With my second year as a mentor in Pitchwars, I entered the contest excited and hopeful and curious, oh so curious, about which manuscripts would claw their way into my heart and not let go.
The two that I found, couldn't be more different in tone and writing style, but what they share is a common language of finding personal truths, love, hope, and a slathering of bittersweet despair.
Kristin Reynold's manuscript, LE CIRQUE DU LITERATI, blew me away with its poetic turns of phrase, mind-blowing visual imagery, and a heart aching love story between its two main characters. I found myself gasping at things, then seeing them fully realized in my head. It's the story of Josephine and Nikolai, both running from pieces of their lives, when they make the fateful decision to hop a train. The train though is not an ordinary train nor does it have an ordinary destination. The train delivers them to Meir, a magical world known only to Josephine through the pages of her grandmother's favorite book. And above Meir, in the clouds, is a Utopian circus filled with artists, poets, writers, dancers, creatives of all types, who seek a place to be safe from those who would dull the world down. Jo and Nik's journey in Meir is about facing their fears, their truths, and ultimately finding their way to each other. It's stunning and beautiful and I want to know which devastatingly smart agent is going to choose it.
 |
Author Kristin Reynolds |
1. Give us the Twitter pitch for your Pitchwars manuscript (140 characters
or less)!
Josephine and beau Nikolai flee homes of fear & ruin. Magicians of a
Utopian circus offer them sanctuary if they relive their darkest fears.
2. Stephanie
Perkins does this cool thing for her books called a Love List, explained here: http://betweenfactandfiction.blogspot.com/2011/01/happy-writers-society-love-lists-by.html,
what is the love list for your novel?
Oooh, this is fun and so important! Okay, here is
my Le Cirque Du Literati Love List:
Cute Russian artist boy
Brave Girl hurt by the world
Reunited lost loves
Dead Gypsies
Literary heroes
Art
Poetry
Color splashed across the page
Love that hurts, but holds
Broken hearts
Mended wounds
Music
Moustaches
New life born from death
Otherworldly magicians
A circus of imagination!
A giant with moving tattoos
Fearlessness
Willpower
Truth
Believing in yourself and your dreams
Beating adversity
Battling personal demons
Trains
Train whistles
Granted wishes
Inspiration
True friends
Lavender sun
Cherry red moon
A city above the clouds
Magic
Letting go
A black tower called Magna Dune
A dog who is a friend
Freedom
And miracles for those who believe
3. Name a
handful of writers whose work inspires you, along with a short explanation of
why!
Wow,
only five, eh? That is so hard!
In
absolutely no order:
1)
Stephen King: I reread The Dark Tower series every year or two and it never
gets old for me. I have read a good many books, and with many have found true
and deep love, but I cannot imagine any other character I adore more than
Roland Deschain—and don’t get me started on Eddie and Oy! King writes so
flawlessly, and with so much between the lines wisdom, beauty and truth, when it’s
a timeless story like The Dark Tower or The Stand, there is nobody I’d rather
read and learn from. Well, except for . . .
2)
Haruki Murakami: Like King, Murakami twines philosophy and existential wisdom
into his stories, using metaphor and just the right amount of weirdness to make
every crazy event absolutely believable. Kafka on the Shore is one of my most
beloved books and 1Q84 had me engrossed from page one. Such a brilliant, wise,
and ethereal man, Murakami. I’ve learned a lot of style from him.
3)
J. K. Rowling: Need I say more? She birthed a world that our world would not be
the same without; her mind resurrected magic, and breathed such life into her
characters, I for one would be lost without Harry Potter, Hogwarts, and
Dumbledore, more necessary characters (Hogwarts is a character to me) whom I
love and would hate to live without.
4)
Antoine de Saint-Exupery: This man writes skies, deserts, the human heart, and
treachery of man more fluidly and poetically than anyone—ever. Exupery, best
known for writing The Little Prince, in my top 3 books of all time, is little
known in regard to his other, adult novels. Such a shame! Put it this way. If I
were to be trapped on a desert island with only one author’s books, it would be
Antoine de Saint-Exupery: Flight to Arras, Wind, Sand and Stars, Wisdom of the
sands, more, all of them are so literally divine I could live eternally inside
his words.
5)
And, last but not least, my new favorite author, Laini Taylor. Few writers
today meet with her grace of combining visual art with literature. I see words
and verses in color, so by the time I’m finished reading a book, the
amalgamated hue generally leans one way or another: white, gray, blue, red, you
get the idea. But hers are like a prism, a rainbow of color jumping off the
page. Laini’s characters make me feel, love, yearn, have me right there with
them, heart in my chest. I so adore her poetic language and style, I am always
thrilled to immerse myself inside her unique and colorful worlds. J
4. Why
PitchWars?
Why? Because it’s the greatest pitch contest ever!
Where else can you learn such invaluable lessons—on craft, publishing, editing,
grammar, stupid confusing commas, how to structure a novel that works, and how
to keep writing no matter what, because, damn it, you can do this—where, but the
illustrious Brenda Drake’s PitchWars can a writer find so much writerly love? There
seriously could not be a finer, more giving community than the writing
community, which is the heart and soul of this contest. (Thank you all!)
5. When you
self-identify as a writer, what does that mean to you?
That I have accepted the dream that came wrapped in
ink ribbons inside of me at my birth. That I will no longer let society, the
illusion of normalcy, the fear of failing, or ridicule for following this
inherent drive to write, rule me. I am a human filter for processing human
experience, emotions, and any number of miracles, for writing down life as I
see it through a simple poet’s eyes. That is what the term writer means to me.
How does it
make you feel?
Like until I accepted myself as a writer, a small
sun inside of me was draped in a blanket of pitch . . . but the moment I wrote
my first query letter, that sun rose and blanket burned and I will never be
cold again.
6. Next 3 books
on your TBR pile, what liquid's in your cup, and what's playing on repeat!
Next three books on my leaning tower TBR pile:
1) Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His
Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami
2) The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk
Kidd
3) No Place to Fall by (the
incomparable) Jaye Robin Brown (aww, thank you!)
What Liquid’s in my cup: WATER, as always.
What’s playing on repeat: Why Georgia Why by my sweet,
sweet love, John Mayer J
Jaye, this was a blast, thank you! <3