Pitching is now closed. Thank you to everyone who participated! And a huge THANK YOU to Shira for all of the time and thought she is putting into this pitch day. We had such an amazing turnout that Shira needs some extra time to read through all of your pitches. Please check back for comments and requests through Saturday.
Be sure to read through the comments! Shira shared some great insights on pitching and what she is looking for when it comes to manuscripts.
You may have heard that Sub It Club is 3 and we are celebrating! Today we are thrilled to have Shira Hoffman of McIntosh & Otis here at the Sub It Club blog perusing your pitches! If you have not yet read our interview with Shira, please do go and read it. She shared a ton of helpful tips that you may want to know before pitching.
Shira will be looking at pitches between 10am and 6pm EST today and will be making requests on those that pique her interest. She may also offer feedback if time permits.
Here are the rules:
Only pitch work in the genres that Shira represents:
- Adult commercial fiction, literary fiction, up-market women’s fiction, romance, sci-fi/fantasy, mystery, narrative nonfiction, memoir
- Young Adult contemporary, sci-fi/fantasy, mystery, romance
- Upper Middle Grade sci-fi/fantasy, mystery, scary
Pitch completed work only.
Post your pitch in the comments section of this post.
Please use the following format your pitch. Pitches are to consist of:
- Title:
- Word count:
- Genre:
- Pitch: 100-words maximum
- Excerpt: The first 100-words of your novel
If you get a request please put Sub it Club in the subject line along with the title of your manuscript so that Shira knows she requested your work. This is your opportunity to jump to the head of the line!
If you have questions, I’ll be hanging around in our Sub It Club Submission Support Group and will answer asap. Here’s to some great pitches. Best of luck everyone!
Sub It Club 
Title: WITH ARMS WIDE OPEN
Word Count: 80,000
Genre: YA Contemporary
Pitch:
ANNA & THE FRENCH KISS meets CATCHING JORDAN at a Brazilian soccer camp.
Seventeen-year-old Amélia abandons her soccer career after the accident that leaves her goalkeeper brother wheelchair-bound. When her childhood best friend Noah joins her family’s camp in Rio de Janeiro, her vow to remain soccer-free is put to the test. But Noah’s plan involves more than getting her back on the field. He also wants her — as more than friends. To give friendship and love a chance, Amélia must find the strength to open her heart to forgiveness and allow the boy she’s falling for inside.
Excerpt:
My rapid heartbeat marked the seconds. Any minute now, my miracle would walk through the gates.
After six long months, I was ready to breathe again.
The soccer ball knocked against the tree that loomed by the driveway. Yellow, trumpet-shaped flowers floated down, and the wind swept them away with the last evidences of autumn, leaving behind only a trace of their unique scent. The ball dropped to the ground and rolled back to me. It knew its place – never too far away from my feet. Balancing it on top of my foot, I tilted my head back and closed my eyes against the bright sun that highlighted Rio de Janeiro’s clear sky.
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Title: ILLUSION
Word count: 54,000
Genre: YA Contemporary Fantasy
Pitch: Sixteen-year-old Kate has her summer organized into a tidy list—until she’s abducted by Idina, her best friend.
Idina takes Kate to the Guard, an organization of magicians. Here Kate learns that she was rescued from a splinter group of magicians who want to find a lost sword and use its magic to free their leader from his prison. Determined to prevent a magicians’ war, Kate joins a hunt to find the sword—but that means solving clues that lead across the globe.
ILLUSION combines the thrilling hunt of National Treasure with the magic and secrecy of The Kane Chronicles.
Excerpt: It just doesn’t stand to reason why my very normal life would have to be interrupted by weirdness on the last day of school. Of course, reason isn’t pervading my thoughts at the moment. Only alarm.
“Stop with this nonsense.” I admonish myself. “You can figure this out.”
The cause of my distress is a ball that up until a few moments ago, I was using to practice a magic disappearing trick.
Until the ball actually vanished.
Footsteps crunch on the sidewalk. “Have a good summer, Kate.” A guy—a senior, like me—heads toward his car.
———————————–
Thanks to Heather and Ms. Hoffman for this opportunity!
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Title: Twelve Months Without Sunshine
Word Count: 94000
Genre: Women’s Literature
Everything about Sarah Cambridge’s life changed the day she lost her only son Robert to a motor vehicle accident on his way to highschool. Sarah and Robert started the day with an argument as she rushed him out the door to make it to school on time.
The story chronicles Robert’s life and Sarah’s emotional loss of her only child. Her grief forces her to address her guilt, sorrow, anger and resentment of a life without her son as she searches for solace. Sarah’s unconditional love provides the channel she needs to begin to heal.
Excerpt:
“Have you ever woke up in the morning and wondered what was going to happen to you today? Have you ever woke up and wondered how your day is going to end? Have you ever stopped and thought, maybe today will be greatest day of your life? Or maybe, just maybe there is a chance I should just go back to bed and stay there for the day? At least that way you could guarantee your own survival over the next 24 hours! Have you ever wondered if at the end of the day you would end up dead or alive?
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Title: SKIN FACTORY
Word Count: 54,000
Genre: YA Horror
PITCH: Killed by his father, Chase’s soul ends up in a netherworld factory where he’s forced to build human bodies for beings known as the Wardens to infiltrate our world. When Chase overhears a plan to infect humanity with soul eating spores called the Obsidious, he escapes the Factory to save his mom and sister, Andi. Only there’s a problem: Chase accidentally possessed a girl’s body to escape in. In our world, his mom is confined to an asylum, while Andi has already been infected with the Obsidious. If Chase can purge it from her, he might convince Andi he’s really her brother and save their mom.
EXCERPT: Hell? Shit, that’d be like green grass and jellybeans compared to this.
There’s a brutal crack and a whiff of hot bone as I jack the last of the cylindrical teeth into the upper jaw of the skull. I holster the Pop Gun and flex my hand from the heat of the thing. Using an angled mirror, I quickly inspect the teeth alignment. Details will be worked in later down the line in Final.
The teeth are perfect. No gaps.
I pat the skull containing the teeth I just installed, and the conveyor moves on.
A new unit arrives. Toothless, as they all are before me. A jawless, empty skull tacked to a steel rack.
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Title: 4227 Mansfield
Word Count: 35k words
Genre: Lit fic/mystery
Alan is willed a house and property by a woman he never met. He accepts the strange offer, soon discovering he has stepped into a mystery, created just for him by the previous owner of the house, now deceased. Alan tries to juggle the labyrinth of clues laid out for him, while not losing his girlfriend or his sanity. In an adventure involving pies, a beagle, a rowboat, and much more, he must follow the clues to fulfill the final, posthumous wishes of Shelby Cannon.
Excerpt:
I love puzzles, dear – always have. Consider this my last game, my final roll of the dice. Oh, and do bake yourself a pie. Welcome home.
Many Fond Regards (from beyond), Shelby
Alan stuffed the stationery back into its matching envelope, which had “Hello, Alan” looped across the front. He had found it stuck to the foyer mirror when he entered the house. He slid the loop of Camilla’s leash from his wrist.
“Go check it out, Cam,” he said. The beagle trotted off, nose stuck to the ground, until she rounded a corner and was out of sight.
