... In Space, by Catriona

Give us your elevator pitch for your latest book, then analyze it and tell us why you think it might tempt an agent, editor, or movie producer.

The title of this blog isn't a reference to Artemis II, but rather a nod to the fact that a pitch including the words "in space" is always going to be translated by a movie producer as "One small set. No location filming." But see what I did there? I said "space" when everyone's marvelling at the amazing photographs of the Earth and the Nutella, which doesn't hurt.

Not that I'm any good at that sort of zeitgeist evocation when it matters. Of all the suckage in my suckacious life I suck most at pitches, I reckon. I once said "It's about some people", to an agent. Luckily we were only chatting in a bar and I wasn't actually agent-hunting. Ach, it made her laugh. That's all that matters when you're chatting in a bar. She wasn't to know I'd have said the same thing at PitchFest.

The only kind of pitch I can do at all is the "meets" sort. For the book that's coming out on the 1st of May, THE DEAD ROOM, I went with Sleeping Murder meets Gaslight.

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Does that work? I've said it to people and got a three-syllable "oo" in reply. You know the one - "oo-OOO-ooo?" - so maybe it does. And it got a publisher to read the synopsis when I put it in a covering letter. So let's say it does. Now, why?

Well, it's going to pull in Agatha Christie fans, mentioning one of her best Miss Marples (imo), and even someone who doesn't know their St Mary Mead from their 221b Baker Street might think "sleeping murder" as a concept sounds like our kind of fun. Similarly, anyone familiar with the 1940s film Gaslight will get that there's psychological trickery in a domestic setting going on here. And, again, younger readers who've never heard of Joseph Cotten or even Ingrid Bergman, will have heard of gaslighting and catch the drift.

Glancing back at the question, though, I see I'm not supposed to be considering potential readers. I'm supposed to be thinking about agents, editors and movie producers. I've mentioned the editor already; I'm never changing agents and it's too scary even to contemplate it; and I'm going to assume that the idea of a film title taking off and coming to define a whole sub-category of dysfunctional behaviour would be catnip to a producer, so reminding them of that time it happened before is a good idea.

The book I'm writing now has a three-way "meets" pitch. I've cast it as The Railway Children meets Rear Window meets The Wicker Man. I'm not sure that would be as successful. Edwardian children's fiction is a long way from enjoying the everlasting relevance of Christie's oeuvre, for a start. 

Rear Window's a good shout, I think. Yes, it's dated but Hitchcock is still cool, as far as I can tell, getting on for fifty years after he died. (At least, the showing of Dial M for Murder in the original 3D, as part of my local arts cinema's Hitchcokotober festival last year, was sold out and turning people away.) 

What about The Wicker Man though? The Guardian named it the fourth best horror film of all time but a. that's the Guardian for you and b. this was before The Babadook, Get Out and Sinners. If people hadn't heard of Rear Window or The Wicker Man, my pitch might sound a bit like shading the southern exposure of your house with home-made blinds. And three plucky children in rural England aren't going to help. 

But, assuming editors and producers are familiar with all the references, I think this pitch is a belter. We've got a constrained protagonist, claustrophobia-induced paranoia (or is it?) and an upending of small-town charm that my book jackets have often hinted at but which I've never written about so directly before. I mean, imagine living in the house with the dead room, if you couldn't escape and you couldn't trust your neighbours not to use you as bonfire fuel. 

But that's next year.

Cx