The First Pitch – Leia’s Version

You might have read Sorcha’s post recently about her pitch session with an editor at Fiction Fest — a writer’s conference we attended last weekend. In her version, I made the pitch appointments “without her permission” then “forced” her to do it. Then at the very end, she suggested I needed to be spanked. After our fans read this, they agreed a beating was in order. So I’m here now to give MY side of the story. Then I’ll let you be the judge of who needs to spank whom.

First of all, Sorcha secretly wanted to pitch her book idea to the agents and editors at the conference. I know this because she kept dropping clues like, “no one will want my book, I’m not going to pitch it” and “no, really I don’t want a pitch appointment.” So like a good friend, I picked up on these subtle hints and made her an appointment with three agents. And when I picked her up from the airport and told her I signed her up to pitch and she smacked me, I knew I’d made the right choice.

During the keynote, when the speaker talked about the changing industry and that publishers were taking risks with edgy cross-genre quirky books, I nudged her repeatedly and she seemed eager to prove me right. So the first workshop we attended was one about pitching. After the workshop, I sat in the hallway with her while she perfected her pitch, giving helpful advice like “you should say it in a movie trailer voice.” I was even late for the time management class!

Then when she went to pitch, I spied on her and was pleasantly surprised at her performance. She seemed so confident and barely looked at her notes. I was like a proud mother watching her chick fly from the nest for the first time. Fly Sorcha! Fly!

And finally, when I found out that the next pitch appointment was scheduled with an agent only looking for Christian books, I told Sorcha to cancel instead of watching her pitch anyway and laughing hysterically as the agent doused her with holy water.

So you see, I’m an excellent friend and co-author. If anyone needs to be spanked, it’s Sorcha for insisting I enjoy making her suffer instead of seeing this as a character-building experience. Now, if anyone would like to dispute this with her, she’ll be in my dungeon, wailing and begging for mercy. Mwuahahaha.