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Title: The Mysterious Death of Mr. Phelps
Word count: 68,000
Genre:YA mystery
Pitch:
When Lucy Brown’s elderly neighbor is not at his window, Lucy is worried he’s had a fall. She is not expecting to find Mr. Phelps dead from a gunshot wound. Mr. Phelps and Lucy played chess together. He was a bright spot in her otherwise gray life. At fifteen, Lucy is a naturally strategic thinker and puzzling out his death keeps her from dwelling on her own problems. Lucy is clever, but she won’t live to solve this mystery unless she realizes, as someone already does, that Lucy holds a clue that will convict a beloved neighbor of murder.
Excerpt:
“Lucy Brown? Is that you?”
Lucy kept her eyes fixed on the hallway to the first grade classrooms. Could she pretend not to hear the woman behind her? She felt a hand on her shoulder.
“Lucy Brown.”
Lucy turned around. She hadn’t seen Mrs. Hunziker in years, but the Hunzikers only lived five blocks from the Browns. Once upon a time, Lucy and Lily Hunziker had been friends.
“Are you here to pick up your brother and sister?” Mrs. Hunziker’s question was simple enough, but her intonation made it sound like she’d said something tragic, like, “This puppy is ill and will die.”
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Shira, thank you for this opportunity!
Title:
The Harvester
Word count:
112,000
Genre:
Science fiction, horror, superhero fiction
Pitch:
When friends are scarce, Mara Murphy invents an AI to be her friend. When she has questions about the universe, she taps into all human knowledge and unravels the secrets of the cosmos. When she finds love, her world is turned upside down. For the first time in her life, Mara finds the simple things bring her the most joy.
Mara’s life is flying when her wondrous machines draw the attention of a galactic predator who brings armageddon. Mara must say goodbye to happiness and wage war against the alien, for the soul of every human being is at stake.
Excerpt:
Ginger Watson worked at the National Museum of Natural History in Toronto. She was a curator for a new exhibit for Homo Florinus, one of the coexisting species of prehistoric human that competed with, and ultimately gave way to, the rise of the anatomically modern human, Homo Sapien. The field team had retrieved a whopping fourteen fully preserved remains from the dig near the base of Mt. Etna, Sicily. The shipment of the remains started coming in a few weeks earlier and Ginger’s team spent the last week carefully unpacking each crate and organizing the remains in a large staging area in the vast bowels of the museum’s basement.
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Title: IMPERIUM
Word count: 89k
Genre: YA sci-Fi
Pitch:
Sleeping Beauty meets Avatar in a world that pits cyborgs against humans, and Prince Charming is the rebel leader.
Excerpt: (first 100 words)
06:54 flashes on my right retina. I pick up the pace. It’s the last day of class and being late will only bring unwanted attention. As it is, I’m already on everyone’s radar because I’m the Imperior Daughter. I fall in with the flow of cyborgs coming out of the Qwar satellite and cross the atrium that is teeming with both black-haired Azers and white-haired Qwars. I slow down. There is an unusual ripple in the air. I scan the crowd. Average heart rate is up 1 bpm. I regulate mine accordingly until I catch the breakdown.
Thank you, Heather and Shira, for setting this up!
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Can you send your pitch, synopsis and first 100? Don’t forget to include “Sub It Club” in and the title in the subject line. Thanks!
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Title: LUNADAR: HOMEWARD BOUND
Word Count: 50,214
Genre: YA fantasy
Pitch:
Seventeen-year-old mystic Ariana thinks raising Candra on her own is going to be her biggest challenge. That is, until her father, the king, is killed by the evil Lord Shemar, and the fate of Lunadar, a waterfall city, rest in her hands.
Forced into a life of piracy to help feed her people, Ariana must protect the future heir to Lunadar from the dark lord, and vengeful Queen Naab, ruler of the underwater kingdom of Renndar, while fighting her growing feelings for Candra’s father, the merman Prince Kaspar.
Maybe the pages of her father’s hidden diary will show Ariana who she can trust and who she can give her heart to?
Excerpt:
The setting sun bathed the ship’s deck in an unnatural light. The men were restless. They were too long from land, too long from home and it weighed heavily upon their spirits. This night would be a rough one with choppy seas and razor sharp tongues. Lady Ariana’s hand was firm upon the railing and her body swayed in rhythm to the waves. Her eyes peered into the fading light as if to see land just beyond the portal. She would get no rest this night.
Voices wafted up from below, a harsh word muttered here and there as the men settled down for the night.
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Title: THE LAST PRINCESS
Word Count: 67,000
Genre: Upper MG Contemporary Fantasy
Pitch:
Twelve-year-old Cat Brökkenwier wishes her life was a fairy tale. But homeschool in the suburbs falls way short of satisfying her over-active imagination. Then a mysterious crone tells her faerie-folk were real but they’ve blended in over the years until they look human, and Cat can spot them because she’s one of them. Oh, and since she has royal blood and this “fae-dar,” she’s a candidate to become the last princess of the fae. Now Cat must earn the favor of the scattered fae-born before a goblin changeling with sinister powers beats her to it. Or worse, before her mother finds out.
Excerpt:
An ogre. Definitely.
I could see him through a gap in the plywood. He was standing at the end of the alley, wearing a Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts and gnawing on a big, greasy turkey leg. He had a hook nose and black hair, and one bushy eyebrow across his forehead. Classic ogre.
Of course, to everyone else he just looked like a regular guy. You know how some people can look up at the clouds and find elephants and pirate ships and bunny rabbits? Me, I look at people and see fairies and dwarves and trolls. And they’re everywhere.
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Title: Hope Is an Elaborate Fiction
Word count: 100,000 words
Genre: Adult Light Sci Fi Thriller
Pitch:
With a single touch, Hope Jacobson can “read” the histories of artifacts and people. She uses this gift to infiltrate England’s Museum Federation—an organization that controls information, and probably murdered her Dissident father. But when her murder investigation intersects with the long-lost Ark—the Internet archive destroyed in 2062—Hope must unravel riddles hidden throughout London’s museums, before the Federation discovers her gift. If they do, they’ll stop hunting the Ark, and start hunting her.
Excerpt:
With the unearthing of the first box, two thoughts occurred to me: one, the Museum Federation now unwittingly possessed enough evidence to hang me for treason. And two, I had told them where to dig.
Triumphant shouts from the far end of the field brought Tesla and me running towards the excavation. We found Reid, our coworker from the Museum, leaning on his shovel in the pit. Between him and the other diggers rested a familiar trunk, its English oak exterior dark with damp. I cursed at myself.
A butterfly sigil marked the lid.
I knew this field held buried Dissident collections, but I never would have brought the Museos had I known it held these particular boxes.
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Title: ALL’S FAIR IN LOVE AND PARKING
Word count: 93,000
Genre: Adult Contemporary romance
Pitch:
ONE FOR THE MONEY meets PARKING WARS in Ana Schroeder’s world, where it’s considered a good day when people throw anything at your head. Parking enforcement isn’t a glamorous, but that changes when she boots the car of Jonathan Hadley.
Ruling the corporate world and his company, Jon doesn’t tolerate distractions… except for the intriguing blonde commandeering his car. Now he wants to know why his reputation and money send this particular woman running.
Their chemistry is intense, but they may have to rely on the cardinal rule of parking enforcement – when in doubt, lock that wheel boot and run.
Excerpt:
Ana squinted and tried to see through the Philadelphia sun. Even shaded behind her dark sunglasses, her eyed watered slightly under the intense rays. She took careful steps toward the gathered crowd of parking enforcement employees, doing her best to remain unnoticed. The last thing she needed was her supervisor, Dale, to catch her sneaking in late to the last minute event.
