St. Martin’s New Adult Contest
TEMPTED by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast
Attention, writers! St. Martin’s Press is holding a contest for submissions. Yes, a contest hosted by yours truly to find books to publish. We are actively looking for great, new, cutting edge fiction with protagonists who are slightly older than YA and can appeal to an adult audience. Since twenty-somethings are devouring YA, St. Martin’s Press is seeking fiction similar to YA that can be published and marketed as adult—a sort of an “older YA” or “new adult.”
The contest begins today on Monday, November 9 and ends Friday, November 20, 2009. Submissions will be taken online and read by JJ of the St. Martin ‘s Press editorial department and Georgia McBride, Founder and Host of #YAlitchat!
There are prizes! The top three submissions—1st, 2nd, and 3rd places, if you will—will receive a copy of TEMPTED by P.C. and Kristin Cast. There may be multiple winners of this contest, but a free book will go to the three I find the most interesting/appropriate for what we are looking for.
The Rules
- One submission per author.
- Fiction applicable to older teens and twentysomethings, please. For guidelines, the protagonist should be 18 or older, but 20s are preferred.
- All works must be complete, edited, proofed and ready for submission upon request.
- Submission must include author first name, email address, 2-3 sentence hook/pitch and first paragraph of story ONLY. Any additional content will be discarded.
How It Works
Submissions are reviewed by the Editorial Department at St. Martin ‘s Press and Georgia McBride, Founder and Host of #Yalitchat. Based on the criteria defined by St. Martin’s Press; submissions are assessed and if we are interested in seeing more, authors are contacted via the email provided in the submission and a partial (first 50 pages) of your manuscript will be requested.
Your manuscript should be edited, proofed and ready for submission. If the editorial team at St. Martin ‘s Press would like to see more of your manuscript after reading your partial, they will request the remainder of your manuscript. Please make sure that your manuscript is properly formatted, spell-checked and ready to go.
Winners
Winners in this “contest” are those who submit and are asked to have their manuscript submitted for consideration by St. Martin ‘s Press. Ideally, a book deal would come of it, but we have no guarantees. The goal is to give as many #Yalitchat writers an opportunity to have their work considered.
Disclaimer: St. Martin’s Press does not guarantee to publish the material requested and cannot be held liable for a book published through St. Martin’s Press with similar content to any submission from the “New Adult” Contest sponsored by #YAlitchat.
Comment here to enter. Good luck!
PITCH: AFTER THE END is set in New York City in the immediate aftermath of a zombie invasion. Nineteen-year-old Ari Brenner is a young man home on leave from boot camp. His natural leadership abilities draw a small group of survivors to follow him, although self-doubting Ari believes it’s only the uniform they trust in. Lila Teske, the female lead, is a college student studying philosophy. She is the peace-seeking yin to Ari’s more aggressive yang. There are other members of the diverse group thrown together when their subway car is attacked, but the focus of the story is on Ari and Lila, two young people who learn about sacrifice and inner strength through the ordeal.
FIRST PARAGRAPH: Through the binoculars, a zombie was even uglier than when seen up close and personal. Of course, when they were near, you didn’t generally have time to study them too carefully. There were other things to do—like screaming and running. From a distance it was safe for Ari to let his gaze wander over the creature’s rotting skin, its vacant eyes and slack-jawed yokel mouth. Blood stained the lower half of its face, coating cheeks and chin and nearly obliterating the Alpha Kappa Beta logo on the upper half of the thing’s sweatshirt. An “after” then. He could usually tell by the clothes a “before” corpse from one that had been turned after the first wave. Who would bury their beloved Brenda or Beth in a sorority sweatshirt? Most of the first generation zombies wore suits or dresses since they’d come to the banquet from mortuary viewings or funeral services. Or they were naked cadavers straight from the slab at a hospital or city morgue.
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PITCH: For as long as she can remember, 18-year-old Alex Hunter has felt there was something missing in her life. Leaving her hometown behind to study in the Big City, Alex soon embarks on a series of fleeting affairs. But it is only when she meets John — a charismatic banker old enough to be her father — that Alex stumbles closer to the truth, which, she soon learns, can sometimes do more damage than a lie.
FIRST PARA: Ever since the letter came, Alex Hunter has been living in a state of panic. At least once a night she bolted upright in bed, bug-eyed and short of breath. Such times it was as though God’s heavy boot was bearing down on her chest in a move worthy of the World Wrestling Federation. Or maybe it wasn’t even God but some New Age force that was to blame for her current bout of insomnia. Then again, maybe it was just this wretched futon.
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PITCH: A GOD TO DEMONS
Samantha Jones, New Jersey woman who doesn’t want her sort-of boyfriend to find out she’s pregnant. Using some old-timey steam-coach tickets (a gift from her Grandma), she crosses the Shadowlands, trusting in her travel pass for protection from the native demons who not only think she’d make a good meal, but are also on the brink of civil war. Will she reach her destination? Or will a demonic uprising keep her stranded in the Shadowlands forever?
Either way, it’s a good thing she met Avrael, a demonic bodyguard/tourguide who protects her from any who would ignore the sanctity of her travel pass. It doesn’t hurt that he’s the hottest being she’s ever met, and he seems interested in her. Too bad he’s got a secret that could accidentally leave her dead.
FIRST PARAGRAPH:
Pregnant. That’s what the little blue box meant anyway. Seven kits in one hour couldn’t be wrong. Probably. Almost certainly. Samantha Jones groaned and gave in, admitting that she was indeed pregnant with her on-again-off-again boyfriend’s child and also that she needed to go to Wegmans for another crate of bottled water.
