Bouncer Round 6 #20

Title: CRYSTAL COAST

Genre: Paranormal

Word Count: 70,000

Query:

Parenting a child with autism is not easy, but Stevie Lewis never falters in her devotion to her young son, Charlie. When his life is threatened, Stevie finds herself at the heart of a three hundred year old secret and discovers that she is a genetic witch capable of reducing the laws of physics to mere suggestions.

Stevie has no knowledge of her family’s magical legacy or the long-held secrets that haunt her hometown of Beaufort, North Carolina until Vanessa Moore, a dark witch with lethal intentions, returns to town to retrieve a power amplifying amulet believed to be among the newly recovered treasure found near the wreckage of Blackbeard’s sunken flagship. Vanessa also plans to use her time in Beaufort to exact revenge on the coven responsible for locking her mother away in a psychiatric hospital twelve years earlier. Determined to shake the coven to its core, Vanessa targets young Charlie as her first victim and inadvertently awakens Stevie’s dormant power. With help from the clandestine coven led by her own mother and a few eccentric octogenarians, Stevie works to master her newly acquired magical talent and soon discovers exactly how far she will go to protect her vulnerable son.

The first installment in a planned series, Crystal Coast is fast-paced paranormal fiction that will appeal to fans of Practical Magic. The manuscript is complete and has been professionally edited.

First 250:

The woman in black raced to LAX as soon as the call came in. She hadn’t returned to her oceanfront house to pack a suitcase, and with no baggage to check, she quickly purchased a one-way ticket to Raleigh-Durham International Airport and proceeded farther into the bustling concourse.

“Have the car waiting for me when I arrive,” she barked into her phone. She paused, listening to the response from the other end of the call. Then she snapped, “I don’t care how you get it, just do it!” She abruptly ended the conversation and shoved the phone back into her leather handbag.

At the security gate, she placed her suede Manolo pumps and her bag into the plastic tray and waited for her turn to pass through the metal detector. Though she was certainly the most dangerous passenger the agents would ever encounter, this exercise was a waste of time. The weapons she possessed would not be revealed by a metal detector. She passed the security check without incident.

The woman in black found her gate and waited for first class to begin boarding. Struggling to hide her contempt for her fellow passengers, she warily eyed a young mother with an infant and a toddler in tow. Children were nasty little creatures, always sticky, drippy, or crying. Why anyone would willingly assume the care of one, much less two, was unimaginable to her. She looked away, comforted by her certainty that the pesky monsters would be flying in coach.

When the time came to board the plane, she found her seat on the aisle and settled in, discreetly observing the others around her. As usual, there were several businessmen to consider. One was quite attractive; she guessed he was in his early thirties, not much older than she was. She caught a glimpse of his left hand as he loaded his briefcase into the overhead compartment. No wedding band.

That’s too bad, she thought. All the good ones are single.