Erotica by Cori Vidae

This month I am one of the industry professionals participating in the #AdPit event on Twitter. #AdPit, (or Adult Pitch) is a Twitter pitch fest where authors with completed manuscripts pitch them on Twitter (including the #AdPit hashtag). If an agent or editor is intrigued by the pitch and interested in reading more, they favourite the tweet to signal that to the author.

All of this pitching and favouriting (and plenty of retweeting too) is taking place on February 13th and myself and my colleagues at both Red Moon Romance and World Weaver Press will be keeping an eye out for awesome new projects. In addition to all that, however, I’m also participating in the week-long build up which precedes Friday’s organized chaos.

Here’s a brief breakdown of what is happening in that week and how I’m participating, followed by a little more about me. My current bio is pretty brief and meant to make you smile, but if my critique services are going to be given as an award I think you deserve to know a bit more about the person behind the pen name whose feedback you’ll be receiving.

• On February 8th the #AdPit website will open up to submissions and Interested participants will submit the 35 word pitch and query letter for their novel
  • Once 150 200 submissions have been received the submission window closes and those subs are read and reviewed by a team of slush readers
  • Winners will be chosen (the website says 11 but I think it’s actually been updated to 16). Five of those winners will be critiqued by literary agent Jessica Schmeidler, five will be critiqued by myself, and six will be critiqued by the #AdPit team.
• In the meantime, anyone still polishing their #AdPit Twitter pitch can use the hashtag #AdPitCrit to ask people on Twitter in general to critique and help them polish their pitch before the big festival on (Dun, dun, DUN) Friday the 13th.
  • I will be lurking on the #AdPitCrit hashtag and will try to offer what critique I can
• On the 13th if I favourite your tweet that means I’m interested in reading more. If you’d like to show me (and my colleagues at RMR) more please follow our submission guidelines here. Because we favourited your tweet it means we are soliciting your work and you are welcome to send it to us outside our normal submission window, just be sure to include #AdPit in the subject line somewhere.

A little more about me… The bio I’m using these days is this:

From cover model to author, Cori has performed many roles in the creation of erotic titles but this is her first time wearing an editor hat for this genre. Be gentle with her. Or don’t. That can be fun too.

All of that is true. But it leaves out a lot as well. I’ve been working in publishing for about ten years now. Over that period I’ve ‘worn a lot of hats’ as they say.

I’ve worked as a ghost writer, a copy writer, as a short fiction editor, and a micro publisher. I’ve edited numerous anthologies which people seem to like and I’ve written a thing or two as well (my first erotic novel was published in 2009 and I’ve also had tons of short fiction published). I’ve even been nominated for awards (haven’t won any yet though LOL).

So what I’m trying to say is, though things get a little tricky when you’re dealing with pen names I’m not new to this, and I’m pretty good at what I do. If I favourite your tweet I hope you’ll give me a chance to prove that to you.

Finally… I’m not *just* looking for kinky/sensual romance. I’ve been reading romance since my early teens. Mostly bodice rippers with Fabio on the cover (there are still copies of Catherine Hart’s books and Roberta Gellis’ novel The Rope Dancer on my bookshelves) and these days my tastes are eclectic. One day I’ll want to read a straight-up erotic romp, the next I’ll be in the mood for a sweet YA romance. What’s more, all the editors read the submissions which come into us, so even if a query doesn’t pique the interest of one of us, it might just hook another. You never know.