buses, she has to go out and hunt. Which is why Xanthe discovers the horrors of speed dating, dining clubs and Internet dating sites. At least something good comes out of it - she meets Maggie, and they can compare and share the ups and downs of life and dating at fifty. Older women still have it, but flaunting it is just that bit harder.

Aimed at young-hearted older women who are fed up with ageism, and bored of reading about ditsy young things or the trials and tribulations of women who think they are the first to raise teenagers, this novel is for women who want heroines of their own age who don’t have it all. Funny and wry, Do Not Exceed Fifty follows Xanthe on her dating quest, discarding hopeless cases: men who want women to cook for them; men with moustaches and men who have only just left home as she goes.

Congratulations Lindsay.