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THE SUPPORT GROUP
PITCH: Former prodigy Dustin thinks he’d tried everything to stop his little brother Jeremy’s brutal night terrors until young (and hot) nurse Caleb encourages Dustin to admit his brother into a…controversial support group. Jeremy’s flourishing in the group, no longer plagued by memories of his dead mother, but so is Dustin’s sense that Caleb’s looking for something bigger than the satisfaction of helping others. If Caleb’s going to be prodding around Jeremy, expecting a gentle target, he should know that Jeremy’s not quite his gentle self when he’s asleep…
FIRST PARAGRAPH: Dustin learned a long time ago that the easiest way to control Jeremy was to remain close. He’d touch Jeremy—sometimes, not always. He wasn’t supposed to touch, but it was hard not to, especially when Jeremy was still quiet. A hand on the shoulder, that’s all, or around his ankle, maybe palm-down on his forehead. Every once in a while, maybe murmur something comforting. “It’s okay.” “Everything’s fine.” “You’re with me.”
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PITCH: Allyson Hales thinks she may never get over the death of her fiancé on their wedding day, until she meets time-traveling detective Grant Pierce and both her ideas about the future and recollections of the past are forever altered. Every night Grant appears in her dreams rewriting her past to include him. Unaware of Grant’s supernatural ability, falling for him has made Ally a pawn in a war between benevolent and malicious time-travelers putting her life in jeopardy in more ways than one.
FIRST PARAGRAPH:Dawn is an enemy to me. I consider it little more than a silent, unrelenting monster I can’t hold off. Morning sneaks in like a thief, stealing the only peace I have left, the obscurity of night. Every new day I wake to the same cutting reality, the same wounds. Still, the days pass like an endless blue stream. Sometimes they rush and sometimes they creep. The villainous sun shines in through my window, without fail. I fantasize about pulling the shades down, blanketing myself in the comfort of my bed, forever lost in sleep and dreams, and pretending I don’t see the blinding light of day.
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PITCH: Archaeology grad student David Preston has his life turned upside-down by Ariyl, a time-tourist from the year 2111. She needs a guide to help track down Jon, her psycho ex-lover, whose thefts of unique treasures are rewriting the past. Chasing Jon from Ancient Greece to Revolutionary America, to Golden Age Hollywood, the mismatched pair must overcome vast differences…and try to ignore a growing attraction.
FIRST PARAGRAPH: On the day he died, Andy awoke in a lousy mood, never dreaming the greatest afternoon of his life lay ahead. Even if I’d known what was coming, the only way to have kept Andy from his fate was to kneecap him the second I got to Dodger Stadium. And what would that have saved him from? Not death. Just early death…but also that incredible, legendary game.
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Title: Rain
Pitch: A witch’s son with no power of his own discovers that he is a natural amplifier for magic. Now on the wrong side of a faerie war raging through the cosmopolitan sprawl of Johannesburg, Rain Pike must destroy the other side’s weapon before he himself is put down. Rain is determined to do at least one thing right before he dies, until he discovers that the other weapon is the daughter of his dead boyfriend, and that his control over magic might be greater than he realises.
First Para: Fuck magic. No, really – fuck it with a fucking cordless drill. It skitters through the air; an electric pulse that echoes the boom from the club’s speakers. The unexpectedness of it is so jarring that I look up from my turntable, my hands shaking.
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Pitch: The war has done enough for Ellinca – both her parents are dead, her mother’s ghost is sought for weapon manufacture, and now the only way she can escape execution is to run the border into enemy territory and pray she doesn’t get noticed. After all, being noticed doing the wrong kind of magic is what got her into trouble. So when Dost, a half-undead prince needs her to help him regain his human form and convince his father that peace is better than war … well, she can see promise in the idea, but she’s already seen up close how fate tramples the dreams of the small and defenceless
FIRST PARAGRAPH: It was a dirty war when ghosts were used as ammunition. Ellinca touched the black satin pouch at her waist sash. Her secret. Inside was a green bottle with a filigree gold lid that contained her mother’s ghost.
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Pitch: Revising Grace
Come and Play.
These are the only words written on a small note, folded and sent from across the Atlantic, finding twenty-nine year old Grace Martin and ultimately altering the course of her life.
When she isn’t dodging questions about her marital plans, (of which there are none) she’s daydreaming about her past – about the time she before she watched her best friend leave for Europe, as she stayed behind to pursue the path she assumed would rise to meet her steps – marriage, family, contentment. However, none of this comes as easily as she had hoped.
First Paragraph:
We used to sit in the coffee shop for hours. Time evaporating all around as we sank into ourselves, squandering Saturdays over notebooks and ashtrays and conversations – dark and deep ones, like the coffee I drank. Black with extra sugar, sweet and indulgent, like cheating on a diet with a caffeinated lover.
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PITCH:
Using art school as an excuse, Pearl Kizzy relocates from Liverpool to the rocky shores of Monterey to research her deceased mother’s roots. Shocking family secrets unravel when an antique pendant conjures ghostly ancestors who reveal her gypsy lineage and latent telepathic powers. Peril lurks deep in the shadows of Pearl’s mystical discoveries, waiting for the moment to strike.
FIRST PARAGRAPH:
“Is he still behind us?” I gave Celeste a barbed elbow nudge into her pink-lycra clad ribs, hoping to grab her attention. No such luck. Scanty outfits and purses displayed in decadent shop windows proved too much of a distraction for her. Lilly-livered, I tensed my fingers around the taut handle of my canvas slouch bag, and linked my free arm with Celeste’s.
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PITCH: High school senior Avery Frost is about to learn lessons not found in any text book: Some secrets won’t stay buried (no matter how badly your parental units want them to). Water-shifting isn’t the best way to climb the social ladder. Fully formed werewolves will try to eat you, even if you’re their girlfriend.
And, some guys will die to get your attention…
FIRST PARAGRAPH: “Oh, geez. Not again.” I peeked through my bangs at my best friend Kelsey. “Please promise me you aren’t going to get on my case about your pool party.”
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When Benito Ochoa’s long-gone father shows up, flashes some wealth and power, and starts converting him from a Tijuana street punk into a Yale student, it calls for some adjustment.
