Today, the pitch is being judged by Susan Hawk from The Bent Agency.
Here are some other interviews to help you get to know her taste and style:
A Word From Susan
Agent Alert
Meet the Agent
Winner: Gets a query critique of the first 5 pages of your manuscript! (Thanks Susan!)
When: Begins today, Tuesday at 9AM EST and ends tomorrow Wed at midnight EST (I will close comments when it officially ends so if you get a comment in, you are counted.)
What: Leave your paragraph pitch in the comments on this post. Your pitch can be NO MORE than 2 sentences and MUST be something Susan is looking for.
Eligibility
- If your manuscript is still in WIP - you may enter since this is a query critique
- Your pitch must only be 2 sentences. Your entry must follow the rules to be counted.
- This is for unagented/unpublished book writers only. (if you've published articles or essays - you can enter!)
- You can only enter ONCE so choose wisely!
- You must be a follower of my blog and promise to come back everyday this month to comment. (This last part is a joke guys :) Followers are eligible.
- title of book
- genre
- your paragraph pitch
- your email
69 comments:
The Magic Withheld
Urban fantasy
The Imperium wants all the wizards leashed but they are not aware of Justus, an unrestrained adept living among the humans. Hiring Sable, a mage linked to the Imperium, is his first mistake and falling in love is the second.
beccoff(at)nwmo(dot)net
ZOMBIE RABBIT
Middle Grade/Adventure
Watership Down meets Bunnicula when an undead rabbit leads a whacky quest to liberate an animal testing lab.
mgill0627@aol.com
Oh! Oops! Yay!!
MERCY
YA magical realism
People are full of regrets, but what if you could go back and do things differently - would it matter? Eighteen-year-old Camilla Jay can rewind time, but when her twin sister kills herself she must confront her own brokenness and how her actions contributed to her sister’s death – and in changing the past, find the courage to move forward.
jessica @ jessicatudor.com
Thanks so much for the opportunity Shelli & Susan!
TITLE: THE GHOST WRITER
GENRE: YA ghost story
EMAIL: marcykate(at)gmail(dot)com
Seventeen-year-old Tessa James can’t even watch Casper the Friendly Ghost without nightmares, so when letters written in French appear on her nightstand she does her damnedest to ignore the implications. But when the accidents begin, there's no more ignoring the ghosts in the theatre next door.
Thanks for the opportunity.
Title: I'm Here to Save Your Day– The Adventures of Bo Wolf
Genre: Adventure/Fantasy
Pitch: A brazen boy faces a playground bully to reclaim the school jungle gym, only to discover the bully's mom– the lunch lady— plans to poison the school with her irresistible ginger snaps.
Email: iwillwhisperno at gmail dot com
Title: Wants
Genre: Contemporary/Realistic YA
High school is tough, especially when your boyfriend is gay. Despite always sitting on opposite sides of the school cafeteria, Alicia and Savannah struggle to find some commonground when they discover their boyfriends are lovers.
pamharris1981@yahoo.com
Title: TALENT'S BLOOD
Genre: YA Dystopian
Pitch: A genetic mutation makes seventeen-year-old Justin Talent an outcast—it also makes his anemic blood a drug. A drug that can kill his sister’s murderer.
E-mail: laurabdiamond@yahoo.com
Thanks! :D
Thanks for this great contest!
title: DROWNING
genre: Urban Fantasy
Samantha didn't drown in that harbor like everyone thinks, but only her twin sister Elly knows the truth. Elly never wanted to admit that she and her sister are psychically connected before, but now she has to use the power to follow her sister's steps and bring her home.
acasile at gmail dot com
YA Contemporary
Title:Prove Me Wrong
Luke’s only concern is finishing senior year so he never has to look at another textbook again but then he sees her. Hailey is the new girl in school and has no intention of making friends since she has a one year old son at home, who her mom wants her to keep a secret, but then she meets Luke and struggles with the guilt that comes with keeping a secret, especially since he promised her to be nothing but honest about his past.
