Surprise Agent Invasion #40

Title: SPIRITS FROM THE VASTY DEEP

Genre: YA historical (1850s) with a ghostly twist

Word Count: 107, 000

Query:

After a terrifying near-possession as a child, Olivia Herald rejects her powers to speak with the dead.

Years later, en route from Spain after her father's death, seventeen-year-old Olivia sets the ship Empyreal afire while escaping its murderous crew—dooming all hands aboard. She barely makes it off alive, and so does the captain who instigated the attacks on Olivia and her traveling companions.

Once she is rescued by another ship headed to the West Indies, signs that the Empyreal’s crew are not resting easily disturb Olivia’s nights. Her days are occupied with more worldly concerns: how will she earn passage back to the States from Antigua? And should she give in to her feelings for a young sailor, when their romance is complicated by her memories of the shipboard attack and her secret struggles to keep the spirit world at bay? And most importantly, will she ever see justice for her murdered friends?

When word arrives that the Empyreal’s captain not only survived the sinking, but blamed Olivia for causing it, she’ll need to return to the States to clear her name—or risk hanging. But it’s not only her own life at stake: Olivia’s neglected abilities to speak with the dead have left her with a foot in each world, and the vindictive spirits of the Empyreal’s crew can use that connection to invade the world of the living.

As the veil between the worlds becomes ever thinner, Olivia will need to overcome her fears and reclaim her powers in order to stop the sinister shades.

I am a PAL member of SCBWI whose past publishing credits include a MG short story, “Hornworms", in Hunger Mountain, a YA short story called "Ebb Tide" which took third place in the WOW! Women on Writing Spring 2010 Flash Fiction Contest, and numerous nonfiction pieces in such magazines as Birds & Blooms and Sierra Heritage Magazine. For a complete list of my writing credits, please see my blog at http://angelicarjackson.blogspot.com.

First 250:

Miss Werner's Female Seminary

(A Young Ladies' Boarding School)

April, 1843

Prologue

"Where are you taking me?" I planted my feet, but Miss Bonney pulled me into motion again. What had I done this time? Did she find the copy of H.C. Andersen's fairy tales I hid inside the hollow oak? I was forever in trouble for removing books from the school library, but fairy tales begged to be read in the woods.

"I'm taking you to the east wing, to end this superstitious nonsense once and for all," she answered. "I will solve two problems with one fell swoop—get some use out of that room, and cure you of lying."

"But I don't lie." I tried to defend myself, my breath coming in puffs as I trotted to keep up.

Miss Bonney snorted. "I suppose you deny telling the other girls the ghost of the groundskeeper and his dog walk the gardens? Or that Tabitha's late grandmother wanted to speak with her? Some of those girls haven't slept in a week. You're nearly ten years old, Olivia, you're getting too old for such stories."

"They're not stories—there are shades all around us, all the time. And I told the others they didn't need to fear these spirits; they don't mean us any harm." I had only shared those things because I thought they would offer some comfort—like how the groundskeeper continued to protect us, even after he was found face-down in the violets last year.