David Gillon

It occurred to me last night I should check my junk mail folder. Actually it occurred to me on Tuesday as well, but I fell asleep before I got the executive function to manage it.

But last night I did, and there may well have been a scream as I found myself looking at not one, not two, but three agent responses from #DVpit.

The oldest was a nope, fortunately. But the other two, both from last Thursday, were a partial from Tricia Skinner at Fuse Literary and a full from Rena Rossner at the Deborah Harris Agency. (Because I've been taking things very slowly these are also the first real follow-on requests I've had).

Very rapid, and very apologetic responses followed. Glad I had the long weekend to blame for part of the delay.

But Aaaiiieee!!! I need to go back in there later and confirm that everything else was junk.

Literary agent Beth Phelan's #DVpit twitter pitching event  is happening tomorrow, details here.

The idea is that if you have a submission ready manuscript with diverse characters and/or are yourself diverse, then this is your chance to pitch to a bunch of agents (over 50) looking for diverse authors/stories. You have a single tweet to sell your manuscript to watching agents, so it really hones your precis skills!  (You're actually allowed one tweet an hour over the 12 hours it runs).

I'll be taking part with my Pitchwars novel, and I also blogged about #DVpit, SF/F Disabled Voices and #DVpit on why it's so desperately needed for SF/F and disability. (TLDR: no one has a clue how to do a decent job of it, or to recognise when they don't/)

Sadly #DVpit has become somewhat controversial. While the initial rules made it clear you could be non-diverse, but submitting a diverse manuscript, some people have set out to police those people out of the running, and as a consequence, some people on the margins of diversity, e.g. those with invisible disabilities, and LGBT folks who aren't out, are being driven away. It's sadly ironic when the pro-diversity camp adopts the "you aren't genuinely disabled" tactics of the forces of oppression. ETA: Beth Phelan seems to have come out in favour of own voices only, but the tweet wasn't exactly clear, I read it the other way around, but seem to be in the minority.

And then there's the non-diverse writers with non-diverse manuscripts whining because they can't enter. Tough, enter the next #pitmad or #pitchwars, there's no shortage of pitching events

We had #Mockpit earlier today, a trial run for your tweets, which was valuable as it turns out people can't work out what "w/chair user" means, and some were even unhappy with 'wheelchair-user". I very politely explained why "wheelchair bound" is not an option (because I'm not writing 50 Wheels of Grey!)

Jami, my #Pitchwars mentor, came up with a couple of good tweets for me:
"#DVpit Adult UF #Own. When forensic sorcerer Laura's husband is shot and her daughter stolen, she'll face down demigods to get her back."

" When a necromancer with a grudge targets wheelchair-user Laura's family, he pisses off the wrong forensic sorcerer #DVpit Adult UF Own" - This is the one people had problems with, no one could parse "w/chair using forensic sorcerer", not ever after I expanded it to wheelchair-using. *Headdesk*, long way to go....
 

While mine are mostly variations on the theme of:
"Laura's many things:CSI, wheelchair user. witch, but mother first. God help the man, or demigod, who threatens her 3yo #DVpit Adult UF Own"

Now to go finalise my 12 tweets.