HEIRS OF SILENCE, a 92,000-word YA dark fantasy filled with creatures from Slavic mythology, Russian fairy tales, and Yiddish folklore, where RED QUEEN meets SHADOW AND BONE.
Revolutions and deposed royalty mean nothing to Toma, a seventeen-year-old orphan who is more concerned with hunting, farming, and sewing her adoptive family’s severed limbs back onto their decaying bodies. Raised by benevolent undead known as upyry, Toma’s simple existence is threatened when she finds an unconscious youth, Mikhail, in the wreckage of a hot air balloon. After reviving Mikhail, she learns he is a dethroned tsar fleeing from the revolutionary leader, Zoran, and offers Mikhail a place to hide.
To provide Zoran with proof that Mikhail was devoured by upyry, Zoran’s henchmen kidnap Toma’s undead sister. Teaming up with Mikhail to rescue her sister, Toma leaves the safety of her home for a war-torn land rife with monsters and ruthless soldiers alike. As Toma witnesses the bloody consequences of a civil war fought between magic-endowed tsarists and the superstitious lower class, it becomes increasingly difficult for her to tell which side is good and which side is evil. Horrified by the tsarists’ brutality, Toma must decide if saving her sister by restoring Mikhail to his throne is worth the destruction it may cause.
When seventeen-year-old Taylor’s brother contracts a fatal neurological virus, he’s locked in a quarantine zone and denied proper medical treatment. She smuggles black market meds to him in her bra—until she catches Kalion’s Syndrome herself.
Taylor already has epilepsy, so when the Syndrome starts corroding her nervous system, one of her seizures mutates the virus to make her generate electricity. The doctors who denied her twin brother treatment decide she’s worth their attention and imprison her in a lab. After dozens of failed tests, they tell her she’ll never be able to control her electrogenesis. Without force fields or sedatives, she’ll fry anything she touches.
But Taylor won’t spend her life trapped in a lab.
When the criminals who provided the illegal medication offer her a chance at escape, Taylor breaks out even though she risks hurting the very person she needs to save. She’ll need all of her scientific knowledge and delinquent skills to adapt to a life with her new symptoms, but ultimately Taylor must decide who she can save: her brother or herself.
SYNDROME is a young adult science fiction novel complete at 80,000 words that will appeal to fans of Scott Westerfeld’s ZEROES and Marissa Meyers’ RENEGADES. It is a standalone with series potential and was selected for Author Mentor Match, a contest hosted by published and agented young adult and middle grade authors. I have a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature and work in a public library with young adults in the metro-Atlanta area.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sarah Brubaker
Heather
3 years ago
THE BLADELESS SWORD, a YA Fantasy novel, is complete at 80,000 words with series potential.
The Plains was once a quiet medieval village where nothing ever happened. Then one day, sixteen-year-old Rian Abanhart, the chosen protector of The Bladeless Sword, and his family showed up and everything changed.
In a world where beautiful demons, called the Kyldranan, are taking over, the last thing anyone wants is for Rian to bring the Kyldranan’s attention, but that’s exactly what he does when a beautiful woman magically appears, and he accidentally gives away his location. Fleeing their home, the village seeks The City of Refuge, Adalia, because it is the one place where the magic is strong enough to resist the world of darkness. However, once in the city, Rian quickly learns they refuse to take in any refugees who aren’t followers of their god.
Alana is the daughter of the fallen king of the nation of Leviathan, who has sold his people over to the Kyldranan. After Alana is given against her will to the most terrible of them all, their leader, Thanos, she flees her city and heads to Adalia, a city that has already decided she isn’t one of them and therefore, not worth protecting. In Adalia, as Rian learns how to protect the hilt, he vows to protect the refugees they refuse, people like Alana, no matter the cost, even going against the Adalians and right into hands of the enemy to save them and the ones he loves. Even more unsettling, Rian begins to realize two things, one he doesn’t agree with the religion of the lost God of Light, and two, he quite possibly is the lost God of Light.
Daniel
3 years ago
Dear Ms. Keyes,
Thank you for participating in this event.
Please consider A SMOLDERING FIRE, a completed 34,000 word middle grade fantasy about twelve-year-old Jon Bidwell, who discovers the teachers and other staff members in his school are dragons in human form.
