Pitch Wars ALT: LL-10 THE THINGS BETWEEN

MENTOR: Amy Reichert

ALTERNATE: Ellen Brock

TITLE: The Things Between

GENRE: Soft Science Fiction

WORD COUNT: 85,000

PITCH: A man who is legally dead, a street kid, and the guardian of a disturbed child must band together to stop a man who can manipulate dreams.

EXCERPT:

She was a child. An infant.

Wally stood with his fists shaking at his sides, staring down at the baby curled up on the ground. He had seen many people die, had even helped facilitate most of those deaths, but he had never harmed a child.

His brother Frank stood beside him, a broad grin on his face. They had been looking for someone like this, and she was better than they had expected. Her energy pulsed through the dream as if charged by electricity. It was a sensation neither Frank nor Wally had ever felt from another dreamer.

Wally stared down at the child. Her dream was nothing more than brown and red blurs accompanied by the sound of a beating heart. She had nothing to dream about yet, and it struck Wally how untainted she was, how innocent.

Frank put his hands on his hips and sighed. “We're going to have to go through her parents since she can't tell us where she lives.”

Wally nodded, as enthusiastic as ever, but looking down at the girl, a naked pink infant unmarred by the outside world, he wanted to tell Frank no. For the first time in twenty-five years, he thought about what he was doing, what his brother was doing, how they used people and then threw them away.

Frank pulled back towards consciousness. “Let's go,” he said, flickering for just a moment before disappearing from the infant's dream.

But Wally didn't follow. Without his brother there to tell him what to do, to get angry at him for sympathizing, he bent down and picked up the infant.

Pitch Wars ALT: LL-11 SWEET NOTHING

MENTOR: Nazarea Andrews

ALTERNATE: Portia Moore

TITLE: Sweet Nothing

CATEGORY/GENRE: NA Contemporary Romance

WORD COUNT: 68,000

PITCH: Lauren was thrilled Cal gave her his his body, heart and his last name. The thing is, it wasn't his to give. It all belongs to a man named Clay and he has no idea Lauren or Cal exists.

EXCERPT: 

Here he comes. My very own Prince Fucking Charming, Cal Scott. He walks in and his eyes quickly skim the packed suitcase in my hand and briefly rest on my face. He lets out an exasperated sigh, places his keys on the table, and takes off his coat. His eyes fall on the empty bottle of wine I finished today, and a smirk spreads across his face before he walks past me and into the living room.

I’m not surprised by his lack of response. It’s expected, but it hurts all the same. He regards me more like his personal high-class escort than his wife.

I clutch my suitcase, full of the very few things that are mine. He can keep the cars, the money, and the penthouse—the things he believes should comfort me in my loneliness. All the material things in the world can’t make up for the growing disconnect between us. I glance down at the four-carat yellow diamond on my finger. It’s a beautiful but painful reminder of the vows he broke.

I look over at him, now slouched on the couch with a self-assured cocky grin plastered on his face, the same cocky grin he was wearing the day I met him. I walk into the living room. He’s watching a basketball game on his obnoxiously big television screen like he hasn’t a care in the world.

Pitch Wars ALT: LL-12 THE LIGHTNING CITY

MENTOR: Nazarea Andrews

ALTERNATE: Heather Lynn

TITLE: The Lightning City

CATEGORY/GENRE: NA Sci-fi

WORD COUNT: 91,000

PITCH: In the Lightning City, being a magical wielder is illegal. Ilya, a young policeman and wielder, wants to change that and goes after the powerful magical mafia – if his own side doesn’t arrest him first.

EXCERPT:

Ilya steadies the needle over his arm – it’s a liquid silver mosquito ready to bite him. The metallic taste floods his mouth, coating his tongue. And the needle isn’t even in yet. But he’s sweating, his palms are slick. It’s still gonna hurt like a sonofabitch.

The syringe is filled with metallic poison, after all.

He lays his arm flat on the table – a dumpster dive find. He’s added a few instruments that don’t come standard -- like several shackles to hold him in place. He stretches his right arm flat, flexing his muscles, the vein jumping out. Outside dogs are barking, on the floor above him, bass reverberates through the ceiling, and down the hallway a couple shouts at each other. When he presses the needle into his arm, his scream goes unnoticed. His arm spasms, but the restraints do their job. His mouth floods with the acerbic taste of iron. After the injection, his veins are silvery tattoos. They darken to black before fading away and sliding back into his body.

