It's done. After five hundred and forty entries, more reading and re-reading than I can account for, and a great deal of heated debate, we have our final ten. These are the openings our judges have chosen to carry through to the last stage of the Marlowe & Christie Novel Prize. Reaching this point, out of a field this large and this genuinely strong, is no small thing, and I want to say clearly that the standard across the whole competition this year has been extraordinary. If you were commended or highly commended and aren't on this list, that is not a verdict on your book. The line had to fall somewhere, and it fell among work I'd happily have championed either side of it. The final ten (in no particular order): 🔟 The Break-up Artist 🔟 A Murder of Crows 🔟 Sea of Clouds 🔟 Flotsam 🔟 Pigeons 🔟 The Dog That Didn't Bark 🔟 Crooked Little Smile 🔟 All That Has Wings 🔟 Nonsuch Island 🔟 Rathaus Here's what happens now. These ten go forward together, anonymously, judged on the writing alone, to be read by four people from the publishing world. The winners will be chosen from this stage. They are: 📚 Alec Shane — a literary agent at Writers House in New York, one of the largest and most established agencies in the world, representing fiction from literary and historical to crime, thriller and horror. 📚 Jenny Hewson — a literary agent at Lutyens & Rubinstein in London, who joined after a decade at Rogers, Coleridge & White. The authors she represents have been shortlisted for and won prizes including the Booker and the Women's Prize, and she has a particular love of distinctive literary voices. 📚 Katie Seaman — an editor who spent a decade commissioning fiction at major publishing houses including Penguin Random House and HarperCollins, now a freelance editor and book coach across commercial and literary fiction. 📚 Patrick Gleeson — a novelist whose Theatreland Mystery series (Hattie Brings the House Down, Hattie Steals the Show and Hattie Breaks a Leg) is published by Bedford Square.

Has anyone else tried their hand at one of the Inkitt writing contests? These require 20,000 words or more and revolve around a general theme. This month the theme is Myth or Legend, next month is open to any genre and any topic! I have found this to be a great way to get instant reader feedback. There is a really nice mix of readers and writers on the platform too. I write something new for the contests and not something I am very attached too, but it has been a nice way to test out new ideas and to see what readers are looking for in a story. I would highly recommend for anyone just wanting to test something out - even if it's not for one of their contests.

Many, many entries this cycle, well beyond what we had anticipated, and the standard of the writing has made winnowing the longlist unusually difficult. Thank you to everyone who trusted us with their opening pages. The quality was so high that the commended list is longer than in previous cycles. We are releasing the names in no particular order, over the coming days, and a shortlist will be drawn from this group. Today, in no particular order, we are announcing: - Lies on Sale by Gabby Martini - The Impossibility of Eden by Harry Wilson - Beach Dog by Tom McDonough - The Breaking Point by Fiona Harriet - The Taste of Iron by Ramona Slusarczyk - Askar and the Witch by Nina van der Beek - The City of a Thousand Eyes by Angelique Talbot - The Melusine Murders by Jesse Weiner Congratulations to all of them. Many further entries, equally commended, will be announced over the coming days. If your name is not yet here, please don't read into its absence. Names are being released in the order we can write the posts, which has nothing to do with preference, and every remaining commendation carries the same weight as those above.

The first part of the list will be published here tomorrow!

Just to let you know where we are with the contest. We don’t like reading on a screen, so we send the entries off to a printer and get them back in big ring-bound booklets. Then we annotate, produce feedback for those who have requested it and work out who will be commended or long-listed. Good luck all!