When Jon and his friend Anna are caught eavesdropping on a staff meeting, the school custodian assures them that there’s nothing to fear from the school staff, even though they are dragons. But, he warns them, there are other dragons who live in Inner Earth, and they are intent on conquering the world. Jon realizes that even though his dad, who also knows the truth about the dragons, insists he not enter the tunnels of Earth, he needs to find a way to do just that.
Perhaps even more important, Jon finds out he has a twin sister no one bothered to tell him about. She was separated from him at birth, and his dad believes she might be a captive of the dragons in Inner Earth. All previous attempts to find her have failed. Jon is not going to let failure happen again. Armed with only their own wits, Jon and Anna learn to rely on each other as they go an adventure to save the world and find Jon’s sister.
I have the joy of teaching fifth grade students, am a member of SCBWI, and I might have a dragon living in my basement.
R. Lille
3 years ago
Dear Emily,
I read on your manuscript wish list (MSWL) that you were seeking a story about a woman running an empire, and I thought you might be interested in A THOUSAND SKIES OF BLUE, my 90,000-word YA gender-flipped retelling of Beauty and the Beast.
To end the war that claimed his brother’s life, Mutton Bolt – a failed Cleric with a deadly allergy to blue moss – must find the underground rebellion working to overthrow the reclusive Empress of Aberglyn.
For over a century, the Empress has failed to find a way to vanquish Noorland’s Ghost Warriors. The danger of total defeat, and destruction of the entire continent, creeps closer with each loss.
So when a chance arrives to become the Empress’ Scribe, Mutt seizes the opportunity to infiltrate her fortress, and attract the resistance. But his nefarious plans go up in smoke when he discovers the dangerous truth about the Empress, and the curse that’s imprisoned her for decades.
As the Empress begins to shed some of her secrets, attraction replaces his hatred. Then the Empire’s army suffers a catastrophic loss at their doorstep, and the resistance offers Mutt an agonizing choice. To save the Empire, Mutt will have to break more than the Empress’ curse. He may have to break her, and his own heart.
A THOUSAND SKIES OF BLUE will appeal to readers craving the lush worlds and antagonistic romance in Renee Ahdieh’s THE WRATH AND THE DAWN and CJ Redwine’s THE SHADOW QUEEN.
My feature writing has been published in The Boston Globe and The Washington Examiner. I am an active member of SCBWI and the Singapore Writers Group. Before repatriating to Louisiana last year, I managed the social media and press operations for the U.S. Embassy in Singapore.
Thank you in advance for your consideration.
R. Lille Moore
Seventeen-year-old Rayne Robbins can’t keep a secret. As the FBI’s most valuable weapon, she’s been taken from her family and locked away for the past seven years, forced to use her ability to see secrets to reveal the terrible things criminals hide. But her government prison is safe. Familiar. And this alone keeps her from trying to escape.
Until the day she is forced to.
When Rayne is kidnapped from her sanctuary and on the run from the country’s most notorious hacker, her only hope is a boy named Sam, whose strangely colored eyes reveal nothing but the truth of his words. She decides to trust him, agreeing to use her ability to track down his missing father in exchange for his help to reunite her with the FBI. But when she discovers Sam’s unexpected ties to her ability, Rayne finds herself hiding a secret of her own, and she must make a choice: surrender to a lifetime of secure captivity, or take an innocent life to finally gain her freedom.
THE SECRETS OF RAYNE is a young adult urban fantasy with series potential, and is THE DARKEST MINDS meets LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD. It is complete at 110,000 words and will appeal to fans of the DELIRIUM series by Lauren Oliver and THE YOUNG ELITES by Marie Lu.
Thank you so much for your time!
Karyne
3 years ago
Thanks for the opportunity for feedback!
Dear Ms. Keyes,
Seventeen-year-old Brynn anticipates being cryogenically frozen for her future spouse—after all, now that a ninety percent genetic compatibility link is required for marriage, four out of five teens are frozen until a link is found. But after witnessing the terrifying freezing of her claustrophobic best friend, she is desperate to avoid the same fate.
Instead of being frozen, the Linking System (the government’s match-making program) accidentally links Brynn with Matthew: the first boy ever frozen, the son of the man who created the Linking System, and the secret poster boy for the Romantics, the rebel group fighting against the government. When he’s thawed for her, they commit to exposing the two-hundred-year-old mystery behind the system’s creation—the mystery Matthew’s father kept secret by cryogenically silencing his own son.