Existing shouldn’t be illegal – but his is. With each thump of his heart, the iron invades his body, extinguishing each spark of magic. Ferrous is a banned substance, illegal to make, to use, and to own. It’s almost as bad as being a magic wielder to begin with. At least using the ferrous is his choice – even if it makes him doubly screwed.

Pitch Wars ALT: LL-13 ENTHRALLED

MENTOR: Tina Moss
ALTERNATE: Luisa M. Perkins
TITLE: Enthralled
CATEGORY/GENRE: Contemporary Fantasy
WORD COUNT:  89,000

PITCH:

Una’s sick of being someone else’s magical battery pack. Fighting both her mother’s powerful hexes and her abusive fiancé, Una will do whatever it takes to be free—even accept the unlikely help of Tom, her mother’s bounty hunter.

EXCERPT:

Port Authority Bus Station, Manhattan

The symptoms hit Una sooner than she had calculated. She had to get on that bus—fast.

She dug her fingers into her waist as cramps twisted through her gut. Stumbling at the accompanying dizziness, she leaned a hand on the soot-stained wall—then snatched it away and wiped it on her jeans.

She was moving too slowly. She forced herself not to check over her shoulder yet again. That would only attract attention she couldn’t afford.

At Gate 58, Una pushed open the door and exhaled shakily. The express bus to Kingston idled in the depths of the massive parking garage. If she could get on it and make it through the first stages of thrall withdrawal, she’d be free.

Once on board, she knuckled sweat out of her eyes and bit off a moan. She just needed a little space to curl up alone so she could fight through this. But as she staggered down the aisle, it seemed like every eye was on her—hostile, suspicious. She knew she looked like a common junkie. Maybe the bus had been a bad idea.

Near the back, Una found someone who wasn’t staring. He glanced up with a polite half-smile, but immediately returned his attention to his book. He looked like her best chance of being ignored. That cinched it.

She slipped into the seat and slid her knapsack off her shoulders. She gritted her teeth against the bile rising in her throat and peered past her neighbor out the dusty window. Just a few more hours, Una. You can do this.

Pitch Wars ALT: LL-14 A BREATH OF SILVER

MENTOR: Tina Moss
ALTERNATE: Cheyenne Campbell
TITLE: A Breath of Silver
CATEGORY/GENRE: YA/NA Fantasy (time-travel)
WORD COUNT: 100,000


PITCH:

In 2165, when historian Bryn MacBride uncovers a conspiracy regarding her idyllic town’s dark past, she seeks help through the forgotten London Underground. Outside Cimmeria for the first time, she emerges in 1692. In the Scottish Highlands, her ancestors wield ley lines, and a link between the Glencoe Massacre and Cimmeria’s origins. To return with help, Bryn must untangle her history — and relinquish her newfound freedom.       

EXCERPT:

I never entered the Ruins for anything other than research, but that day, I made an exception. As Sod’s law would have it, this turned into a complete cockup. My boots pounded the gravel as I darted through the fence separating town’s cottage rows and sculpture-dotted promenades from the acrid haze. Weekly research expeditions built my tolerance to the Ruins’ psychological residue and resultant disorientation, but Tessah and Hyde had no such tolerance. Racing across the melted landscape, I swore for the fifth time in as many minutes. If anything happened to them, I’d never forgive myself.

Tessah was practically my kid sister, and I’d planned on distracting her with our recent discovery – the second-largest pre-Meltdown structure on record. Hyde brought packed lunches, and if Tessah’s father hadn’t been cremated hours earlier, it might’ve been a rip-roaring afternoon. But the damn kids snuck ahead, and now I envisioned them swallowed by treacherous mists like other Cimmerians down the years. Like my own father.

I negotiated Sector Four, where last week I’d unearthed a rare specimen: a 20^th-century jar, intact. Thrilled at the time, now I could only consider its uncanny resemblance to the vase holding Tessah’s father in particle form atop his wife’s mantelpiece. Pressing onward, I swore again, vehemently deciding on two fundamental absolutes in life. One: I would never voluntarily fit into a vase; and two: marriage was complete and utter bollocks.

