Well, I attended my first conference on 4/14/18. It was a full day of workshops, as well as a scheduled pitch session with agent Victoria Selvaggio of Storm Literary.  I quickly learned that I don’t pitch well face-to-face; my anxiety showed clearly. Ms Selvaggio was kind enough to assure me that there was no pressure as she planned on accepting ALL manuscripts pitched to her during the conference for review. So, I’m delighted to have my first true ms submission under my belt.  Even though I did a poor job at the verbal pitch, my hope is that the strength of the ms will carry me through.

The next step is to improve my query letter (many thanks to #MariaVicente for her help with that!), and submit other mss elsewhere.  I didn’t secure a prize in the ICL Kid Inventor Contest for my rhyming ms; they did point out that rhyme is terribly difficult to do well–apparently I didn’t succeed either! However, I am undeterred and will continue writing and submitting. It is a sign of my hubris that I thought I would win the very first contest I entered!