When Matthew assists in a massive thawing orchestrated by the Romantics, he’s arrested for treason. With war looming between the Romantics and the government, Brynn must uncover the proof that reveals the flaws in the Linking System before the boy she’s grown to love is hanged and she’s frozen. But secrets that stay hidden for two hundred years aren’t easy to find.
LINKS AND LIES is a young adult novel complete at 96,000 words and suited for fans of Lauren Oliver’s DELIRIUM and Beth Revis’ ACROSS THE UNIVERSE.
I am a member of the SCBWI and a contributing author for PUTTING THE SCIENCE IN FICTION, which is scheduled to be published by Writer’s Digest in Fall 2018. I’m also a labor and delivery nurse, photographer, wife, and mom of 3.5 kids. I would be happy to send you a full or partial manuscript at your convenience. Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Karyne Norton
Caitlin
3 years ago
Dear Ms. Keyes,
When 12-year-old Mae’s Nana disappears right in front of her, she knows she’ll never be the same. Her mom thinks she’s “passed on” but deep down Mae knows the truth, even if it’s a little hazy: the faerie stories her Nana used to tell her are true and she ended up in the immortal realm of Beyond.
Even though her mother doesn’t believe her, Mae sets out in search of a doorway to the realm. Only, it isn’t as easy as she hoped, considering the annoying neighbor boy Jack decided to help her. When the two are surprised one day in the garden by Fin, the pixie from Nana’s stories, Mae knows Beyond is real and that she’s going to have to trust them both with her secret struggle: something her doctors called “adjustment disorder.”
However, when they reach Beyond, the unlikely trio of an anxious girl, popular boy, and obnoxious pixie are tricked into a bargain with the Dark Fae Queen, sending them on a quest to retrieve three specific items from across the realm. If Mae helps the Queen, she’ll release Nana and let them all return home where life can be normal again. But if they don’t succeed, they’ll be trapped in faerie forever. As Mae ventures deeper into the realm meeting new creatures and the Ancient Guardians, she realizes there is more to the stories she grew up hearing. Through her journey, Beyond begins to speak to Mae in a way she wasn’t expecting: teaching her she’s exactly who she’s supposed to be and that friends show up at the most unsuspecting times.
BEYOND (complete at 61,000 words) is an upper middle grade fantasy set in the alternate world of Fae. It will appeal to readers who enjoyed 13 Treasures, Foxheart, and The Spiderwick Chronicles.
Shanice
3 years ago
This WIP is still in the third round of revisions. This is the revised query according the the above revisions if ya’ll wan’t to edit this one instead of the original!
In a society where being black can get you killed or taken, Liv is given the choice to survive by systematically killing her own people, or be killed herself, but is survival important when her loved ones are dying?
Black seventeen–year–old Liv Tate lives in Pinnacle, what’s left after the second American Civil War. In a totalitarian country the Patricians, the rich, administer a vaccine to the Plebians, the poor, through food genetically modified to inhibit emotions. Evaluations are conducted annually from puberty until seventeen years old to ensure compliance. Those who are immune are taken.
As a Plebian, Liv knows she’s immune, so her only goal is to ensure she and her mother survive.
Liv has made it to her final evaluation without detection, but, this time, she is taken prisoner to be a government test subject. When she arrives, her absentee father gives her an ultimatum: becomes a Taker, and systematically kill her own people, or die.
Liv agrees, but when she refuses to an arranged marriage, her mother dies. She realizes she can’t hold on to her morals and survive as a Taker. She decides to flee the country after aiding and abetting in the release of an innocent fugitive. But, when her own people and the government, both, want her dead, will she succeed?
SINS OF THE FATHER is a young adult sci-fi novel. Currently 55,000 words, it is the first in a series. It would appeal to fans of Sandcastle Empire.
I am currently a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, getting a Masters in Liberal Studies with a focus in Creative Writing. I hope to analyze the hypocrisy people exhibit when reading fiction juxtaposed against how they treat their neighbors. I also work at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte as an Administrative Graduate Assistant for Leadership in Housing and Residence Life. When I complete my degree, I hope to continue on to a PhD in American Studies.
I realize the word count is low, but that’s because in my current round of revisions, I decided to scrap some scenes that weren’t working. I’m currently working on new scenes and chapters that will bring it up.
Michelle
3 years ago
Dear Emily S Keyes,
THE WINGED BASTARD is a 80k YA fantasy with a dual POV. In a world where old treasures hold the last of the world’s magic, a runaway thief and a rogue marine combine forces with a gang of female pirates to keep the power of reviving the dead from the authorities’ grasp.