Email: Tmpmarkmajor@aol.com
Thanks :)
Title: Caenus
Genre: YA Historical
When a prince in ancient Greece is forced by his father to compete in the games that already claimed his brothers' lives, he tangles with a brash competitor who'll stop at nothing to win. The prince's biggest test comes when he falls for a mysterious local girl at the games who spirals him toward a fight-to-the-death for her hand.
cs_ledbetter@yahoo.com
Title: BLUE LOTUS
Genre: YA Paranormal Romance
Pitch:
When Anna meets a boy she’s been dreaming about while excavating a tomb in Egypt, she discovers that their lives have been entwined in a millennia-long war between Anubis and Osiris, and that they must locate Osiris’ tomb before the death god is unleashed on Egypt, or their past is the only thing they’ll have together.
Email: SWattersWrites (at) gmail (dot) com
Title: THE GHOST SEER
Genre: YA Paranormal Romance
Pitch:
Sixteen-year-old Kayley can see ghosts, who are harmless, but then learns of a new, mutant strain of ghosts who are out to kill her for some, unknown reason. Kayley can't identify the new killer ghosts as ghosts -- they appear to be normal, living people to her -- and she wonders if her sweet, gorgeous new boyfriend Evan, with his to-die-for British accent, could actually be a mutant ghost trying to murder her.
E-mail: tessadevan at hotmail dot com
Thank you so much, Shelli and Susan!!
Title: The Totally True Tales of Tansy Berry, Tooth Ferry
Genre: Middle-grade fantasy
Pitch:
When new management in the form of drill sergeant Ruth Canal takes over at Tooth Central, Tansy Berry, Tooth Ferry is fired from the only job she’s ever loved. She must to join forces with a crazy elf dentist on a quest for the mythical Sweet Tooth, her ex-boyfriend - the attractive but fickle Jack Frost, and banished Tooth Ferry Ginger Vitus in order to rescue not only her career but also the teeth of all the children of the world.
Email: schurshan@gmail.com
Title: Colors Like Memories
Genre: YA paranormal
Pitch: "Julia has a secret: she accidentally killed the guy she loved—except it wasn’t a completely an accident. In order to save her best friend’s life she’s going to have to face her past, but her ghosts won’t make it easy, especially his."
Email: mrs.which (@) gmail.com
Thanks for doing these--I totally love reading all of them!
Title: Southern Cross
Genre: Contemporary/Multi-cultural YA
Pitch:
When the star of the local futbol team confesses he has loved her since childhood, seventeen-year-old Camila Hassan believes she has escaped her father’s oppressive rule and the fate of her emotionally abused mother. But the picture of a magazine cover shows that her lifelong crush may have been less than honest with her, and that his life is full of secrets she never suspected.
Email:
yamile DOT s DOT mendez AT gmail DOT com
Title: Letters to Mary: A Donner Party Story
Genre: Historical Fiction/Middle Grade
Pitch:
When 13-year-old Virginia Reed's arrogant father makes poor decisions that leave the Donner Party trapped in winter snows, she must find the courage to defy him in order to save the rest of her family.
Email: naherman@placerville.net
Thank you!
Title: Slipperage
Genre: YA Science Fiction
Pitch: In a retelling of “The Twelve Dancing Princesses,” Rana’s sisters accidentally rip a hole through space, and the twelve of them are forced to dance every evening with demon princes as the lines between dimensions blur. The fate of the princesses rests with their father’s rival—a young king who doesn’t want to have anything do to with them.
Email: jeni.any.dots (at) gmail (dot) com
Thanks so much for this contest!
Let's give this another try! And thanks to Shelli and Susan for the opportunity.
Title: Those Lost at Sea and Drowned
Genre: YA historical (1850s)/paranormal
A young woman who can hear spirits, but has renounced her powers after a childhood trauma in a haunted room, discovers her talent is key to stopping a spectral ship and its crew hellbent on revenge and murder.
email: strikingnotes(at)yahoo(dot)com
Thanks for this amazing contest!
