The Kansas Writer’s Association’s Scene Conference is less than two months away. I am, indeed, excited. There is new knowledge, old friends, and opportunities.
One of those opportunities is a thing called PitchaPalooza, described on some web sites as the American Idol for Books. Apparently without Simon. The idea is that you get one minute to pitch your book with the winner getting a meet with a literary agent. It condenses all the frustrations or all the joys of sending query letters into sixty seconds of your life. Live. In front of other people.
Oh, what the hell! I’ll give it a go. Sure, I get nervous in situations like that. But if I hide behind my Tikiman persona and figure I’ve got nothing to lose, then everything will be okay.
Except…I’ve got two books I could pitch and I don’t know which one to go with.
Which pitch to pitch?
There’s Swansong, my first NaNoWriMo from 2007 which I have fleshed out and developed over the last four+ years. A good piece of hard-boiled crime fiction. Detailed locales from here in Wichita, KS. Really out-there characters (as you would expect from something detailing the dark underbelly of the crime world). A troubled yet heroic anti-hero.
On the other hand, I’ve got Weekend Getaways, or Adventures in Contract Killing. Darkly comic and Transgressive. (Think Brett Easton Ellis or Chuck Palahniuk.) Looks at the notions of self-improvement and the extreme angst of call center customer service. Unusual fonts and integrated paragraphs of non-linear description. Probably unpublishable. But I absolutely love it.
Traditional vs. non-traditional.
Dark vs. dark comedy.
Fitting into the mainstream vs. swimming upstream.
Good work in a genre of a lot of good work vs. standing clearly outside the lines and daring the reader to step over.
I know it’s not much to go on, but I’m asking you who read this…
Which pitch to pitch?