When shy Cay from the isolated west steals an old pirate treasure to escape her abusive foster father and buy her parents out of slavery, she didn’t expect half the marine fleet to set out in pursuit. When shadows start to stir, bodiless voices begin to whisper of power, and dead things come crawling out of the ground, Cay realizes more than her parents’ freedom is at stake if she allows the treasure to fall into marine hands. Because whoever holds the artifact, wields its power—at the cost of one’s sanity.
The Admiral’s ocean-addicted son, Fever, never imagined he’d need to hunt down a thief to earn his place on the waters and bring his beloved mother back to life, but the rumors of a gateway into death is enough for him to put aside his lifelong doubts about magic. The closer he gets to his target, the clearer it becomes that the powers of revival are not only all too real—the treasure seems to have plans of its own: plans involving a badass crew of female pirates, his mother’s soul stuck in a place worse than death and Fever being banned from the seas forever.
Not only are the authorities’ true goals discovered as the hunt brings Cay and Fever together, but also the fact the thief and marine can make the others’ dream come true. The problem? They can’t both get what they want. Not without risk filling the world with those better left in their graves.
T. James
3 years ago
Dear Ms. Keyes:
A mad scientist’s niece must stop her uncle from experimenting on the alien creature who helps her deal with the death of her dad.
Twelve-year-old Kate seeks refuge in the woods saving trapped animals. She’s been stuck in small-town Minnesota with her mad scientist uncle ever since her dad’s unexpected death. She can’t relate to the gun-toting locals or the pesky boy who follows her around—not that she needs friends—and she definitely can’t relate to Uncle. He’s too busy punching holes in the universe to notice when she’s around.
Then a hulking, color-changing creature comes through one of those holes into the woods. It cares for Kate almost as much as Dad did, and she grows to love it in return. But even the woods aren’t big enough to hide a giant. When a local farmer mistakes the creature for a dangerous bear, he aims to put it down. And if Uncle catches it, he’ll dissect it—all in the name of science. To protect the creature Kate must send it back through Uncle’s rift. Except then she’ll lose her friend forever.
And Kate isn’t ready to let go.
GRAVITY AND MONSTERS is an upper middle grade, science fiction novel, complete at 52,000 words.
Dayna Dunbar
3 years ago
Emily,
Thank you so much for taking a look! I’m an award-winning author published by Ballantine. My agent has left the industry and I’m seeking new representation for my first foray into a new genre.
LEGACY OF ADYA, a YA sci-fi adventure with alternate history, tells the secret story of why the world did not end in 2012 as predicted by the Mayan calendar. When the apocalyptic date came and went, the world concluded the prophecy was a myth. But it was not. Disaster was averted by an extraordinary course of events that took place simultaneously on two different planets—Earth and Adya, an awakened civilization far more advanced than our own.
Told in dual POVs, the story opens on Adya where sixteen-year-old Mobius doesn’t fit in. He was born an Anomaly, less evolved than everyone else and without access to the Wisdom—the field of collective intelligence in the universe. After a failed bid for Adya’s space program, he struggles to find his value and place in his world. But then he finds proof that a rogue commander from Adya’s toxic, violent past planted a time capsule in a Mayan pyramid in 720 AD. When he discovers the capsule is about to implode and create a black hole, devouring the Earth, he steals a spaceship to save the precious blue planet and prove his worth.
On Earth, nineteen-year-old Diego is a paramilitary ranger in the lawless jungles of Guatemala. He’s on the take with a local drug cartel, hoping to wipe away his “poor kid from the barrio” status. While guiding Jillian, an eighteen-year-old American, around the endangered habitat, the narcos kidnap them both, holding her for ransom deep in the rainforest.
When Mobius lands in their midst, the gang flees and Diego and Jillian agree to help him navigate this strange, turbulent world and find the time capsule. Joined by a Mayan shaman, they embark on a geo-quest, racing through exotic Mayan ruins in search of clues that build to a shocking revelation. And Mobius realizes he will have to learn to access the Wisdom if there is any hope of preventing the Armageddon.
The Red Pyramid meets I Survived … in Kingdom of the Serpent a middle grade historical fantasy, complete at 79,000 words.
Twelve-year-old Princess Ankhes hates how her older sisters steal everyone’s attention and shove her and her brother Tut into the background. So when the spirit of Maat-ka-ra, her many-times-great-grandmother, offers to teach her magic, Ankhes seizes the chance. After Ankhes masters journeying into the Netherworld and gains the gift of prophecy, the entire court takes notice, and she quickly becomes her father’s favorite.