Title: Out of My Body
Genre: YA Urban Fantasy
Whenever her soul feels like jumping out of her skin, sixteen-year-old Tanya Reinhart finds herself hovering over her limp, drooling body. As if being a freak doesn’t make high school difficult enough, now she has to save her mom’s kidnapped soul by risking her life as an out-of-body spy for the U.S. Government.
moni.bw (at) gmail (dot) com
Thank you for the opportunity!
Title: Across Two Universes
Genre: Science Fiction
To find his mother’s murderer, seventeen-year-old actor Paul Harrison must impersonate the musician he’s cloned from. When he travels to an alternate universe to learn his role directly from the musician, Paul risks not just his life but the stability of the wormhole connecting the universes.
sandra@sandraulbrich.com
Wow! So far the entries look exciting!
Title: Witches Don't Wear Socks
Genre: Tween/YA Paranormal/Urban Fantasy
Alex(andria) is a fifteen year-old lapsed-Wiccan medium (who wishes she wasn't), who is having the birthday/Halloween from hell - literally. The veil is thinner than usual, allowing for an evil Aspect to cross and 'collect' souls of the gifted - which includes Alex and her sister, Cassie.
Cinette5(at)hotmail(dot)com
Thanks for this opprotunity!
Title: Edge of the Falls
Genre: YA Dystopian fairy-tale retelling
Synopisis:
Sabah has lived her entire life Outside, and—despite the dangers—is quite content with her life. But as she nears Majority, things change: the Commission is offering her Citizenship—but can she trade the love of a ban-wolf for the safety of a life with no choice?
nazareanandrews@gmail.com
Title: Poison Sweet
Genre: YA Fantasy with a magical realism bent
Pitch:
A guardian celestial fox spirit must fight to keep the girl he loves from unleashing the nightmarish creatures of the spirit world, while the fate of an entire town rests in the balance.
Email: sgairden@gmail.com
YEAR SEVEN
YA Paranormal
When Bee flees a date with her unwanted boyfriend, she unknowingly runs into her best friend Lucy’s brother, whose family has kept him hidden since moving to the neighborhood six months ago. Ignoring Lucy's warnings, Bee follows him during the night to the grave of a boy who died seven years ago, where she learns just how ill prepared she is to deal with the secret behind his night dwelling way of life and alienation from his family.
Thanks!
erica.c.woo@gmail.com
SLIPPERS OF PEARL
MG fantasy
After his uncle—who has a bad habit of dying—is fatally poisoned, Faryn’s family packs him off to the King’s Seat to learn magic and find his place as his uncle’s heir. What he discovers instead is a knack for making magical shoes, that turning a girl into a goose is a bad way to make friends—and dying her bright blue only aggravates matters, sinister apples that enchant all the maidens at court, and a royal edict to undo the apples’ magic if he wants to keep his head.
danyelleleafty*atyahoo*dotcom
Thanks to the both of you! :)
great pitches so far.
Shout out to all the 300 lurkers who have come today already. This is your chance to come forward and get in front of an agent looking for writers to represent. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by entering this.
Good luck to everyone! ;)
title: THE TWEED COAT MYSTERY
genre: paranormal MG
pitch: Maggie McConnell buys a second-hand coat at the local thrift shop. When strange things start happening she believes the coat is haunted by the ghost of a girl who died during the Holocaust, but could the coat be triggering her own spirit's past life memories?
colleen@myartsite.com
Title: Destiny's Minions
Genre: Middle Grade paranormal
Pitch: Thirteen year old Owen Blackler has never made any secret of the fact that he hates the whole idea of Destiny. That's too bad, because Destiny is the headmistress at Owen's new school, and she doesn't like him much either.
Email: penny [at] penelopewright [dot] com
Title: Shadow of Moonlight
Genre: YA Paranormal
Pitch:
In sixteen-year-old Lexy’s word there are two simple rules: 1 Zombies are bad 2. Werewolves are worse. But Lexy has to choose between following what her family has taught her or following Kaden, a werewolf, for a chance to save Jason the boy—I mean zombie of her dreams.
email miriam (dot) caldwell (at) gmail (dot) com
As always thanks for these awesome contests!
