Kathryn Rountree
The Saving by Kathryn Rountree
One cool spring evening, newlywed Sarah Williams steps into her garage to find her husband, Stuart, slumped over his steering wheel, dead. Wracked by grief and thrust into a new life as a twenty-four-year-old widow, she reaches out to her older sister, Wren, and her family to help support her through a tragedy she never imagined could happen to her.
Wren Williams and her husband, Jack, wage a fierce battle with infertility, only to be met with a seemingly never-ending stream of obstacles. Just when Wren decides she can’t take one more injection or endure one more hormonal roller coaster, she discovers she is pregnant. The loss of her baby, however, leaves Wren in both shock and denial, thus alienating her from both her husband and family. With nowhere left to turn, Wren directs her search toward the supernatural, hunting for answers about the baby she lost in the most unlikeliest of places.
Set in lush southern Louisiana, the Williams sisters are faced with the unspeakable, each mired in a conflict that threatens to swallow her whole. Filled with grief, drama, and a humor that only southern women can muster in the face of life’s most difficult punches, The Saving recalls other women’s contemporary fiction, such as Caroline Leavitt’s Pictures of You, Jodi Picoult’s The Pact, and Karen White’s The Beach Trees.
The Book Doctors: I just love how quickly you take us into a situation where the stakes simply could not be any higher. Boom! We’re right in the middle of life and death. And the stakes keep getting higher. These kinds of family sagas with women trying to come to grips with grief and fertility, motherhood and death, these are the very backbone of women’s fiction. And I love your comparable titles. We’re friends with Caroline Leavitt, and she’s such a wonderful writer, the great constructor of stories. I want to know more about what makes Sarah Williams tick. What was she trying to accomplish with her life before her husband dies? Is there a through line that defines who she is? She seems to not have any personality apart from her role as grief-stricken widow. I don’t get a sense of who she is, what she looks like, what kind of human being she is. Then all of a sudden, we switch to her sister’s story. I don’t understand how Sarah’s story blends in with the story of her sister. Quite jarring, because I’m emotionally involved in Sarah’s story, then all of a sudden she’s gone from the book. I am really confused by the sudden appearance of the supernatural. You need to give me more specifics about what kind of supernatural thing you’re going to present to me. How is your supernatural element different than the supernatural elements in the countless supernatural stories that we’re bombarded with every day in our culture? And instead of telling me that your story is set in lush southern Louisiana, you have to show that to me. Wow me with how beautifully you can portray this part of the world, which is filled with wonder and magic and danger. And you tell me that the sisters are faced with this conflict, but you don’t tell me how the stories are related to each other. You don’t show me a series of events that escalate to a seemingly tragic conclusion. I have a pet peeve; I hate when people tell me that their stuff is funny. You say that there is southern humor in your book, and yet I don’t see one single piece of evidence to support that. You can’t tell me you’re funny; you have to make me laugh. You shouldn’t have to tell me that it’s filled with grief and drama either. You have to display that and make me feel it.
Myra Kendrix
Ms. Communications by Myra Kendrix
“When do you need me to finish this?”
“By last Thursday. Can you meet that deadline?
Gwen Mongan is a Marketing Communications executive at an innovative startup bent on saving the world from global warming. Her job is exciting, her co-workers’ antics entertaining and her salary has allowed her to restore her dream home.
But then there’s her boss: the impossibly demanding and maddeningly charismatic hi-tech superstar, Jake Folton. When Jake finally pushes Gwen too far, she begins to think it’s time to move on. A former social worker who dabbles in matchmaking and runs a support group, Gwen longs to revive her youthful ambitions of bringing people together.
But Gwen soon discovers it’s going to take more spunk and ingenuity than she knew she possessed to extricate herself from a boss with a stellar track-record of getting exactly what he wants. In fact, it’s going to turn her tidy existence upside-down.
Can an unknown racehorse named Purple Lemonade, a deadly Funnel-Web Spider, and a dubious Bachelor-of-the-Year contest finally show Gwen that some people are not what they seem and some risks are worth taking?
Debut novelist Myra Kendrix brings her own experience in hi-tech marketing to this fast-paced romantic comedy, set against the vibrant cityscape of Sydney, Australia. Ms. Communications gives an inside view of the cut-throat startup scene, where today’s titans are born or burned, and sometimes the impossible becomes a reality.