But journeys into the spirit realm also have dangers. A god known as the Hidden One once protected Egypt from all supernatural creatures that would do it harm, but Ankhes’s father banished him. As a result, the Serpent of Chaos, a giant snake intent on devouring all creation, slithers free from his Netherworld prison and prepares to strike.
Without the Hidden One to stop him, the Serpent grows stronger. His demons break into the living world, killing royal family members one by one. Even the dead aren’t safe, and Maat-ka-ra falls. Determined to honor her lost mentor, Ankhes secretly seeks the Hidden One and discovers he can be restored. The only way to do this and save her rapidly dwindling family is by destroying the Serpent’s source of power—and that source may be her father.
I have been a devotee of ancient Egypt for over 30 years and am a board member of the American Research Center in Egypt (Chicago Chapter). My publications include the Egyptian-themed stories “The Book of Thuti” and “Imperishable Stars” in Leading Edge, and “Cleopatra’s Needle,” a Speculative Literature Foundation’s Fountain Award nominee, in Paradox. I have an M.A. in Writing and am a member of SCBWI and the Online Writing Workshop for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror.
Thank you for this opportunity.
Renee
3 years ago
Exploring the issues of female powerlessness and abuse of power, THE AGENCY (65,000 words) is a young adult science fiction novel where The Handmaid’s Tale meets The Bachelor to ‘Take Back the Night’.
Being young and female makes sixteen-year-old Cherry a rarity in a population-controlled world with an overwhelming preference for male offspring. Unexpectedly selected by The Agency, which has become the go-to choice for uber-wealthy, elite bachelors looking to secure a trophy wife, Cherry has to decide if marrying a stranger is a price she’s willing to pay to escape poverty.
Cherry signs The Agency’s contract, convinced she can find a loophole before receiving a proposal she’d be forced to accept. But she quickly discovers there is no way out. Trapped in a competitive and divided Academy, she is forced to fend off an all-powerful predatory Director, ultimately finding strength in unity. Ensuring no one is left alone, Cherry leads the girls in a coordinated campaign to thwart the Director’s tactics but her revolt has repercussions.
Breaking protocol by marrying off a girl of just sixteen, Cherry is graduated early to face a batch of bachelors far worse than she could ever have imagined. However, a defeated Cherry with no control over her destiny, manages to attain empowerment in the most unlikely of places.
Jasmine
3 years ago
Dear Ms. Keyes,
Hex Allen and the Clanksmiths is Nick and Tesla meets The Hobbit – a 46,000 word MG fantasy STEM adventure where the characters use science and engineering to fight goblins, ogres, and dragons.
In a world where everyone can do magic, twelve-year-old Hex Allen is a misfit because of her inability to cast even the simplest of spells. Her penchant for imagining creative workarounds won’t help her finish school or find a job. Her only hope is the Wishing Wyrm, a legendary dragon who grants a single wish every century. When she runs away to find the Wyrm, Hex meets rivals for the wish — the Clanksmiths, a group of three kids who also can’t do magic. They won’t tell Hex their wish, but they’re not interested in being healed like her. They claim they don’t need magic — instead, they’ve learned to build clank, creations that use the mysterious arts of science and engineering.
After Hex saves the Clanksmith’s lives from a fairy fiasco, they decide to travel together. Even though Hex knows that their truce is a temporary one, she can’t help but befriend and learn from the Clanksmiths. With their engineering know-how and her MacGyver-esque creative flare, they use clank to trick ogres with LED’s, escape from goblin using electromagnets, and knock out an unfortunate lion with a potato cannon. As they fight their way closer to the Wyrm, Hex must decide if risking her friendship with the Clanksmiths is worth the wish she isn’t sure she even wants anymore.
Pages from Hex’s design notebook illustrate the varied mechanical and electric projects so that readers can learn along with her.
I am a mechanical engineer with a BS and MS from MIT, and a member of SCBWI. My day job is building game arenas for robots.
Thank you for doing this pitch session!
Sincerely,
Jasmine Florentine
Hannah
3 years ago
Dear Ms. Keyes,
There isn’t anything twelve-year-old Hope wouldn’t do to capture the perfect photograph to win an online contest. And as the daughter of field archeologists, she has a lot opportunities. The Taj Mahal in India? Anyone could take that shot. Elephants in Thailand? Been there, seen that.
