PitMad

Today is #PitMad, a pitch party on Twitter that allows agents/publishers to peruse 140-character book pitches by authors and request material if they're interested (as opposed to the usual process of sifting through query letters/emails). I usually hear about these after the fact, but this time I got lucky and found out last night.

I started pitching a finished fantasy novel to agents this past summer, then slowed down quite a bit over fall semester (when I'm usually busy grading other people's writing). Even with spring semester picking up this week, I'm trying to increase my querying efforts. So #PitMad it is! See my short pitches in the Twitter feed. The project I'm pitching is described in a bit more detail after the jump:

"Winteraster" are fallen stars -- classic characters like Zeus and Hera, Cupid and Psyche, and St. George and the Dragon -- who are tired of being imaginary and build their own world by which to become Real. In this Interim they acquire new names and memories: Patraster and Bo, who possess others' bodies and create Monsters; Arrow and Psuka, whose daughters want to be heroes; and the Earth Worker and Arcain, who battled anciently and are due for a rematch.

CHILDREN OF GOLD follows honey-haired Decima, Patraster's daughter and a Helen of Troy, as she grows from a kidnapped princess to a dangerous queen. Though reliant on a mysterious white rod and haunted by Patraster and Bo, she finds that power suits her…until the next sacrifice to obtain it is her own brother. But it may be too late to convince his would-be avengers that she is not the true enemy.

CHILDREN OF GOLD is a fantasy novel complete at 99,000 words, the first of a planned series called WINTERASTER.

"Planned series" is a bit of an understatement -- I wrote the second installment first (and was awarded my MFA for it). Realizing it was more the middle of the story than the beginning, I started over with the story mentioned above. Some of it was written as part of my MFA program at Goddard College (authors Rachel Pollack, Susan Kim, and Jeanne Mackin were my reader-mentors) and an excerpt received an honorable mention in the Writers of the Future Contest a while back. Wish me luck!

PS: The tag #FakePitMad is trending now, too, and is a lot of fun to read.