Monday, January 14, 2013

Bouncer Post #34


Title: AEOLIAN
Genre: YA Paranormal
Word Count:  88K

Query
To save the hidden society she descends from, 17 year-old Dayenara must use her ability to channel energy in order to defeat the power-siphoning drainers bent on feeding off the general population, but it comes with the grave choice between her first love and the Mage who saved her life.    
When Drainers massacre half of Dayenara's junior class, she takes refuge with the Sentinels, secret guardians of mankind who manipulate elemental energy.  She's the hottest commodity to both sides of this ongoing war, able to find the Grimoire both Drainers and Sentinels desperately seek, the guide to controlling the energy of Air.  But these powers come with the loss of her free will, forcing her to choose between protecting her first love and trusting the captivating mage she's fated to.  Too bad one of them is about to hand her over to the enemy.  To stay alive, she must find the confidence to stand on her own and risk everything for a love worth battling her own destiny, or she'll face the extinction of the Sentinels and the world they’re sworn to protect.  

First 250:

Guilt and exhilaration warred for control of my heartbeat.  Sneaking out for a kegger was way outside Mom and Dad’s rules, but I took the chance and broke out of their comfort zone.  I lied; I wasn’t curled up at Emma’s house watching movies.  God, I hoped they didn’t find out, or I would say goodbye to swim team, and reunite with perpetual spelling bees.    

Music pulsed, echoing off the tiled aquatic center walls as if it kept rhythm with the dancing lights under the surface of the pool.  The legendary party was expressly forbidden by our school, but that didn’t stop the combined swim team from sneaking in the night we won Colorado’s State Championship to make a few new legends of our own.  Besides, given the ease with which we broke in, something told me the school turned a blind eye.  A few dozen of my teammates and their dates flooded the pool in a mix of water volleyball and badly-disguised make-out sessions.  Two girls next to me drove me insane with their senseless, insipid conversation.  Who invited these cheerleaders, anyway?  Their high-pitched boy drama consumed nearly the entire party, and now they wanted my take on what I considered to be their total lack of self-respect. 

“I don’t care how hot he is, no guy is worth throwing yourself off a cliff,” I answered.  Apparently my thought-to-mouth filter wasn’t working.   

9 comments:

  1. Amazingly beautiful! I can't wait to read the rest of this book when it's published! Even just the first 250 sucked me into the story. I feel like Dayenara and I will be best friends.

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  2. I really enjoyed your first 250 words! Lots of great voice. :)Good luck!

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  3. I really liked this! I think you have a great voice! Your first 250 words were fun, and I love the choice you set up for Dayenara in your query. I really liked the line, "Too bad one of them is about to hand her over to the enemy."

    The only recommendation I would have would be to simplify your first sentence a little, or maybe chop it into two sentences. It was a little difficult for me to understand the first time I read it. But great job overall!

    Good luck!

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    1. Thank you, Stephanie! I'll definitely examine that first line. =)

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  4. What a cool idea! Manipulating elemental energy sounds really interesting. I do have a few things to say, though!

    First of all, your query. The first sentence is way too long, and I feel like you’re trying to give us a logline that is then explained in greater detail in the next paragraph. Sometimes this can work, and I’m not going to tell you absolutely not to do it, but it needs to be cut into two or shortened. Alternately, I think you could just leave out the logline altogether!

    I also got a little confused in the meat of the query. There’s a lot going on, and I had trouble picking out what the core conflict was. Is it just that she can find the Grimoire? And what does that have to do with her first love? Is there any way you could simplify this?

    Second, your 250. I like the writing here a lot, but I never would have thought this was the first page of the book described in the query! To me, the query (and the title, and the MC’s name) feel very fantasy/paranormal/maybe even like they’re set in another world, and this 250 is straight high-school contemp. I know it’s difficult to fit much worldbuilding into the first 250, but this is so jarringly different I wondered at first if I’d skipped to another entry accidentally! If the story is set in high school, could you find a way to work that into the query? Or if it’s not, maybe this isn’t the place to start?

    Good luck!

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    1. Thank you so much! The story does start in high school and then changes location, which I wrongly removed from the query. DOH! Thank you so much for the critique, I really appreciate it!

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    2. Ah, that makes sense! I did catch the "junior class" thing in the query, but it might help to make the real-world/high school part a little more obvious so we're expecting it.

      Good luck!! :)

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