The Book Doctors: I love how we know right from the beginning that our heroine has something she desperately wants. And that it’s fighting global warming, which makes us root for her. And I like that the story is set in not just the world of startups, but in the world of Australian startups. I have not heard that setting for a book yet. And I like her nemesis, “impossibly demanding and maddeningly charismatic high-tech superstar.” That’s a lot of great words put together in very economical ways. I also really like the final paragraph’s list, again it’s really fun. I don’t quite see the romance in this romantic comedy, and that’s a problem. In the very first couplet that we read, the last question doesn’t seem like realistic dialogue. Do you think it should be something more like, “Is that going to be a problem?” Because we know that they can’t actually make deadline that was last Thursday. I don’t have enough of a sense of where your novel takes us. How do the events become more tense and the stakes higher?
Ian Cahill
Pencil by Ian Cahill
Pencil is the story of Finn, corporate rising star by day, hopeless romantic by night. All he wanted for his 25th birthday was a date with the girl next door. Instead he got a strange silver envelope in the mail detailing his enrollment into a century old government program.
The law is simple. You have three pencils. You must write one sentence a day in one of the many government approved writing rooms. When your pencils are gone, so are you. The trouble is no one really knows where you go.
Suddenly, Finn’s life is torn between his new duty as a citizen and the nagging feeling of rebellion. Seeking the truth behind the program, Finn crosses paths with Mia, a fellow writer and member of a secret group of misfits looking for the same answers Finn seeks.
Slipping through the fingers of the law and digging for clues in familiar and not so familiar places, Mia leads Finn on a journey across the city and into the depths of a mammoth corporation. To keep Mia and find the truth, Finn is forced to make the ultimate decision–write or run?
The Book Doctors: I really like how much creepiness you manage to get into these 250 words. And this strange world is so strange. Three pencils. Write until the pencils are gone. Then disappear. I’ve read 10,000 pitches and never seen this before. But there aren’t enough specific details in this story. Is he excited about the strange silver envelope? Is he scared? Confused? And what kind of a world is it? I gather it’s in the future, but how is it different from our world? “Secret group of misfits” is too vague & general. “Slipping through the fingers of the law and digging for clues in familiar and not so familiar places…” isn’t exciting. I see no word pictures in my head. And what will happen if everything goes wrong? Also, there doesn’t seem to be a romance between Finn and Mia. Is there? I feel shortchanged on their relationship. I believe a couple of comparable titles would also be very helpful because I’m not quite sure exactly where this book sits on the bookshelf.
The Book Doctors NaNoWriMo Pitchapalooza Winner Gets 3-Book Deal with Random House
The Book Doctors are proud to announce 2013 National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) winner Stacy McAnulty got a 3-book deal from Random House for The Dino Files, in which a nine-year-old dino expert has adventures at the Dinosaur Education Center of Wyoming, run by his paleontologist grandparents.
The 2015 Book Doctors NaNoWriMo Pitchapalooza is accepting pitches from now until March 6. Just send your pitch to: nanowrimo@thebookdoctors.com. PLEASE DO NOT ATTACH YOUR PITCH, JUST EMBED IT IN THE EMAIL. All pitches must be received by 11:59PM PST on March 6, 2015. The 25 random pitches will be posted on March 15, 2015. Winners will be announced on March 31, 2015. Anyone can vote for fan favorite, so get your social media engine running as soon as the pitches go up!
Like last year, we’re offering free 20-minute consultations (worth $100) to anyone who buys a copy of The Essential Guide To Getting Your Book Published. Just attach a copy of your sales receipt to your email and we’ll set up your consultation.
It’s been a great year for Pitchapalooza winners. Cathy Camper and Raul Gonzalez III were our Pitchapalooza winners from world-famous Powell’s bookstore in Portland, Oregon. Their middle grade graphic novel, Lowriders in Space, is the first in a two-book deal with Chronicle Books. Cari Noga was the NaNoWriMo Pitchapalooza winner in 2011. Her novel, Sparrow Migrations, was a semifinalist in the 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest, the spring 2013 winner of the ForeWord Firsts contest sponsored by ForeWord Reviews, and was named a literary fiction category semi-finalist in the Kindle Book Review’s 2014 Kindle Book Awards. She recently received an offer from Lake Union Publishing, an imprint of Amazon Publishing. Then there’s Pitchapalooza winner and NaNoWriMo veteran, Gennifer Albin. After she won Pitchapalooza, one of New York’s top agents sold her dystopian novel in a three-book, six-figure deal. Her third book, Unraveled, just came out this past fall. And these are just a very few of our many success stories!
