New Adult Threesome Contest Entry #13

Title: CURVE

Genre: New Adult Contemporary

Word count: 71,000 words

Query:

English Everygirl Cass is seventeen and never been kissed, let alone touched, when one night of humiliation brings two boys into her life.  Flynn is the older brother of her best friend, yet Cass has never considered him as anything other than that.  Rob is the school sports star and becomes obsessed with Cass when he loses a bet because of her.  Her relationship with Flynn takes Cass's breath away with its passion and intensity, helping her feel more confident about herself. 

However, Rob's malevolence spirals out of control and one terrible night change her life forever.  The aftermath threatens to destroy her relationship with Flynn, her family, her sense of self.

First 250:

Things like this don’t happen to me.

As we swayed slightly awkwardly in time with the warblings of a ballad being sung by one of those manufactured boybands, I tried to enjoy the moment for what it was: me, Cass Jones, dancing with Rob Meadows at the Sixth Form Christmas party. Rob Meadows, star of the school rugby team. Rob Meadows, blonde god of gorgeousness. Me.

The evening was coming to an end and, after the rowdy jump-dancing of earlier, the DJ was playing the compulsory slow numbers that signalled the end of the party for some but just the start of the evening for others.  And there I was, still dancing.

The Sixth Form Christmas party was a highlight of the school social calendar, especially as it usually provided significant fodder for the yearbook.  All of Year 13 had started to think about lives beyond school, our small town, even our friends, as part of the university application process.  Consequently, there was a sense of desperation to our attempts to create some happy memories to take with us.  There we were, on the cusp of legal adulthood, yet not really sure of our place in the world.

Neve and I had debated whether or not to even bother going to the party.  As habitual residents of the social periphery, we didn’t really belong to any of the usual cliques found in most high schools.  And we were OK with that, enjoying the sense of irony in watching those cliques shift and re-shape, occasionally even imploding.  

New Adult Threesome Contest Entry #12

Title: TEMPTING FAME

Genre: New Adult Contemporary Romance

Word Count: 91,000

Query:

When an incident with her twin’s boyfriend results in a racy rooftop dance and a viral video, twenty-year old Chandler Valliere will never be the same. An interview takes both Chandler and her twin, Avery, to Beverly Hills, where a fashion designer waits with an offer they can’t decline. Quickly, they sink into a world of glitz, glamor, and oodles of eyeliner. And they’ve barely begun.

Believing they’ve found their place, the girls are stumped to find the teen heartthrob of the year and a movie director on their doorstep with plans to make one of them a star. With one twin pursuing her modeling career and the other earning a spot on the silver screen, they have nowhere to go but up.

But fame comes at a price, and when a slipup at an audition causes the girls to swap identities, the truth may be it. Forced to date an actor she abhors and hounded by an insatiable desire for fame, Chandler must learn to juggle her priorities before she loses everything and everyone, including herself.

In the past, I published samples of previous works on the website “Wattpad” under the pen name Lia Holloway and the username “slantingwillow”. Thus, the majority of my Internet presence is under either or both of those names.

First 250:

Green is such a neutral color - it isn't light or dark. In other words, it can’t be identified with either good or bad. It simply exists, and in the large scheme of things, that normally isn’t a bad thing. For a twin, neutral colors can be devastating. Wearing such a shade in public? That can be life changing.

Fixated by the task at hand, I speed-walked down an aisle at the local grocery store. Few people were around, and for that I was grateful. I hated green; it was such a bright, earthy color, and hues like that got on my nerves easily. The sheer idea that I was in a green top made me uneasy, especially since I usually wouldn’t be caught dead in one. My brilliant idea, stealing one of my sister’s shirts to avoid washing my own, had become my fatal mistake. The faster I hurried to go home, the quicker I could escape public humiliation.

Careful not to dawdle, I made my way down the soda and beer aisle, desperately trying to pick out a drink to take home. My parents would inevitably drink water for dinner as they always did, but Avery and I wanted something a little more appetizing.

Plagued by the endless rows of mouth-watering choices laid out before me in every shape, size and color, I pulled my white iPhone out of my jeans' pocket with the intent to call my sister, but an arm around my midsection prevented me.

