Friday 6 July 2012

Now I'm Nervous

Crazy, I've been all over the NW on holiday and I thoroughly enjoyed myself, then we had to move over to the NE to go to this pitching workshop and I'm panicking. The reason probably is that someone is probably going to expect me to define what my book is about and I still can't. I walked around Waterstones, thinking 'where would it go?' but still no idea. Kelley Armstrong's books ended up in 'Horror' but I don't think I've written a horror story. Historical novels all seem to be romance, the only things similar seemed to be in 'teens' but my protagonist is definitely an adult. 


My agent came up with: 'Imagine the best of historical fiction meets crime fiction with added vampires...' although I promise the word vampire is never used and nobody sparkles. It's really about 'revenants, souls that are held back from heaven by sorcery', but her pitch never even mentioned my main characters and I have a feeling I'm going to have to add them somewhere. If we can't pitch it, we can't sell it.


I found this blog post very helpful, and I'm going to huddle over a piece of paper and work on my 'elevator pitch' this evening. Wish me luck! Oh, and still no news...

8 comments:

  1. Well good luck. I always thought when you got an agent they'd do all the pitching and you could just kick back and take it easy.

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    1. Ha! That's what I thought...apparently it's a good idea to know how to do it to promote your masterpiece. I usually start with 'Oh, that? I just wrote it for my son...' hopefully I can improve on that.

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    1. Hi Teresa, it's the 18th July, and I'm a bit more confident now!

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  3. Good luck! I know you can do it, after all you have got this far :)

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    1. Thank you Kate! It was sad, finding myself stammering for two minutes at a time to a new listener, thinking 'what is the bloody book about, anyway?'

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  4. So far I've got away with 'commercial women's fiction with a magical twist' but I'll probably need to more specific at some point!

    Fingers crossed for good news soon.

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