Are you feeling a little unsure about exactly how to craft your pitch? We’ve got 10 Tips for Pitching:
- A great pitch is like a poem. Every word counts.
2. Make us fall in love with your hero. Whether you’re writing a novel or memoir, you have to make us root for your flawed but lovable hero.
3. Make us hate your villain. Show us someone unique and dastardly whom we can’t wait to hiss at.
4. Just because your kids love to hear your story at bedtime doesn’t mean you’re automatically qualified to get a publishing deal. So make sure not to include this information in your pitch.
5. If you have any particular expertise that relates to your novel, tell us. Establishing your credentials will help us trust you.
6. Your pitch is your audition to show us what a brilliant writer you are, it has to be the very best of your writing.
7.Don’t make your pitch a book report. Make it sing and soar and amaze.
8. A pitch is like a movie trailer. You start with an incredibly exciting/funny/sexy/romantic/etc. close-up with intense specificity, then you pull back to show the big picture and tell us the themes and broad strokes that build to a climax.
9. Leave us with a cliffhanger. The ideal reaction to a pitch is, “Oh my God, what happens next?”
10. Show us what’s unique, exciting, valuable, awesome, unexpected, about your project, and why it’s comfortable, familiar and proven.
Fifth Annual NaNoWriMo Pitchapalooza
You wrote your 50,000 words (or got pretty close!). You’re a winner. You felt the high. Now what are you going to do with your precious manuscript? That’s where we, The BookDoctors, come in.
For those of you not familiar with Pitchapalooza, here’s the skinny: You get 250 words to pitch your book. Twenty-five pitches will be randomly selected from all submissions. We will then critique the pitches online so you get to see what makes a great pitch. We will then choose one winner from the group. The winner will receive an introduction to an agent or publisher appropriate for his/her manuscript. We will also crown a fan favorite who will receive a free one-hour consult with us (worth $250).
Beginning February 6, 2015, you can email your pitch to nanowrimo@thebookdoctors.com. PLEASE DO NOT ATTACH YOUR PITCH, JUST EMBED IT IN THE EMAIL. All pitches must be received by 11:59PM PST on March 6, 2015. The 25 random pitches will be posted on March 15, 2015. Winners will be announced on March 31, 2015. Anyone can vote for fan favorite, so get your social media engine running as soon as the pitches go up!
Like last year, we’re offering free 20-minute consultations (worth $100) to anyone who buys a copy of The Essential Guide To Getting Your Book Published. Just attach a copy of your sales receipt to your email and we’ll set up your consultation.
It’s been a great year for Pitchapalooza winners. Cathy Camper and Raul Gonzalez III were our Pitchapalooza winners from world-famous Powell’s bookstore in Portland, Oregon. Their middle grade graphic novel, Lowriders in Space, is the first in a two-book deal with Chronicle Books. Cari Noga was the NaNoWriMo Pitchapalooza winner in 2011. Her novel, Sparrow Migrations, was a semifinalist in the 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest, the spring 2013 winner of the ForeWord Firsts contest sponsored by ForeWord Reviews, and was named a literary fiction category semi-finalist in the Kindle Book Review’s 2014 Kindle Book Awards. She recently received an offer from Lake Union Publishing, an imprint of Amazon Publishing. Then there’s Pitchapalooza winner and NaNoWriMo veteran, Gennifer Albin. After she won Pitchapalooza, one of New York’s top agents sold her dystopian novel in a three-book, six-figure deal. Her third book, Unraveled, just came out this past fall. And these are just a very few of our many success stories!
Are you feeling a little unsure about exactly how to craft your pitch? We’ve got 10 Tips for Pitching:
1. A great pitch is like a poem. Every word counts.
2. Make us fall in love with your hero. Whether you’re writing a novel or memoir, you have to make us root for your flawed but lovable hero.
3. Make us hate your villain. Show us someone unique and dastardly whom we can’t wait to hiss at.
4. Just because your kids love to hear your story at bedtime doesn’t mean you’re automatically qualified to get a publishing deal. So make sure not to include this information in your pitch.
5. If you have any particular expertise that relates to your novel, tell us. Establishing your credentials will help us trust you.
6. Your pitch is your audition to show us what a brilliant writer you are, it has to be the very best of your writing.
7.Don’t make your pitch a book report. Make it sing and soar and amaze.
8. A pitch is like a movie trailer. You start with an incredibly exciting/funny/sexy/romantic/
9. Leave us with a cliffhanger. The ideal reaction to a pitch is, “Oh my God, what happens next?”
10. Show us what’s unique, exciting, valuable, awesome, unexpected, about your project, and why it’s comfortable, familiar and proven.
