Curtis Brown Discovery Day 2016 - Part 2

Today I welcome Julie Stock, author of From Here To Nashville, to tell us a little about her hopes for the Discovery Day.

Luckily for me, my daughter is a member of Foyles' loyalty scheme and she was the one who told me about their Discovery Day. I signed up straight away before I could change my mind!

I have never pitched to an agent before and so I'm hoping that it will be good practice for me to prepare a pitch and to deliver it to a real-life agent without actually collapsing in a heap. I'm looking forward to being able to discuss my book with them for a few minutes afterwards as well and to see what their advice is about where to take my career from here.

I have been sending this new novel out to agents for a while now with some interest but no actual developments and so I have already prepared a query that seems to work quite well. I think I will use this to help me prepare my 30 second pitch and then I'll practise it and time it to make sure it's not too long.

Elaine Everest's advice about seeing it as an opportunity to practise in front of an agent rather than a guarantee of representation has been really helpful for me and I think it will calm my nerves to think of it this way so the pressure is off a bit.

As a self-published author for my debut novel, I have decided to seek an agent this time round because I'd like guidance on how to progress to the next level. I am very nervous about pitching but won't be nervous about asking questions in the panel session afterwards. I really want to know their thoughts on what it would take for them to represent a self-published author or whether that even matters.

Book and Links

My debut novel, From Here to Nashville, was self-published nearly a year ago. It is available on Amazon and on iBooks.

Author Bio

Julie Stock is an author of contemporary romance novels, novellas and short stories. She's also a proud member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s New Writers’ Scheme and a Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors.

She blogs about her path to publication on her website, ‘My Writing Life’ www.julie-stock.co.uk

You can also connect with her on Twitter, Goodreads and via her Facebook Author Page.

If you would like to be the first to hear about her new releases and other news, you can also sign up to receive her occasional newsletters via her website.

When she is not writing, she runs her own small business as a proofreader, tutor and WordPress website designer/troubleshooter. She is married with two teenage daughters and lives with her family in Bedfordshire.