Writers hope to strike lucky with book pitch
Writer Craig Robertson will be swapping his pen for football boots to play in the annual match on Saturday
While well-known crime writers like Lynda LaPlante, Val McDermid and Ian Rankin are big attractions, the true success of the Bloody Scotland festival is its Pitch Perfect sessions.
This year’s event on Sunday, September 10 at Allan Park South Church from 12.451.45pm is a chance for the next big thing to pitch their novel to a team of publishing professionals.
Last year, the winner was Alison Belsham who travelled all the way from London to participate and found herself an agent and a publisher.
“Sometime last summer I stumbled across a post on Facebook about a pitching event at a crime-writing festival in Scotland,” said Alison.
“I’d never heard of Bloody Scotland or the Pitch Perfect event. I hadn’t written a crime novel and I wasn’t Scottish. In theory, I should have scrolled right on past.
“But two little words caught my eye: ‘professional feedback’.
“Fast forward 11 months. The book is written. I have an amazing agent - Jenny Brown, who chaired the Pitch Perfect panel and offered to represent me the same week.”
Now her debut novel “The Tattoo Thief ” will be published by Trapeze in spring 2018.
“And it’s all because I didn’t scroll past that Facebook post about Bloody Scotland’s Pitch Perfect. Some people say you make your own luck. Bloody Scotland made mine.”
Eight new writers are in line for this year’s Pitch Perfect - Helen Calder (Singularity); Mark Wightman (Sleeping in the Tiger’s Lair); Ajit Panickar (Inspector Chatpati and the Arms of Durga); Sandra Kohls (The Waltzers); Francis Shennan (An Innocent in the Scandal); Nick Jury (The Guilt Avenues); Fiona Stirling (Fire Boy) and MA McShane (The Mercy Season).
The finalists have been selected by crime writer and founder of Bloody Scotland, Lin Anderson and a leading agent and the expert panel who will give valuable feedback and choose an eventual winner features Jo Dickinson, publishing director at Simon and Schuster; Keshini Naidoo, associate publisher at Bookouture; Jade Chandler, editorial director for crime fiction at Harvill Secker and agent Jemima Forrester.
Other past winners are already forging great careers in the world of crime fiction and this year some Pitch Perfect graduates will be back to perform .
Power blogger “Crime Thriller Girl” aka Steph Broadribb was a Pitch Perfect finalist in 2014 and went on to be published by Orenda. Trapeze have just snapped up a new police procedural series by her to be published in November under the name Stephanie Marland and when she’s not writing she’s one of the Slice Girls, always the first event to sell out at Crime at the Coo cabaret.
Matt Wesolowski won Pitch Perfect in 2015 and has also gone on to be published by Orenda. And former crime fiction buyer at Waterstones, Joseph Knobbs aka Joseph Knox won Pitch Perfect in 2012 and this year was published by Transworld going straight into the Sunday Times bestseller list. Kirsty Logan was participating in the same pitch.
The trio will be at Allan Park South Church on Sunday, September 10 from 2.30-3.30pm.