Brianwoods

Hi. My name is Ken. I'm a member of SCBWI. I'm your tour guide into Brianwoods, a blog dedicated to my children's writing endeavors. Thanks for stopping by.

Just for a minute, close your eyes and imagine you're walking along a forest trail. Listen to the forest animals, as they call out to greet you. Welcome to Brianwoods!

This blog includes some of my other writing and details on my published materials.

Monday, February 11, 2013

Pitchapalooza. What's It All About?

I try to read as much as possible about writing, whether it's books, magazines, newspapers or on-line forms like Twitter, Blogger, Facebook etc... On December 30, 2012, I was reading the Hartford Courant, the local newspaper in this area and found something interesting. In the Arts section of newspaper, there's this part entitled Books. This usually contains information about literary activities in the area, author presentations, book festivals, and other similar things. The part that caught my eye was a piece entitled "Pitchapalooza". What the heck is a Pitchapalooza, I thought?

It's a free event characterized by many as the "American Idol or The Voice for books". These events have a unique format, where writers from all genres, published or unpublished, prepare a one minute book pitch and place their names in a hat.  Literary Agent, Arielle Eckstut and author, David Henry Sterry, co-founders of The Book Doctors, randomly pick twenty lucky names out of the hat. Those individuals then get to make their pitch in front of Arielle, David, several other editors or agents on a panel, and everyone else at the event.

After all twenty of the writers have done their pitch, the panel picks one winner, who gets an introduction to an appropriate agent or publisher.  But don't worry about the odds here. I understand that anyone who buys the The Book Doctor's publishing book, "The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published: How To Write It. Sell It, and Market It...Successfully." gets a twenty minute personal consultation. 

The Book Doctors have been running these free events across the country for several years in local bookstores and libraries to promote their book. I checked out YouTube and found a number of videos on these events. There's actual recorded pitches set up by The Book Doctors and some of them are winning pitches. Several people interviewed on some of the videos indicated that although they didn't get chosen to pitch their book idea, they thought attending the event was extremely informative, especially because the panel gently critiqued each one.

I consider these events just another opportunity to enhance my writing. I plan on attending the Hartford Connecticut event on March 2, 2013 at 1:00 pm at the Hartford Public Library, 500 Main Street, Hartford. It's right next to the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. Check out the Hartford Public Library website at www.center.hplct.org and The Book Doctors website at www.thebookdoctors.com/workshops. 


Happy writing.

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

The Waiting Begins

On January 31, 2013, I took the day off from my regular job. I spent the morning polishing my entry for this year's Highlights Fiction Contest. Around 11:30 am, I went down to the local Staples to make a copy of my entry since my printer/scanner/copier stopped working. Shortly thereafter, I mailed my entry at the post office after getting it postmarked since it was the last day entries are allowed to be submitted.

My entry is a little different this year. Rather than writing a typical fictional story like I've done in seven previous attempts, I juiced it up a bit. Here's a clue to the content of my story, it involves a canine food critic.Now we all know that dogs tend to eat almost anything so it's kind of a paradox to have a dog food critic.I imagine that all food establishments would prefer to have such a critic with the certainty that the report would be quite complimentary.

Now it's time to wait. But I already have too many other writing projects in the works. I intend on keeping busy and trying not to think about the outcome. The winning entries won't be announced until late May or early June. That's a ways off.

Bon appetite!

Ken