On to the next round

Out of 10,000 entries, a list of the top 2,000 pitches moving on to the next round of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award was released today, and...my name was on it!  I was so excited!  And shocked - I honestly believed I wouldn't even make it through the first round of the contest.  I had decided last minute to go ahead and enter, and managed to pull all the materials together hours before the submission period opened.  One of the requirements was to submit a "pitch" for my novel, and the first round selections were based solely on this pitch.  I had no idea how to write a pitch, had never done it before, and had only a couple of hours to do it.  Here is the pitch I wrote, and it must have been decent, since it made the cut (not bad for my first try):
 

Like the heroine of Jane Austen's novel Northanger Abbey, seventeen-year-old Kate Blackmoor has read too many creepy novels. Vampire novels, to be exact. When she moves to the coast to live with her aunt and uncle for the summer, she starts seeing vampires everywhere she looks. Or at least she thinks she does.

But then she meets Hadden Tradd, a guy so hopelessly perfect that Kate is convinced he could never be interested in someone as plain and ordinary as herself. But is Hadden really who he says he is? He lives on the fringe of the little coastal community, in the shadowy and secluded Northanger Plantation, the antebellum plantation home hidden deep inside a thick grove of trees, away from any prying eyes. Hadden's only companions are his sister and his father, a retired military colonel who is more of a dictator than a father. And there is something strange about the siblings themselves, a weird dynamic in which the two are inseparable, painfully shy, and reliant on each other for confirmation each time one of them speaks.

When Kate is forced to spend the night at Northanger Plantation, she learns that Hadden's mother died under mysterious circumstances, and the sinister Colonel Tradd arouses her suspicions. Is it possible that he was responsible for his wife's death? 

As Kate pieces together clues and formulates theory after theory to explain the mysteries of Northanger Plantation, will her friendship with Hadden blossom into something more, or will her obsession with vampires ultimately jeopardize their relationship?

With twists and turns along the way to keep the reader guessing, Norfanger Plantation is a comical look at the current teen vampire craze, but it also explores questions about identity, insecurity, and relationships, themes particularly resonant among young adult readers.

Anyway, I am super excited!  I honestly do not think I will make it through to the next round, but we will see.  The next round will be based on the excerpt (first 2-3) chapters of my novel and will narrow the contestants down to the top 500.  This will be announced March 22.

(And I may or may not have looked at the list several times over the course of the day today out of disbelief, just checking to make sure my name was really there.  Actually, when I first looked, I was scrolling so fast I saw a bunch of names starting with "Sch..." and thought I hadn't made it until it registered that my name would actually be a bit further down the list.  So I was pleasantly surprised to find that my name actually was on the list!)
Also, I have no idea why the spacing is being stupid on this post, but I can't seem to fix it.  Oh well.