CAGI Entry #11

Title: THE CURSE

Genre: NA Paranormal

Word Count: 100K

Query:

Practical Magic collides with Romeo and Juliet in THE CURSE, a modern love story where witches time travel, jaded ghosts misbehave, and young love is tested with the ultimate sacrifice.

Execution for the crime of witchcraft is a thing of the past.  Still, in these modern times, Ophelia and her family shroud their identity.  A silence that has held Ophelia safe, until now.

Ophelia’s family has done well to hide their secret.  So well, they’ve lost touch with the ways of the witch, Ophelia’s lack of powers a testament to their detachment.  But their past pursues them.  A dead relative is tracking Ophelia, the same witch who, by cursing another coven, forced Ophelia’s family go into hiding centuries prior.  The spirit visits with a purpose: to protect Ophelia from a killer.

When Ophelia falls in love with Elwyn, she has no idea that he too is a witch or that their families share a dark history; the curse is slaying the men in Elwyn’s coven, leaving him the last of his line.  Knowing death pursues him, Elwyn has come to town on a mission – the remedy to the hex lies in the killing of a witch. Ophelia is that witch.  

When the truth is divulged, Ophelia faces a curse of her own: a choice that risks condemning a dead woman, murdering Elwyn, and ending her own life. 

First 250:

“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” Exodus 22:18

                                                                               

I was born into this life a witch – naked and pink as nature intended. And it was because of my birthright I was taken out of this world, naked just the same. Less pink. Less pure.

Hartford, Connecticut. 1652.

At the bow I sit, unclothed, not a thread of dignity left. Hunched and mortified, hands and ankles trussed with rope, all eyes are on my back. Storm clouds tumbling over head, a chill in the air, I look down at my body. My skin is gray and brown with filth, sickly and goose-fleshed, bruised and cut. My hair too is in a miserable state: matted and dangling, the red mesh of curls concealing my bare breasts.

The boat, a shallop large enough to support myself and seven others, rocks with the wind.

Along with the rocking, I receive a taste of what is to come. Beneath my bare feet washes the river water. The cold of it trickles from my toes up my spine, cursing me with a grievous shiver.

Swooped up by gloved hands, I am no longer sitting. Worn leather fingers pinch the undersides of my arms as I am hoisted off my feet and placed on the splintered edge of the shallop. Sharp wooden picks poke at my backside, sticking into my most sensitive of skin, purging a yelp from my mouth.

In an instant I am face to face with my accusers: acquaintances, the minister, fellow townspeople. 

CAGI Entry #10

Title: INSIDE THE CIRCLE

Genre: YA Contemporary

Word Count: 70,000

Query:

Inside the Circle twists a suspenseful, dark love story through the subculture of ultra-rich teens in Scottsdale, Arizona and the drug cartels of Mexico and South America.

Inside the Circle is 17-year-old Kate Connor’s story. Kate and her friends are “The Circle,” a tight group of friends who grew up fast and are now as hard as diamonds. Their parents are distracted and absent, and the friends of The Circle promise to take care of each other without judgments.

They use their freedom to try anything at least once in the backyards of mountainside mansions and the shadows of late-night clubs. Eventually, though, their dangerous appetites land them in the dark counter-culture of serious adults who aren’t playing rich-kid games.

Kate unexpectedly falls for Marcos, the unwilling teenaged heir to the Vega cartel. Then, Kate’s reckless best friend ominously disappears. Kate’s unique voice evolves from the detachment of an ex-addict to the clarity of a strong, young woman who feels too much. Kate loves, she loses, and she learns to stand on her own, outside of the circle.

I’ve been teaching high school for sixteen years, and I love listening to the way that teenagers talk. I’m a member of SCBWI and PNWA. I received a BA in English Literature from Indiana University. I also have an MFA in Dance/Choreography from University of Arizona; I’m fascinated by artistic construction in all art forms. My writing was recently published in Silk Road Review.

First 250:

“I’m out in a couple of weeks. That’s what the doc said this morning,” Allison says offhandedly, like she doesn’t care if she stays or if she’s released. It’s freezing in here, like always. I shake off a shiver and lean back into the short, vinyl couch. Outside the window, the shadows on Camelback Mountain deepen as the sun starts to set. Nice view, I think. When I was in-patient here at the Center, my room faced the other way.

“A couple of weeks, that’s good, Allison. That’s nothing,” I say, watching her play with her platinum watch. She twists it around her wrist.

“It’s all bullshit anyway,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I just went too far one night, you know? I’m not an addict.” Sure about that? I want to ask her. Instead, I keep my face still.