But nothing compared to dealing with the fact that his father is not from earth and most of Ben’s instruction takes place in the hyperspace world called The Sky, home of the “real human race” who seeded life on all worlds.
Ben is being groomed for planetary leadership, but maybe his annoying father’s plans are actually a dirty domination scheme. So Ben rounds up his old street gang and they use the inter-galactic hypertubes to do what they always did: smugglingn and partying.
But it starts getting too serious for that and Ben is caught between his future, his people and his blood.
Benito stepped into the ring wearing his straw Stetson copy, the brim carefully pinched and crushed into the ever –so-cool Tejano beak. He kept his stolen sunglasses on in the gloom of the cockpit, a teenager’s defense against the eyes of elders. He looked around at a ring of dark-faced factory workers and taxistas raving as they placed bets and waved money. Drunken dorks sweating in a nasal swirl of norteño music. He held his bird out, “flirting” it at the opponent cock, driving both into a killing fury. Then he squatted and released a deadly explosion of feathers, and backed away. Nothing more he could do but watch and hope. It was over almost immediately.
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PITCH: Frustrated with his job cleaning toilets and annoyed by his dysfunctional family, twenty-one year old Daniel Cole thinks joining a local comedic rock band will provide the spark his life has been missing. Instead, he falls for the lead singer’s musician hating sister: only to find out the heartthrob guitarist has been pining after her for years. Dan can either win the girl and get kicked out of the band for screwing over an unexpected new friend, or he can follow a dream he never knew he had.
FIRST PARAGRAPH: I had just started cleaning up the remnants of an egg attack on the storefront of Bodkin’s Delicatessen when I spotted someone across the street ripping a FOR SALE sign out of the brick house’s front lawn. Even though it was broad daylight, he was really going at it, flinging dirt and torn grass everywhere. My eyes bulged with panic as I realized it was my older brother Evan. During my twenty-one years on earth so far, Evan had been a tremendous rectal itch. Lately, he was a full-blown hemorrhoid.
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Derek Jones is the name of both a twelve year old boy and a thirty-five-year-old Major League Baseball pitching phenom. One fateful day, “little” Derek Jones, mistaken for “big” Derek Jones, is abducted by aliens so that he can pitch in the universe’s deadliest, most dangerous sport: Smunch! The fate of the solar system now depends on him.
FIRST PARAGRAPH:
“Derek Jones, you have the grace of a humpback whale!” Mrs. Hannigan
exclaimed as she pounded her tambourine against the dance studio wall in a steady,
demanding beat.
“Cabriole! Cabriole!” she cried. Derek leapt into the air, tapped his legs together, and landed back on the hardwood floor with an loud “clomp clomp!”
“Absolutely dreadful!” she said. Derek sighed and glanced at his watch; only five more minutes and the torture would end. Looking back, Derek was amazed how
skillfully his mother Linda had conned him into taking the class in the first place; somehow she had managed to convince him that ballet would improve his baseball skills.
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Pitch
What if blood-sucking vampires and limb-rending werewolves were just a cover story for something really nasty? What if that something wanted you?
Jason Willow’s father has a secret past, a previous life of wielding arcane power in a war against a demon-summoning cult that most of the world, and even his family, know nothing about. After years in hiding from inhuman assassins, Jason’s mother is killed and the hunt is on for the rest of the Willows.
A terrifying new world opens up all around Jason – a dark world of possessed innocents and the damaged individuals who hunt them down. Hidden in an isolated abbey, rocked by first love and betrayal, Jason must embrace his own supernatural powers to survive demonic retribution.
But time is running out. Nothing in the abbey is what it seems and slowly, the ripples of Jason’s unlocked abilities begin to draw in the darkness that has stalked him since birth.
First Paragraph
‘Get down!’ Dad yelled and hurled Jason and Miranda to the floor. Jason tucked into a roll and flowed to his knees pressing tight against a concrete pillar. Mum and Dad darted behind parked cars as the blacked-out van squealed to a halt and three armed men burst out.
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PITCH: Despite her mother’s efforts to turn her into a high-powered urban career woman like herself, Lily Knox is defiantly old-fashioned and wants nothing more than to live a simple life in the country with a good man by her side. At nineteen Lily believes she’s found just this man when she falls in love with Will, a charming ex-hippie-back-to-the-lander. But in addition to being sweet and funny and knowing how to grow all his own food, Will also happens to be twice Lily’s age, father to a teenage daughter, a recovering alcoholic, and HIV positive.
FIRST PARAGRAPH: After school, the girls sat in the park getting high. Cross-legged on the dry grass, knee to torn-jean knee, they sat in a circle with their backs turned to everything else: the empty playground, the Tappan Zee Bridge, Manhattan bobbing downriver like a many-masted gray boat. It was October. The low hillsides glowed golden and a steady breeze was shepherding air down the Hudson from some fresher place, farther north. This was Lily Knox’s absolute favorite time of year. It was when, for a little while, what was inside of her seemed to match the world outside and she felt most like herself.
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Pitch:
Half a century ago, leviathans rose from the sea, toppling ships and drowning crews. The Deluge claimed all water, and humanity retreated into domed cities across the world. During a reconnaissance mission to the East Jungle, everyone in Angela’s unit is killed–except her. She escapes to the city, but the Deluge has followed: a water spirit haunts her and a terrible virus floods her neighborhood, killing some and causing others to grow scales and gills. Once more, Angela has to fight back, because she never escaped; she was released.
First Paragraph:
The jungle haunted Angela. In dreams, the green wild stalked her as pythons did mice, crushed her and consumed. But she had to go. Plane engines roared on the runway, prepped to bear away the twenty-third company. Two years she’d trained and now, her affairs in order, she was to do her part fighting the Deluge. Just a reconnaissance mission. Look and report. See what the jungle lord had planned. No matter that half the teams sent out never returned.
