Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Love Triangle Entry #15

Title: KILLING KESSLER
Genre: YA sci fi
Word Count: 60,000 words

Query:

Sixteen-year-old Tabby Weber doesn’t want to murder anyone, but in Griffin Kessler’s case she’s willing to make an exception.

In the year 2018, nineteen-year-old science prodigy Griffin Kessler created a virus that nearly wiped out the human race. A decade later, survivors are imprisoned in concentration camps while brutal gangs roam the deserted cities. Tabby, her siblings, and her best friend, Murphy, live in hiding while they complete her father’s time machine. Their goal is simple: travel back in time and kill Kessler before he can finish his virus.

When Tabby and Murphy return to 2018, Tabby meets Kessler, who isn’t the monster she imagined at all. She soon finds he’s smart, sexy, and as desperate to protect the virus as she is. As Tabby falls for Kessler, Murphy confesses his own feelings for her. But Tabby’s love life is the least of her worries. With Murphy still determined to kill Kessler, she doesn’t know how to stop him, or if she even should.
  
First 250 words:

Our hiding spot is less than ten feet from the boy. An overhead floodlight blazes against the predawn sky, so bright I see the sweat falling from his wavy black hair and the clumps of dirt on his shovel. He has stubble on his jaw and a muscular chest and arms, but he looks young, maybe sixteen like me.

I glance at Leila. My sister’s full lips are stretched into a wide smile. I reach out to her with my mind. Forget it, Leila, I think. He’s locked in the Village.

We’re watching him through the witch hazel bushes outside the Village fence. The electric fence, twenty feet of razor wire crowned with another five feet of spiked coils, surrounds Pitman Air Force Base. The base was once the heart of Wexler Falls, until Alexander Zika’s henchmen transformed it into the concentration camp we know as the Village.

Leila’s expression doesn’t change, but I know she heard me. We can shut off our thoughts as easily as closing our eyes, but if she were blocking me out, I would feel it.

Seriously, it’s not like he’s going to break out of there and take you on a date, I add. Leila knows this, of course, but that won’t stop her from doing something stupid. She turned fourteen last month, and all she thinks about is boys. 

14 comments:

  1. Okay. Just from the query, this sounds INCREDIBLE. Sign me up.

    I'm kind of desperate to find out exactly how this dude's protecting his virus. 0_0 Sounds intense.

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  2. Oh I remember reading this one! I love when I read 'the boy'. I instantly get stomach flutters and read religiously till I find out who the boy is and why he's so important. :)

    Awesome :)

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  3. Awesome query! So good! Exciting beginning too, makes me want more :)

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  4. I remember this from the Agents Inbox. Love it!

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  5. I'm going to surprise myself here and...

    Request a PARTIAL. 100 pages.

    The surprise part, is that I don't (generally) like time travels and barely, hardly, rarely ever request them. But I like all these elements you've got set up: revenge, single minded goal that gets waylaid by truth, science. And I love a potentially intelligent yet naive character so much I'm willing to seem a hypocrite by requesting a time travel.

    And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the trick to a great pitch--make me want something I didn't know I wanted. :D

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  6. CONGRATS! No surprise here. Loved this one!

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  7. Oh darn you Vickie I was about to call a partial on this one, too! Well I've already requested my FULL today so I'll have to wait until tomorrow to decide whether to trump you :D
    *Goes off to brood.*

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    Replies
    1. Sorry V, but I gotsta do it. I'm calling a FULL on this one. YOINK.

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    2. *imagine me in slow mo*
      Nooooooooo!

      Dude, really?! The first time travel I actually express interest in and you yoink it.

      Ga!

      You'd better move fast John. Once your two weeks are up, I want this one.

      Delete
  8. knew this one would get picked up! happy to see it's being fought over. sounds like a fabulous story!

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