I SEE YOU EVERYWHERE
Contemporary YA
The newspapers call eighteen-year-old Izabela an internationally renowned artistic genius, but she's only a lonely -- and maybe a little bit crazy -- hippie at heart. When she's challenged to paint a series of paintings about Poland with another prodigy, a girl who calls herself Zula, Izabela is sure that the arrangement isn't going to work -- not until she finds in Zula a spirit too much like her own and on the trip a love so strong it threatens to overpower her.
Email: weronika(dot)janczuk(@)gmail(dot)com
FADING GREY
Paranormal Romance
Anna’s vampire mother and werewolf father abandoned her as a young child in an effort to protect her from their feuding races. Now 17 year old Anna has no idea what her genealogy includes, or that she will have to reconcile the two sides of her inhuman heritage if she is to find a new hope for the future.
geistfeldj@yahoo(dot)com
Alexia's Pen
Fantasy YA
A magical pen unleashes a young teen's power to control a fantasy land, a realm only she can save from evil.
Nicole.Zoltack@gmail.com
Title: WISTFUL
Genre: YA Historical Romance
WISTFUL, after her extravagant Ton wedding, 15 year old Julie Haynesworth runs away from her ancient husband to live with a poor commoner family only to fall in love with the eldest son; too bad he thinks she’s a boy.
phanhnguyen1@yahoo dot com
Thanks for the opportunity!
Title: Luke's Lucky Break
Genre: Middle Grade Animal Adventure
For a gentle dog like Luke, being sold to notorious dog fighter, Tank Tucker, is not a fate worse than death, it is death. Luke must take matters into his own hands, errrr paws, if he’s going to survive.
yanceyjen(at)yahoo(dot)com
Title: Before I Wake
Genre: YA Paranormal
Even under ordinary circumstances, dating can be tricky, but when Anna discovers she’s a novo— a person with the ability to stave off death and prolong the lives of others— and the boy she’s falling for is a reaper charged with guiding souls into the afterlife, things get complicated.
Particularly when a gatekeeper of the underworld comes sniffing around, hoping to use Anna and her abilities as a bargaining chip in his own quest for power.
apincheofpanache(@)gmail(dot)com
Because
Young Adult Thriller
Sydney Rain is a young girl who has had a conflicted, dangerous relationship with her Journalism teacher. After an experience filled with both horror and desperate elation, her parents have moved Sydney out to a small town called Pleasant View, Colorado, in a final attempt to help her forget the entire experience.
kelseyjsutton@gmail.com
Title: Nine
Genre: Middle Grade Dark Fiction
The Pharaoh’s cat must cheat Anubis, the keeper of death, to save the souls of nine people who befriend him.
chantee (dot) hale (at) gmail (dot) com
Title: The Throwaways
Genre: Contemporary YA
Seventeen-year-old Arianna thought she had life figured out until she meets Marcus Trent and one bad choice, quickly followed by another, leads her down a pit she can't crawl out of. And Arianna can crawl out of most anything.
email: elizabeth.arroyo5@gmail.com
Title: The Lion Awakens
Genre: YA
Pitch: In this modern David versus Goliath tale, two 17-year-olds find information hidden in anonymous gifts that leads them to a parallel universe and an enemy hell-bent on taking over their world because his is dying. It’s up to the teens, who are the only offspring of parents from the parallel universes, to stop him.
E-mail: Buffy@ydr.com
Thanks for the contest, Shelli and Susan. Here's my entry:
Rupert and the Great Space Mix-Up
Middle-grsde sci-fi adventure
Disabled 11-year-old Rupert dreams of going to space, but when he’s accidentally taken to another planet with his thumb-sucking sister Pip in tow, space is the last place he wants to be. The aliens, who look like garden gnomes, declare war on Earth because they think humans are turning their kind into stone for yard decorations, and Rupert and Pip are the only ones who can clear up the galaxy-sized misunderstanding before their home is destroyed.
sam (at) sirnewtonbooks.com
I love these contests, so thank you for the opportunity. I posted this once before, or tried, but it hasn't shown up so I'm going to try again.
