Among other things, I have honest to goodness due dates now.  For the curious, Shades of Milk and Honey gets turned in on June 1 and Glamour in Glass (the working title for book two) needs to be completed by January 2, 2010.  On the one hand, I panick a little, because that’s not very far away. On the other hand, Shades only took three months to write and another to revise. So I ought to be in good shape. In theory.

I will say, by the way, that anyone contemplating signing a book contract without an agent is playing with fire. My wonder-agent definitely took care of me.

So when you say “elevator pitch” do you mean a short summary of your story that’s catchy and to the point? What else should one put into a quick presentation like that?

I meant to answer this much, much sooner, so I’m sorry about that.

I’ll start by saying that I learned about elevator pitches from booking theater shows, so an agent or editor might tell you that I’m totally wrong.  This is not a “how-to.”  This is just my theory on elevator pitches.

As I understand it, the term “elevator pitch” comes from the idea that you should be able to sum up your novel in the ride between floors at a convention. You might only share the elevator for one floor, so the shorter the better.

Think of the elevator pitch as verbal cover art.  In an ideal world, it should be attention grabbing, give them a sense of the type of the book, and — most importantly — make them want to know more.

For Shades of Milk and Honey, my elevator pitch is “Jane Austen with magic!” ((Yes, the exclamation point is in there, always.)) The reason this one is so short is that I’m able to use “Jane Austen” as shorthand for “A novel set in the Regency period, in which a young woman tries to find love and suffers through several social setbacks, including some comedy of manners,” with magic! This is why you’ll see people suggesting that you find something that your book resembles — it’s not about saying “my book will be as successful as [x],” it’s about finding a code that will let you condense your pitch.

You’ll notice that my Milk and Honey pitch really doesn’t say anything specific about the plot or characters, but this short hand is enough to get people to say, “Really? Tell me more.”

All of which works well if you’ve got something that can be easily compared to something fairly high profile. Otherwise, you have to break it down to the core conflict and pick the thing that makes it unique, aiming to make a — look, instead of saying editor/agent/show presenter, I’m just going to say mark, since really what we’re talking about is selling something.  What you want is for your mark to say, “Tell me more.”

I think of pitching as a series of layers.

Layer one is very fast and exists to hook the mark and make him ask you to tell him more. By making it fast and engaging, I’m setting them up to say, “Oo! That sounds interesting.” Which turns it from a pitch into a dialogue. It means that whoever I’m talking to is less likely to glaze over.

Am I worried about condensing it too much? No. Because if I do my job here right, then I will have time to expand.

Layer two is the expansion of the pitch. My mark already knows the basic premise, so I can give a bit of plot, plus more of the pieces of wonder — or the things that make my story unique. This can be a full on paragraph, but still needs to be snappy. At the end of this, I want to either be sending them a packet or booking a show.

So, let me show you this summary for one of me novels that’s waiting for revision and needs an elevator pitch.

Currently it stands as this:

Virus Attached – SF murder/mystery: Scott Huang is a detective in the homicide department; like all the detectives, he is paired with Metta, an AI who functions as a virtual partner for the entire precinct. Metta customizes her interface for each detective, appearing to Huang as Mae West. In the midst of a murder investigation, Metta’s chassis is stolen, effectively kidnapping her. The department reboots her from a backup and Metta.2 must work with Huang to solve the original Metta’s disappearance. For an AI, this should be easy, but the thief is using the original Metta to create a virus, hacking into Metta.2. They have six hours to solve the crime, before Metta’s programming is cracked, allowing the thief to wipe every police record at any station using her software.

This is way, way too long.  So, first I’ll strip it down to what you have to know in order to get an idea of the story.

Virus Attached – SF murder/mystery: Scott Huang is a detective partnered with an AI. In the midst of a murder investigation, the AI’s chassis is stolen. He has six hours to solve the crime, before the thief starts erasing police records at every station using her software.

