Ten Minutes

It doesn’t seem like a lot of time, does it? Or maybe it’s too long – but in either case that’s all I’ve got to work with. I snagged my first choices of publishers and agents to pitch to at RT (a big surprise to me, honestly), and now it’s put up or shut up time. I get 10 minutes to convince a publisher or an agent that my work is worth reading. Actually – it’s more of a 5 minute pitch and 5 minutes of questions, but the end result is the same. The reality of it is that the pitch is nothing more than a foot in the door – it’s not a guarantee of anything other than a chance to not have the manuscript tossed on the slush pile. Still – I’d rather get my toe crushed than be standing around picking my nose.

I debated it, honestly – if it was even worth attempting, but the more I thought on it, the more I realized that it would be incredibly stupid not to. Given what I’m paying to be there, given who I’ll potentially be rubbing shoulders with, given how much work I’ve put into writing over the last few months – why wouldn’t I do it? The WiP rough is nearly done, give or take 20 or 30k worth of words. I would imagine I can crank out the rest of it before I leave – and there’s nothing like a gun to my head for incentive. The worst that will happen will be a polite no and I’ll chalk it up as a learning experience and move on. Anything else will be a bonus. And I’m not trying to be pessimistic, just a realist – a mental girding of the loins, if you will. Don’t know if it will hurt less that way, but I’m willing to see.

So, I will be meeting with Shauna Summers of Bantam Dell, Heather Osbourne of Tor and Jennifer N. Schober of SpencerHill Associates, Ltd. I purposely chose these pubs/agents because they really aren’t strictly romance. The conclusion here being that my work is more of a cross-over and I’m hoping they may take more of a chance on something that doesn’t fit within specific labels.

Here’s hoping, anyway. 🙂

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