Her stomach rumbled, revolting against the chocolate bar wolfed down on the bus and topped with acidic coffee. A headache threatened behind her temples.
Snippets of complaints and conversation floated through the crowd, heard above the crackling speakers.
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Title: THE EVENTIDE
Word Count: 90,000
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Pitch: When Val’s twin is kidnapped by the foreign conquerors of Airylle, she sets out to find him before the tribes declare a war they can’t win. The only problem—she’ll have to travel aboard an Airyllen ship to find him and it’s illegal for Airyllens to hire girls.
Disguised as a boy, she joins a ship run by Captain Devon Orsin. When the tribes send out a magical storm, she’s stuck on the outside. Her brother is still missing and if the Airyllen king learns her secret, she’ll be hung. THE EVENTIDE is a loose retelling of TWELFTH NIGHT.
Excerpt:
Purple mountains jutted into the sky before me as a tear slipped down my ocean-weathered face: the Pass. For most it represented the boundary between the southern tribes and the pale-faced invaders. For me, it meant home.
Tonight, after eighty-two long days by myself, the elders would name me chieftess. Chieftess Valerian. It had a nice ring to it.
Letting my sail out, I tied the mainsheet and moved to the bow of my sailing canoe. My deer hide sack hung on the mast, swaying slightly from the movement of the boat. Reaching into it, my rough hands fished out the smaller drawstring pouch.
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Title: PLAYING GOD
Word Count: 111,000
Genre: Adult Fantasy
Pitch: Sworn off family in-fighting, Apollo decamped to Maine, incarnated as a scientist. Family’s not the only thing Apollo’s sworn off — he’s also done with women (of the mortal ilk), and Pantheon, a game the gods play with human lives. So when Venus demands that Apollo assist her with a move in the game, Apollo’s intention is to execute the move and get right back to work in the lab. He doesn’t expect his attraction to the pawn, Theresa DiPaulo, or how Theresa’s involvement has stirred things up on Olympus. Apollo’s back in, playing hard.
For grown-up Riordan fans.
Excerpt:
I’d never paid much mind to the palace doors, two twenty-foot panels of heavy engraved ebony. But then, I’d never used them before either. In all my existence, I couldn’t remember them ever having opened.
“We don’t have to go inside,” Artemis said.
“You don’t. I do.”
“Like I’d make you do this alone, Apollo.”
Normally, we access the palace on Mt. Olympus from our in-essence state. The old homestead is the only place we can be both in-essence and in-body at once. Totally knowing, totally feeling, spiritually and physically whole. Best of both worlds.
But nothing was normal anymore.
(P.S.: I queried you last week, Shira!)
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Title: A GHOULISH AFFAIR
Word count: 30,000
Genre: MG Spooky Mystery
Pitch:
When 11-year-old Pen Waters gives a ghoul her sock in exchange for a glittering pocket watch, she unwittingly invites herself to become his next meal. Saved from the ghoul’s sleepwalking spell by 11-year-old Jack, a boy who lives in an art museum, the two team up to investigate the creatures. But when Jack is captured by their ravenous leader, the Great Ghoul, Pen must uncover his secret weakness before they both become the brute’s next delectable feast.
Excerpt:
Something scratched at Pen’s window.
She lay still in her sleeping bag on the hard attic floor. Darkness filled the room, except for a circle of light glowing from the window. Everyone else in the house was fast asleep. Their snores drifted up from the floor below and collected in Pen’s room.
The something at the window scratched again.
Thousands of tiny goosebumps prickled her arms. It must be a giant, she told herself, trying to find his way in and snatch me up.
She could just picture the hideous, slender fingers poking around, fishing for a way in.
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Title: Baywich and The Big Nothing
Word Count: 15162
Genre: Upper Middle Grade Contemporary Fantasy
Pitch:
It was no coincidence thirteen-year-old Madelyn Kapoor found the magic shop. The impromptu trip through the vortex to see her dead mother and the trip to Salem that followed were not coincidences either, but Maddie never meant to start the end of the world.
A gray veil is overtaking Baywich Harbor. Nothing exists behind the veil and that nothing is spreading. Madelyn, a Magic Imbiber, rallies together with her coven friends. Using the vortex, a full moon, and her mom’s Indian Moonstone, they travel back in time to 1693 to save Baywich Harbor from the encroaching darkness.
Excerpt:
I’ve been sleeping pretty good since last fall. Most nights I dream about my mom, which is totally sweet. The problem is I have to wake up. Every morning I wake up with this wicked annoying feeling that there’s something I’m supposed to be doing. This morning was different. Today I knew what I had to do. I had to talk to my mom. I saw it and I knew it, like I know the sky is blue. Of course my mom is dead, but that didn’t change what I had to do.
I woke to sunshine and the strangely clean smell of dirt from the freshly-turned fields.
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Dear Shira Hoffman,
thanks for taking the time to look through pitches today. Hope you find this one entertaining!
Title: HELL TO PAY
Words: 54,000
Genre: Fantasy (satirical)
Pitch:
Some people have a Guardian Angel: what would life be like if you were suddenly to find you had a Guardian Devil?
One September evening in an alternative near future, Yorkshirewoman and lifelong environmental campaigner Verity Player is shocked to discover that Lancastrian evil genius Stan ‘Satanic’ Mills has been stalking her since her teenage years.
She immediately understands the nature of his destructive, geometric ‘Plan’ having anticipated, as a student, the selfsame thing happening. But in securing a ‘sporting chance’ of thwarting him she accidentally gambles a fundamental part of herself…
Excerpt:
“You…”
Verity Player stared at the black-clad figure perched on the edge of the four-poster. “What the heck are you doing here, in real life?”
She had turned to get up from her seat at the computer in the spare bedroom and her heart had nearly stopped at the sight of him. His angular shape like a black rip in the cheerful fabric of the room: defying the striped wallpaper, the roses of the bedspread and the soft drapes tied back to the four-poster’s uprights.
“You usually wait till the screen’s completely black before you turn to get up.”
The display showed nearly midnight…
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Title: STRAWBERRY SEASON
Word count: 68,000
Genre: YA Contemporary
Pitch:
Seventeen-year-old Torrance Blake has it bad for Bee. Her boyfriend Jonah? A technicality.
During a summer of Bee-organized scavenger hunts, Tor launches his own hunt for Bee. But just when it looks like his girlfriend-stealing plans might work, an accident during one of the hunts severely injures Jonah and tears them apart.
Tor tells the story of that golden summer. In alternating chapters, Bee tells the tale of the aftermath. Bee leads one final scavenger hunt to try to bring them back together, but as they each realize, sometimes getting what you want isn’t a dream come true.
Excerpt:
Strawberry was my favorite fruit and the name of the girl I loved. Unfortunately, neither one loved me back.
I had a handle on strawberry-the-fruit’s animosity. I could forgive the itchy tongue. But Strawberry-the-girl was another story.
She wasn’t why I stayed home that Friday night. But she wasn’t far from my thoughts as I sat alone in my room, bouncing a lacrosse ball off the wall across from me, my thoughts thumping in time with my throws. Thwap. Strawberry. Thwap. Tomorrow. Thwap. My fervent wish that she would be mine. Thwap. The reason she couldn’t. Thwap.
Jonah.
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Title: REQUIEM
Word Count: 91k
Genre: YA Contemporary Fantasy
Pitch:
The Cathari family has the power to make Rix, a seventeen-year-old former street kid, immortal. To win their blessing she’ll do just about anything they ask. But when they kidnap her suppose-to-be-dead boyfriend, she finds herself in the middle of a centuries old feud, her allegiance torn between the love of her life who abandoned her and the Cathari, who can give her everything she needs.