Tattle Tell
YA Science Fiction
A young mutant, Ephram Gray has been a snitch to the government for a long time while keepign his own mutation a secret at school. When one of his only friends shows signs of mutation he begins to question his role as a federal tattle tale.
DawnEmbers(at)ymail(dot)com
Thank you, ladies!
Title: Rock 'n' Roll Princesses Wear Black
Genre: Middle Grade realistic fiction
Pitch: Stefani is sick of being ignored by her parents and tired of the teasing from her classmates who dare her to (gasp!) wear a different color to school. Stef gets more than just a new look when an an impromptu concert at school and a medical emergency help her realize that life is much easier when you can just be yourself.
Email: kellyp123(at)comcast(dot)net
Storyteller
MG fantasy
Lily Lightfoot has a power she can’t always control - the stories she tells actually come true. When Lily inexplicably finds her long lost mother in the pages of a fairytale book, she must use her skills to find a way into the fantasy world and save the person she loves the most.
Thanks so much!
peach83352@yahoo.com
BURNT AMBER
YA Fantasy
Sybil is really not a fan of “Once Upon a Time” and she’s certainly not interested in a Prince Charming, or Sultan, or any entitled Istanbulite who thinks Casanova is a demi-god. So she’s less than pleased when she's sucked into a power struggle in the chauvinistic djinn world and faced with a choice: assenting to bigamy for a chance at regaining her humanity…or accepting a future cut off from both worlds forever.
csabiad00@gmail dot com
SPITFIRE
YA Fantasy
Mattie Bower can create fire out of nothing, which kind of sucks, because someone found out—and he’s after her. To save her family from this creep, she’s forced to flee into an entirely different world—one where having the gift of fire is punishable by death.
slbakhshi (@) yahoo (dot) com
Title: SECOND SOUL
Genre: YA Urban Fantasy
Pitch:
John isn’t the kind of guy to seek out danger, unless you consider fastballs and sassy ex-girlfriends dangerous. But that is before his father dies, before John becomes Gatekeeper to Heaven…before he loses control of his body.
Email: mbwest_writes at yahoo dot com
Thanks for this opportunity!
THE SONG OF THE SUMMER KING
MG Fantasy
Shard is a young gryfon who will do whatever he must to keep his place in the king’s pride, and when the king sends all the young males on a hunt to prove themselves, Shard learns that he is a capable warrior – but also meets someone who hints that he may be much more.
As Shard learns his heritage, searches for the truth of his past, the history of the pride and his own father’s death, he must also prepare for a war he doesn’t want to fight and a choice he never dreamed he would have to make: to serve his king and remain with the pride, or turn against all he knows to become who he was meant to be.
Email: jessowen.writer@gmail.com
ANGEL OF THE WATERS
YA urban fantasy
With monsters constantly threatening the unsuspecting human population, seventeen-year-old assassin, Feng Huang, is The Big Apple’s only hope for survival. A fight with a demon gets her thrown into Bethesda Fountain in Central Park, and she lands in an alternate Manhattan with something more intimidating than blood-thirsty creatures: the parents she never knew existed.
hollyloiseau@hotmail.com
Title: Unlives of the Undead
Genre: YA Paranormal Mystery
Pitch:
George, a dim-witted zombie, finds himself at the center of an investigation when his roommate, a snarky vampire, gets a stake through her heart. To avoid spending the rest of his unlife in jail, George must elude the camera crews of the undead reality show he stars in, overzealous detectives, and swirly-obsessed jocks long enough to solve the crime and figure out who framed him.
dustin.warren(at)nc.rr.com
Arrow of the Mist
YA Fantasy
Enchanted, barbed roots from a Straif tree are attacking and poisoning woodsmen in the Celtic inspired kingdom of Nemetona. Her da and numerous others will perish from the poison unless Lia—a 15-year-old tree mage—deciphers a thirteen-part cure and defeats the demon shade causing the Straif tree's attacks.
cdmercer@sbcglobal.net
Title: The Lion Within
Genre: YA Contemporary Fantasy
At fifteen, Renna survives a lion attack in Africa, but that isn't what turns her world upside down, it's what happens when she wakes up - with lion-like abilities. One year later, after her father dies, an out-of-control Renna becomes a high school student in Wisconsin where she must lie, kill, and die in order to tame the wild cat inside of her.