So when she stumbles upon an ancient Incan ruin deep in the Peruvian Amazon, Hope breaks her parents’ only rule: never ever touch the artifacts. But uncorking the millennia-old jar will do more than get Hope grounded. Suddenly, people from the local village start disappearing one-by-one. With the help of a new friend–a Peruvian boy who can communicate with dangerous nature spirits–Hope tries to solve the mystery, but her search for answers only leaves her with more questions. How was a two-thousand-year-old Greek artifact found in a crumbling Incan ruin? Why is the jar covered with depictions of snarling, malevolent creatures? And what, exactly, did she release from the jar? When Hope’s Dad vanishes too, she realizes she must recapture the ancient Peruvian creature she freed before it’s too late.
Bad news is: Pandora’s Box doesn’t want to be closed again.
My middle grade adventure, HOPE TAYLOR AND THE PANDORA CURSE, is complete at 50,000 words.
Dear Ms. Keyes,
This Tiny Perfect World meets Out of the Darkness and Ashes of Roses in FIRE CURTAIN, my young adult historical that is based on the December 30, 1903, Iroquois Theatre fire. Using a real-life event that happened in my hometown, the story illustrates the importance of family, humanism, resourcefulness, and loyalty.
Seventeen-year-old Laura Castle loves two things more than anything in life: her family – especially her eleven-year-old sister, Nory – and the theater. She dreams of becoming a stage actress, and when the Castles move from Milwaukee to Chicago, she is thrilled that she will be able to take acting lessons. Once settled in, she and her family struggle to find their place in the social circles of the straight-laced movers and shakers of the city, where new money isn’t easily welcomed and doesn’t yet open doors. Lonely, Laura wishes she had Nory’s knack of making friends and endures get-togethers with girls her age from desirable families for the sake of her family’s betterment. Becoming someone the girls will accept is the toughest role she thinks she’ll ever undertake because she knows they call her “the prairie dog” in whispers between each other.
Over Christmas vacation, Laura tackles the most important role of her life during a theatrical matinee of famed comedian Eddie Foy’s Mr. Blue Beard at the brand-new Iroquois Theatre. When fire breaks out 15 minutes after curtain, Laura throws caution aside, assumes the part of the heroine to keep from panicking, and risks her life to save Nory and the girls into whose social circle she has not yet been welcomed.
One of Chicago’s stories of loss and strength is the Iroquois Theatre fire when 602 people – including women with their children on holiday from school – tragically met their deaths, 571 of them within the first 15 minutes of the fire. The heartbreaking irony is that the theatre’s owners touted the Iroquois as “absolutely fireproof.” Over 250 more theatre-goers were injured.
I am a member of SCBWI and the North Carolina Writers’ Network. My reviews of adult, young adult, and middle grade literature have regularly appeared in India Currents magazine, and I am a Books for Youth reviewer for Booklist magazine (ALA). Previously, I have worked behind the scenes in professional theaters in the Chicago area, taught high school English and Technical Theater, and have been a middle school paraeducator specializing in Reading, Language Arts, and Technology.
Thank you for your consideration,
Jeanne E. Fredriksen
THE PROPHECY THIEF is a middle grade fantasy-adventure complete at 48K words with series potential. It is perfect for fans of The Map to Everywhere’s whimsy, the characters from The Iron Trials, and The Very Nearly Honorable League of Pirates’ humor.
Twice Perkins lives in Cooktopia, where fish swim in the skies, dragons prefer drinking tea over breathing fire, and every twelve-year-old receives a prophecy. And Twice’s family always gets the best. The only thing worse than inheriting the paparazzi cannibals, who churn out sappy articles about his mild cerebral palsy, would be getting a pathetic prophecy. That would turn his famous family’s limelight sour.
When Twice cranks the handle, the Giant Fortune Cookie prints his destiny, and he learns there can be something worse than having a pathetic prophecy: having no prophecy at all. Stuck onstage with a blank piece of paper, Twice does what he’s best at—he gives a media-loving smile and tells the world’s Biggest Baddest Lie. He’s going to save the city!
Determined to earn a front-page article without his family’s help, Twice sneaks on board a flying ship with three other prophecy bound kids. He has three chances to steal one of their prophecies—and fulfill it—before his lie is outed and the headline turns from Perkins, a Prophecy Paragon to Perkins, a Prophecy Pretender. At least, until his catastrophic actions snowball, unleashing mortal danger upon Cooktopia, where his help might be needed after all.
