So, this is what my home office floor looked like when the online pitch sessions. While you might think that there was a path laden with gold and that the confetti looked good, the colorful pieces were actually shards of my heart.

Pitching ain’t for the faint of heart.

To speak succinctly and without flow to someone who holds your future in their paws is daunting and one’s tongue tends to tie. I imagined that the multiple vixens (and one male agent) saw through me, into my heart, ready to squeeze and/or torch it. I never hoped more to pass a test in my life!

I may/may not have glugged a little wine before/after each session, whether online or in person. I kept each cork, like a trophy or talisman of a certain sort… and now I have enough for garments for two. Do you want one, Constant Reader?

For now, I am in the dark, waiting out the 12 weeks cited as a feasible timeline for a reply, a social distancing of a sort. Will be a rejection, no response, or affirmation of my dreams, hard work, and aspirations. Will I bite every nail, smile like a lunatic, or cry enough tears to fill a small pond? Will I write my fears and tears onto pages of more deathless prose??

The wait is complicated by the fact that Simon & Schuster, one of the final five New York publishers, is for sale. Further, most agents self-furloughed during the COVID-19 panic. Mayhem fostered by so many mistakes at the government and local human-level seized our minds. A message that switched between calm and feistiness and Armageddon-like grief confused all of the world’s citizens to the max.

While I’d never allow vixens and/or agents to control my past, present, or future, I had to use all my wits to prevail and not succumb to stupidity or fear.

Btw – I’m looking forward to a fist bump, as well as a book deal.