Postponed til 2/12 Get Your NaNo Novel Published Successfully!
The Book Doctors show you how. 2/12, 4PM PST http://bit.ly/1ADUqCF
NaNoWriMo Pitchapalooza 2014: The Winners!!!
Thanks so much to everyone who participated in this year’s NaNoWriMo Pitchapalooza! As always, we got so many fabulous pitches, making it VERY hard to choose a winner. But choose we must. And this year the winning pitch goes to KITTY KILBY for her book The Oyster’s Autobiography. Amazing job, Kitty!
We also had such a tight race for fan favorite, that we’re awarding two consultations for two talented (and obviously well-loved) ladies who were neck-and-neck the whole time. Congratulations to MEGHAN SPRAPEC and IZZY VERDERY. Woohoo!!!
If you’re looking for regular advice on writing and getting published, sign up for our newsletter (where you’ll find info on our live Pitchapaloozas and workshops around the country) or visit us on Facebook and Twitter.
Write on Wrimos!
Cheers,
Arielle & David
P.S. If you’re a winner, please email us at arielle@thebookdoctors.com.
2014 NaNoWriMo Pitchapalooza
Read the 2014 pitches below and vote for your favorite, by Author:
- Meghan K. Strapec (34%, 1,415 Votes)
- Izzy Verdery (33%, 1,396 Votes)
- Bárbara Thomé (10%, 402 Votes)
- Courtney Parker (5%, 191 Votes)
- Jennifer Mason (3%, 138 Votes)
- Kelley Greene (3%, 126 Votes)
- Sara Knaus (3%, 117 Votes)
- Arjav Shah (3%, 115 Votes)
- Tiffany Vora (2%, 63 Votes)
- Rebecca Ansari (1%, 53 Votes)
- August Samuel Evrard (1%, 45 Votes)
- Sara Pauff (1%, 32 Votes)
- Jessica Scott (1%, 26 Votes)
- Candice Watson (0%, 18 Votes)
- Kitty Kilby (0%, 7 Votes)
- Jessica Hoeferr (0%, 5 Votes)
- Sara Litchfield (0%, 5 Votes)
- Tia Kalla (0%, 5 Votes)
- Lauren Harsma & Kate Dias (0%, 4 Votes)
- Clarissa Kae (0%, 3 Votes)
- Keri Culver (0%, 2 Votes)
- Lubna Safi (0%, 2 Votes)
- Hazel Sparks (0%, 1 Votes)
- Ana Maria Visinoni-Davidov (0%, 1 Votes)
- Sarah Downie (0%, 1 Votes)
Total Voters: 4,173
Nano Nation delivers yet another batch of pulse-ponding pitches! Teens with superpowers and a real life teen writer. Witches, an Egytian queen and mutated babies. Poisonous smartphones and a yarn-bomber. Dead brides and Mr. Rochester. Mobsters and star-crossed lovers. There’s something for everyone here.
Once again, we were totally blown away by the diversity, quantity and quality of pitches we got in our NaNoWriMo Pitchapalooza. But of course we’ve come to expect this level of excellence from NaNo Nation. The Book Doctors had an absolute blast swimming in this vast pool of pitches. Write on, Wrimos!
Now for the 411: The 25 pitches below were selected randomly. Our comments follow each pitch. It’s our mission to try to help all you amazing writers not just get published, but get successfully published. That’s why we’ve told you what works, but also what needs to be improved.
On March 31, 2014, we will name a winner. But, in the mean time, don’t let our opinion sway you. What story intrigues you? What pitch would prod you from the couch to the bookstore (or, if you’re really lazy, to buy it online)? This year, we’ve made it easy for you to vote for your favorite pitch. The pitch that receives the most votes will be awarded the “fan favorite”, and the author will receive a free one-hour consult with us (worth $250).
But please note: YOU CAN ONLY VOTE ONCE! So please choose carefully. Don’t just read the first couple of pitches — read them all. You owe it to your fellow Wrimos. Encourage your friends, family and random strangers to vote for you via the link to the poll. We will also be posting these pitches—a couple a day–on our Facebook page. We encourage anyone to “like” your entry but only poll votes from the webpage will count towards the Fan Favorite.
Finally, through the 31st, we are still offering a free 20-minute consult (worth $100) to anyone who buys a copy of our book The Essential Guide To Getting Your Book Published. Just email us a copy of your receipt and we’ll be in touch to set up a time to talk.
