Musings

So, I finished my pitch at Rougue about 11:00 am. Overall I think they went well. Let me rephrase. I know I pitched well, and that’s the best I can do. Now it’s in other people’s hands.

The gentleman yesterday was an executive at Universal, and he had a lot of years experience so he had the Great Stone Face down pretty well. It’s always harder pitching to someone who reflects nothing back to you, but you have to keep in mind it’s a performance, and stay focussed. By the end of the pitch I had him nodding at points, and even laughing so that felt like a victory. Afterward he asked questions, we talked, and I found a political issue that really interested him, and played up that angle in Wild Cards. In many ways this is like the work I did as an attorney. You’ve got to read people, and listen like crazy to what they are saying, and how you can tie your agenda to theirs. I know it sounds manipulative, but it’s the business/game and you play it or fail. At the very end the gentleman asked for a writing sample. I’m trying not to read too much into that, but I found it encouraging that he wanted to get a sense of my writing. If he didn’t like this at all I can’t imagine he would have asked to read something I’ve written.

Today’s executive was younger, female, and far more animated. She kept her eyes locked on mine while I made the pitch, and at the end she had a few suggestions on how to make the pitch story more of a “Rogue” story. That was cool, and I told her that wouldn’t be a problem. Another plus was that her assistant had read Wild Cards when he was a kid. (He’s sort of a kid now, maybe mid-twenties), but it helps to have someone who was familiar with the books, liked the books, and it helped sell how long this series has been going.

Keep your fingers crossed for me.

So, now I’m going to switch gears, and work on my proposal for the new Wild Card book BUSTED FLUSH, and then work with Mike Cassutt on our Big Space Movie.

Melinda

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 28th, 2007 at 1:00 pm and is filed under hollywood. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.