The Crimefest conference included a live pitch session with three well-respected literary agents. It was advertised as "speed dating" but with literary agents. I was signed up for Saturday morning, and I would get a precious ten minutes of face time with three different agents.
In the handful of queries I'd sent prior to the conference, there were two requests for fulls. There was no reason not to be excited. (Unless you subscribe to the theory that you shouldn't count your chickens...which I now do.)
I floated through the Friday panels in an aura of excited confidence. "I wrote a book. I have a finished manuscript," I thought. "They are going to love it," I told myself. "Just wait until they hear that I've already started on the next one!"
I arrived to the pitch room early, wearing an outfit I'd chosen weeks before. I took my place next to two other other pitch participants. One was wearing flip-flops and biker shorts. Neither had a finished manuscript. "I got this," I thought.
Cue the sound of breaks screeching to a halt.
It turns out it doesn't matter so much what you are wear (although I wouldn't recommend flip-flops and biker shorts). What matters the most are the words you've written on the paper.
I sat down in front of the first agent. He told me that he didn't believe in ghosts and could never represent anyone who wrote about ghosts. My mouth dropped open in stunned silence. I recovered enough to make an effort (I used to be an attorney after all, I couldn't let it go without a fight.) But after that opening statement, I should have just looked at my watch and asked, "Well, what else should we talk about for the next 9 minutes and 30 seconds?"
My second pitch went a little better. But I walked away with the advice that I should rewrite the entire novel with a young adult MC. Huh. I'd never really thought much about Young Adult, I was just writing the story that was in my head. In hindsight, I realize now that this agent was ahead of a market trend, she just couldn't put her finger on what it was. And it was something I had struggled with a bit as well. In the months since, the market has identified a new category: New Adult. And my manuscript as it stands now and as it did then, fits within this perfectly.
To be honest, I don't remember much about the third pitch. I only remember that she told me "she didn't really believe that my MC would still be mourning the loss of her best friend from a few years before." At which point I actually started to cry. You see, my husband's best friend was murdered, for real. And watching him cope with the loss sparked the original inspiration for my main character. I explained this, and the shocked expression on her face was enough of an apology. But I'm sure to this day, at cocktail parties, she probably tells the story about "that time she made a pitch participant burst into tears at Crimefest."
I walked out of that room utterly deflated. It took me several months to regroup from those 30 minutes. During that time, I even rewrote my entire manuscript with a young adult main character. (Which was a disaster, by the way.)
But I will forever be grateful for that experience. First, because attending Crimefest made me realize how very much I want this writing dream to come true. Second, because it made me take a wrong turn - rewriting the manuscript as a Young Adult. If I hadn't taken that wrong turn, I never would have found my way to SCBWI Belgium and the greatest critique group I have ever known.
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