Yeah… uh… never mind.

Luther M. Siler

First things first– I’m trying to post this via email. Any wonkiness in the formatting is therefore because of that, and I’ll try and fix it later today.

I have decided, regretfully, that I don’t have time for Pitch Wars this year. Not to enter, mind you– the manuscript I was going to use is done, although having looked at it recently it does still need some work. The query letter wasn’t going to be a huge deal to write. This actually just really hit me last night as I was fiddling with the query: I don’t have time to win.

Leaving my job aside, I have no less than three books (yes, three– mwahahaha) on my plate right now. One needs to be beaten into releasable shape within a month. One is half-finished and currently languishing, and if I don’t find the time to get back to it with a quickness it’s going to die on the vine and that would be very, very bad. One is a Big Sekrit and I don’t wanna talk about it right now.

I don’t have the damn time to add a fourth. If I were to write a wonderful query letter (and mine was basically fully-formed in my head, needing only to be put onto pixels, which would have taken about an hour and which I absolutely have time to get done today) and it would win, that would mean I’d either have to put everything else aside to work on CLICK between now and the agent round, which is in… November?… or I’d have to find a way to work on four different damn book projects, plus care and feeding of the blog, plus my job, plus my wife and son.

Naaa gaaa dooo it.

So. As much as I like the idea of Pitch Wars, and as much as I’ve enjoyed poking fun at the other authors and the mentors and interacting with people about it over the last month or so… it ain’t gonna happen this year.

Dammit.

*Cracks knuckles, rolls neck*

Luther M. Siler3 Comments

Aaight y’all.

It’s Monday morning, on the week before school starts.

You may not know this: this is the busiest week of the year for teachers.  No doubt, no comparison, no nothing.  The first week of school doesn’t come close to comparing to the business of the week before school starts.  It’s like a vacation after that shit.

Now, as you know, I am not actually teaching this year.  I will not be in a classroom.  But my new position has placed demands on me in such a fashion that I think this week might be worse than the average week-before-school-starts, because in some ways I’m responsible for the entire building.  You may recall me hiring Sven last year.  I will be hiring Sven and seven of his older, meaner brothers this year.  And giving them halberds.

In addition, the 24-hour submission window for Pitch Wars is August 18th, and I have a shitton of work to get done before then for that, and oh by the way I’ve written like a thousand words on Benevolence Archives 8 in the last two or three weeks and if I don’t get back to that really soon it’s going to die on the goddamn page and I absolutely cannot let that happen.

What I am saying is this:

  • I may not be around much.
  • I am probably lying about that.
  • But posts are going to be shorter, because I am out of my mind.
  • You should continue to visit my blog four or five times daily, because I cry when my stats are down.
  • While you’re at it I haven’t sold a copy of the BA novella in a while and you should fix that and go buy it because it’s hilarious and interesting and good and you’ll like it.
  • Also my son’s birthday is the 23rd and we are having a party for him and the house is in no way ready for guests.
  • Oh my god don’t ever GIS the phrase “cracking knuckles.”

I will be back up for air in early September, I think, but holygod the next couple of weeks are gonna be a madhouse.

Pitch Wars Stage One: COMPLETE

Luther M. Siler1 Comment

Girls wanna have fun

This means that I have, uh, ten days to complete Pitch Wars Stages two through four, which are: 2) Winnow this list down to four; 3) Write a query letter for those four; 4) Take another look at the first chapter of Click, potentially beating it into shape to be submitted to these fine folk.

It was already going to be an insane ten days.  School, by the way, starts in twelve.

I can do this.

Sure.

Anyway, just for shits ‘n’ giggles, here’s the shortlist of mentors I’m looking at:

I am, at the moment, calling my reading comprehension into question– because this contest is fairly heavily tilted toward YA/middle grade authors, a lot of the 75 mentors aren’t looking for books for the adult market.  I thought I had done a decent job, like, noticing that while going through and creating the shortlist, but I just had to delete three people who very clearly say “only YA” or “Only MG” in their profiles.  So, uh, I don’t know what happened there.

Hopefully I’ll have picks by the end of the weekend.

A brief note for the writerpeople

Luther M. Siler7 Comments

If you write YA or adult genre novels, particularly if you have a manuscript lying around that you haven’t done anything with yet, you probably ought to be checking Pitch Wars out.  I have at least four other things I ought to be doing right now but I’m going through their mentor list right now, and I’m not sure I’m making a bad decision in it either.