My YA debut released last year and was hailed by Kirkus as “richly imagined…a propulsive, sharply crafted tale about a planetary war.” I’m currently under contract for the rest of the series. I’m drawn to characters with physical limitations due to my own disability. I’ve also spoken about writing, disability, and art at local conferences/workshops and a high school. I live in Colorado with my husband, two fluffy pups, and perpetually paint-stained hands.
Thanks for your time!
Rachel
3 years ago
Dear Ms. Keyes,
It’s called an oath, but it’s more like a curse. When you feel another’s pain, when your life is tied to another’s, you don’t have a choice. If they die, you die.
Eighteen-year-old Corinne Montgomery faces constant migraines, nausea, and imminent death—all thanks to a cyst in her brain. She isn’t expecting any miracles when she and her mom move in with family friends in Vermont to seek a fifth ‘second opinion.’ But hey, at least Vermont in autumn creates a scenic backdrop for her photographs.
One photograph in particular has Corinne noticing shared scars between family friend Kim and her boyfriend. When the photograph is stolen and she goes looking for it, she meets Liam. He admits both he and Kim’s boyfriend are Guardians—beings sworn to protect the world from chaotic monsters trying to destroy it. The more she learns about Guardians, the more hopeless she becomes. Maybe dying isn’t so bad after all if the world is falling apart anyways.
Then Corinne discovers her connection with Liam. Every scar she’s ever had, he shares. When she bleeds, he bleeds. So when she dies, will Liam die too? Racing against her worsening symptoms, Corinne struggles to find a way for Liam to survive her death.
DELIVERANCE is a 115,000 word YA contemporary fantasy with series potential that’s told in multiple points of view. Deliverance shows how even at your physically weakest, you can still be strong, and saving people doesn’t always mean fighting. As a pharmacist, my passion for medicine as well as personal experiences with a brain cyst allow me to provide a sincerity and truth to Corinne’s struggles.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Rachel Bowen
Kristy
3 years ago
Dear Ms. Keyes,
Sixteen-year-old Lucy Andrews fears the color red, compulsively draws graffiti in bathroom stalls, and avoids even numbers because they’re too perfect. Yet somehow she’s able to manage her OCD—until her artistic best friend Janice, her beloved art teacher, and two other art-driven classmates commit suicide, all within a few weeks.
On the verge of breaking down, Lucy is committed to a mental hospital for her obsessive-compulsive behaviors. At first, she’s willing to accept help, but soon she realizes something isn’t quite right. The art room has no artwork, four of her classmates have also been committed, and a woman is stalking her.
She’s offered an experimental drug with the promise of being discharged early. Though the drug helps her OCD, it takes away everything that makes her Lucy. When she fights back, threatening to expose the hospital’s sinister secrets, the head doctor threatens to never let her go. Lucy is left with the choice of doing as she’s told in hopes of regaining her freedom, or risking her future by revealing the truth—the medication causes people to commit suicide—before they unmake everything she is.
LUCY COUNTING STARS, a YA contemporary novel, is complete at 91,000 words. Comp titles include EVERY LAST WORD by Tamara Stone and a YA version of GIRL, INTERRUPTED by Susanna Kaysen. It was selected as a manuscript for the 2017 Pitch Wars Contest and placed second in the 2018 Serendipity Literary Agency YA Discovery Contest.
I work full time as a middle school librarian. I also worked as a middle school counselor for ten years and suffer from generalized anxiety disorder. Therefore LUCY COUNTING STARS is part experience and part research.
Thank you for taking the time, and I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Kristy F. Gillespie
neicolec
3 years ago
Dear Ms. Keyes,
Since you like the nerdy stuff and also seem interested in unusual books, I’m querying you with my novel DECODING EMMA. It can be comped as WESTWORLD meets WE WERE LIARS and is a novel relevant in the #MeToo era. Chosen for PitchWars 2017, DECODING EMMA is 75,000 word YA contemporary with speculative elements and series potential.
Prototype cyborg Delta has one hundred days to pass as human, or she’ll be dismantled. To accomplish her mission, she’s been given an AI built on the memories of a dead teen named Emma. The Emma AI is more than a program, though; it’s Delta’s guide, her confidante, and the equivalent of her soul.
