CAGI Entry #18

Title: OF FIRE AND SHADOW

Genre: YA Urban Fantasy

Word Count: 63,000

Query:

The day after her mother dies, shadows begin stalking sixteen-year-old Talitha Martin. To start over and be safe, all she needs to do is hide her biggest secret: that her body randomly turns into smoke.

Except secrets, like smoke, are impossible to contain. When emotional stress causes Talitha to shift, her new neighbour Caspar sees. Except instead of running away—or exposing her secret—Caspar is intrigued. His stubborn friendship, however, is tested when the shadows attack Caspar and Talitha, and they’re saved not by her smoke, but by two beings forged from flame, the Ascended.

The Ascended came down to Earth to find the vessel—a human who carries one of their essences, their key for survival. For if the Ascended fall so does humanity. Though not the vessel, Talitha’s power enables her to find and protect this person. The Ascended promise to help her control the smoke, but only if she agrees to help. And, of course, she does.

But when the shadows mark Caspar to die when the vessel does, Talitha knows time is running out. She must harness her powers fast or the shadows win. Either way, her dreams of a normal life just went up in smoke.

First 250:

My mother died a week ago because of me. Smoke inhalation, the coroner’s report said.

The problem: there was no fire.

The cause: the freakish mutation that's plagued me for three years. Not that I could admit it, unless I wanted to become a science experiment, or thrown in jail. As I leaned against the rough brick wall, something caught my eye.

The shadows across the road were oddly darker than the midday sun warranted, as if they had swallowed the very ground. Goosebumps prickled down my neck. 

I stepped away from the wall, drawn by the shadows, which was a good move considering the wall had etched a pattern into my skin.

Something, or someone, stood in the shadows across the street. I squinted, trying to overcome the glare of sunlight, to make out what stood before the towering office buildings. The figure swayed like branches caught in a breeze. My eyebrows furrowed as I stepped into the gutter, ignoring the cars blurring past. The shadows writhed and crept towards the buildings, the figure moving in their safety.

“Talitha?” I spun and faced my grandma’s inquiring face. She’d finished inside the lawyer’s office—finished with the aftermath of my own design. I swallowed hard and glanced back at the shadowed trees and sidewalk. They were normal once more.

“Everything sorted?” I asked, and shook my head to clear it. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen the writhing shadows. 

She squinted at me through her round glasses. “Yes.”

CAGI Entry #17

Title: FOREVER FRIDAY

Genre: YA Urban Fantasy

Word Count: 85,000

Query:

Friday Anderson’s life is over. She just doesn’t know it yet.

Ever since she survived the accident that killed her mother, seventeen-year-old Friday has felt stuck. She’s lost her only parent, she’s living in a town where dreams go to die, and even her hair and nails have stopped growing. Her only hope for getting out is earning enough money for college tuition, so when a mysterious ad appears in the local paper for a job assisting a rock band, Friday jumps at the opportunity.

Spending time with the gorgeous guitarist, Craig, certainly beats baling hay, but there’s something odd about the four young musicians, who spend most of their time bickering while their instruments gather dust. When Friday overhears a hushed conversation behind closed doors, she finally learns the truth: the band members are Athanatos, immortals trapped somewhere between life and death. Not only is Friday one of them, she’s the only immortal capable of killing another, and it’s up to the others to keep Friday from becoming a deadly weapon in the world’s oldest blood feud. Between magic rings, ancient curses, and the fact that Friday’s going to have to live with the same haircut for the rest of her life, it’s definitely going to take some time getting used to this whole “undead” thing.

Forever should just about do it.

First 250:

Un milagro, they called me. A miracle. I heard the nurses whisper it to each other as they passed my hospital room. I saw it on the news for three days before my story was overshadowed by celebrity gossip and political scandals. And it was the first thing the Chilean doctor said to me when my scan results came back normal.

But I didn’t believe in miracles.

“Good morning, señorita,” the nurse said as she pulled back the curtains. “You are going home today, no?”

           

I nodded, even though I wasn’t sure what “home” meant anymore.

“Muy bien. The doctor will be in to release you soon.”

           

It had already been a week since the accident, but I still felt like if I tried hard enough I could wake myself up from this nightmare. Surely the real me was sitting in a café in Paris, the place I’d dreamed of going since I was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor over a year ago. But instead of sending Mom and me to France, the wish foundation had called six weeks ago to tell me I’d been granted an all-expenses-paid vacation to Chile. Chile.

My mom said it must have been some kind of computer mix-up, or maybe a trip to Chile had just been more affordable than Paris, and that I shouldn’t complain about a free vacation. But it was literally my dying wish. You’d think they could at least get the country right.

CAGI Entry #16

Title:  THE CHILDREN OF THE NEPHILIM

Genre:  YA science fiction

Word Count: 63,000 

Sixteen-year old Paxton Mills freaking hates living in space.  The station is freezing cold, her berth is barely bigger than a port-a-potty, and her fear of heights doesn’t lend itself to a comfortable intergalactic experience.  She’s one of several hundred teenagers saved from the fires that ravaged Earth.  Handpicked for their ability to acclimate to celestial living, they were taken to ensure humanity’s survival.  However, Paxton isn’t grateful to her rescuers for whisking her into space and educating her in hydroponics and uniform maintenance.  Why should she give a damn about hanging squash or pride herself on having a wrinkle-free jumper when she's haunted by memories of her loved ones being left behind to burn to death?

