This holiday weekend has been just the concluding part of what has actually been a vacation; I took off on Thursday and Friday too, so am in the midst of five days off and enjoying it very much. The highlight, of course, has been JRW's conference.
The marquee guest this year, Kitty Kelly, was unable to attend, as her husband was recently hospitalized, which is more than an understandable reason for a change in plans. One of the agents, too, had a very late-breaking reversal; after already being on his way to come to Richmond, Jason Allen Ashlock learned of a death in his family and had to turn around. Apparently, he has committed to reach out to each one of us he had been scheduled to meet with at the Conference, to set up a Skype or phone call or some rain-check meeting. I call that a pretty incredibly generous gesture, especially given the circumstances, and am duly impressed by commitment like that. It's unlikely I'm alone in wishing peace and sympathy for his family.
And so I started the conference "off the hook" in a way. My agent meeting was off, one of the other
best agents there I've already queried, and the publishing pros there have nothing to do with historical fiction. In a way, the years the Conference don't offer me any direct prospects are freeing, because they provide all the benefits of the education, support, and enjoyment the Conference always does, and skip some of the stress. It's always fun to set a meeting, of course, but with as much work as I've been putting in lately - and with the fact that I am working on some revisions for an agent interested enough to put me to work on them (this is me, totally not squeeing and being 100% insufferable that
I am working on revisions for an agent, by the way ...) - it was nice to embark on the event without pressure to perform.
I have to say, thanks to a couple of
the Sarcastic Broads, to JRW's excellent
Administrative Director, to all the volunteers, and of course to the guests, it was a great conference this year, not missing a beat even if it was missing a planned speaker and agent. It was relaxed and rich, and went off without a hitch. Smooth as silk - and fun, to boot.
Perhaps the unique feature of JRW's conference is the accessibility of the participants. Guests who come for this event are asked to stay for all of it, to eat lunch with everyone, to be available in the halls and between their panels: you don't necessarily need to have an appointment with an agent to have access to them. Last year when I talked to Michelle Brower and she asked me to query her, it was not in a formal pitch 5-minute meeting, but just a chat about a colleague of hers after a panel.
I've learned that sitting out the panels, too, can be relaxing. If one of the ones I am thinking about is overcrowded, or in the dark room with the uncomfortable chairs, or if I have just taken SO many notes at the last one and want to decompress (or, on years I am having a meeting, if I don't want to disrupt a discussion by coming-and-going from it), it can be rewarding to stay out in the lobby and chat with people as they're about to meet with an agent, or - amazingly - actually work on my writing! The venue is a very nice one, and this year the weather was extraordinarily beautiful, so sitting out a period was a bit of a zen relief.
This year, sitting one out, I met
Kevin Hanrahan, whose name I advise everyone to remember. His novel is one I can't wait to read, and suspect an awful lot of us will embrace. On top of being a likely success as an author, he's also an active service member, a very nice and generous guy (he agreed to read my battle scene!), and a family man. It'd be impossible not to wish the guy excesses of success, and with the idea he's pitching, he promises to find it.
I also got to chat with
Mike Albo, who, on top of being funny, turns out to be ANOTHER one of those friendly, supportive, enthusiastic, and infectious people the Conference is simply riddled with. Likewise Joe Williams, who did not have my dad as a professor (hee), and yet somehow managed to turn out to be a dazzlingly smart and also very nice guy nonetheless.
It's almost a bewildering abundance, the talent and charm JRW seems to attract.
The exception to this statement is notable, actually. There was one guest this year who put on a show such as I've never seen before at any JRW event. At one of the largest panels I attended, we were treated to a guest literally positioning herself with her back to the moderator, rolling her eyes at said mod, evincing obvious and 100% unnecessary antipathy quite publicly, and making an immense show of both boredom (whenever she was not speaking) and overdramatic snobbery. It was pretty amazing, and devastatingly ugly. The moderator largely on the receiving end of this Mean Girls snottiness evinced zero awareness of it, either because she couldn't see the show (this person's back being firmly to her) or because she is, you know, a GROWNUP and not feeling the need to engage pubescent antics. I always liked this moderator, but am now firmly On Their Side now, and entirely disgusted by a guest I would hardly have guessed to be a petty, clique-ish little wench. And, yes - I'm aware this succumbs to the clique dynamic. But she started it!
