The Writer's Voice #7 - NO REST FOR THE WANTED (YA)

Title: NO REST FOR THE WANTED

Genre: YA Thriller

Word Count: 90,000

Query:

Seventeen-year-old Lora Winters is still stuck with Cole Davis. Dark suit. Hidden earpiece. Crooked smile and the ability to kill anyone with one swift jab to their trachea. It's been the longest year of her life, and he's not going away any time soon. Cole is a junior secret agent… and her 24/7 bodyguard.

Ever since international criminal Charles Holguin used his slimy ways to escape from prison, Lora's parents have gone into over-protective mode. If Holguin's list of crimes isn't bad enough (assassination, embezzlement, stealing an entire Russian security system), he's now after secrets locked away by Lora's late grandfather. And when Holguin arrives in town, Lora must run. Because she has the key.

Now Lora's dyed hair and stick-on tattoos are the disguise of a fugitive. With a one-way ticket to London and a fake passport shoved in her bag, she delves into Cole's world of espionage: sneaking behind locked doors in Milan and stealing Vespas (and kisses) in Paris. But spying isn't all fun. She must unearth her family's dark past before Holguin does, and in the process, decide if she can trust anyone but herself.

First 250:

"My parents will kill me if the bomb squad interrupts Christmas … again."

The bitter Boston wind tossed my words down the shop-lined street. Cole stood beside me, his back to the display, as I wiped my jacket sleeve against the frost-covered window outside Bettye's Bath Bubbles.

Behind the glass, colorful bars of soap were precariously stacked like a Jenga game. Hundreds of different scents like Blueberry Bliss and Mango Tango were piled high in a multi-colored pyramid until the very last bar, Pickled Pear, topped it off like a green-and-white speckled angel on top of a Christmas tree.

I sighed. Why couldn't my mom have requested anything other than Bettye's soaps? She knew the bomb scanner was crazy sensitive.

"Lora, I fixed the UltraSweep." Cole crossed his arms, looking bored. "After last year's incident with the bubble bath, I've made sure the scanner won't mistake ammonium sulfate for ammonium nitrate again."

"What?" I glared at him. "Are you trying to ruin Christmas?"

Cole ignored me as he eyed the crowd of shoppers hurrying through downtown Boston. At eighteen, he was only a year older than me, but Cole was … well … different. He was always perfectly presentable. From the dark suit that hugged his lean muscular frame to his carefully combed sandy hair, Cole gave off a World's-Greatest-Intern/Your-Daughter-Is-Safe-With-Me vibe.

That's because Cole Davis, with his hidden earpiece and ability to kill anyone with one swift jab to their trachea, was not normal. He was an agent. And, unfortunately, my bodyguard.

The Writer's Voice #8 - BROTHERLY LOVE (YA)

Title: BROTHERLY LOVE

Genre: YA Contemporary Romance

Word Count: 95,000

Query

With a bright music career in her future, and plans to marry her childhood sweetheart after graduation, life is charmed for seventeen-year-old Lacy Dalton.

Until Nick Martin happens.

Nick has been in love with Lacy since she first started dating his little brother Kevin. He’s waited years for an opportunity to steal Lacy away from Kevin. With graduation and the subsequent wedding only six months away, he’s running out of time. Tired of waiting on fate to intervene, Nick takes matters into his own hands and devises a scheme to have Lacy catch Kevin being unfaithful. He intends to be the hero who swoops in to mend her broken heart afterwards, but his plan costs Lacy more than just a fiancé.

That one night of betrayal sets off a devastating chain of events for Lacy, ending in the accidental death of her mother, and the mental breakdown of her terminally ill father. After losing everyone she loves, along with all the dreams she had for her future, only tattered shreds of her once perfect life remain. Through it all, Nick is there by her side helping Lacy along her path of restoration and recovery. As new hopes, new dreams, and a new love arise from the rubble, Lacy forges a new future for herself.

Unfortunately for Nick, if his duplicity is exposed, destiny may find a way of righting its course.

First 250

Lacy

I gathered up my homework from the floor at the foot of Kevin’s bed. Not that there was much to gather. We’d spent more time kissing than studying.

“Just stay for ten more minutes,” he begged, trying to tug my backpack away to stall me.

“I can’t, Kevin. If I don’t leave now your mom is going to come up in a few minutes and send me home.”

When I started to stand he pulled me back to the carpet and pinned me down with another kiss.

“Sneak back out later.”

“You take down bleach-blonde over there and I’ll think about it,” I bargained, nodding toward the poster of the naked model taped to the ceiling over his bed.

“That’s not fair. You’ve got dude posters hanging all over your room.”

“With their clotheson.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’ll take down Sheila when I don’t need her anymore.”