But her days of moping around end when she realizes her teachers aren’t humans, but aliens known as the Nephilim.  Knowing she needs evidence of her discovery to convince the other students, Paxton breaks into the forbidden Red Block and finds curled and crusty teens barely clinging to life.  That's when she learns she and the other kids were never taken to ensure humanity’s survival.  They were taken to ensure the survival of the Nephilim.  Years of genetic manipulation has left the aliens infertile and their only hope of survival is to reclaim their own alien DNA in its unaltered state from a visit to Earth thousands of years before. That cosmic calling card swirls inside the veins of each of the taken teens. 

To complicate matters even more, Paxton has to come to terms with the lingering love she has for her murdered boyfriend, Mo, and with the reluctant attraction she feels for the irritatingly perfect hybrid, Kendal.

I’ve been an active member of the Society of Children Book Writers and Illustrators since 2009 and am the group leader for the SCBWI local chapter critique group.

First 250:

“Paxton, what are you doing?”

I didn’t have to look up to know Mo had entered my compartment.  Although his voice had deepened in the two years I’d known him, only he still called me by the unusual girl name my mother chose.  It didn’t surprise me that he showed up.  Mo had been my best friend since we boarded, and I knew he’d only excuse my absence for a few days before coming for me.  Anticipating his arrival, I left the slider to my berth open.

I sighed loudly and rolled over onto my back, the book still in front of me. “Hmm?”  

“Are you really reading that one again?”

I glanced over in time to see his slight smile.  I reluctantly closed the tattered volume.

Mo snatched the worn copy of Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth from me. “I’ll never understand how you can read the same thing over and over.”  He tossed it onto the makeshift desk that canopied my bed.  “You know, you may want to take that back to the repository some day.”

I resisted sticking my tongue out at him.  I finally managed a tight-lipped smile instead.  This particular novel had become a favorite.  The thought of an underground world, another dimension people could have escaped to before the earthquake swarms released the fires on Earth…  So what if there were killer plants and meat-eating dinosaurs?  Professor Von Hardwigg made it out alive, didn’t he?  

CAGI Entry #15

Title: WHITE EYES

Genre: Young Adult

Word Count: 61,000

The Realm is teetering on the edge of war, and there are only two who know. One has blood on his hands, and one knows something the other doesn’t. Murders strike the Realm, and the Severen Spiri—a disgusting ritual that rips a person’s soul in two—is being ruthlessly and illegally performed. Caught in the middle is Meadow Ashby who sees the miscreant’s crimes through her abnormal visions, and is immediately implicated a liar. She must choose who to trust: an old friend whose behavior has become clandestine, or a new one who is fiercely protecting a secret of his own.

White Eyes immerses the reader into Meadow’s magical world of danger, destiny, and loss as she struggles to keep the Realm from being destroyed, and the people she loves from death—or a fate far worse.

While White Eyes could stand alone, it is meant to be in a trilogy. The first draft of book two has been written—very preliminary, of course—and book three is in the planning stages.

I am currently a senior at Fort Hays State University in Hays, KS. Three of my short stories and two poems have been published in their literary journal, Lines From the Middle of Nowhere. “Being Kane” (2009), “Tuesday Nights” (2010), “Irrevocably” (2011), “Nevermore Doll Store” (2012), “Nothing to Me” (2012). My first novel, Toenail Lemonade, was published by PublishAmerica in 2010.

First 250:

Preface

They called them night terrors, products of an overactive imagination, and even a physical malady. The most decent of people thought she was confused, the cruel said she was starved of attention. Even in their magical world, visions were not normal, and to them she was a liar.

But they hadn’t seen what she’d seen.

She watched as the blood ran warm beneath the jagged blade, and the man’s desperate cries swallowed any strength of hope that this truly was a nightmare. Her clenched fists grasped the cool metal as if she were the murderer, all the while her mind shrieked in terror.

When she awoke, her palms burned with the indention of the dagger’s handle.

One

Since his disappearance five years ago, Harkin had been the subject of Meadow Ashby’s dreams. They’d met at the mere age of six when the Cetherwoods had moved to Winchcombe. He shyly hid behind his mother’s legs, but Meadow, being the stubborn tomboy she was, chased him until he cried. Unable to endure the shame, Harkin shoved her until she cried.

But now Meadow dreamt of the day when they sat underneath the white, puffy leaves of the Finneus Tree in her backyard, talking of the Abilities they hoped to inherit when they turned thirteen. Their backs were pressed against the rough green bark, the wind brushed dirt onto their bare legs, and the sun warmed their faces. The grass was so lush and thick that they could run barefoot through the yard without hurting their feet on sticks and rocks, and the yellow, pink, and blue sky was clear enough to see every bird that sailed above them.