From September 21-26, we’re posting mini-interviews with most of the 2020 Pitch Wars mentors. We thought it would be fun to have them answer one question. A question that would give you an idea of their likes and personalities. And possibly point out a mentor you may have missed on your exhaustive search for which mentors you’ll submit to when our submission window opens. Don’t know what Pitch Wars is START HERE.
Giveaway!
We’re giving away 2020 mentors’ and committee members’ books! Go to the bottom of this post for details and to enter for a chance to win.
Need to connect to the community?
Join the Pitch Wars forum to have discussions with some of our mentors and other writers or get your work critiqued by your peers and sometimes mentors or search for critique partners. It’s our gift to you for being so awesome, and we hope you find this space useful. To join the forum go here: http://pitchwars.proboards.com/
Mark your calendars!
Join us for our official #PitchWars #askmentor chats on Twitter and our live mentor video chats happening on Sarah Nicolas’ Youtube channel. Go to this blog post for dates and follow @PitchWars on Twitter for all the details.
This is the question we asked our mentors to answer: Invite three authors (living or dead) to dinner – who and why?
And here are their answers …
“If I’m cooking, can I invite more?! I’d have to invite Toni Morrison, Eric Jerome Dickey, and Jill Mansell–each of them influenced me in some way, whether it be my craft, my confidence, or my resolve to be unapologetic about my characters. I met Eric at a book signing, and Jill and I have communicated on Twitter. They’re such warm and encouraging people, and I read EVERYTHING they publish. There are so many more I’d invite if I could (Maya Angelou, Terry McMillan, Lauren Weisberger, Madeleine Wickham), but Toni, Eric, and Jill are highest on my list.”
Taj McCoy
Website | Twitter
“This list was really hard to narrow down and I have so many honorable mentions! My three fun, dynamic dinner guests are:
– William Butler Yeats, so I could hear him wax poetic (ha) about metaphysics and how dreams infused his work,
– Diana Wynne Jones, because I’ve always wanted to be at least half the writer she is and I need her counsel on how to make my own words so bright and deceptively straightforward, and
– Louise Erdrich, hoping she’d spill her secrets about how her writing is so infused with heart and with the beauty beneath the tragic.”
Gwynne Jackson
“Liane Moriarty, Jane Austen and Samantha Downing. All three write about startling secrets and are masters of unexpected twists. I’m fascinated by the secrets we all keep and how to craft books that sneaks in twists that people don’t expect. I’d love to hear how they came up with their twists, if it’s based on something in life or pure imagination. And usually someone dies and I guess I’m just morbid enough to be drawn to how they work that into their novels.”
Lyn Liao Butler
“If I could invite three authors to dinner I’d invite Kate Elliott, Chris Anne Wolfe, and Samantha Sabian. I read a lot, but there’s a special place in my heart for books I keep coming back to over and over and over again. I am just dumbfounded that these authors created worlds and characters that mean so much to me out of their own imaginations. If they were at my house for dinner I’d just sit staring at them with my mouth open and listening to whatever they had to say.”
Keena Roberts
Enter for a chance to win one of our mentors’ or committee members’ books. We’ll choose ten winners to receive one book each. All you have to do is search our mentors’ and committee members’ books, pick one you’d like to receive should you win, and enter it in the rafflcopter at the bottom of this post. The book must be one from our 2020 mentors or committee members.
You can find our mentor pages here: https://pitchwars.org/mentor-status/active/ And you can find our committee members here: https://pitchwars.org/about/meet-the-pitch-wars-committee/
It’s open internationally, but only for books available on the Book Depository. Make sure to go to their site and verify the book is listed for sale before choosing your book in the Rafflecopter.