#PitMad

I joined Twitter.
I swore I would never, ever, get into Twitter, but guess what? When you're trying to get a book published, you will do whatever it takes to get your foot in the door. While researching agents I noticed that a LOT of them are on Twitter, and I decided I might glean valuable knowledge from following them.
It has been amazing what Twitter has done for me so far. So many writers and agents put up links for interviews with agents, or information on query letters, or how to define genres. Thursday the 12th was my introduction to a fun event called #PitMad (short for pitch madness).
For those of you unfamiliar with Twitter... You get to write these short little notes (140 characters) called tweets. If you include something with a # (which is no longer a pound sign, it is a hash tag), then your tweet is compiled with all the other tweets that include that hash tag. So the goal for #PitMad was to describe your book in the space of a tweet. Agents and editors would check in periodically, and if they liked your pitch, they favorited your tweet. That was a signal that you were invited to send them your query, but you got to include that they favorited your tweet- which would hopefully mean they paid a little more attention to you.
This is what I mean by doing whatever it takes to get your foot in the door.
I spent the whole day on Twitter on my phone, scrolling through other peoples' pitches, posting mine a couple of times an hour, hoping that someone would take notice of me in the THOUSANDS (not an exaggeration- go scroll through #PitMad for the 12th of September if you don't believe me) of pitches that day.
I got lucky. Two people favorited my pitch- an agent who was already on my list of people that I wanted to query (so that was awesome) and an editor at a new imprint of Bloomsbury that is launching this fall, but only publishing e-books (not as awesome, but still cool).
Here was my pitch:
Anna's ready to grow up. It'll take a death, a proposal, and The Sound of Music to help her make her own choices. #PitMad NA contemp rom
The letters at the end mean New Adult contemporary romance, which is what I like to write.
So that was it. I'm still waiting to hear from that agent. It's agonizing, having requests out to agents. I check my e-mail more frequently than any sane person should, and I hold my breath while my inbox updates on my phone. It's nerve wracking. And exhilarating.
Next Twitter event is on September 24th- #MSWL. It either stands for My Secret Wish List, or Manuscript Wish List, depending on who you ask. I'll be there, heart pounding and hands shaking.

Oh, and if you'd like to follow me on Twitter, I'm @reynoldstribe