Blind Speed Dating #18 (YA)

Title: BROKEN IN BLUE

Genre: YA Contemporary Fantasy

Word Count: 80,000

Query:

Seventeen year old Rhi is definitely different—she feels in color—but synaesthesia isn’t the worst of her problems. Rhi couldn’t get noticed if she stripped naked in the middle of the cafeteria and played the ukulele.

While tap-dancing.

But when Rhi is almost drowned by a watery demi-goddess, she discovers that beings of myth and legend are real and more interested in her than anyone else has been her entire life.

After Rhi’s first date ever goes up in flames—literally—she somehow uses her colors to destroy a hellhound and is recruited into an underground army intent on preventing an impending doom: the return of King Arthur. Arthur might be the greatest king ever born, but he is also a ruthless dictator who will stop at nothing to conquer the world.

Conflicted by her feelings for two brothers, and strangely drawn to an older man (centuries older), Rhi must uncover both the secret of her abilities and the mystery of her own heart to remake Excalibur and stop Arthur. Forced to choose which world she really belongs to—this one or the world of magic—Rhi finally gets noticed. But for every wish granted, there is always a price. The choices broken by color and magic are never black and white.

BROKEN IN BLUE is an 80,000 word YA contemporary fantasy in which LE MORTE D’ARTHUR meets GOSSIP GIRL.

I am a member of SCBWI, The Writers Community of Durham Region, YALITCHAT, and Canadian Actors Equity.

First 250:

Fear is white and thickly veined with sea-green.

I reached over the bed rail and touched Mom’s cheek, but the industrial clock on the wall ticked loudly and I jerked my hand back fast. She was cold. But she was always cool and thin and strange with her pale, pale eyes. Now they were open and staring and I couldn’t bring myself to close them the way they always do in movies.

The only thing Mom was ever afraid of was a man with silver hair. I saw him once when I was little. Mom pulled me tight against her chest and the sound of her heart was a wave crashing against rocks. That fear crept out of her chest, crawled through my ear, and made its way down to my own wildly beating heart to take up permanent residence.

Rhiannon, listen to me, we cannot be seen. Hide in the shadows and be still and silent.

And as she held me, my fear broke apart like ice on a churning ocean and all the colors of my emotions erupted out of it.

I once tried to tell Mom about the colors I felt, but she just smiled and looked away. It would have been nice to talk to someone about it. I’m sure my colors would be pretty interesting to some psychiatrist bored with the usual budding Unabombers.

But fear is white and veined in an ugly sea-green that matches the color of the hospital walls.