Blind Speed Dating #21 (YA)

Title: LOST AMONG THE STARS

Genre: YA Sci-Fi

Word Count: 82k

Query:

Ten long years after her father disappears, sixteen-year-old Jayne Orcutt realizes his human-like alien conspiracy theories are true when a spaceship lands in her backyard.

Taken hostage and whisked across space, Jayne butts heads with an enigmatic alien rebel. He is convinced her father’s journal contains epic truths about the origin of life that will assist him in conquering every habited planet in the galaxy, Earth included.

So he demands Jayne decode the journal or die. Only Jayne can't make heads or tails of her father's hieroglyphic scribbles, and she can’t ask her father about them—he has disappeared (again) from the rebel’s clutches.

Jayne’s salvation comes not from Earth, but from Orin, the dashing young Protector begrudgingly sent to her rescue. He pledges to keep Jayne alive—at least long enough to ensure the power-hungry rebel doesn’t obtain her father’s journal.

Deciphering her father’s secrets could result in the destruction of life, aliens and earthlings alike, but it also might be Jayne’s only chance to find where he is among the stars. Jayne and Orin must find a way to work together, without killing each other, to ensure her father’s secrets don’t fall into the wrong hands, or Jayne just might lose her father forever. 

LOST AMONG THE STARS is an 82,000-word young adult science fiction adventure. Jayne and Orin’s differing perspectives are reminiscent of Beth Revis’ ACROSS THE UNIVERSE, while their quest to discover secrets of the past evokes INDIANA JONES & THE LAST CRUSADE.

First 250:

The spaceship was going to land right in her backyard. Jayne threw herself against the window in her father’s study, as if her face pushed to the glass would somehow give shape to the blue light blasting through the blackness of the night. Was it?

No. Not a spaceship. Just because her father believed in aliens didn’t mean UFOs were real. Get a freaking grip, already.

She pulled away, ready to sigh, when the windowpane shuddered and sent a shock wave up both hands still splayed against the glass. She stumbled back and yanked closed the heavy drape as if it could somehow stop the intrusion. The blue intensified, casting an eerie halo about the drapery.

Then darkness.

Seconds passed, maybe minutes, maybe years. Jayne’s heart thumped rapidly like a drummer on speed. She tiptoed to the window and pulled back the drape. The desk lamp from behind cast a soft glow upon the glass, outlining the mound of strawberry blonde curls that spilled about her pale, freckled face. She scanned the moonless night. The lights in the sky were gone.

Lights in the sky fly by. She repeated the mantra ten times, letting each familiar word comfort every frazzled nerve. She reminded herself there was no unidentified flying object in her neighborhood, only a low-lying plane headed towards the private airstrip miles away.

At that very moment, Jayne resolved to stop drinking coffee late at night. Her nerves needed caffeine like a diabetic needed processed sugar.