Excerpt:
The streets of Manhattan feel different from inside this chauffeur-driven, lavishly detailed Audi. See, when you’re homeless, the streets are your universe and prison. Home and enemy in one. Everything you do — eat, shit, sleep, cry, have sex, fight, and even die — you do on the streets. But sitting here inside this aluminum-framed bubble I don’t feel a thing for the old hood.
My boss of the past three months, Philippe Cathari, slides across the slick backseat until we’re touching, causing a small jolt of fear I do my best not to show. Mega-rich, slippery-smart and more than a little bit crazy, he’s intimidating as hell, but he’s tons better than the other Les Cathari.
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Title: DISTRACTION
Word count: 90,000
Genre: Steamy Contemporary Romance
Pitch: My name is Stacey Kuhnz. I would like to pitch my complete, steamy, contemporary romance about a sarcastic widow and pissed off mega celebrity that find love after loss and scandal. I believe you’d enjoy the funny and heartfelt voice similar to ‘FLIP THIS LOVE’ by Maggie Wells.
For ex-ER nurse, Rebecca Barnes, life isn’t bleak. It’s shit. Shit layered with cat puke, sprinkled with fairy piss. Yeah, that’s dramatic, but her once sunny disposition died alongside her husband and what’s left is a snarky, sparkling gem of a waitress muttering through awesome day after awesome day. On the run from Hollywood scandal Maxwell Clarke needs a distraction, not another botched tabloid romance. But the plan for calculated media exposure goes out the window when Max sits down in Becca’s North Texas bar, saving him from what would have been death by swarming sorority fangirls.
Excerpt:
It’s been five minutes, genius… she taunts. Again. For the umpteenth time today. I fidget with my watch like it would somehow move time forward and glare over the crowd. Everybody has one. An inner voice. For many, it’s the voice of honesty – the real honesty you learn to filter because too much truth crowns you with the title of ‘bitchy.’ It’s the silent nag that’ll make you put back the crop top and skinny jeans because everyone knows you’re thirty, not thirteen. For me, it’s a sarcastic, cynical voice of reason and the only part of me that survived.
A few measly feet away a couple sits wedged in each other’s arms. The ambient noise provides a reason to let their lips linger just below the other’s ear, catapulting a routine flirt session into an obscene gropefest.
Like a class A pervert, I stare. A weight builds, then crushes against my sternum. My arms fold over the ache. I don’t resent the happiness of others – or PDA – but it’s really fucking hard to watch sometimes.
“Get a room,” I groan unable to help myself. The couple stops and glances over their shoulders. Shit. It’s not the first time my filter failed to do her job. I gnaw on my lips, pushing my cheeks upward. Now I’m the creepy perv with an even creepier leer.
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Title: THE KITTEN & THE CLOUD
Word count: 95K
Genre: Sci-fi/ YA
Pitch:
THE KITTEN & THE CLOUD is the story of seventeen-year-old Raine Tripp, a tenacious redhead who’s been on her own in a post-apocalyptic, demon infested NYC for three years. Desperate to find out why her deceased family never made it on to Heaven’s cloud server, God™, she’s determined to get her youngest brother’s soul re-instated on the feed before she dies and finds herself without him forever.
Excerpt:
Raine heard the gongs again. Heart plummeting, she felt her anxiety shoot sky-high. It was almost dawn. But she was close, 85%. She sat in an abandoned office downtown, charging her PDA, Heaven’s Wing™. The 3E implant in her spine transmitted vital signs directly to her device and Heaven’s cloud network, God. It chimed an alert when her blood pressure spiked. Stubbornly, she stayed glued to her chair, grinding her teeth to stay focused. She should have left for home ten minutes ago, but no way was she leaving until the power gauge on her phone read 100%.
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Title: Boundless As The Sea
Word Count: 57,000
Genre: Women’s Fiction/Mystery
Pitch:
In 1950 16-year old Air Force brat Bobbi Potter is uprooted once again because of her father’s latest deployment. She and her alcoholic mother join The Colonel in Japan and it’s a tough adjustment for smart-alecky Bobbi as she deals with everything from the new culture to the snotty girls at the American school. Their kind maid, Yuko, is helpful as is her handsome son, Hiroshi, who is also sixteen. When Bobbi’s father’s death is ruled a homicide all eyes are on Hiroshi. Bobbi must defend her friend as both the American and Japanese communities turn against the couple.
Excerpt:
I knew something was wrong as soon as I got home. Instead of sitting at the kitchen table reading her romance novel, cigarette in one hand, Manhattan in the other, Mother was standing facing the door as if she’d been waiting for me all day. I started to tell her about the stupid theme for the spring formal but she interrupted me, the side of her mouth curling up into a smirk: “Pack your kimono, sister, because we’re heading to Japan.” When she saw my jaw drop, she swung around with an air of self-satisfaction, grabbed the bottle of bourbon from the counter and sashayed down the hall.
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Title: THE AURORA GENE
Word count: 72,000
Genre: YA Sci Fi/Fantasy
Pitch:
Seventeen-year-old Ellie McClaire was the epitome of a typical teenager, until her world melted away with two deadly words. You’re infected. Diagnosed with a virus threatening humanity’s existence, Ellie’s life is forever changed. Taken to a facility dedicated for the infected, Ellie must put her faith in an alien race called the Maorie. They promised the world to find a cure, to let her return home, but instinct warns her about their true intentions. Deprived of her own choices, tormented by Bataars, and betrayed by her own race—will Ellie ever return to those she loves?
Excerpt:
The world around me melted away as I sank into the corner of the room. “Breathe Ellie… Just breathe,” I whispered.
Wrapped in my arms I fought to contain the violent tremors threatening my body. I was losing control. Right now I wished I was home. Heck, I wished I was even at school, but none of those things were going to happen. My fate had been sealed… I was going to die.
Tears swelled in my eyes as I tried to gather my sanity, my courage, or by golly something to keep me from becoming a snot faced crying
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Title: Fair Game
Word count: ~67,000
Genre: Contemporary YA
Pitch: Zach Wheeler is a socially awkward 14-year-old who likes onomatopoeia and knows that bison were once native to Maryland. Junie Alvarez, also 14, is a dancer who collects quotes and paints her nails black. Zach’s brother Tripp is on a different level than either of them—he’s a minor Internet star, Hillside High’s “King of the Hill,” and a virtual superhero. When he’s asked to supervise the local county fair, he ends up relying on Junie and Zach’s help to prevent catastrophe. As the three work together, they confront saboteurs, old enemies, and their fear of growing up.
Excerpt:
It is 9:30 pm, and I am standing on top of a truck.
The weather’s not that great. Sort of cold for August—wind chill, I guess. I wrap my bony arms around my undershirt, but my teeth won’t stop chattering to the rhythm of the pop song Tripp is blasting from the stereo. Why are Maryland nights so rough?
Oh, yeah—I’m soaking wet. That’s probably relevant.
Below me, Tripp leans his head out the window. “Reach, Zach!”
I bend my knees, stretch toward the target, and scrape my thumb on a tree branch. “I can’t keep doing this, Tripp.”