I wasn't alone in noting her rather stagey antipathy, nor in being throughly put off by the show. It was the single most revolting piece of behavior I've ever seen at any JRW event - and it was, in fact, the single piece of revolting behavior I've really ever seen at all. (Poorly socialized people with unfortunate interpersonal skills really do not hold a candle, though certainly there've been a couple of those.)
***
The closing event of the weekend was
Pitchapalooza - an event not ideal for the faint of heart or weak of knee. Like the
First Pages Critiques, this challenge asks writers to bare their works. Unlike first pages - Pitchapalooza is not anonymous ... not done for you by readers onstage ... and is utterly direct.
Also unlike first pages ... it turns out that the likelihood of finding your name drawn out of the box, to present your pitch live in front of everybody, aren't so small. With First Pages, which take a little while to read, and a little while to discuss, if they get to read as many as ten of them, it's a bumper crop.
With Pitchapalooza, there's a one minute limit on each author.
So there is time for a whole lot of people to read.
So the odds go way UP, that you will get chosen.
All of this is irrelevant to me. Because the odds of being chosen FIRST out of the box ...
Turned out to be 100%, for me.
Leila tells me the look on my face when they read my name FIRST was worth a million dollars.
I can say this: being chosen first was pretty painful! But David Henry Sterry and Arielle Eckstut were remarkably generous - they clearly know what this is like for writers - and asked for a round of applause for me before I even began, and were pretty kind (and VERY HELPFUL!) in providing first-feedback.
I'm glad I didn't have to follow Kevin Hanrahan.
I'm sorry I didn't get to hear some of the repeat comments they gave to most participants, so I could edit briefly and address some obviously typical issues with pitches.
I'm interested by the fact that some of what my work overall needs done on it is common to what they observed about the pitch itself! (It's well written and *rather* engaging, but needs "lusciousness" and really has to grab its audience harder by the lapels.)
I'm embarrassed that I was a bit disheveled at the time we got started, and didn't have time to acclimate to the event and prepare myself for it, and so stood there looking wildly, NAKEDLY nervous, my hair a bit of a mess, and my entire body shaking while everybody watched and at least two cameras TAPED ... heh.
But I was gratified by the kindness of several folks afterward (see also - the comment on my post below, from my Frank-ophilic friend Jeff Sypeck [this is as distinct from francophilic, fella babies]), which included Mike Albo saying the book sounds cool, and a girl named Cathy who said she missed my actual pitch but heard the feedback and wanted to know about the book, and Joe Williams, to whom I said I liked his pitch better and he said he liked mine (... UM ... and can I just say, the White House correspondent for POLITICO
liked my pitch better than his - this, a guy so insanely calm and poised I was wishing I'd taken some sort of drug just so I could have appeared less of a trembling wreck and wondering how he did that).
I mean, I stood in front of Karl Marlentes and gave this speech. I stood in front of Michelle Brower (ON the judging panel, by the way), who's already (so generously!) rejected my query. I stood in front of all my Broads, and EVERYONE there (including that one Mean Girl) and shook, and faltered, and had trouble breathing, and managed to get through it.
FIRST.
And took ten minutes to come down. Hee. My handwritten notes on what they had to say are hilariously quavering, the pen half-digging through the page in physical translation of the mental pressure!
I have to say - Pitchapalooza? HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. Woot!
Joe Williams said this, and I will close with it (as we Broads both opened and closed Pitchapalooza itself): "They say you have to do one thing every day that scares you. I think we've gotten a month's worth of scare in, doing those pitches."
WORD, Joe. And a hug and a high five.