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Pitch:
In a world where half-humans are outlawed, and where magic is the only power worth having, Cerrita, the untalented daughter of an enchantress, knows her sole value is to marry to her family’s benefit.
But her arranged marriage to Kerial takes her to where she faces a terrifying taboo: a country of panther-shifters, desperate to keep their secret and willing to do anything to protect it.
Fighting to understand them, with her troubled marriage to the tortured Kerial, and with her own growing power, she comes of age in a story that asks what Beauty’s life would have been like, if the Beast had never turned into a handsome prince.
First paragraph:
Cerrita’s hands were cold. As she stood in her mother’s dressing room, sunlight slanting straight into her eyes, her heart beat painfully, driving nausea through her veins, up into her throat. She swallowed, opened her mouth and tried, for the second time, to speak. “You’re testing me again?”
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PITCH:
Derek Stratton is an undeclared, underachieving college freshman who is only good at scratching lotto tickets and playing “Hot Cross Buns” on the recorder. But when aliens ask him to deliver their message of peace and love to the president, he becomes humanity’s one last hope for peace and love. Since he’d rather hook up than play a hero, his grandma (aka Grandma Slap Yo’ Face) tags along to keep him in check.
FIRST PARAGRAPH:
Grandma handed me a present wrapped in the funnies section. “And this is for Derek,” she said. “I got you just what you needed.”
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The Dying Curse
Pitch: For eighteen-year-old daydreamer Katie Smith, ascending into outrageously cool witch powers rocks, or at least it will if she can stomach a rushed marriage to a guy who she doesn’t love in order to keep them.
Paragraph One: A rush of air sent my hair flying around my face. My skin tingled, the adrenaline high was addictive, and I needed more. I cranked my wrist. Increasing the gas sent me shrieking forward like a blur. This–speeding through the trees on my boyfriend Colin’s ATV—was officially my new favorite pastime. I loved anything fast and dangerous.
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PITCH: THE DHARMA BUM BUSINESS
Anna and Kat have two goals for their post-graduation road trip: finding proof of God’s existence and losing their bothersome virginities. But Anna didn’t prepare for the fact that Kat is falling in love with her, or the fact that her own desires are…complicated. Add to that the beautiful boys on the brightly painted bus–the tension of temptation and an accidental acid trip that pushes Anna and Kat to the very edge of the bond between them.
FIRST PARAGRAPH:
It’s strange how a plan can unfold sometimes–an umbrella shooting up at the touch of a button and extending out in all directions quickly, effortlessly. In so many ways, this journey is exactly the wrong thing to do. I mean, what kind of daughter leaves her grieving father and takes off across the country for no reason, or no reason she can say out loud? But I look at Katy beside me–I see her clutching that book like always, the bright flash of her blue toenails on the dash, and I can’t help but smile.
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hahahahaha for some reason the when you click on me it doesn’t take you to the right blog…hopefully this one will :)
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First Name: Melinda
Email: melinda.hamby@gmail.com
Pitch:
Down a Dirt Path is about Sylvia, a homeschooled high school senior who finds the survival of her family suddenly thrust in her hands. This is a modern retelling of Little Red Riding Hood; magic and werewolves and a teenage girl finding who she really is inside.
First Paragraph:
Sylvia sighed loudly, as the Rav4 EV bounced down the unpaved road, watching as the pine trees pass them quickly through the window. Humph, she thought, road was stretching it. It was really more like a suggested dirt path through the wilderness. She once again considered opening the door and jumping out. She just couldn’t shake the feeling of something bad coming their way, which was freaking her out and making her skin crawl. Regardless of what her mom said, it wasn’t just the chill in the air during the month of July. July, which is summer, hot and muggy maybe, but not overcast and looking like it will snow any minute now. The difference between California and Montana weather patterns were enough to boggle the mind.
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Hook: Love is blind, but what if the other half of your soul was the mortal enemy of your family?
First Paragraph:
“I’ll have an Intimidator with extra bacon and two baskets of Cajun fries.”
I handed my menu to the waitress who raised a judgmental brow. “That’s an awful lot of food for a tiny thing like you.”
I’m actually twenty-three, but without my driver’s license to prove it, a truant officer would probably haul me right back to high school.
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Doh! I forgot to add the name of the book is: Moonlight (84,000 words)
Thanks!
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TORN
PITCH:
Two years after being rescued by Gregory Lucas and cramming two decades worth of education into her head, Billy must begin her Sentinel residency by competing in the Novice Games, an annual tournament between graduates that tests their competency in their elements. Grand Prize is a full scholarship to the Program, a highly elite university-level curriculum that will guarantee a novice’s future in the Foundation, a secret organization dedicated to preventing the natural elements of Earth from taking their poll on humanity.
Billy’s unique ability to use all four elements has made her into a tug-o-war toy between the Foundation and the rebel Syndicate and she’s almost killed during her first event by her best friend. From her best friend’s betrayal to the Syndicate’s gorgeous emissary, who was sent to sway her to their side, Billy learns quickly that the real world isn’t black and white at all but simply shades of gray.
FIRST PARAGRAPH:
Bright lights glared around us, heating up the enclosure. For me, there was only him and the knowledge that I might die. I refused to acknowledge that I could lose my life tonight and instead drove myself into that place in my mind where all I saw was the fight for my life. My opponent charged for me. I dodged his flying fist and slammed my foot into his back as he passed me.
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PITCH: Trudy Baxter, a product of foster homes and detention centers, initially decides to form a band in order to attract the attention of Noel, lead singer for the goth-rock group Lygeia. After she to cobbles a group of grrls together and transforms herself into Trudy Sin, she discovers that music might be the ticket to fame and fortune, not to mention a renewed connection with her mother.
First paragraph: Trudy Baxter settled back in the squad car, her shackled wrists resting lightly on her lap. Outside the windows, fields of tobacco and cotton whizzed by. Mobile homes and loblolly pines wavered in the heat. Trudy was glad to be in the air-conditioned automobile. She shifted and craned her neck to peer into the rearview mirror. Her lipstick was still bright, hadn’t melted. She’d nicked a quality brand. That was weeks ago.
