Welcome back!

Well the Alumni retreat is fast approaching and I’m looking forward to meeting with all my friends and faculty at Seton Hill. But even more important, I’ll have an opportunity to pitch my novel to some of the agents who will be at the retreat. There’s one problem.

I’ve never done a pitch in person.

Now, I’ve spoken about my book to many people, and also have written a query letter about it, but this will be the first time I go to a conference and pitch this thing in front of an agent. I’m very nervous about this and I’ve read quite a bit about making the perfect elevator pitch, but I’m still not sure if I’ve got a good one.

I’d like to throw out my pitch here and would appreciate any feedback on it. Does it work? What needs to be tweaked? Any suggestions are welcome. Here it is:

What if you forgot you lived a different life? And what if someone is trying to kill you because of it? In this science-fantasy, Maria, an amnesic combat cyborg turned farmer’s wife, has to find out more of who she was before she’s hunted down. What she finds out leads to a revelation which will end everything she knows and loves.

Once more, I reach out to the crowd for thoughts on my latest question: Returning to the Florida Writer’s Association.

A long time ago, I had joined the Florida Writer’s Association in search of others who shared my passion for writing.  I wanted to find kindred spirits who understand the driving force of wanting to put down words to describe the thoughts, ideas, and visions dancing within my mind.  I hoped I could then find some within who wrote in similar genres as I and that maybe we could become a critique group and support each other as we all strived for own goals.  I even took part in the first such conference they had organized.

Unfortunately, I didn’t find what I was looking for.  The meetings didn’t hold my interest and there were very, very few who wrote in my genres and seemingly even fewer who were interested in working in a critique group.  And I was too early in my writing career to relate to some of the topics in the conference.  While I had some great social opportunities, it didn’t work out as I had hoped. In fact, I remember when I went up to chat with the keynote speaker, he took the time to point out I was overweight and that it would affect my writing (Like I really didn’t notice I was sporting some extra pounds. I’m glad you pointed it out for me!).

That was about eight to nine years ago.  I recently stumbled across the Annual Florida Writer’s Conference website and was thinking about going back to see what was happening.  I’m still looking for some social opportunities with other writers and have found them to be lacking here in Orlando.  But, then some of the last experiences I had kept coming to mind.  Would I just be throwing my time away? Or should I shelve my experiences and go back to the meetings to see if maybe there are others around who also write in my genre and give the organization a chance once more?  What do you think?