Sunday, April 5, 2009

Thirteen Black Cats - The Beginning


The Book Roast hosted a 75 word lucky pitch party for St. Patrick's Day. I thought it would be fun to participate, so I wrote a pitch about luck - bad luck. Moonrat chose my pitch as one of her favorites. And Thirteen Black Cats Under A Ladder got it's first words written that day.

It's a lot darker than I expected. That always surprises me. I think I know how a story will be as it travels from my brain through my fingertips and onto the computer screen. But it's like a game of telephone - what winds up on the page is different from what was in my head.

Maybe there are editors hidden in my elbows.

And the winning pitch was:
Curses are for princesses in books, not twelve-year-olds in Cranford, NJ. In THIRTEEN BLACK CATS UNDER A LADDER, Sasha inherits her brother’s curse and the cure he never figured out. She has to step on a crack, find a black cat, walk under a ladder, break a mirror, open an umbrella indoors and spill salt – in the right order, before she turns thirteen or her party will be a catastrophe and she’ll break a leg.