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PITCH: Camille MacTavish is a seventeen-and-a-half-year-old runaway escaping an abusive home life with a stolen magic dragon in the pocket of her jeans. Which could be fun, if the dragon didn’t attract all the wrong people. The magical trinket (a netsuke in the shape of a dragon) isn’t what it seems. Although Camille thinks it’s a luckpiece she stole as a souvenir from her last “ride,” Philip, it’s actually the protrusion into this dimension of a powerful magical entity from another plane of existence. Philip is a sorcerer, and he sets out to track her down, retrieve it, and kill her (thereby gaining power through sacrificing her to his personal demons.) Once she realizes what’s happening, Camille begins running for her life. The magic she unwittingly wields (after the “luckpiece” is attuned to her) but cannot control gets out of hand, and the battle becomes far larger and more perilous–not only for Camille, but for the friends she has made on the road and at the Renaissance festival where she found work. Worse, she must fight the magic because it wants to lead her down the path Philip chose. She and her new friends (the disenfranchised) must defeat the dark forces quickly to prevent a rending of the very fabric of space-time.
FIRST PARAGRAPH:
By the time Camille MacTavish stepped off the bus in Texas, she was beginning to regret stealing the dragon. As the creaky Greyhound pulled away from the curb, exhaling a cloud of diesel smoke, Camille visored her hand and peered after it. She briefly wondered whether Philip knew she was gone. Maybe now that she’d escaped him, her luck would take a turn for the better. Way down at the bottom of her left-hand jeans pocket she could feel the dulled vibrations of the netsuke she’d stolen, a Japanese dragon carved out of a knot of burled rosewood to fit in a palm. She wouldn’t have taken it, except it kept calling to her. Impulsively she shoved her hands deep into her pockets. When her fingers touched the dragon, they tingled.
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Title: FireWalker
Pitch: On an unplanned outing Sofia, a marine biology student discovers the existence of hidden worlds and that J’Red, her study partner, is a member of the underwater mer realm. J’Red, who had been hiding his mer heritage, as well as his desire for Sofia, discovers she is the last surviving member of a missing line & he promises her adoptive parents to keep this secret from everyone including Sofia.
In a world where the four elements of air, water, earth and fire are bickering siblings whose petty arguments create natural disasters across the planet, Sofia discovers her heritage is in fact to take on the mantle of the missing fire gatekeeper – one of the four chosen to temper the disasters created by the arguing elementals.
First Paragraph:
She brushed a hand through her hair as she stood anxiously before him. ‘So, are we going ahead with this? There’s no way to leave it be?’ She was nervous of his reply, whichever way he decided. This crazy idea of his had begun as a joke but he was now delving into it for real. It was professionally dangerous for them both. Their reputations were on the line.
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PITCH: When Jane receives an invitation to spend the summer with an old friend at his summer lake house, she is reluctant. The last time she saw Henry, they quarreled, and she resolved never to see him again. However, when she accepts, she is swept into a vacation with her outlandish sister Julia, Henry’s fiancee Trinny, a celebrity who requires much positive reinforcement, and the charming and mysterious Henry.
FIRST PARAGRAPH: On my twenty-fifth birthday, I received a rather odd piece of mail. It wasn’t a birthday card or a check or anything useful; it was an invitation to spend the summer at a lake. Now, this note might have seemed like some sort of junk offer like those phone calls you get saying you’ve won a trip to Hawaii. And I honestly thought that was what it was when I first read it. But when I saw that it was signed “Henry”, I felt an odd mixture of nostalgia and indigestion.
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Submission: The Sybils of St. Gilles
Pitch:
20-year-old Mara Peters would rather chew cactus buds than complete her Swiss finishing school’s program in etiquette and international business. Her frustration with her conformist professors is eased when she meets an intriguing guy on campus. But when he turns out to be a ghost who knows about her mother’s death there years before, Mara feels compelled to solve both their murders, discovering as she does so an age-old conspiracy, a love that transcends time, and the heart of her own darkness.
First paragraph:
My mother used to say fate is like sex. A woman can only call herself grown up if she chooses when, where and how to live her fate. If she lets anyone pressure her into it, she’ll be a child for life. Just a teensy bit of a hardnose, my mom was. Then one day, she chose her own fate. It was a breezy September afternoon, the cotton-ball clouds scudding over Lake Geneva like little lost sheep in a huge blue field, or so I’m told. I barely remember myself; I was only twelve and a bit of a basket case. After my mother finished teaching that day, she tucked her papers into a briefcase, climbed the winding staircase inside a bell tower and jumped to her death.
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When Rachel falls for Nathan, she’s pretty sure it’ll never amount to anything–he is, after all, a ghost. But when Nathan comes back from the dead to save her life, they struggle to prevent the shadow people from using them to enter the world of the living.
First Paragraph:
Lexington, Virginia has its share of Civil War re-enactors, so when I caught a guy in a grey uniform looking at me, I didn’t think much of it. But then I suddenly felt very strange–awkward yet familiar, like that dream where you find yourself on stage and can’t remember what you’re supposed to be doing. Glancing around, I tried to figure out what was happening to me when I saw him: the guy in uniform, across the park on a bench. The guy who was staring at me.
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Submission: Blood Nation
Pitch: When Marrock and his girlfriend Jewel are captured by the undead, Marrock is forced to fight in the arena for the vampires’ entertainment. Meanwhile, the vampire God chooses Jewel to be his next undead queen, and the marriage takes place in two weeks. Marrock strives to save them both.
First Paragraph:
Marrock looked at his father wondering why he’d reined their animals to a stop. Silent as always, Zanbar calmly stroked his beard and stared at the thick forest. He finally said, “Hmmm,” but did not glance toward his son. He slowly drew an arrow and fitted it to his wooden bow.