That gives me a complete story, but doesn’t sound particularly unique or interesting.

Virus Attached – SF murder/mystery: Detective Scott Huang is partnered with Metta, an AI modeled on Mae West. When her hardware is kidnapped, Metta’s backup copy and Scott have to stop the thief before he uses her to create a virus which will erase police records in every precinct. The only way to do that, might be to erase Metta permanently.

(Granted… I could probably sum this one up as “CSI with a Mae West A.I.” and do better, but you get what I’m talking about.)

You’ll note that I don’t try to tell the ending in my elevator pitch. I just hit the world/main character, the central conflict and the stakes.

Now, that thing above is fine for something written.  But an elevator pitch is spoken, right? I can take advantage of that in the way I structure it.  There’s a trick in theater for audience participation shows, where you can trigger, almost certainly, the audience to say what you want them to.  You can do that with marks too.

For instance, one of my actual pitches would probably go more like this. ((I was tempted to use one of my show pitches instead, but Lyn asked about fiction))

Mark:  So what do you got?

Me: Shades of Milk and Honey, a regency romance, Good Housekeeping, an suburban fantasy, and Virus Attached, an SF murder/mystery.

Mark: Tell me more about the SF one.

Me: Sure.  While on a murder investigation, Scott Huang’s partner is kidnapped.  The catch?  She’s an AI and Scott has six hours to stop the thief from using her to create a virus which will erase police records in every precinct.  Oh, and she looks like Mae West. ((See, what I’ve done is ended with something that is interesting and also that raises a question. Why does she look like Mae West?))

Mark: (some variant on, “Mae West?”)

Me:  Yeah, she’s partnered with all the cops and can customize her interface for them.  Scott likes silver screen stars.  Things get really sticky when the department decides to reboot her from a backup copy to help solve her own kidnapping.  Besides the crime, the book touches on questions of identity and what it means to be real. The AI knows that she’s being hacked into and that the only way to stop the thief might be to shut herself down permanently.

—

See what I’m doing? I’m turning it into a dialogue. A properly done audience participation show ((This means that the audiences’s actions have a direct impact on the action on stage, not “Everyone wave your arms. Now we’re all trees.”  In a correctly done show, if the audience doesn’t participate, the show could end.  That’s why the Tinkerbell moment works.)) causes the audience to be more engaged and invested in the action on stage, because they are part of it.  I’ve found that making my pitch more conversational does the same thing.  It makes the person more invested and more likely to book the show.

As I said, I’ve got no idea what an editor or agent would tell you about this, but it sells shows. I can’t see any real reason why it wouldn’t work with fiction.

And of course. Practice the darn thing! You need to know it so well that it doesn’t look memorized.

What are your own tricks?

In a little less than 15 hours, my entry in Brenda Novak’s auction to support research for Diabetes goes live. It’s a one day auction and the bidding starts at a mere $2. (Yep, just $2.)

I’m offering to read and evaluate a proposal (defined as three chapters – up to 50pp – plus a synopsis) of an unpublished manuscript. I will also meet with the winner at RWA National for a drinks date to discuss that proposal or other publishing questions. Since I know I have a number of readers on this blog who may not be attending, I’d also be open to meeting at other conferences I’m attending (such as Readercon or Bouchercon).

Bidding is here, and it’s really easy to sign up and get a bidder ID.

There are other amazing auctions and the cause is very worthy. I encourage you to check it out and bid.

On the other hand, Elizabeth Bear introduced me to Jay Lake, who in turn set up a meeting with Ken Scholes, and he recommended Mary Robinette Kowal, who became a new client of mine last month. (That makes it Mary’s turn….) So, it certainly has its advantages. They still all had to write really, really, really, really ridiculously good books.

Which set me thinking… See, the thing is, that Ken’s introduction let me jump the slush pile. BUT if I’d sent in my first novel, Jennifer would have rejected me. The novel I signed with is the fourth that I’ve written.

