How the Pitches Went

Now that I have the first of the two partial mss that got requested nearly ready to mail out, I have time to report on how the requests happened.

First, I spent a lot of time and energy on a fit of stage fright. Although I am by nature gregarious and can sell almost anything I actually believe in, when the bottom falls out of my belief in my own work, I totally lose the ability to sell it. All day Thursday, any time I crossed paths with KJ (who runs the conference), I would say (1) Tell me what you need a volunteer to do right now, so I can do it, and (2) It will really be best for everyone if I cancel my agent and editor appointments, because the finished book is too long, and the book that can be the right length is months from completion. KJ wasn't having any of it. Over the previous several months, she had had to field too many phone calls from people with good intentions who said stupid things like, I need an agent appointment so I can pitch this book I'd like to write someday. What's that? Why, no, I've never written anything before. KJ knows that, over the past three years, I've averaged well over 100,000 words per year, and my drafts consistently clean up well, so dammit, I was going to sit my butt in the chair and pitch, because she wanted to hold my books in her hands.

So, despite my best efforts to weasel out of my appointments, I had to rewrite the pitches for Hands of Beltresa and The Traitor of Imlen. Then I had to pace around the hotel room annathepiper and I were sharing, repeating my two little sentences again and again.

( In Which Dr. Pretentious Pitches to the Illustrious Editor )

So now, I have to finish the prequel in three months. That was daunting enough by itself, but the next day, I had an appointment to pitch to a Much-Vaunted Agent from a Famous and Venerable Agency.

( In Which Dr. Pretentious Pitches to the Much-Vaunted Agent )

So I scurried back to my room to see where the hundredth page fell. It fell seven pages shy of one of my favorite chapter closings, one in which I break the reader's heart with the smallest of my several sledgehammers. Today's work was to whittle the ms back until page 100 fell right at that chapter break. Done. Seven pages gone, and only one of the cuts was more than a single sentence long. Most of the cuts were dialogue tags and gear-grindingly slow exposition from the second Haldur chapter. I'm a lot more optimistic now than I was about getting the whole ms down closer to 250K, which I would really like to do in the next month, just in case the Much-Vaunted Agent requests the full.

So, here's the current crazy plan:
(1)Finish a complete revision pass on the big book in July, while continuing to research cavalry warfare for the prequel so that the prequel's battle scenes will not suck.

(2)Write the prequel's synopsis and finish roughing out the manuscript in August. I laid down the 50K I have now in 30 days, so I know it can be done.

(3)Revise the prequel in September, so that when I ship the partial, the full is ready enough to go.

(4)Rough out the next Rugosa Coven novella in October. My tattoo artist character finally let me see the story he wants me to tell.

How I'm going to do all that while teaching my current student load is a mystery to me, but I spent a lot of time last weekend with people who can crank out an 80,000 word salable, polished ms from start to finish in a month. I don't think I'll ever want to work that fast, but I like knowing it can be done. I'm very curious to find out how I pull all this off.