Love Triangle Entry #20

Title: JEREMIAH COPPERPOT

Genre: YA Fantasy

Word count: 80,000

Query:

When a fifteen-year-old noble’s life is shattered by murder, she reinvents herself in order to exact revenge and save a kingdom she’s never truly known.

Noni Winthrope, the isolated daughter of the King of Doorish, believes her father was just murdered by Renart Duchamp, the same man who will be crowned at next month’s Coronation. Rather than being forced to silence in a nunnery, Noni runs away and takes up thieving and vandalism, hoping to cause discord for the false King-to-be. Years of playing her mother’s mysterious games filled with accents and disguises are about to come in handy, as will her un-royal habit of climbing anything and everything. Slipping in and out of identities, she depends on stashes of money and a costume trunk to keep alive and unnoticed.

After taking shelter with a clever dockboy and his friends, she finds out a truth more sinister than the price being offered for her dead-or-alive return. Duchamp is setting up an alliance with a group from the unknown East, and his plans for Doorish have more to do with his military background than loyalty to the Kingdom. Setting aside personal mourning, Noni must decide whether or not to save the land she was meant to inherit. To do that, she’ll need to sift through disguises and find an alias that will inspire Doorish to resist the incoming King. And by becoming Jeremiah Copperpot, a rebellious peasant boy, Noni may come to know her true self and learn that she was never alone at all.

JEREMIAH COPPERPOT may appeal to fans of Shannon Hale, Janice Hardy, and Jessica Day George. This is a standalone novel with series potential. I am a member of SCBWI.

FIRST 250:

By the time the final words at the King’s funeral were spoken, I felt nauseated by incense and overwhelmed by the urge to become a trespasser.

And a thief.

And a vandal.

When Renart Duchamp, soon-to-be King of Doorish, interrupted the eulogy to declare that everyone should paint their doors black in honor of the royal passing, I almost choked on the thickness of his insincerity—of the betrayal that nobody else could sense.

Perhaps it was because I was the lone mourner in the first row, and those fifteen extra inches rendered them deaf and blind. Perhaps if I had someone sitting beside me to coo, pat my hand, and whisper the correct words of gratitude for such a gesture, I would feel differently. Whatever the reason, my broken heart did not melt at Duchamp’s speech, nor wither with sorrow. Instead, it burst into flames of anger.

And of plans.

Even as Father’s closed casket was anointed with olive oil and wafted with holy smoke, I considered my approach. I would run that very night to a paint shop in Main Square. I would break glass or bludgeon locks, whichever it took to get inside. It would not be black for me. Nor dull grey or navy. Nor soft brown or pale sage, the traditional colors of Doorish. No, I would take brilliant blood red, pagan green, and shocking blue—the shade of the brightest sky in Springtime.

I would paint every traitorous door in Doorish, starting with the one belonging to Renart Duchamp—the man who murdered my father.