New Adult Threesome Contest Entry #11

Title: CROSSOVER

Genre: Science Fiction

Word Count: 85,000

Query:

After a storm electrocutes twenty-year-old Blake Kline while he’s beta-testing a virtual reality simulation, he finds himself a part of a classified fringe science initiative and his mind slipping back and forth between two universes. In one, he’s an average frat boy ready to C+ his way through Tulane, but in the other he’s aboard the pioneer space ship Athena, preparing to colonize New Earth. That is, until Blake’s accidental crossovers begin to blur the boundaries of their worlds. 

The Crossover Initiative, a decommissioned military program, links a person’s mind to their otherself—another version of them in an alternate reality. The two Blakes couldn’t be more different and it doesn’t take many slips back and forth for them to ruin each other’s lives. Trying to save colonists on a space walk, Blake loses two of his otherself’s fingers—and crosses home to find the Other Blake ended up in bed with his lab partner. Blake tries to survive both the Athena and the chaos his otherself makes of his life in New Orleans, as the Initiative works out how to break the bridge between them.

As universe boundaries begin to blur, New Orleans braces for the worst hurricane in history. Despite the danger, his otherself is loving the life he might have had if his family hadn’t died. The Athena prepares an emergency colony on Europa and Blake struggles with the challenges of life on the icy moon, where he’s stepped up to be a leader. With every crossover their universes grow closer and the friction begins tearing the world’s apart. The last crossover ended the Initiative and destroyed most of the other world’s Western Hemisphere, now history is repeating itself in Blake. They need to sever the connection—fast, before their universes annihilate each other. 

Crossover will appeal to fans of Elizabeth Norris’s Unraveling and Beth Revis’s Across the Universe Trilogy. I am an editorial intern at Entangled Publishing under Theresa Cole and a book review for the Dark Faerie Tales blog.

First 250:

Orson helped the young man pull on the virtual simulation cap, arranging the wires to fall over the edge of the recliner and not his face. Hope bloomed like a weed inside his chest, whispering, This time. This time it will work. He didn't have the strength to mow it down.

"Now I just want you to relax and remember, this isn't a fully-functioning game yet." His greatest fear was something going wrong, stranding the boy's mind outside his body—forever. "The programmers are still writing the code. You're only there to observe. Not interact. We want to make sure it looks as real as possible before we invest any more money into it. Alright?"

"Yeah. Sure. Christ, I can't believe I'm doing this."

Orson laughed. It came from deep in his belly, touching on the desperate wish that he could be the one going in.

"You have no idea. It might not work, remember," he went on, as much for Blake as for himself.

"Yeah. Right. But still, so cool." The kid—young man, damn he felt old—all but vibrated in his seat. Orson envied that fresh enthusiasm. Should he really risk someone so young?

What choice did he have? He postured past the nerves with another smile.

Finished checking the sim cap, he asked, "Ready?"

Blake's excitement didn't let any nervousness through as he nodded, smiling wider.

"Alright then. Let's log you in."

And please, Orson thought, activating the program and shielding his heart for another failure, please don't die.

New Adult Threesome Contest Entry #10

Title: THE SENSUALITY OF SUSHI

Genre: Romantica

Word Count: 100,500

Query

Growing out of Christine Stark's erotic dream, "The Sensuality of Sushi" is a sexually charged and vivid account of two women's struggle to escape disastrous marriages and abusive husbands. When Christine meets Amadour, she and her best friend Lara find their lives changing in ways they could never have imagined. Amadour is handsome and charismatic, but more than that, there is something magical about him.

Led by the mysterious Amadour, the two women embark on a journey of sexual and personal awakening. Completely beguiled by his good looks, wisdom in the art of lovemaking, and his knowledge of their inner most secrets, they surrender themselves to him, and subsequently to each other.

Through a series of sexual encounters with Amadour at his brownstone, the two women find the layers of who they have become beginning to fall away. Christine comes to grips with her sexuality and her whore of a husband at the same time she finds Michael Harris.

On one visit to the brownstone, Lara plays the role of a prostitute. When it turns out to be borderline rape she realizes that she has been the enabler for her husband all along, allowing him to abuse her in is own perverse ways. After this she vows never to let another man abuse her.

Christine has her own sexual experiences at the brownstone, but unlike Lara, she embraces the feeling of anonymous men and the sexuality of it all. When Christine meets Michael, she falls in love for the first time in her life. However, her marriage and repressed sexuality causes problems with a man still hurting from a past relationship.