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PITCH:
College sophomore Tracy Jo (TJ) Stallings got sucked into the future by mistake. The World Science Foundation 2027 has set up a Gate to recall one of their scientists from a data-collecting mission into the past, but TJ blunders into the invisible gate instead. She lands at the feet of Neil Pearson, an air traffic controller who programs the grid of laser aircabs that provide transportation in the city of a hundred years hence. Neil is about to face a virus/worm which will be loosed on the grid software, meaning that chaos and crashes could ensue; TJ, surprisingly enough, has the knowledge he needs to defeat the maker of the worm (because its AI-expert system design feeds off historical knowledge stored in a special database, and she’s a history major). But how will he explain to Security why he needs the help of a non-person who came from the past and who doesn’t oifficially exist? By the time TJ has caught her breath, they’ve fallen in love. Easy enough. But can the pair manage to dodge the Immigration/Security teams that would imprison and study her, and still defeat the virus before it crashes the Premier’s private taxi and brings chaos? And before the time-imbalance TJ has caused decides to right itself by taking her back into the past? (Or can she manage to stay in the future with Neil?)
FIRST PARAGRAPH:
The grid lit up the sky as though there were no stars. Despite the shock value of the scene, TJ couldn’t concentrate on the planetarium show. Because that guy who was throwing spitwads at her from the end of the aisle was definitely the same one who’d hassled her earlier, at the student center. When he stood and began pushing his way past knees down to her end of the row, she leaped out of her seat and headed for the other exit. Only when she pushed on the metal double doors, it turned out they didn’t lead to an exit, but to–what WAS this? It looked like the internals of the planetarium works. But the creep’s footsteps came faster and closer behind her, so she pressed forward. She reached for the light switch and stepped inside, and her feet went out from under her. Suddenly she was falling down and backwards in the darkness. She saw a blue flash, and then nothingness.
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PITCH: Nine years ago, before MySpace, Facebook and Twitter, two young women eager to flee our sheltered Midwestern upbringings for that of a decadent life promised us in fashion magazines and song lyrics, connected via an online message board. Our identities concealed by the anonymity of email, we soon began confessing our deepest secrets, desires and fears to each other—divulging details we would never dream of sharing with even our closest friends. In our everyday lives, we were eager to dazzle and entertain, but when we cast aside those socially acceptable facades and sat down at our computers, we became the truest versions of ourselves and launched a mutual quest of self-discovery in feverishly-written prose. Six years later, we are ready to share those messages with the world.
DISCONNECTED is a memoir for the Facebook generation, written in real-time email format from 2003 to 2009 and documenting the adventures, addictions and ambitions of two twenty-something romantics obsessed with finding our happily-ever-afters. Our emails account our mesmerizing cross country journeys from girls to women, from boyfriend to boyfriend, from country to city to island, and from Greenwich country clubs and Marc Jacobs fashion shows to dirty drug dens and the pure white sheets of psych wards. It is the raw and compelling story of two seemingly perfect strangers enabling themselves to hold on…and finally, together, learning when to let go.
Making a strong case for the power of virtual friendships, DISCONNECTED puts a complex and contemporary twist on the standard diaries of self-discovery. Our story targets the vast market for lost souls looking to make sense of love and their relationships in an online era.
FIRST PARAGRAPH: Dear Andrea,
It’s noon and I’m still drunk from last night. I’m at my grandparents’ house , writing to you while sitting indian-style on a patchwork quilt I remember sleeping on as a child. I’ve been pacing back and forth dramatically, sneaking cigarettes from my dead grandfather’s pack. He died from lung cancer and I’m in Ohio for his funeral. Everyone is grieving this loss but my mind is too preoccupied to be sad. I’ve done something bad.
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PITCH: Warning: the following pitch is for a new adult urban fantasy novel featuring a talking Great Dane, a little old lady in leopard skin outfit who pulls Jedi mind tricks on social workers, a Calgary oil company in bed with a minor deity and of course, really awkward romance. Oh … and zombies. Lots and lots of zombies.
FIRST PARAGRAPH: Mrs. Gilbert literally flew out the front door of her house. I should add that Marcus Gussman and I had absolutely nothing to do with it. Now when I say that Mrs. Gilbert flew out of the door, I should probably preface everything by stating here and now that we’re not talking about being chucked out the front door like some guy getting thrown out of a nightclub or a goon being kicked out of a hockey game. No, Mrs. Gilbert was approximately six feet off the ground and actually flying in a lateral trajectory, landing squarely on an enormous bed of orange and yellow zinnias.
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PITCH:
MULTIPLE POSSIBILITIES is a new type of urban paranormal in which the kickass heroine, physicist Lauren Martin, wields scientific powers to master quantum possibilities and make all her dreams come true. Reality splits into two possibilities for Lauren on the
first day of her fabulous new professor job but she saves
herself by picking the possibility in which she’s not bleeding to death, and a smokin’ hot colleague, Mario Rivas, helps her solve the mystery of what
happened: she can use quantum mechanics to pick possibilities and affect
reality. Things only get more complicated from there as Lauren has to risk her new relationship with Mario and her life to foil some quantum criminals and save reality itself.
FIRST PARAGRAPH:
If I’d known my morning was going to split into two possibilities,
I would have bought two cinnamon rolls—one for me, and one for the
other me.
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NAME: Lisa
EMAIL: lisakatz17 at gmail dot com
PITCH: When a re-org puts 25-year-old Sadie’s cushy marketing job at risk, she realizes it’s time to grow up in the corporate world. Sadie tries to pull this off without losing her feisty personality, but she’s up against a ton of battles. A new boss wants her fired, a co-worker is stealing the spotlight, and a love interest is off limits.
FIRST PARAGRAPH: Bethany is stalking me outside my cubicle. She saunters back and forth, her sleek shoes with their pointy heels digging into the blue-gray carpet. As soon as I hang up, Bethany is on my desk. I know what she wants, but I get to the question first. “What’s Jack doing here?” I point to a closed door a few feet down the hall.