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Title: RUST
Word Count: 80,000
Genre: Contemporary Science Fiction
Pitch:
Bird won’t let her grandfather, the man who raised her, live his final years in a nursing home. She returns to the small town of Victoria three years after an accident left her with a below the knee prosthesis. She’s never felt more like an outsider until she discovers a techno-organic alien living in Pop’s shed. His technology can help Pop recover from his Alzheimer’s. Hiding him from the nosy neighbor with a grudge is worth all the trouble. But when the results of Pop’s treatments go from promising to scary, Bird might lose her Pop for good.
Excerpt:
Oh, this speeding ticket would be easy to get out of. I opened my car door and swung my feet onto the gravel driveway, but the cop already approached, hand on his holster like I was some kind of bank robber. “Stay in the car, ma’am.”
I stood. “Come on, Andy. I’m not a ma’am.”
Andy stopped and smiled. “Well, look who it is.”
“Yeah, yeah.” The warm March breeze ruffled my skirt, and I prayed it didn’t draw attention to my legs. Jeans, dammit. I should have worn jeans today.
“Come back for your Pop?”
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Title: Dear Aida
Word count: 70,500
Genre: Women’s Fiction
Pitch: When her husband announces to their entire New Year’s Eve party that he’s been promoted to name partner at one of the top financial firms in New York, Aida is thrilled. Until he explains that means he’ll be leaving her for someone more driven. Someone like the lawyer he’s been screwing at cocktail hours for the past month.
One year later, with more drive than ever, Aida is finally about to make name partner herself and all her sacrifices, including pulling herself away from family and friends, are about to be worth it. That is until Aida’s therapist gets involved and shakes everything up. She challenges Aida to follow one piece of advice, for eight weeks, from the letters she receives from her over-involved, entertaining eighty-year-old Italian grandmother. Well, not so much challenges as requires her to, if Aida wants her signature on the required mental health evaluation form.
From telling her to go dancing with her two over-endowed cousins, to learning how to actually cook something besides pasta, Aida’s grandmother takes her on an adventure that leads her to new experiences, and new relationships, but ultimately forces her to answer the hard question: What’s really worth working for in life?
Excerpt:
Dear Aida,
I hope you got the socks I sent you. When I first mailed them, they were in a business-sized envelope with one of those return address labels from the Easter Seals. I always feel bad using those since I only donated $5 back in 1992, and each year they send me enough labels to cover the Great Wall of China. Of course, I would never actually use those labels on the Great Wall because I wouldn’t want that many people knowing where I live, but it doesn’t matter because two days later my letter to you was returned.
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Title: LIVING NIGHTMARES
Word Count: 29,000 Words
Genre: Upper Middle Grade Scary
Pitch:
12-year-old Esme should be sneaking sweets or staying up past her bedtime; not thinking her stepfather Horatio killed her Mom. A talking rabbit’s (Julian’s) visit confirms her suspicions regarding Horatio when Julian shows her what happened the day her Mom died. But knowing the truth isn’t enough even when her boyfriend Steven and hacker best friend Chace would do anything for her. What starts out as trying to record a confession turns into psychological warfare. Horatio always anticipates Esme’s next move, which begs the question if she can outwit her Stepfather before becoming a casualty of their war.
Excerpt:
Good girls don’t think about murderers.
It was what my Social Studies teacher said when I pointed out how Americans could have been viewed as murderers when it came to the Native Americans. But that didn’t stop me from thinking I lived with a murderer (my Stepfather)…
The wind rattled outside, slamming against the house, forcing me to pull the extra blanket over my body. There was something about winter that never sat right with me. My restlessness wasn’t even entirely due to the wind though since it was just one of those nights when tossing around in bed was inevitable.
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Title: MYSTERY AT THE WHITE HOUSE
Word Count: 38,000
Genre: Upper MG mystery
Pitch:
Hannah has an invitation to visit the White House where she meets JT, the new president’s son. A painting is missing from a third floor bedroom. With JT’s confidence and her eye for details, they are on the case.
When JT invites Hannah to spend the night so they can continue working, she gets to experience living at the White House. Will they hang out in the game room, the rooftop Promenade, or maybe watch a movie in the theater down the hall?
JT also enlists her help to complete his bucket list, which includes the antics of other president’s children, plus some additions of his own. Hannah’s not sure about the one with a spider and a member of his dad’s cabinet and she has no confidence whatsoever they will let him bring goats into the White House.
There’s a fingerprint with a distinctive scar, a secret staircase, and some unique twists and turns. Will they solve the mystery of the missing painting before it’s too late?
Mystery at the White House includes a little bit of history mixed with a mystery set in the most famous home in the world and is similar to Andrew Clement’s Benjamin Pratt and the Keepers of the School. Stand alone with series potential
Excerpt:
Hannah sniffed. Her dad reached over, gently squeezing her shoulder. Visiting the White House without Pawpaw, her grandfather, was going to be harder than she thought. Stupid heart attack. It had only been a month since his funeral, but Pawpaw would be disappointed if she flaked out. Studying art was their thing and it had taken months to work out the details. This might be her only chance to see some of the exclusive art hanging on the walls of the White House.
Hannah and her dad walked past the wrought iron fence and up to the small white guard
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Title: Coded For Murder
Word Count: 70 000
Genre: Mystery
Pitch: My book is a mystery with a high tech component.
Chief Inspector Derek James of the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal has accepted the death of his family and lives for the thrill of the next case. He investigates a faceless body found hanging by the St. Lawrence River — the features eaten by acid and torture. While at the crime scene, James’s car is rigged and explodes — someone within the police force is trying to kill him. The investigation and his life are both placed in jeopardy. This begins a three-day chase among Montréal’s cafés, hipsters, and geeks to stop an unexpected killer.
Excerpt:
“Strung up by the river? Without a face?”
Chief Inspector Derek James of the Service de Police de la Ville de Montréal tucked his cold hands into his pockets and looked up. A rope looped over the middle branch of an oak in the urban beach park. Above him hung a body with an exposed skull, framed by sparse hair on top, ears on either side, and a wrinkly neck puckered in a noose. The face was stripped to the bone with eroded teeth set in a perpetual grin as if the skull were enjoying a joke at everyone’s expense.
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Title: THE CAERWOOD CIRCLE
Word count: 81,000
Genre: YA Fantasy
Pitch:
Synne is a fisherman’s daughter. She’s also one of four princesses attending Caerwood Academy to smooth over their kingdoms’ squabbles.
The school year spirals into a nightmare when the teachers abandon the girls, a magical hedge trapping them in the castle. They may survive – if they can escape the hedge, turn their prison into a fortress, learn the forgotten skill of wordcraft, and fend off a sorcerer. Oh, and don’t forget kitchen duty. If they can do that, with a cryptic letter from their kidnapper and a little help from a goat, then they’ll save their lives and their kingdoms.
Excerpt:
Needing directions to the king’s house was a new problem for the courier. Palaces and mansions were generally easy to spot. Even a fortress was conspicuous, though sometimes out of the way. He turned onto the rough dirt track, which wound high over the quay onto the clifftop. A single lit window showed a house built against the sheer rock face.
Windswept scrub trees lined the pebbly road, their tortured limbs pointing the way upward as the rain gave up and the moon lit the foam on the beaches below. The house shrank as the horseman approached. It was smaller than the other village houses.
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Title: SKIN FACTORY
Word Count: 54,000
Genre: YA Horror
PITCH: Killed by his father, Chase’s soul ends up in a netherworld factory where he’s forced to build human bodies for beings known as the Wardens to infiltrate our world. When Chase overhears a plan to infect humanity with soul eating spores called the Obsidious, he escapes the Factory to save his mom and sister, Andi. Only there’s a problem: Chase accidentally possessed a girl’s body to escape in. In our world, his mom is confined to an asylum, while Andi has already been infected with the Obsidious. If Chase can purge it from her, he might convince Andi he’s really her brother and save their mom.