Lara's love is Marc, a man who works closely with her husband, a very dangerous man. When Lara goes to tell him she wants a divorce, she is beaten and only saved at the last minute by Marc when he tricks her husband into jumping off the balcony of their Manhattan high-rise.

In an intimate dining room at his favorite Japanese restaurant, Michael and Christine consummate their love for one another while feeding each other raw delicacies. Christine finally wins the battle of the sexes with Michael when he realizes he can't live without her.

Their story almost turns out to be a dead heat on a merry-go-round, but in the end, Christine and Lara find anything can be overcome once they face their fears, and that love is more often than not a walk on the edgy side.

Few love stories are as simple as boy meets girl, boy kisses girl, happily ever afters to follow. "Sensuality" is a narrative of what happens when two women grab hold of their second chance.

First 250:

"You may remove the blindfold now." A soft voice whispered.

Christine blinked as her eyes adjusted to the sudden glow of the fire. Shades of glowing red, bright oranges and yellows shimmered before her in the fireplace. Its warmth engulfed her nakedness, and as she rubbed her hand across her arm and along her thighs, she glanced around the room. Grasping the back of the loveseat on which she sat, Christine turned to scan the darkness of the room. Since the only light was that from the fireplace, most of room was visible only in dancing shadows, but what little of it she could make out was magnificent. Colors faded into shades of grays and yellows, but her perception saw the deep reds and bright colors of gold and white. Oriental carpets, thicker and richer than any she had ever seen spread like patchwork across the floor. The bed was Victorian, and from her vantage point, it looked as if one would need a step stool to reach it.

Somewhere behind her she heard the steady ticking of a clock. Each tick seemed to match the pounding of her heart. Minutes seemed like hours as she sat in front of the fire, naked and alone. Suddenly, a sound from within the darkness on the far side of the room startled her and she turned with a gasp. It was the soft creak of a door opening and she could make out a dim yellow lamp glowing in a room just beyond.

New Adult Threesome Contest Entry #9

Title: LOVE AND THE BARD

Genre: NA Contemporary Romance

Word Count: 90,000

Query:

Anna is stuck in a rut. To be fair, though, it’s a very comfortable rut that her dad approves of, and that she dug for herself. But still, it’s time for a change.

Change comes in the form of Coy McLeod, visiting Anna’s small hometown from the far away land of Chicago. He’s as spontaneous, passionate, and independent as Anna is… not.

When Coy gets the idea to take a Shakespeare Festival road trip, Anna agrees to go along, hoping the spontaneity of the trip will help her to be more open to new things. But when she returns home, she is just as uncertain of what to do with her future as when she left. Coy has added a new choice to Anna’s list of possible future plans- he wants her to move to Chicago with him. As if things weren’t confusing enough already.

Should she finish college at her family’s alma mater, while staying at home with her widower father? Or take a chance on Coy, and step into the unknown? As time runs out on Anna’s last semester of school, it will take a proposal, a death, and The Sound of Music to bring the curtain down on her old life.

LOVE AND THE BARD is a New Adult contemporary romance, complete at 90,000 words. It would appeal to readers who enjoy contemporary Young Adult novels, such as those by Sarah Dessen, and are now looking for an older protagonist. 

First 250:

The thick manila envelope from the University of Oregon is staring at me. Or, at least, I am staring at it, trying to figure out what it is doing on my desk. I haven't applied to the University. So why are they sending me a big, thick package?

I carefully tear open the envelope and pull out a letter.

Dear Ms. Claysmith, Thank you for your interest in the University of Oregon. Enclosed you will find a copy of our course catalog for the upcoming school year.

I don't need to read any further. This has Dad's handiwork written all over it. The envelope, the letter, the course catalog- all are explained by the photograph of my parents that sits on my desk. The two of them are only a few years older than I am in the photo. They have their arms around each other, and are proudly wearing robes and mortarboards. In their hands are their diplomas from the University of Oregon.

Dad hasn't kept it a secret that he hopes I'll go to Oregon when I finish my Associate's degree in December. But pretending to be me and requesting a catalog from the school is taking things a little too far. I chew on the inside of my cheek, trying to decide how to tell him this.