Pitch Madness

No posts for three months and now two in one day! I also entered Brenda Drakes Pitch Madness. To follow, check out #PitchMadness on twitter. She has an amazing line up of support and agents who will eventually see the best entries.

Here's my 35 word pitch and 250 word first page:

Title: MIGHTY MIKE AND THE ALIEN PEZ DISPENSER
Genre: Middlegrade Sci-fi/Adventure
Word Count:42k

Pitch: Dedicated to all things science fiction, eleven-year-old Mike tests superpower infused alien candies in hopes of escaping bullies. He ends up in a remote control versus laser battle to save his friends—and worst enemy.

Excerpt:

Mike crept toward the swings, one eye on Brutus, the keeper of The List of Kids to Be Pounded After School. Brutus and his two cohorts leaped and hollered on the basketball court, absorbed in the bloodiest game of basketball ever. So far, they focused on bruising themselves instead of their usual targets at Grover Cleveland Middle School. Mike peeked through the monkey bars. Still safe.

The List wasn’t a physical list, of course. It lived in the head of Nathan Simms, the biggest kid in sixth grade. Failing to call Nathan by his self-chosen nickname of Brutus guaranteed an entry on The List. Even the teachers found it easier to call him Brutus.

Mike didn’t know how he’d landed a permanent entry on The List. He wasn’t ugly, poor or stupid. Brutus didn’t say a word when Jordan—the most popular sixth grader, with skin the same coffee-color as Mike’s—spewed milk from his nose. Instead of calling Jordan booger-breath, Brutus tagged Mike with a humongous, drippy spitwad.

No one picked on Mike’s best friend Carlos either. But then Carlos was always picked first for team sports and had two older brothers. Big older brothers.

Dashing from the monkey bars to the merry-go-round, Mike stubbed his toe on a bump and nearly face-planted in the gravel. He scrambled to his feet and tried to walk casually. His eyes flicked back and forth from the uneven ground to Brutus snatching the basketball from his second-in-command Cole. Cole retaliated by elbowing his buddy in the chest.

My 2011 NaNoWriMo project is done!

It's been a while since I posted. Back in January, I thought we were about 10 days from closing on an awesome property we found in Cedar City Utah. Great house, next to BLM, a basement apartment for my mom. We'd need to do some fencing and build a barn, but it was perfect for us because it is so close to a lot of the endurance rides we want to do.

But, the property was off the grid. And after swearing that was no problem, the bank suddenly said, oh, you mean there's no electricity? Well, we can't loan on that.

We flailed around with a couple more banks, even tried one that would let us finance running electricity for a mile to the place, but that failed as well.

Since then we've been living out of boxes since we'd packed everything but the essentials. And we have to move since we've sold our current property. Luckily the buyers are able to be flexible.

A CP and friend of mine, Eliza Tilton, soon to be published with the project that we first met over, challenged me to finish a book I'd started for the 2011 NaNoWriMo. She figured we could finish our WIP's in time for WriteOnCon in March.

I was 20k in, expecting it to end around 40k. So I knew it was possible. I averaged 1000 wpd most weekdays and got it finished on Feb 28.

Throughout Feb, Eliza and my in person CP read the pages and I felt it was a pretty clean ms. So I decided to submit to a couple contests and get more feedback.

I entered the Operation Awesome Secret Agent. The secret agent is Tricia Lawrence of the Erin Murphy Literary Agency and I won! She wants to see the full!!!! I'd checked out this agency in the past because Ami-Joan Paquette read a few chapters of my currently shelved YA Fantasy. This is very exciting because not only do I think they're a great agency, but they don't accept unsolicited queries. Awesome opportunity!

I still haven't moved (but getting closer - we found a 62 acre property in Colorado with a log home that needs lots of work, cuz yeah, I need more projects!)