EXCERPT: Hell? Shit, that’d be like green grass and jellybeans compared to this.
There’s a brutal crack and a whiff of hot bone as I jack the last of the cylindrical teeth into the upper jaw of the skull. I holster the Pop Gun and flex my hand from the heat of the thing. Using an angled mirror, I quickly inspect the teeth alignment. Details will be worked in later down the line in Final.
The teeth are perfect. No gaps.
I pat the skull containing the teeth I just installed, and the conveyor moves on.
A new unit arrives. Toothless, as they all are before me. A jawless, empty skull tacked to a steel rack.
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Title: BETWEEN NEVER AND ALWAYS
Word Count: 74,000
Genre: YA Contemporary
Pitch:
In this “Lance Armstrong scandal” meets ANNA AND THE FRENCH KISS there’s instant chemistry between track phenom Callie and Trent, a neo-pro on her uncle’s cycling team. But after losing her pro-cyclist father in a horrific crash, Callie’s sworn she’ll never date a cyclist. Besides, Trent’s already dating the daughter of the team sponsor.
A season-ending injury derails Callie’s invite for an elite track team and a cheating scandal surrounding her father’s cycling career ignites. Trent becomes the perfect distraction, but as the sparks between them start to sizzle Callie must decide whether following her heart is worth the risk.
Excerpt:
I could do anything for fifteen seconds.
Ignoring the burning sensation engulfing my thighs and lungs, I pumped my arms and concentrated on staying two steps behind Reed Barkley as we rounded the last turn of the sunbaked track.
“Go, Callie. Go!” my teammates called from the infield.
One hundred meters left.
Sweat from Reed’s soaked hair, or maybe his glistening back, splattered my cheek. Running intervals with this smelly pack of guys was punishment for being the best high school miler in North Carolina and one of the top ten girls in the country, but every torturous millisecond would be worth it when I finally won States.
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Hi Shira; thank you so much for your time & generosity on these.
TITLE: The Season of the Plough
WORD COUNT: 74,000
GENRE: Adult Literary Fantasy
PITCH:
In a village of exiles and wandering fugitives, there’s no shortage of legends. When old cottager Grim discovers a fairy-blooded girl in the woods, she’s naturally mistaken for the foretold child of ancient prophecy—but destiny doesn’t unfold as smoothly in this fallen age as it did in old legends.
When the ancient evils are supplanted by petty human civil wars, Aewyn grows up facing the doubts and struggles of those not predestined for greatness: what does it mean to do good, to forge your own destiny, as an ordinary farm girl in an uncertain age for heroes?
EXCERPT (FIRST 100 WORDS):
Grim had come down from the far North for reasons some called mysterious. In the earliest days, before the village of Silver took on its first Reeve, he built a simple earthen hut in the fertile northern hills, at a place now called Grimstead. In the old language of his people, still spoken north of the river Ban, the name Grim meant “mask,” and the first villagers considered it a reflection of his many secrets. None in Silver, nor the whole forest of Haveïl, nor all the Empire, could guess his right lineage, his father, or his family name.
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Title: CROOKED MILE
Word Count: 98K
Genre: Commercial Fiction
Pitch:
Dex isn’t thrilled about his release from prison. He liked being punished for killing his wife. Now, he’s a burden to his disapproving sister, while keeping his volatile anger under control and staying clear from the drugs and alcohol that plagued his life before. But temptations are everywhere. As is Dex’s violent father-in-law who vows to take everything away from Dex.
Dex seeks out his own degenerate father to keep Dex and his loved ones safe, but is lured back into the life of addiction. Dex must discover how much he’s willing to sacrifice for the freedom he doesn’t deserve.
Excerpt:
The last time Dex had been down the road that led into Thompsonville, Indiana, the trees were bare, brown leaves had littered the sides of the roads, chill air bit at his nose. The softness of spring was present this time—green grass blowing in the wind, birds flying in lazy circles—as if he’d only been in locked away in prison for one long winter instead of eighteen years.
Dex didn’t know where his sister, Crystal, was driving him and he was fine with not knowing. He liked living in those moments of ignorance before the truth came crashing in and destroyed his illusions.
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Title: Stupid Girl
Word count: 90,000
Genre: Upmarket Women’s Fiction
Pitch:
In 1996, at the dawn of the internet gold rush, dot-com rockstar (and nice Jewish girl) Barrie confidently creates web blockbusters but crumbles around her co-worker, Prince Geeky-But-Charming Tucker. When Tucker snogs a company receptionist, crushed Barrie takes comfort in her career, only to have that rug pulled out when higher-ups corral some Hollywood producers to shake up the start-up, As the interlopers push her out the door, Barrie must dig deep and team up with Tucker to help thwart a hostile career takeover and save her stock options before the company goes public.
Excerpt:
You might wonder why a grown woman is cowering in the bathroom.
If you were dodging a hail of Nerf gunfire, you’d duck into the nearest john, too.
I pump a little of that cloying, almondy-smelling, work-bathroom soap on my hands and rub them together slowly, as if performing some demented Howard Hughes ritual. Forgetting myself for a second, I brush my too-long, Chrissie Hynde bangs out of my eyes, leaving a foamy forehead trail. Ugh.
Another ball bounces off the hall wall outside. Tech boys will torture for hush-hush meeting details by any means necessary.
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Title: XO XO
Word count: 13,593
Genre: Tween-Fiction Novella
Pitch:
When fourth-grader Makayla Massi is chosen as the new face of Gems XO XO jewelry store, her dream of being a model has finally come true. As she walks the runway on her way to success, she couldn’t be happier—that is, until she realizes her classmates want to crush her dream. Will they run her off the runway or will she find a way to shine?
Excerpt:
“Ta da!” my mom shouted, raising her hand straight in the air toward a tall glass building with a fountain in front as we stood in the parking lot.
“Mom, this is my surprise? This doesn’t look like it. What are we doing here?”
I love surprises, but here’s the thing. I have no clue where I’m going, so I had no idea what to wear. I was going to wear my favorite DIY T-shirt with a silver heart on the front to match my heart-shaped earrings, but, at the last minute, I changed my mind and, after half of
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TITLE; DATE WITH DANGER
WORD COUNT; 38,000
GENRE; MIDDLE GRADE FICTION ADVENTURE
PITCH;
Jessica and Lincoln must convince her dad nothing can go wrong on a six-hour ski trip. Yet everything does. A misunderstanding leaves Jessica behind when her friends are picked up. She makes a big mistake taking a ride with scary strangers. They drive to their hide-a-way, meet up with a nasty third fellow, and leave her to survive the winter. She must learn new skills, overcome her loneliness, and make a plan to escape. Then a wolf howls.
Lincoln tells her dad of the misunderstanding and joins the search. His friends and town blame him. His imagination sees her die a thousand deaths.
EXCERPT: First 100 words
Why do I feel guilty? At least–for today—I get to live.
Jessica Kidd stared at the kitchen clock and waited for friends to pick her up. Seven-fifty. She had ten long minutes to think. And to regret.
Last night at her grandma’s, she said something awful, right in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner. As soon as the words left her lips, she wished she could take them back. Her dad looked like part of him had died. Her grandma and grandpa froze, as if her words had stopped time.
