Welcome to my perfumed garden

...reading this on which I hope is a much happier and sunnier day for you...

Still, I'm so sorry you had such an awful time of it yesterday and hope you can agree with what I'd have been telling you if I'd commented yesterday: today will look better/a day isn't gonna make any difference ;) And isn't it absolutely *great* that you have this friend at the submissions dept. of that agency?

About "The Pitch": How can that *not* be hard? It's frustrating but also a bit of a reassurance to think that the truth is that *The Pitch* (rather than the months and years you spent writing the actual book) makes for most of the money you'll get from it. It's like applying for a job. Once you have the job, most people only need to show up and...well...not suck at it, but it's mostly the success of the application that guarantees the income in the end.

On the (very slim) off-chance that you haven't seen this yet *and* are interested: Randy Ingermanson (http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/) sells all sorts of advice on selling books, too. I don't personally like his style of self-promotion but I bet it serves him very well, so... And there's something about "the pitch" in his free article on the Snowflake outlining method's first couple of steps.