The evolution goes like this:

• Novel 0: Took ten years, starting from high school, to write. It is well and firmly trunked. (Shape-shifting cat/human aliens with wings anyone? Did I mention my D&D character has the same name? Yeah… trunk. TRUNK.)
• Novel 1: Middle-grade Fantasy – Six months. I think this has potential, but there’s a flaw in the first three chapters that I can’t seem to fix. I sent this out to publishers on my own for a while, and always got requests for partials but no requests for fulls. Now. This is book one in a series. Did I write the second book in the series next? No.
• Novel 2: Science Fiction/Murder Mystery – Four months. Better. It needed revisions, so I set it aside to think about before diving into it. Meanwhile, I wrote:
• Novel 3: Urban Fantasy/Chick Lit – Three months. Good. Needs revisions… Meanwhile:
• Novel 4: Regency romance/Fantasy – Three months. Good! This immediately felt stronger than the others and I had a clear view of what changes needed to happen. So I didn’t wait on the revisions. This is the one I signed with.

The point being, that it took a while for me to learn to write something salable and that if I’d sent in any of the others, I think I would still be without an agent because those books aren’t there yet. I do think they can be, but the course I chose to take — and mileage varies — was to write novels in several different genres to see which one stuck. I have sequel ideas for all of them, but until I knew that I had a book one that worked, it didn’t make sense to invest time in a string of books in the same world.

At the moment, I’m doing revisions on Novel 2 and continuing to work on short stories. Right now, I’m at a point in my career where I have the luxury of taking a year off from a novel before doing revisions. Since I’m a better writer now than I was a year ago, waiting to revise the novels is like earning interest on my skills. Seriously. I re-read Novel 2 and it was dead easy to see where it had gone astray. The revision process is like swimming downstream.

Now, let’s say that Ken offered to introduce me before I’d written Novel 4. I knew Novel 1 was flawed, so sending it in would have been wasting that opportunity. What’s more, it would have been embarrassing to Ken.

I’m sure that someday I’ll introduce a writer to Jennifer, but I can almost guarantee that it won’t be with their first novel.

And then I ran around in circles, weeping and giggling.

See, I don’t blog about everything but back in January, I made the very hard decision to leave to leave my agent. The details aren’t important, but it wasn’t easy to decide to jump back into the dating pool. It really did feel like I was breaking up with a boyfriend to be single again.

While I was moping, Ken Scholes told me that I should send my manuscript to his agent, which I had already wanted to do. She’s done wonderful things for him and I liked everything I heard about her. It was nice, though, to get Ken’s blessing before sending in that manuscript.

And today, oh man, today the acceptance email came in. I have to tell you that I looked at the subject line and thought, “this is going to be a rejection.” And then it wasn’t and I burst into tears. Yes, I can be very girly.

Really, when people tell you that an agent/author relationship is closer to a marriage than anything else, I think they know what they are talking about. After courting Jennifer Jackson, I do feel like I’ve just been proposed to.

I’m looking forward to what the future holds. It feels very, very bright right now.

I think I’ve mentioned that, because my hands are small, I have to wear two pairs of gloves to work as the Mayor. We did that shot (him adjusting his cufflinks for the Secret Agent episode) and I immediately stripped out of the gloves, slammed my hands into Ziggy’s got suited up for the next shot and they realized that they needed to have me in Bessie’s after all. Out of Ziggy’s gloves, into Bessie’s. Do the shot. Out of Bessie’s gloves, back into Ziggy’s and–wait.

And wait.

Still waiting…they are fixing a lighting issue so I take the gloves off, and like I had pushed a button the lighting is fixed and “Why isn’t Ziggy ready?” Ahh! Fortunately he’s one of the easy ones to get into.

My goodness. It’s almost impossible to talk about doing this work without sounding dirty.

Today is better, because Rosa and Sigga fixed the sleeves last night. Even so, I’m still getting into the puppet a shot before we’re supposed to be ready.