Blind Speed Dating #16 (YA)

Title: RIFT RUNNERS

Genre: YA Fantasy

Word Count: 90,000

Query:

When Paumee village’s resident nutcase finds a little boy washed up on the beach, sixteen-year old Shasta knows it means more than just a shipwreck off the coast. A rift has opened, sucking away chunks of Paumee Island and spitting out whatever remains of the “other world” the rift came from, the boy a part of that debris. Worse still, he’s dying of the same incurable disease that’s killing Shasta’s father.

But before she can muster a plan, her own village kidnaps the boy, forcing Shasta to turn to Jayce – the guy that dumped her – and her estranged older sister, Ali, for help. Soon Shasta’s only hope of saving her father’s life means traveling through the rifts to a dangerous, technologically advanced world she’s only heard about in stories. A world where a cure might actually exist.

A world they call “Seattle.”

Currently, I am an MFA candidate at Chatham University in Pittsburgh, specializing in writing for children and young adults. Thank you very much for your time and consideration.

First 250:

Only one thing could suck the wind away and make it blow the wrong direction.

Atop the bluff, the sudden gust nearly knocked me over and I grabbed hold of a branch to brace myself. I let my snare line fall slack as I watched for other signs of a distant rift. Below me, the ocean swirled in strange eddies that didn't match the tide, like something far, far away was sucking up the sea. But a minute later, it was over. The wind switched back to the east and the tide took its normal course.

A baying dog startled me from my thoughts. At the bottom of the hill, Sam's hound paced with her nose pointed upward.

“Balt it, Peg! What's got into you?” Sam kicked her and she howled again, her tail ducking between her legs.

“She must’ve smelled something.” I hopped to a lower outcropping, shoving a canteen in my bag. “The wind went funny.”

“Funny?” Sam pushed a sweaty curl off his forehead.

“Switched around.”

“You done up there already, Shasta?” Sam raised an eyebrow, probably to communicate I was acting like an idiot.

I stopped winding my spare twine into a ball. “But the wind changed. Really changed. And the tide-”

“So? Get the trap lines down. You want a lean catch tomorrow?”


“Who cares about tomorrow? We have to warn the village!” I felt caught between fear and excitement. Wind anomalies were the first thing Dad taught me to watch out for. “There could be a rift out there right now.”