Pitchapalooza 3

Pitchapalooza startled and awed audiences with its possibilities.

Pitchapalooza 2 pushed audiences further, with Journey-acclaimed critics calling it awesome and exciting.

And now the release of Pitchapalooza 3 is ready to stun the viewers further...

...until it completely bombs at the box office and turns out to be worthless to pretty much everyone involved.

And so it seems that my novel pitch is not among those the Book Doctors selected. Ah, well. It wasn't as if I thought winning it—let alone being chosen randomly—was that realistic.

That was still the best odds I could possibly have of getting an agent, but oh, well. Self-publishing digitally it is!

Once I actually finish the story. And maybe after redoing the cover, although I need practice drawing people holding hands for my current idea...

Pitchapalooza: The Sequel, in Amazing 3-D!

Well, I've gone on ahead and written up a pitch for The Winding Road. I'm sort of unsatisfied with that title now that I've thought about it more, though, so I refer to it as The Long and Winding Road in the pitch. If anyone has other fitting title ideas, feel free to (read: please do) let me know. Also feel free to critique this first draft of the pitch.

Clocking in at 239 of 250 allowed words, we have:

The zombie apocalypse was years ago—old hat. Besides, there’s a cure and plenty of bullets yet to take care of the rotting stragglers.

No, the threats these days are the survivors.

Charlotte Heiman has finally achieved a stable life in the walled remains of Killeen as a zombie hunter, but she can’t stay any longer. She hasn’t seen her little brother Blake since her family dropped him off at camp that fateful summer, and now that she has the supplies, she’s headed his way.

Arthur Deering has finally achieved a stable life in a rural home with no companions but his bow and arrows. He has long since come to believe that he’s the only man alive—so it comes as quite a shock when Charlotte finds him. Quite an infatuating shock, as a matter of fact.

Although Arthur turns out to be much more of a suitor than a menace, he’s not the only survivor Charlotte meets. It’s a long walk to Hunt, filled with those who lost everything and aren’t afraid to take whatever they can. It will take both Charlotte and Arthur to get past survivors that threaten to take their supplies, bodies, and lives.

A tale of the numbness and the hope humans can achieve in the aftermath of atrocity, The Long and Winding Road will appeal to all post-apocalyptic romance lovers from the realm of The Hunger Games to that of Warm Bodies.

Pitchapalooza

I'm interested in the NaNoWriMo Pitchapalooza. There's an incredibly slim chance my pitch would be picked at random, and an even lower chance it would win, given that I've never written a pitch before.

It seems like a great opportunity, though, and I feel like I could use the practice even if mine personally won't come to anything. Despite the odds, the reward of an "introduction to an agent or publisher" seems like something from which I shouldn't just up and shy away.

I'm a bit torn as to whether I should try a pitch for The Winding Road or for Mayflies. At this point, The Winding Road has a lot more to it, and I'm slowing down Mayflies to keep my progress in sync with my online course. On the other hand, I just watched Warm Bodies, and it has a shocking number of elements exactly like The Winding Road. Certainly it's not the same, but the major points of my idea weren't nearly as original as I had thought.

There are some writing tips on the site, but, as someone who's never written more than however many characters fanfiction.net allows in a summary, I'm still not sure how to actually do this 250-word thing. If anyone has experience with this, please share.

I seem to have the rest of the month to finish this, but this week is going to be terribly busy. I'll put all of my writing into Break Out, I think, and leave this for another time. Maybe I'll have figured out something about it by then.