Pitch Wars ALT: LL-15 YOU'LL BE THINKING OF ME

MENTOR: Elizabeth Penney

ALTERNATE: Densie Webb

TITLE: You’ll Be Thinking of Me

CATEGORY/GENRE: WF with elements of romance and suspense

WORD COUNT: 93,000

PITCH: Rachael Allen’s chance encounter with actor Mick Sullivan and an impromptu video trigger an improbable fairytale romance marred by threats and obsessive love. A stalker leaves a bittersweet gift behind and Rachael’s HEA comes at a price. 

Excerpt:

She was attractive. At least, it registered that way in his alcohol-soaked brain. Blond. He preferred brunettes, but he was experiencing a unique brand of loneliness after weeks of nonstop traveling. He had been antsy, unwilling to give himself over to sleep and the inevitable nightmares, so he came downstairs to the Austin hotel bar and made his way to the corner booth unnoticed. He ordered a beer, then another, and another, as he fixated on the photo shoot from earlier that day. No one had told him he was going to have to strip down. When he took off his shirt, the dick photographer with the ponytail announced, “Dude, where’s the six-pack? Oh, well, we’ll retouch it later. And can somebody cover up Snow White? I thought you had lasered that thing,” he said, pointing to the tattoo on his unchiseled chest.

His thoughts were interrupted by her voice. “Mind if I join you?”

His eyes at half-mast, he blinked against the lights over the bar. “Sure, have a seat,” he said, his tongue thick with alcohol. “I’m Mick Sullivan.” She had no visible reaction as she slid into the booth beside him. He had lucked upon a woman—a hot one no less—who had never heard of him. She wanted to keep him company, not scream at him, grab him, touch the hem of his coat. That crap, he could get any time.

He waved to the bartender and ordered her a beer, but her warm hand on his thigh told him what she really wanted. 

#PitchWars: Down to the Wire

Pitch War submissions open tomorrow at 12:01am. Are you ready? Make sure you read the submission guidelines from top to bottom. All of them. And then follow them. Precisely. Also, while it's not explicitly stated, my preferred font is New Times Roman.

This is my first Pitch Wars so I'm not entirely sure how things are going to break down. I did Pitch Wars last year as a reader for Agent Boss. I know there were ninety-nine entries and I read every single one. Despite knowing that there were even more entries that didn't make it through, part of me is still worried my inbox will be bare.

I do have a plan if I get entries. It involves a spreadsheet. I know, I know, you're shocked, right? I do so love my spreadsheets. Once I narrow it down to my top choices, I will be asking to see the first three chapters and possibly the synopsis as well. I have to be honest, though, I am not sure I'll be sending feedback to each entry. It depends on how many people submit to me. I'd want to be able to send it out in a timely manner and I don't want to promise something I can't deliver. Watch my twitter feed during Evaluation Week. I'll probably be tweeting quite a bit.

My wishlist was culled from things that the participating agents have said they wanted to see, with one or two personal preferences thrown in. However, the only thing that you really need to follow is what I don't want to see (mainly horror and despicable immoral behavior). I am going to read every single entry sent my way so long as it's an Adult or New Adult manuscript. If the writing is amazing, I am going to give the manuscript serious consideration, regardless if it's a romance or not, but I will respond more favorably to certain genres than other. For example, if you have a hard-boiled mystery, there are four other mentors that would likely be a better fit for it than me, but there's nothing stopping you from rolling the dice and submitting to me anyway.

Genre-aside, I'm primarily going to be looking for writing that grabs me and something that I can work with. I'm also going to be looking for any red flags, like, a word count that is ridiculously long for commercial fiction (i.e. above 90k) or typos. If your sample has typos in it, that's going to be a major, major issue for me because in my mind, you've had ample time to go over those five pages with a fine-toothed comb. Sending me something with a typo tells me you either didn't care enough to edit properly or you didn't realize it was a typo. I seriously cannot stress enough how much I don't want to see typos in those five pages.

I think that expands a bit on what I've posted before and covers some of the things I've been asked on Twitter. If there's anything you're curious about, this is your last chance to ask! Better to find out now rather than after you pressed send. Leave me a comment and I'll get back to you.