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PITCH: As the socially awkward younger sibling of the beautiful and alluring Caroline James, seventeen-year-old Althea has spent most of her existence being compared to her sister, only to discover that aside from their last names, the two have nothing in common. When Althea finds herself falling in love with nineteen-year-old Jacob Monroe, her solitary lifestyle is briefly interrupted; but even as their relationship develops, so too does another. After Caroline and Jacob’s secret is exposed, Althea commits the ultimate act of sibling rivalry that will change her life forever and reveal secrets about herself not even she was meant to know.
FIRST PARAGRAPH: Watching him, I had a sudden urge to shove my pencil inside his ear. I could almost picture his face as I did it, his eyes rolling back inside of his head and his mouth parting in anticipation of a silent scream. But I resisted. I tucked my potential weapon inside the inner pocket of my purse and I waited. I waited for him to stop smacking his lips together in that disgusting way that allows spit to collect in the corners of the mouth. And I waited for his nose to stop making that awful whistling sound each time he exhaled.
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Title
A HOUSE HUSBAND IN TROUBLE: A Loomis Johnson Epic Adventure in 20 Episodes
Pitch
Loomis Johnson is a new husband … a house husband … with way too much imagination and free time. Loomis wonders what his wife does in the bathroom for twenty minutes every night before she comes to bed. Loomis really should know better. He really needs to play even more golf.
First Paragraph
Believe it or not I have been accused of having too much free time. Anyhow, my new wife Lucy the lawyer for some reason just changed the direction of the overhead fan and now the air is sucking up toward the ceiling and not down on me … like I like it. She also turned the speed knob on high, so here I am levitating over our bed. Smiling, because levitating feels neat, I look over to the right at the door of her bathroom. The door is closed and she is in there. I watched her go in there a minute ago, but I can’t hear what she’s doing in her bathroom. It’s not the sound of the fan because we—we get a lot of catalogs in the mail—ordered one of those special quiet ones to go over our bed. It’s just that whatever she does in there for the twenty whole minutes before she comes to bed every night she does real quiet so I don’t know what it is—and I really feel like I might freak out if I don’t find out what it is real soon.
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TITLE:
The Bright Side of Darkness
PITCH:
Everyone knows it’s not safe to go out drinking alone, especially for a beautiful twenty-four-year-old woman. That’s why Liz did the smart thing and went with her friends. Oh she was on the lookout for the run-of-the-mill perve all right, but no one ever bothered to explain that other things, more dangerous than lecherous men, were out there. And they sure never told her she could become one.
FIRST PARAGRAPH:
Elizabeth glanced over her shoulder as she ran. Limbs danced in her wake and shadows seemed to lurk behind every tree. Teasing, taunting her. If there were noises other than the snap and crunch of twigs from her passing, she could not hear them. The voices in her head were too loud. Brambles and brush scratched and pulled at her pale skin, attempting to slow her down. Breathless, shoving limbs out of her way, always pressing forward, she tried to outrun the voices and the thing hunting her. As she gained distance between herself and the carnival, the voices muddled and grew softer. With the exception of his voice. It permeated her mind as if he were standing beside her. His emotions rolled through her. Anger, rage, his lust for death. Her death.
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PITCH:
Eric Bastien never expects Ernest Hemingway to be his guardian angel, but there he is in the rearview mirror – just one more reason for everyone in his life to think he’s lost his mind. Mediocrity is his mantra and Eric intends to keep it that way until Ernest and his father send him to Oliver Crowe, a bedraggled Army veteran, and give the misfit men a common goal: find the girl in the trunk. Trusting the guidance of a ghost who was not known for his good life decisions is a risk when his job, his inheritance and his father’s legacy become the stakes.
FIRST PARAGRAPH:
Early morning before dawn I was summoned to my mother’s house. I hadn’t been there in almost two years. Seeing it again was much like seeing a ghost. As I walked up the path, I had a sense of déjà vu. The memory of having been there before – I remembered some distant truth that I had belonged there at one time. The belonging was a feeling in my core, and at that moment, it was absent. My chest felt hollow. Missing the things I used to know so well created a crack in my brave exterior. It was only borrowed bravery so I just kept walking.
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TITLE: Read My Mind
PITCH: Reading minds isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be, just ask Kate Donovan. Hearing every stray thought is annoying and often overwhelming, but Kate has learned to cope. That is, until a a mysterious stranger turns up, blowing apart Kate’s reality when he reveals that he shares her talent. He warns Kate that she may be in terrible danger from a group of assassins with a long history of seeking out those burdened with Kate’s type of ability. Determined yet unprepared, Kate must decide whether to trust this unknown man or continue to hide and possibly endanger herself and those she loves. As Kate navigates a treacherous path filled with betrayal and death, she must make agonizing choices of who to trust, who to love and who to be.
FIRST PARAGRAPH: I believe there’s a time in everyone’s life when they feel different. Sometimes that’s a good thing, when the difference makes the person unique or special, but I’m not lucky like that. I’m more the abnormal and creepy variety of different, which isn’t the kind of thing I like to sing from rooftops. Nope. I work very hard to mask my issues and try to appear as average as possible. Still, not a day goes by that I don’t wish for a bit of normal.
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In The Excess Road paths diverge on the campus of Wessex College where you can find a friendly drug dealer, a deviant professor, a cocaine seductress, booze and betrayal but you can also lose your mind like Joaquin Chandler. His freshman year starts out well enough though the party scene is overwhelming but he discovers his new best friend Tim is the campus drug dealer and he’s being manipulated by his dream girl for drug contacts. Hope survives but two characters don’t.
First paragraph.
Chapter One: All at once upon a time.
