The excellent publisher and editor, Scott Pack was with us for our April meeting as both main speaker and adjudicator for our competition. The brief was as follows:
Pitch your book, as you would want it to appear in your query email that you send to agents. 150 words maximum, but can be short and sweet if you prefer. It needs to entice the agent and make them want to read your submission package. Many agents will make an initial decision based on the pitch alone.
Announcing his decision Scott said: “A really strong selection. No real stinkers, which was a relief. The things that separated the more successful ones from the rest tended to be:
- A very clear presentation of the basic concept.
- A simple and easy to follow narrative – I understood the story straight away.
- An indication that the author understands the market and/or where their book sits within it.
- A first sentence that hooks the reader in…
- …and a final sentence that urges them to read the manuscript to find out more.”
And the winners were…
First place: Walking with Jane by Nicola Pritchard-Pink
“A strong concept, succinctly and enticingly pitched. Manages to explain the contents while also giving them context, establishing the unique nature of the project and also providing some comparison authors. I would expect any agent receiving this to be very interested. I am not sure I would change a thing about it.”
Second place: Redemption by Dai Henley
“A neat twist on the regular crime novel. The pitch manages to get across the set-up and establish the characters and their relationships, as well as what is at stake for them, and that is hard to do with so few words. Perhaps lacks a punchy final line to act as a call to action for the reader, but otherwise great. “
Third Place: The Burger by Damon L. Wakes
“Sounds brilliantly bonkers, but also intriguing and with commercial potential. Might not be everyone’s cup of tea but does a great job of pitching the premise. Could do with a few more words to explain or hint at how Reggie links to the plot to establish that he is the protagonist.”
Scott’s Highly Commended pitches were:
Never Giver Up by Shirley Jackson
“Very clear about the story, where it fits in the market and the author’s suitability for writing it.”
The Recruit by Sam Christie
“Really intriguing concept. Would benefit from another line or two to pin it down though.”
The Art Thieves by Howard Teece
“Another strong concept but also needs a bit more context or detail to make it clear what the reader is dealing with.”
From L to R: Sam Christie (HC), Dai Henley (2nd), Howard Teece (HC) Nicola Pritchard-Pink (1st), Damon L. Wakes (3rd)
First Place: Walking with Jane by Nicola Pritchard-Pink
Jane Austen described herself as a “desperate walker”. Yet the traditional focus for Austen, like many historical women, is a domestic one, with Austen cloistered away in cosy drawing rooms and any mention of muddy petticoats being confined to her fictional heroines. Walking with Jane is the first book to explore the impact of Austen’s love of walking on both her life and writing, challenging the conventional domestic focus and placing Jane firmly back in the countryside she loved. By retracing ten of Austen’s walks, Walking with Jane combines the engaging historical detail of Lucy Worsley with the rich rurality of Robert MacFarlane, enabling readers to get closer to Jane by walking alongside her.
Second Place: Redemption by Dai Henley
A former policeman, Jack Duncan, is released from prison after serving eighteen years for murdering his girlfriend and not declaring how he disposed of her body. He claims he can’t tell the authorities because he didn’t do it. He approaches Andy Flood, a private investigator, to prove it. Following his investigation, Flood’s convinced that Duncan is guilty. Flood’s daughter, who recently served a prison term for the manslaughter of her abusive husband, begins working in her father’s detective agency. She meets Durban who persuades her of his innocence and has a romantic, but turbulent relationship with him. Flood’s concerned and becomes obsessed with discovering the truth about Durban’s case.
Third Place: The Burger by Damon L. Wakes
There’s a burger in Eastleigh Station. That’s not noteworthy in itself—there’s a MacDonalds in the Swan Centre—but this burger is hovering five feet off the floor. It’s the kind of thing that would make a cartoon wino blink and throw away a bottle, but Reggie’s on antibiotics and has just suffered through an excruciating sober evening down the pub. The burger is inexplicable, incomprehensible: Reggie wants nothing to do with it.
The next day a hazmat-suited horde piles in to investigate, the station is closed, and every train passing through is crammed with rubberneckers trying to snatch a look. This poses a problem for Reggie, and not just because he has to take the bus to work. As the burger remains hovering—and all attempts to understand it fail—the world turns its attention to the one remaining lead: a mysterious figure caught fleeing the station on CCTV…
Highly Commended: Never Give Up by Shirley Jackson
Margaret Ryan is eighteen, Irish and pregnant. Her family banish her to England to have the baby adopted. Despite her relentless fight to keep her son, the harsh reality of raising a child single-handedly in the 1970s forces her to relinquish him.
Forty-five years later, she’s a widow on a mission to track down the son she lost. Having inveigled herself into his family, she risks losing him again for ever.
NEVER GIVE UP is a Commercial Fiction novel about a woman’s fight to reclaim the life stolen from her and will appeal both to those horrified by the scandal of forced adoption and to fans of psychological thriller writers like T.M. Logan. As a social worker during that period, I am acutely aware of the life-long pain faced by women like Margaret.
Highly Commended: The Recruit by Sam Christie
On a drizzly day at the start of spring, Dr Ben Lewis walks into the police headquarters on the edge of the city in order to turn himself in. He is not there for a crime he has committed, rather, he is there to confess to a crime he has yet to commit, but knows he certainly will.
Confused, the police struggle to know what to do with this dishevelled man who has appeared from nowhere, with no past history of any wrong doing. Is he another crank, another washed-up loser seeking attention, or does he mean exactly what he says? How does an institution that usually works with concrete facts, deal with a person that brings them nothing but an abstract idea?
In order to stop a horrifying crime that has not yet happened, all the authorities need to do is listen.
Highly Commended: The Art Thieves by Howard Teece
There’s a gallery in Yorkshire where it’s rumoured the paintings steal people. Every afternoon, Dale Richards visits the same room in that gallery and stares at the same painting. It’s what he was viewing just before his brother and carer, Chris, disappeared. Now Dale knows what happened, and he, his artist friend Sally, and Mr Harrington the security guard, are off to get Chris back. From the paintings that stole him. On a journey through near-perfect copies of great paintings, they travel from Turner to Lowry to Kahlo, Escher and more, pursued by a creator who doesn’t want them to leave. Ever.
