pitchapalooza

Tonight I'm attending an event with my writer's group. It has the dumb name "pitchapalooza". Everyone gets one minute to give a verbal pitch to a panel of experts (what ever that means and how ever they qualify as an expert). The winner gets a 15 minute consultation that may or may not lead to book publication.

I spent Saturday and Sunday trying to come up with my pitch. I can't decide today whether I'm nervous or not. I wish I knew more about what the format for the event was going to be, and how many people are going to be there. I'm wondering if less people will come because of the snow we got yesterday.

Here's the final version of my pitch:

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have your head almost bitten off by a great white shark? Or to take a 70 foot fall in front of eight tourists while rock climbing in the gunks? Or to complete the Alcatraz to San Francisco swim after learning to swim on the internet?

Me too! That’s why I did those things and then wrote a book about them. My Other Nine Lives is a completed collection of 9 humorous non-fiction essays about my experiences in learning extreme sports, despite having little athletic talent and a knee built out of cadaver parts as a result of an accident that doctors thought would leave me crippled for the rest of my life.

The stories are woven together by a biographical thread that provides insight into managing extreme pain through extreme sports, as well as detailing my romances and mis-adventures with professional extreme athletes. It’s the usual travel adventure book, but with homicidal sled dogs, falling ice, and screaming barfies.