Might not survive this, my brassy nerves are uncoiling, but I must try. Pushing through the dense night, the wall of evening gives way as I stalk the streets of Fraternity Row under dim stretches of streetlight seeking the party, the last party, where I must tell her how I feel and exorcise the demons that haunt me. The burden is fueling my anxiety attacks and hallucinations. If I don’t tell her now, another episode might end me. The maple lined lanes are less active than usual as most under-classmen have left for the summer and the summer heat has already arrived in this part of Virginia born of early May. Cigar and cigarette smoke, possibly tinted with weed, cascade by in the damp air as I turn the corner and bounce around the charged crowd outside the Victorian home that was transformed over the neglected years into a party house for college kids. Strange, there is no music.
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Pitch:
When Summer “Sun” McKeller was twelve her world was shattered by the appearance of the “soul-suckers,” a god-like being with a vapid hunger for human souls. Within days entire towns were wiped out, but Summer was one of the lucky ones or at least she managed to escape with her life—what was left of it. Now, six years later, Summer is one of only a few hundred humans left on Earth; a place where night dominates and humans are harvested for their souls. By daylight Summer’s the leader of a small band of survivors, while at dusk she becomes a hunter, with one goal in mind; to take back her world one dead soul-sucker at a time.
1st Paragraph:
Today we were heading into town, what was left of it anyway. We needed to scavenge supplies for our small band of survivors. It was hard to believe that it had already been six years since the attack. Six whole years since we’d lost our families and lives to those things, those soul-suckers.
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Title: The Vampire Kitty-cat Chronicles
Pitch: Patch, a calico tomcat, is sucked into the vampire underground of Bloomsburg, Illinois, by a starving vampire who uses him for breakfast. But his attacker is a victim too, and she becomes his new associate. She decides to run for city council to fight for vampire rights with Patch as her running mate, and in the process Patch is almost skewered with a wooden stake by a mob with blazing torches, tried for murder, nearly crunched by a seven-foot undead guy, almost shotgunned into undead pieces, comes inches from having his tail cut off and seconds from being fried by the sun, kidnapped twice, and turned into a (shudder) politician–as it turns out, life doesn’t get any easier when you’re dead.
First paragraph: Just after dark, death grabbed me by the tail. The moon was full, and cool September breezes were scented with earthy hints that fall was coming. I trotted over a mound of fresh dirt, not an uncommon thing in a graveyard, my mind on a svelte little Siamese who was coming into heat—and a hand shot up and grabbed my rear extremity.
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Hook:
Ever since 21-year-old Teresa Claremont came home from her year of studying abroad in England – and left behind Ben Thomas, the aspiring puppeteer she fell in love with over there- nothing in her life has felt quite right. She has even less patience for her demanding customers at Joe’s Family Pizza; she’s growing distant from her best friend, Brandy, and when she goes to meet with her academic advisor to pick out courses for her final semester of college, she ends up “accidentally” dropping out of school instead. Finding herself out in the real world a little earlier- and a whole lot less prepared than she’d expected, Teresa must face up to the reality that she’s run out of time to grow up.
First paragraph: There are no limits to the amount of physical discomfort girls my age are willing to endure in the name of looking hot. We’ll gladly suffer the nosebleeds and broken ankles that come with 10-inch stiletto heels if they’ll lengthen our silhouette. We’ll put chemicals in our hair whose aroma alone could kill a whole test lab of bunnies just to achieve “Playboy Bunny Blonde”. And don’t even think about asking us to wear a drab raincoat when we’re going out on a typically drizzly London night. We don’t want to waste our precious drink money on tipping the coat check girl. Besides, the whole reason we spent the entire afternoon wrapping our bodies in toilet paper is that we want everyone to see it on us. …Okay, maybe that last example only applies to me.
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TITLE: The Sorbet Guy
PITCH:
Rules for a Successful Sorbet Partnership:
#2: You must remain friends afterwards.
Joss and Matt are good friends. Very good friends. The kind of friends who occasionally end up in bed together.
#4: You must hate your sorbet partner’s ex.
It’s a strange arrangement, but it’s always worked for them. At least, it did. Until Matt decided to change the rules.
#7: The sorbet encounter is not officially over until both partners are fully clothed.
Now, Joss finds herself faced with a choice between giving up her Sorbet Guy, and giving up Matt forever.
#10: The sorbet partners are allowed one violation of these rules without penalty.
Can Matt really be asking her to choose? And will he wait around to find out her answer?
FIRST PARAGRAPH:
My cell phone was flashing its little red light when I left work that day. Matt’s number popped up on the screen and I smiled. A message from Matt always meant my night would be interesting. I knew what he wanted as soon as he spoke.
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Title: Mirror Image
Pitch: Most of the time when you look into a mirror you see exactly what you expect, but what if it wasn’t your reflection staring back at you?
A horrific accident lands Lily in the hospital, but apart from a broken bone, a concussion and some minor cuts, she’s fine. After being released, she heads home, intent on making the rest of her summer vacation before college a success, but she starts hearing voices; the voice of her rescuer. However, that’s only the start of her problems, she can see him too, but only in her mirror.
First Paragraph: The sound of my name drifted to me from a distance and echoed as if it came from underwater. I didn’t want to answer; I wanted to sleep, but I began to hear other sounds–groaning metal, the delicate tinkling of broken glass. I was cold, I realized, shivering. Cold and wet. I tried opening my eyes, but nothing. Only darkness. Darkness and the metallic smell of blood.
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TITLE: Lost in the Shadows
PITCH: Special abilities, powers beyond which any one individual should behold, are alive but hidden, tucked away, in a world where witches and warlocks roam freely, and death lingers in the shadows (quite literally). New telekinetic, Angel St. Claire is haunted by shadow creatures, promotions, a hot temper, and an even hotter ex-lover, Dallas—who has a shady past all his own.
First Paragraph: “Concentrate,” Bobby yelled over the whipping wind resonating throughout the miniscule garage. “If you don’t this will never work. Without a center, you could end up blowing this whole place sky high.” His words bore paranoid delusions into my already frazzled brain.
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