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Title: CATCH A FALLING STAR
Word count: 91,000
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Pitch:
Heartbroken lyricist Rosie Andrews refuses to write love songs. Sex-on-a-stick singer Devon Jacobs inspires them. Desperate to ditch the lothario image he himself created, Devon seeks out Rosie’s help to rebrand and re-launch his career. Despite hitting all the right notes in his relentless flirting, Rosie’s terrified to trust the known heartbreaker. When Devon charms her into a songwriting deal, the lines between life and lyrics blur.
Catch a Falling Star is Maroon 5’s “Moves Like Jagger” meets Sara Bareilles’s “Love Song” in a story about an admiring musician and his reluctant muse.
Excerpt:
I can’t mess up again.
Christ. What’s wrong with me?
I’ve spent the last forty-nine minutes and twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five seconds onstage obsessing over one woman I’ve never even met. My chant for her beats in my body (where it better bloody stay) while behind me, drums, a keyboard, and an acoustic guitar weave their sounds into a song I’ve performed fifty-seven times on tour.
My eyes connect with “not-hers” in the front row, and I grab my chest in what must look like a heartthrob’s gratitude. In reality, my heart’s throbbing; my palms are so clammy I’ve dropped my mic twice; my trousers are tight-er.
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Title: THE LOST TREASURE OF FULL MOON LAKE
Word Count: 45,000
Genre: MG Mystery
PITCH:
Desperate to save her family’s failing lake resort from demolition, twelve-year-old Mia uses a Ouija board to beg the spirit world for help. A ghost named Gus answers the call, claiming to know about long-lost cash hidden somewhere onsite. Mia follows his sketchy clues until she discovers Gus was a Chicago bank robber who disappeared in 1932—and now his ghost is inexplicably after her brother. Clock ticking, Mia races to find the loot and bail out the resort before her brother sleeps with the fishes and her family’s legacy disappears forever.
EXCERPT:
For Mia Luisa Cristina Molloy, summer never officially began until she dove into Full Moon Lake.
Luckily, her grandparents understood this. The second their beat-up Jeep stopped next to the Tamarack Landing lodge, Mia opened the passenger door and hit the ground running. She peeled down to her bathing suit, flinging her T-shirt and shorts on the grass as she raced toward the edge of the bluff, joy bubbling in her chest.
Behind her a screen door creaked and a voice whooped, “Finally!”
Mia grinned, picturing her best bud Connor McGee bursting out of the ranch house next door, but she couldn’t wait for him.
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Title: Saving My Heart
Word Count: 36K
Genre: Adult Contemporary Romance
Pitch:
Julie knows being attracted to your boss is trouble. Peter Mason has saved Julie’s college book club from the wrecking ball, and offered her a summer job. Julie has to negotiate the loss of her boyfriend killed in an accident, and keep control of her feelings for Peter.
Peter has his own baggage. When his father dies, he must return to his New York office to deal with the family crisis. Julie comes with him to assist. When Peter’s fiancé arrives on the scene at his father’s funeral, can they both face their past to save their hearts?
Excerpt:
My heart was coming apart, like an unwound clock losing its springs. My second home was being demolished. There had to be some way to save it. Just like I couldn’t save him. I beat back the tears, getting my mind off the reason I ran to Ohio. I looked up at the mansion that had housed my college book club for years. Something had to be done.
I crossed the dark wooden floor keeping a mental tally of the waste that would happen when it was destroyed.
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Title: HalfWorlder
Word Count: 98,000
Genre: High-Concept YA Sci-fi
Pitch:
When 17yo half-alien Gil Scott uncovers an ancient conspiracy surrounding the artifact his missing dad was hunting, he must use his alien powers to track it down before it destroy the planet he calls home. With the help of a beautiful hybrid, they borrow a spaceship and follow clues left behind by alien sun-god Ra on a cross-Egypt quest. But Ra and the other ancient aliens’ carefully mapped plan to save the Earth has a fatal flaw, and their gamble may cost Gil the only life that will matter to him in the end. And possibly the planet itself.
First 100 words (until end of sentence):
Nothing about my short life prepared me for anything this hard. And my life had never been what anyone would call normal. Not missing summers with friends in California. Not 16 hours on a plane with 374 other people and only six bathrooms. Not trekking through the desert heat while being quizzed on ancient Arabic – at 10 mind you. Not even the trauma of digging up my first body when I was only six – and trust me that’ll make a mark on you.
I’ll never forget his gray raisin skin and tufted hair and the cough-inducing layers of linen strips that had covered him for centuries. …
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Title: RESPAWN
Word count: 60,000
Genre: Young Adult Sci-Fi, Space Opera
Pitch:
Cherry Tango, a High School dropout who wishes to escape her cheating boyfriend, is kidnapped into the world of space travel by a half Asian, blue haired drag queen. She quickly finds herself becoming best friends with him, the most dangerous criminal in universe: OJ Strawberry. Together with his sidekick, they evade bounty hunters and fight intergalactic gangs while trying to find a way out of the videogame that they live in. But when a rival gang leader out to kill OJ emerges, they have to find a way out or die and never go back to reality.
Excerpt:
Life as you know it is just a simulation. This is all a very realistic virtual reality video game where part of the game is that you don’t know you’re in the game. Supposedly, to the psychos that made it, that’s the fun part.
I know it’s disappointing. You have relationships and commitments, but have you ever wondered what would happen if you left it all? Boom. Gone. Nothing would happen. So, because of that, we have this-this untapped freedom to do what we want when we want and no one can tell us otherwise.
So strap on those books, polish those guns, and join us.
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Title: Night Magnolia
Word Count: 91K
Genre: Adult Mystery-Suspense
Pitch:
At age 16, Emma sees her first dead body. Her neighbor, Mrs. Virginia, had been hunted like an animal; plowed down by her husband in their own front yard. But it’s what else Emma saw that night that releases a domino effect of strange behavior. First, by everyone at school. And then, by the dead woman’s son. Told by the viewpoint of Emma, who stumbles upon a secret the night of the murder, the story alternates with flashbacks told by Virginia, the deceased woman whose tragic choices plunge her into a world of drug trafficking, murder, and lies.
Excerpt:
Two legs sticking out from beneath the car. The delicate, white cotton of the woman’s nightgown.
Those were the first things Emma saw when she came bursting around the corner. Her hands flew to her mouth, but only to cover a silent scream.
The front of the car was smashed into a tree, hiss and steam escaping. Shattered glass and metal had exploded across the ground. Remarkably, the engine was still on, parking lights beaming a garish red into the night, a small amount of exhaust sputtering into the dark.
From where Emma stood, she could only see the lower half of the woman’s body, her chest and face hidden behind the engine.
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TITLE: Hallowed Ground (Graves Barren, Book 1)
WC: 90,000
GENRE: YA Paranormal Romance
PITCH: “Year after year, for as long as there is Halstead blood in Graves Barren, you will never know love. For I will kill your women as you have killed mine.”
A centuries old family curse and a lifelong feud with the Zoya — a race of immortal skin walker beings — dictates no Halstead man shall know true love. Unfortunately for Trent and Chloe, they can’t seem to keep their distance from one another. When the Zoya threatens Chloe and her family, she must become one of the Zoya and give up Trent, or lose everyone she loves.
FIRST 100 WORDS:
“You haven’t said a word in over an hour.” Aunt Beth glanced over at me with a frown.