Kitty Kilby
The Oyster’s Autobiography by Kitty Kilby
Shy girls don’t yarn-bomb the school fence at dawn, and they definitely don’t skip school to hang out with Patrick Hayes—student council president, football vice-captain (and president of his own fan club).
But then, best friends don’t usually resort to blackmail.
Fifteen-year-old Mabs is the shadow to Olivia’s sun. That’s how it’s always been. But when Olivia goes on a semester-long exchange to France, Mabs can no longer hide behind her best friend.
When a letter arrives, postmarked Paris, the last thing Mabs expects is a blackmail letter. And unless she completes the enclosed list of dares by the time Olivia gets home, Olivia will send the love poem she stole from Mabs’s diary to the boy it was written about.
What’s even worse than the possibility of Rob Eno (her way too easily decipherable codename for the former object of her affections) seeing that poem, or her best friend thinking that she’s a friendless recluse who needs to be blackmailed into getting a life, is having to admit it just might be true.
After a few humiliating attempts, Mabs realises the only way she’s ever going to get the list finished in time is to enlist the help of an extrovert. Enter Patrick Hayes—her brother’s pain-in-the-neck best friend.
The ultimate extrovert, he might be the only one who can help Mabs finish the list, and step out of Olivia’s shadow.
THE OYSTER’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY is a contemporary young adult novel complete at 72,000 words.
The Book Doctors:
From the first sentence, this is a terrific pitch: “Shy girls don’t yarn-bomb the school fence at dawn.” It’s got a great style to it. It shows us what the voice of the book is going to be like–fun and entertaining. There is also danger and contradiction and panache and the foreshadowing of bad things to come. We immediately get a sense of the story here, and we do fall in love with our heroine. We would like to know a little bit more about what she wants to do with Patrick Hayes, and more of a sense of how this list takes her outside her comfort zone. But you have convinced us you are a talented writer who knows how to create characters and make a story. And you’ve got a great title, too!
Courtney Parker
The Runaway House by Courtney Parker
Kade looks and acts like a runaway. And with his parents breathing down his neck about college applications and baseball scholarships, he almost wishes he were one. So when Agent Boone approaches him with the opportunity to go undercover and disappear, Kade signs up.
In the small, old-timey towns of Jessup, Martin, and Clydesville, sightings of high-profile missing kids from all over the country have poured in through the years. The tips turn up nothing, but the townsfolk tell tales of an old, possibly haunted, house set deep in the woods that separate the towns. Kade is given one mission: to find the house and, if the kids are there, to convince them he’s one of them.
In the three-story, Victorian-style house surrounded by nothing but miles of woods, Kade enjoys his stress-free days and finds himself wanting to abort the mission and just live this new life with new people who expect nothing of him. Yeah, Ian—the guy in charge—has it out for him for some reason and says he’s not allowed to leave the house, but why would he want to anyway? Still, he can’t help but wonder where Ian goes every day when he wanders off into the woods. Quickly, Kade realizes that he is not the only one with a secret, and he must take it upon himself to crack a case much bigger than the one he signed up for. Especially if he wants to ever get himself and the kids out alive.
The Runaway House (66,000 words) is a YA novel. I have written one other book that is a companion novel to this and has not yet been solicited to any agents or publishers. My plan is to write another companion novel to The Runaway House and make it a trilogy. Professionally, I have freelance edited e-books and worked in education and libraries since earning a BA in creative writing in 2009.
The Book Doctors: We like the idea of this book very much. You capture all the obstacles that a teenage kid faces, the overwhelming feeling that makes someone a runaway. We think lots of kids will be able to relate to this. And the missing children from all over the country who have ended up in these small old time he towns, it’s very spooky and cool. We can really see the three-story, Victorian-style house surrounded by nothing but miles of woods. It’s very good showing, a wonderful word picture that our minds can really wrap around. But we don’t get the sense from the very beginning what this kid desperately wants, apart from escaping the pressure. What does he really desire at the beginning of the story? We do like the suspense and the difficulty that Ian brings to the story. But we’d like to get more of a sense of what life is like in this house, why these kids have all been brought there. We’d like a little bit more of a sense of what’s going to happen if he fails in his mission. Show us the pictures of what’s going to happen to those kids if everything goes wrong. Lastly, don’t tell us that you’ve written another book that hasn’t been published. That doesn’t serve you. And just pitch this book, not the companion novel as well.