Art(at)RachelDillon(dot)com
Title: Not Your Average Fairy Tale
Genre: YA Fantasy
Being a fairy godmother would be a piece of cake - if you are a girl. Forced to grant three wishes to a troubled human girl before he can graduate, Ash tries to get his assignment over with as fast as possible - not expecting to fall in love in the process.
alwayssomething2read@gmail(dot)com
Title: Before After
Genre: YA Paranormal Mystery
Ell's best friend changed last summer; first she grew cold...and then she got mean. But the deeper Ell digs into the mysteries surrounding her sudden change, the more Ell realizes something is horribly wrong -- and that same something is turning her classmates into mean little clones.
elizabeth (at) dvw2 (dot) com
Title: LOCK 19
Genre: YA Science Fiction
Pitch:
In a future where good behavior can be genetically manipulated as easily as hair and eye color, seventeen-year-old Tabby is a living doll, completely controlled by her father. Tabby's rebellious older brother is the only friend she has, but when he's killed blowing up the lab where they were created, Tabby is left alone with her tyrannical dad and worse, without hope... until she finds the secret life her brother left behind.
Email: sabrina.wolford(at)gmail(dot)com
Title - Finding Antigone
Genre - YA Paranormal
After being dragged to Greece by her parents for the whole freaking summer, Antigone's goals of lounging by the pool, chatting up the waiters and getting a killer tan totally evaporate when she becomes the key player in a battle between two sets of immortals -- those who desperately want to die, and those who don't. And when she falls in love with Achilles, who's teaching her to kick some serious ass, she just wants a happy ending... too bad she'll have to kill him to get it.
Thanks so much for this, Shelli and Susan - I'm learning so much just by seeing other pitches!
scwinegardner(at)gmail.com
Title: THE TREASURE OF ANU-K’AI
Genre: Middle-grade Science Fiction
The search for a lost treasure leads to the unimaginable—a mountain forged of synthetic intelligence. And when Abigail, Remy, Deak and a recluse named Quin, find themselves entangled in the clandestine world of an underground alliance searching for the true origins of civilization, do they begin to realize how high the stakes are—and just how valuable, and dangerous, the treasure really is.
hpinski (at) gmail (dot) com
When demons kidnap her mother, sixteen-year-old Fire Mage Miranda partners with a young Holy Knight on a cross-country rescue mission.
Miranda grapples with the seductive knowledge in a pair of ancient books from her outcast aunt’s attic, while discovering most of what she’s been taught about her magic is a strategic lie.
FUTURELESS
YA Dystopian
When Cyn crosses the borderline back into United America -- or the Nation, as it likes to call itself -- to rescue her captured sister, she doesn't expect to be transported back in time to the year before her parents' murder. Nor does she expect to slam into the 17-year-old boy who will become the Nation's ruthlessly brilliant General, her parents' murderer -- and the man she killed just a month prior.
shinwrites [at] gmail [dot] com
Title: Daren Anders and the Crown Prince Challenge
Genre: Middle Grade Fantasy
When Daren is kidnapped by Creepy White Guy, he is forced through a dimensional portal into a world he's never imagined. But when he discovers his royal heritage was stripped from him at birth Daren is driven to prove his human blood will not keep him from his rightful position as the heir to the elvish throne.
desviadoyql (at) shaw (dot) ca
Pieces of Moon
YA magical realism
Under the canopy of the Belizean rainforest, Tess passes through the crumbling city wall of ancient Kutzan, and finds a city on the other side where there should be ruins. As she uncovers the curse that was buried with Kutzan long ago, she finds that her own heritage is not far from the city's stones; that her actions will irrevocably impact history; and that she is in love with the Spanish soldier standing in the way of her stopping a present-day Armageddon.
jessicaloliveros(at)gmail(dot)com
Post a Comment