Librarians based in Cork selected the first five hundred words and a two sentence pitch of my work in progress Little Swot for feedback from literary agent Simon Trewin as part of the Cork World Book Fest. Alongside nine others (including Jean M Roberts and Andrew Wolfendon – both fellow Black Rose Writing authors) I read my pitch an opening to a large Zoom audience. The feedback was as follows:
- include only the most pertinent information in the pitch
- think about adding three new paragraphs the at the beginning of the novel to act as a prologue
- make the dialogue sound less written and more spoken
Here’s my revised elevator pitch for Little Swot, a dual timeline crime novel
Following redundancy in 2010, menopausal journalist Stephanie Brett investigates the earlier disappearance of a teenage, West Country girl in a cold case podcast. Through the 1978 timeline, Carolyn Forster tells her own story of infatuation and exploitation.
I’m still working on the new first three paragraphs and the updated dialogue. Watch this space for further developments!
the writer is a lonely hunter 
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