I imagine her in daily group, doing those “complete the sentence” games that the doctors use to get a patient to discover her inner fuck-up.

Finish this sentence, Allison: I might be an addict if…

Well, Doctor, I might be an addict if… I took a bunch of painkillers and drank half a bottle of whiskey and ended up in rehab. But that was just supposed to be a little jump-start before I started to party. Before lines of coke off the compact in my purse. And did I mention the fix that I keep in my car?

Oh, yes, ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. Or actually, an addict.

CAGI Entry #9

Title: SECRETS OF THE DEAD (AN ANYA CALLAHAN NOVEL)

Genre: MG 

Word Count: 88,000

Anya Callahan has gone through something that a lot of teenagers have to deal with. She lost her first love, the boy she is sure is her soul mate. What makes this experience unique is that Anya loses Cam because he can’t handle watching her be possessed by ghosts. Dedicated and devoted though he is, watching Anya’s features shift and hearing someone else’s voice come out of her mouth is enough to scare him away.

As she spends the next few years learning, both about herself and her abilities, Anya never lets go of Cam. She does make a few discoveries along the way however. Anya has always known that she could see and hear all varieties of spirits but the fact that she can control them comes as a complete surprise.

A grown and more confident young woman Anya starts to take control of her own life. She finds a new job, new friends, new abilities and a way to bring love back into her life. Conflict sets up road blocks in her path, including a run in with a particularly fierce spirit that she has feared since childhood and Anya wonders if she will be able to rise to the challenges that are being presented.

First 250:

I am Anya Callahan. I’ve always liked my name, partially because my part Cherokee great-grandmother got it from a vision before I was born and partially because it’s pretty. My name is the only thing I really like about myself though. I’m short and pale, with brown hair and blue eyes. I’ve heard myself described as having almond shaped eyes that are the color of sapphires and chestnut hair with glints of gold and skin that gleams like ivory, but the man who said all that was a poet and I think he just got in the habit talking like that. I doubt he believed what he was saying and I certainly don’t see it. My sisters and my mother are the beautiful ones. I am just one of many, one girl in a crowd, nothing to make me stand out. That has always been the way I liked it best however. I’ve always been afraid that if people look too closely at me they will be able to see my secret. I’ve spent most of my life hiding this secret from friends and family…hiding it from everyone in fact. My secret is one of those unbelievable things that you’ve watched movies about and read stories about. I can see and hear the dead. Even saying it out loud sounds slightly ludicrous and funny, but it’s very real and it has controlled most of my life.

Actually to just say I talk to the dead isn’t the complete truth of it.

CAGI Entry #8

Title: HOW IT LOOKS FROM HERE

Genre: Middle Grade Contemporary

Word Count: 35,000

Query:

When twelve-year-old Becca and her ten-year-old brother Johnny are uprooted from the tiny Polynesian island they’ve always called home, they slam into much bigger challenges than figuring out who can rip through steeper swells, who the next chief of the island should be, or whose grades will be good enough to avoid the Captain’s wrath.

Having a white father and a Pacific Islander mother was never a big deal for Becca or Johnny in Polynesia, but it matters a lot to everyone in Arizona. Just when the siblings begin to figure out how to survive their adventure in the desert, a death in the family forces them to re-evaluate the importance of popularity.  HOW IT LOOKS FROM HERE, a 35,000-word contemporary middle grade novel, is told from the alternating perspectives of Becca and Johnny.

First 250:

I broke three of Quentin’s rules on my last day at Lupelele Elementary. First: never disobey the Captain. Second: never fight a girl. Third: never lose a fight to a girl. In twenty minutes, about how long it would have taken me to run from one side of the island to the other, I pretty much guaranteed that I’d be laughed at till I graduated from fifth grade.

After I’d cleared out my locker for the last time, I headed across the playground to meet my sister. A crowd on the other side of the courtyard was chanting in a rhythm that could only signal one thing: a fight. We only had about two or three fights per year at our school, and the last time one had broken out, I was grounded for two weeks—and I wasn’t even in it. Quentin thought it was bad for the chief’s grandson to be connected to a fight in any way. Even as a bystander. Stupid rules.

As the chanting grew louder, I weighed my potential punishment against the thrill of seeing a fight up close. The decision took me half a second. I threw my backpack down and ran toward the fight.

I elbowed my way toward the front of the crowd. Faith, the biggest girl in the sixth grade, held down her unlucky opponent with a knee between the girl’s shoulders.

What were the chances of a girl fight?