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 …
“As two thriller writers, we’d love the opportunity to dine with some of the titans of the crime genre — say Ruth Ware, Gillian Flynn, and the great Agatha Christie. We’d begin the dinner asking them about their craft, what they think makes an arresting suspense novel, and how to make a fantastic twist. Then, TWIST, the dinner turns into a murder mystery and we’d slink into the shadows to watch the legends solve a murder themselves.”
Carlyn Greenwald
and co-mentor
Kit Frick
“Once, I might have said Diane Duane, but I actually got to have dinner with her once, so check that off the bucket list. Instead, I’ll say Alexander Dumas, Leigh Bardugo, and Oscar Wilde. I don’t think I need to explain why. We’d all drink fine liqueurs from delicate crystal glasses by the light of the candelabra, and no one would even think of retiring until well past the midnight hour.”
Lyndsay Ely
“I’d absolutely love to have Naomi Novik and Madeline Miller over for dinner and thank them for the profound impact UPROOTED and THE SONG OF ACHILLES have had on my life. Their books have been a constant source of inspiration for me, and I would love to express my gratitude in person. I’m also kind of obsessed with books on productivity, and Cal Newport’s DEEP WORK fundamentally changed the way I work. It made me much more productive, and I’d love to have him over and talk about productivity hacks. I think it would be both fascinating and incredibly motivating.”
Rachel Griffin
“I’d invite Agatha Christie, Octavia Butler, and Italo Calvino for a gloomily regal, candlelit affair, where we’d feast upon the sort of food children eat in fairytales. Agatha Christie taught me how to paint a full portrait of a character in just one line, and what absolute mastery of reader expectations looks like. Octavia Butler is a force of incredible imagination—she’s transported me not just into other worlds, but into other frames of mind. Italo Calvino seems to know something about the universe that he found, not with a telescope, but by digging around in the bottom of people’s souls. I’m not sure what I’d say to them, but I sure would spend dinner listening.”
Sunya Mara
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.