I grinned and tried to shove him off me. “You’ve seen me naked, remember?”

“That doesn’t count. We were nine and you didn’t have boobs yet,” he teased, copping a feel over my blouse.

I maneuvered his hand away by lacing fingers with his and kissing his knuckles. “Your hormones can wait six more months. After graduation and the wedding.”

“Test drive?”

“No,” I said, laughing over his tireless persistence.

“Lacy. Kevin.” Kevin’s mother tapped a warning knock on the door. Kevin rolled away from me before she cracked it open to look in on us. “It’s getting late.”

The Writer's Voice #9 - MAD WORLD (YA)

Title: MAD WORLD

Genre: YA historical romance

Word count: 55,000

Query:

Sixteen-year-old Taylor Amare thinks she's already living her happily-ever-after in 1960s Texas. So when her longtime boyfriend Lawrence Douglas starts hearing voices in his head, she'll give anything to get her fairy tale back.

Diagnosed with rapidly progressing paranoid schizophrenia, Law experiences difficulty distinguishing between reality and fantasy, leaving Taylor somewhere in the middle. The small, misinformed town turns against them, thanks to a zealous family with a vendetta, but Taylor does everything she can to protect Law from their cruelty and violence. She finds herself longing for days of roller coasters and midnight rendezvous at the custard stand, instead of fighting to hold onto her life and having a boyfriend who forgets her name.

His hallucinations progress into delusions that everyone's trying to kill him, a notion that doesn't seem so far off to Taylor. He says she makes the bad things go away, but she knows all the love in the world can't pull him out of his twisted reveries. With the town pastor threatening an exorcism and imaginary people telling Law to kill himself in increasingly convincing terms, Taylor's tempted to escape into her own delusion: that things will get better.

But she's going to fight like hell to make that perfect, impossible dream a reality.

First 250:

My daddy used to say there were two kinds of love: the kind that makes your heart race, and the kind that stops it. I said he was going funny, that there was no difference.

But ever since I fell in love with Lawrence Douglas, I knew he was right.

When Law is around, my breath catches. Butterflies—violent, deranged butterflies—attack my stomach in such an overwhelming swarm that I lose my train of thought. Words regularly escape me under his gaze, those gray eyes I swear God worked overtime making. But my heart failure usually takes precedence. I feel my chest still, then furiously pump as much love as possible when it can finally move again.

This isn't your typical high school, sex under the bleachers, lust-filled, quote-unquote romance. This is as real as the sun in the sky.

I stare out my bedroom window, waiting for something to happen. Crimson streaks the sky like a bloodstain, a splattering of red on a navy blue canvas. Across the street, most of the uniform homes have their lights turned off, curtains drawn. Doors still open, though. This is Texas. Tales of crooks and thieves get told alongside Snow White.

No cars move. No people walk by. Still, I hold out hope. Because in the distance, just before the line of trees, a giant Ferris wheel stands erect. The Zipper, shorter but more terrifying, sits next to it.

And Law said he'd take me.

"The Writer's Voice" Blogfest!!!

“The Writer’s Voice” Blogfest is live! Over the next week, we coaches will review your queries and first pages on the blogs listed below, and if one of us wants you on her team, she’ll leave a comment on your post that says something like, “I want you!” If more than one of us wants you, you’ll have to pick which coach you want to work with. (We’ll give you more instructions on this next week, depending on how things pan out…)

 For more information, including a timeline of events and a list of this year’s participating agents, check out this post. In the meantime, feel free to hop around and play along with these not-quite-blind auditions!

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Last but not least, a quick shout-out to Kimberly Chase, our gadget wizard while Brenda’s out of town! Now you know who will swoop in and save the day if we have any technology malfunctions:)

@kpchase817

"The Writer's Voice" Rafflecopter Sign-Up!

Welcome to “The Writer’s Voice” 2013! To enter, your manuscript must meet two conditions: First, it must be COMPLETE, POLISHED, AND READY TO QUERY, and second, it must be in one of the following genres:

YA fiction (all subgenres)
MG fiction (all subgenres)

Also, YOU MUST HAVE A BLOG TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS CONTEST, as we’ll be building our teams via “The Writer’s Voice” Blogfest (which starts tomorrow). You don’t have to have a blog this moment to enter, but you will need to create one by tomorrow if you win a spot in the blogfest (which is what today’s Rafflecopter lottery will determine).

