One week ago today, I was standing in a long line in the concourse (why don’t they just say basement?) area of the New York Hilton, waiting for my editor appointment. I’d worked like a mad woman on my pitch for two days running and had just about memorized it. Yes, I had a pitch all written before I set foot in the big bad City, but realized after practicing it out loud, that it wouldn’t work due to it being only about a minute in length. And the appointment was for 20 minutes.
This 20 minutes made me feel like a very important person, and I spent a lot of time padding my pitch and thinking up intelligent questions I could ask the editor thereby ingratiating myself without seeming obvious about it.
I need not have bothered. 20 minutes REALLY meant I was in a “group” appointment and would have to pitch with four or five other people. Found this out in line from some veteran conference goers, and was actually quite relieved as somehow it seemed to lessen the pressure.
Happily I would not have to ingratiate, something I’m quite bad at, actually.
Comes the group appointment and there are five of us. I was last in the door and everyone had taken the seats facing Joan Marlow Golan, leaving me to sit beside her. I sat. JMG then asked why there were five of us as she only had four fact sheets (we had sent a bit of info on our books when we registered for appointments).
One woman admitted she was there to help her disabled friend, although they had written a book together. As JMG tried to figure out if the book being pitched was written by one or both of these woman, and as the information was hashed out a couple of times until everyone had their story straight, I was able to relax.
Or so I thought.
After the Mystery of the Fifth Woman was solved, JMG immediately asked who was there to pitch to Steeple Hill (a Christian fiction imprint she heads up for Harlequin-thank Goddess I had done my homework)?
Not me. Should I say so? Was saved from having to go first when another woman said that she had a mainstream single title that was not woman’s fiction, not chick lit, not a romance and not Christian fiction. JMG told her she didn’t see a place for her book at Harlequin. Woman then says: should I go? And JMG says yes.
And then there were four. One being the friend of the disabled writer. So really, three pitches.
“My book isn’t Christian fiction,” I said. JMG looked at her sheets of paper and my badge.
I must digress here to talk about the inappropiate ribbon that adorned my badge. Everyone at this conference (except me) seemed to have ribbons attached to their badges, there were ribbons for being published, ribbons for being a speaker, for being a volunteer, or being nominated for an award. Some smart chapter came up with a fundraising scheme to sell faux ribbons that said stuff like “Important Nobody” and “Almost Published.” For some reason, no doubt in part to the wine I had consumed previous to the fundraising sale, I found a ribbon that said “Rejection Builds Character” to be hilarious and purchased it right there, slapping it on my name badge with abandon.
In the morning, when I tried to remove it, it would not budge. So there JMG was, reading my badge with the by now unfunny “Rejection Builds Character” ribbon blazing below my name. Neither of us mentioned this fact and she moved smoothly on to asking me about my book.
I said I thought maybe it was chick lit or maybe it was women’s fiction. I’d had a very snappy sentence written on my cards about how my heroine was settling down without settling for, but I was too nervous to look at my cards. I was staring at JMG and trying not to sound desperate to be published.
Then I gave a really short pitch, probably all of one minute or two at the most, but I got all the main points in. Then JMG said she thought my book sounded like straight romance and that it would fit (which I immediately edited to “would be perfect for…”) their new single title line called HQN. She asked me to send it to a particular editor, and I hurriedly found a pen and wrote the name down on the back of my unused cards.
And then it was the next person’s turn.
I had gotten through my editor appointment, I had a request for a full manuscript, and I finally knew the genre of the book I had written.
I listened to the other pitches; they were all for Christian romances. One of the writers was really nervous but her project sounded interesting. I was disappointed when JMG said that Christian readers don’t want heroines who work as cocktail waitresses, but let’s leave that can of worms unopened. I tried to send positive vibes to the writer. It was the least I could do, having formerly been a cocktail waitress with no grudge against God.
The next pitch came from an already-published writer. She had an agent too. And she was really there to ask JMG lots of questions about their new Christian romance line. She said she had two manuscripts without the Christian elements that she wanted to tweak. I didn’t send her positive vibes, not because I’m mean but because I was too busy trying to figure out why a writer who is published and has an agent needs to pitch her work at a group appointment.
Anyway, it was soon over and I was left to go to the next workshop on my list feeling totally relieved that it was over. And happy that my damned ribbon hadn’t jinxed me.