I shrugged and continued to stare out the window. There was nothing to be said. My life had been forever changed, and everything was beyond my control. All I could do now was sit back and be dragged along for the ride. Literally. The drive from the airport to the town of Graves Barren was long and arduous and completely boring. We passed endless empty fields of lifeless dirt. The town was aptly named, that was for sure. It wasn’t until we actually reached the town limit that I saw anything interesting–a massive, sprawling cemetery.
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Title: Other Lands Library
Word Count: 71,000
Genre: YA 》Science Fiction/Fantasy
Pitch: Reading equals survival when a millennia-old society of thinker-readers, called Imaginatives must stop a rival society – the Versa Organization – from eliminating books for personal gain. 16 year-old Lealla Holliday discovers that she has what it takes to bring long-awaited change. Together, Lealla and the Imaginatives must restore the sense of wonder that had been lost.
Excerpt (first 100 words to end of sentence)
How did I even get here? Of course. I asked for this. Being dragged down the same tunnel I once explored for the sake of intrigue is not how I would’ve chosen to spend my time at age sixteen. Gosh, this tunnel is colder than I remember. Then again, it may just be my nerves from being jerked around. Way to go Lealla Holliday. You sure know how to pick ’em. Now Mr. Emsley’s warning makes sense. The Imaginative world is a calling, and is costlier than I could have imagined nine years ago. Hindsight really is 20/20, but, would I say yes if given the chance all over again?
OTHER LANDS LIBRARY combines Inkheart’s wonder with the written word with the underlying conflict between the public and the gate-keepers to specific knowledge and information seen in The Giver.
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Title: The Black Diamond
Word Count: 77, 645
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Pitch: Within a hidden society of miners, nineteen year-old Jordan lives a life as heroic and beautiful as it is fictitious. Preened since childhood to succeed his father and lead his people in the quest for the “Black Diamond”, the god of the mine, he has always known what he is expected to become. Who he already is, however, becomes more mysterious than the Black Diamond itself when he meets Bjork Geirsdóttir. A foreigner of the mine, she leads him to question the society that has built him to greatness– and can just as easily destroy him.
First 100 words:
The Black Diamond sweeps a long, slender tail behind itself. Armor-like onyx scales coat its skin. “Dragon,” a voice in my head says. “That’s a dragon”. I’ve dreamt of the Diamond as a lion, a woman, a fish, and even a tree, once, but I’ve never seen it as a dragon before.
The Diamond nudges me with its snout. “Climb onto my back, Jordan,” it commands. Grabbing onto one of its scales, I haul myself upward as told.
I clamber onto the Diamond’s back and grab tight to pommel-shaped spines, each detailed specifically to fit the grip of my palms.
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Title: DEEP, DARK, TRUTHFUL MIRROR
Word count: 104,000
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Pitch:
When Declan killed the man he loved, the reaper broke free. Now he senses the mark of death and fights his compulsion to kill. As his resistance fails, he plots suicide until renegade vampire Lulu promises relief from the homicidal urges. Then she tells him he’s a god.
With the hidden immortal world ruled by a weak god with a nasty habit of eliminating rivals, Dec should skip town. But a failed hit on him separates Dec from Lulu, and he won’t leave her behind. Alone and exposed, he descends into the supernatural underbelly of Los Angeles to find her.
Excerpt:
The old man had finally nodded off, but Declan kept singing, just to be sure. Swinging a leg over the side of the bed, he planted his foot on cold-ass tile floor. Next came the tricky part. When he leapt to his feet, the worn-out springs shrieked.
The dude didn’t budge; he was safe.
As he yanked on his jeans, the pocket crackled. The old man always snuck the cash in when Dec left the room, to spare him the embarrassment of asking. He didn’t check the wad. Counting money in front of a trick was a level of bad form beneath even his standards.
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TITLE: Cloud 9
GENRE: YA Romantic Fantasy (LGTB/POC)
WORD COUNT: 85,000
PITCH:
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Except in this case, sixteen-year-old Lily has already been killed.
Lily turns into a death and finds herself in a fortress run by Whites, those who become guardians to ‘deaths’. A counsel of Elder Whites will decide whether she is reincarnated, reaches an eternal daydream, or becomes a White.
Despite losing the memories of her past life, Lily remembers being murdered. With the help of her protector, Ronnie Zacharias, and his best friend Tiberius, they discover a chamber that keeps a record of all souls and can trigger Lily’s memories. In order to unlock it, she must partake in a deadly competition that could cost Lily her soul. When Ronnie and Tiberius are thrust into the challenge along with her, life after death takes an unexpected turn.
Lily is determined to unmask the truth, even at the cost of her own soul. But once she does, she might not like what she learns.
EXCERPT:
Death equals release, or so we’re told. I expected a light at the end of the tunnel, a burst of warmth ready to whisk me beyond infinity. Dying should be pleasant, like staring at the ocean after a wild storm, but all I can feel right now is fear, crippling fear.
I can’t remember what killed me, or who killed me.
My fingers grow numb, too cold and asleep to accompany me on my journey. When darkness engulfs my body, the memories of a lifetime fade like a tide carried by the moonlight. Fear stays, a parasite in my soul that refuses to go away.
“Stay calm, please. We’ll be with you in a moment,” a genderless presence says from above. “We are currently assisting other ‘deaths’, but your soul is important to us.”
Tired of Heaven’s customer service, I kick the invisible floor in impatience.
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Title: DESTINY
Word count: 59,600
Genre: Women’s Fiction/Romance
Pitch: Based on a true story…A heartfelt account of a lifelong love.
Danny and Cassidy meet as teens and fall in love. Their tumultuous relationship brings misery and happiness to Cassidy. Determined and loyal, the once shy girl fights for a love that she cannot let go of. She believes Danny is her destiny.
Tragedy befalls her in her twenties. She has to face the fact that she has lost Danny. Yet, still their love seems to live on.
Can they learn to let go of a love that always seemed to prevail, or has destiny set a path for them that’s beyond their control?
Excerpt: I remember everything about that night, that moment in time. I remember his face and the sadness in his eyes that I had never seen before, even having known him for so long. I was scared, I knew whatever he was about to tell me was worse than anything my mind could have imagined. It would forever change my life, as I knew it. The day when the person you believed in, gave your heart and soul to, betrays you and your heart hurts so much that it can barely beat. A true darkness arrived that would shadow every second, every moment and every day in the coming years. My world as I knew it had just died and I didn’t know how I was ever going to move on.
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Title: Five Hundred And Twenty Seven Miles From Paris
Word Count: 90,000
Genre: Memoir
Pitch:
While jet-lagged and drinking wine, my husband and I impulsively purchased a run-down 15th century apartment building full of gypsies in the southern French town of Perpignan. We made this decision without seeing the inside, because we’re idiots.
Our first contractor couldn’t finish the job, because he went to prison for manslaughter.
Our second contractor was halfway done with renovation when we found out we don’t own the building we’d sunk our life savings into – we own the crappy little building next door.
Obviously, this is not a how-to book. It’s a funny look at a dream gone bad.
Excerpt:
Everything looked pretty when we arrived in Perpignan, France, because everything was blurry. It wasn’t blurry because I’d had a concussion or too much to drink. It was blurry because I wasn’t wearing my contacts, the result of an “incident” the night before, in Toulouse. While I went into the rental car office to get a map, my husband loaded our bags in the car. Except one bag, my carry-on bag, the bag with all the stuff you don’t trust the airline with, had been left behind, alone in a dark rental car parking lot, and was never seen again.
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