For more information, including a timeline of events and a list of this year’s participating agents, check out this post. Then feel free to enter the Rafflecopter lottery anytime between now and 9:00 p.m. EDT!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Last but not least, a quick shout-out to Kimberly Chase, our gadget wizard while Brenda’s out of town! Now you know who will swoop in and save the day if we have any technology malfunctions:)

@kpchase817

The Writer's Voice Details!! (#TheWVoice)

“The Writer’s Voice” is a multi-blog, multi-agent contest hosted by Cupid of Cupid’s Literary Connection, Brenda Drake of Brenda Drake Writes, Monica B.W. of Love YA, and Krista Van Dolzer of Mother. Write. (Repeat.). We’re basing it on NBC’s singing reality show The Voice, so the four of us will serve as coaches and select projects for our teams based on their queries and first pages.



Here’s the timeline:


   May 1              Everybody enters the Rafflecopter lottery

   May 2              The lottery winners sign up on the widget

   May 2-10        We select our team members from "The Writer's Voice" Blogfest

   May 10-20      We coach our team members, helping them polish their entries

   May 20            We post our team members' entries on our blogs

   May 23-24      Agents vote for their favorites

Submissions

To enter, your manuscript must meet two conditions: First, it must be COMPLETE, POLISHED, AND READY TO QUERY, and second, it must be in one of the following genres*:



YA fiction (all subgenres)


MG fiction (all subgenres)



To determine who gets to participate in the blogfest, we’ll hold a single-entry Rafflecopter lottery on Wednesday, May 1. Last year, we were overwhelmed by the response, and in many instances, whoever had the fastest fingers--or the fastest Internet connections--made it in. This way, everyone will get an equal chance to participate.

The lottery will remain open for 12 hours on May 1, from 9:00 a.m. EDT to 9:00 p.m. EDT, at which point the Rafflecopter will select 150 random winners. Those winners will then sign up for the blogfest on one of Mister Linky’s Magical Widgets the next day, May 2. Once you sign up on the widget, you’ll post YOUR QUERY and THE FIRST 250 WORDS of your manuscript on your blog.



In summary, you must follow these three steps to enter:



1. Enter the Rafflecopter lottery on May 1 during the submission window listed above.

2. Sign up on the widget on May 2 if you win the lottery.


3. Post your query and the first 250 words of your manuscript on your blog.



Selections



We’re building our teams via “The Writer’s Voice” Blogfest, so YOU MUST HAVE A BLOG TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS CONTEST. We don’t care if you’ve had it for five years or five minutes; we just want to be able to fight over you in public:)



We coaches will review the entries and leave a comment on your post that says something like, “I want you!” If more than one of us wants you on her team, you’ll have to pick which coach you want to work with.



Coaching



We’ll select our 8 team members (plus 1 alternate) by May 10, then spend the next week and a half helping them put a final polish on their entries. You won’t have to take all of our suggestions, of course; we just want to help you make your entry the best that it can be before the agents get a look at it.



Voting



On May 20, we’ll post our team members’ queries and first pages on our blogs so that the agents can review them. Here are the awesome agents who’ll be voting on your entries:


Sarah Davies of Greenhouse Literary Agency

Mollie Glick of Foundry Literary + Media

Holly McGhee and Elena Mechlin of Pippin Properties

Ammi-Joan Paquette of Erin Murphy Literary Agency

Kate Schafer Testerman of kt literary

Suzie Townsend of New Leaf Literary & Media

Monika Verma of Levine Greenberg Literary Agency

Tina Wexler of ICM Partners

Caryn Wiseman of Andrea Brown Literary Agency

Catherine Drayton of InkWell Management
John Rudolph of Dystel and Goderich Literary Management (NEW!)
Christa Heschke of McIntosh & Otis (NEW!)

The agents will vote for their favorites on May 23 and 24. Each vote will count as a partial or full request depending on how many votes the entry receives. If an entry receives 1 or 2 votes, those votes will count as partial requests. If an entry receives 3 or more votes, those votes will count as full requests.



Voting will stay open until 9:00 p.m. EDT on May 24, at which point we’ll determine which coach’s team received the most votes. That coach will win bragging rights for time immemorial, and everyone who received requests will be able to submit their materials to all the agents who voted for them. These votes represent serious interest in your project, so PLEASE DON’T ACCEPT AN OFFER OF REPRESENTATION BEFORE GIVING “THE WRITER’S VOICE” AGENTS AN OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE A COMPETING OFFER.



So get those queries and first pages polished up, then meet us back here on Wednesday, May 1, between 9:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. EDT. We can’t wait to read your entries! (And of course, if you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments below.)

*We’re very sorry not to include any adult genres this year. We have to base the genres on the agents’ interests, and this year, all the agents who said yes happen to be agents who represent primarily YA and MG projects. There is a chance that a few more agents will sign up between now and May 1, and if a significant portion of those agents consider adult projects, we’ll certainly add some adult genres. But for now, we’ll stick with this.