But the Emma AI is broken and having an existential crisis. Instead of helping Delta learn to act human, the AI begins sabotaging their mission. On top of that, Delta discovers her creators are keeping secrets from her: she’s not the only teen cyborg they’ve made. She has a competitor and only the winning cyborg will be allowed to survive.
Threatened from the inside and the outside, Delta explores the dead girl’s past, trying to help the Emma AI accept its fate so it will work with her. But the more she unravels the mystery of Emma, the more she uncovers her own dark and twisted relationship to the girl—knowledge that makes Delta question whether she even has the right to exist
I’m an active member of PNWA. When I’m not writing about the troubles of imaginary characters, I spend time with my family of six and I work, doing digital marketing, building websites, and writing boring—but effective—non-fiction.
I understand you are looking for middle grade filled with humor and heart, and peopled with unique characters. With that in mind, I’m pleased to offer FAUX REAL for your consideration. This contemporary caper is complete at 42,000 words.
Twelve-year-old Tru Diaz craves popularity enough to chase fashion trends and wear pleather cowboy boots in blistering Las Vegas heat. But it’s tough to fit in when your parents moonlight as Elvis and Marilyn Monroe impersonators. Things go downhill fast when her crush shows up at her family’s struggling pawn shop. Tru attempts to impress him by taking out Elvis’s mortuary toe-tag, but when she’s not looking someone swipes it off the counter. The tag’s owner, who looks and talks like a mobster, is coming to redeem it in six days.
To keep her family from bankruptcy, Tru must track down the big-ticket pawn—even if it means crashing casinos and facing her fear of Elvi (in the plural) at the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll World Convention. She’s shocked by who stole the tag and why. However, to do the right thing means she might be forever banished to the loser lunchroom table.FAUX REAL is OCEANS 11—at ElvisCon. It explores how in a world filled with fakes, not being true to yourself is the greatest deception of all.
My experience as a journalist includes publishing more than 350 articles in national and regional magazines, and five novelty science books for children. A 2017 Pitchwars alum, I’m also a member of SCBWI where I oversee communications and edit KiteTales newsletter for the Rocky Mountain Region.
Claire
3 years ago
Dear Ms. Keyes,
Lucy Carranza isn’t Lucy’s real name. She’s hiding from a terrorist organization called the Legion, along with her mother, who used to work for the CIA. Meanwhile, her older brother is training to join the fight against the Legion at a spy school called the Abraham Institute.
Except Lucy doesn’t know any of this.
For her protection, she’s raised to believe they’re a normal family in Manhattan, and her brother simply goes to another prestigious (read: pretentious) preparatory school. But when she finds out she’s supposed to go to Abraham, too, she shuts her mother out before she can explain their family’s secrets. Lucy’s only concern is to stay in the city, go to a school without prepsters, and be with her best friend and forever crush, Nick. Until the Legion finds them, and her mother disappears.
Lucy learns their lives have been a lie, and until her mother is found and the Legion is stopped, she cannot return to New York or Nick. Begrudgingly, she goes to Abraham to learn how to protect herself; but there’s no guarantee the Legion won’t keep looking for her. She must find a way to protect her real identity in a school for espionage–on top of making new friends, learning Krav Maga, and surviving a merciless French teacher–while the CIA does its job to return her mother to safety. Except they don’t, and Lucy discovers that she isn’t the only student with a family member missing at the hands of the Legion.
Convinced a greater conspiracy is at hand, Lucy and her new spy friends embark on a mission of their own to save her mom and expose the truth behind the Legion’s ties to Abraham.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Claire
Lisa
3 years ago
YA CONT
Sixteen-year-old Tess Malleck is convinced she’s responsible for her parents’ estranged marriage and is desperate to get them back together. She retreats to Silver Head, a river town where her family used to spend summer vacations with her grandparents, believing her parents will follow her there. They don’t. When she finds out a local shop owner is threatening to knock down the castle where her parents were engaged seventeen years ago, it’s too much for Tess to lose in one summer.
Tess is ready to protect the castle at all costs. Using a hidden painting, obituaries, and river folklore that may or may not be true, Tess unravels a link between the shop owner’s son, Ryan, a boy she’s grown unexpectedly close to, and the family that abandoned the castle years ago. Tess realizes finding out more about the castle’s history might be the key to saving it. But while trespassing, she and Ryan are caught by the castle’s vengeful caretaker. Forced to choose between preserving the past and embracing the present, Tess strikes a deal with the caretaker, foolishly believing if she can save the romantic relic, her world will stop falling apart.
WHAT DREAMS MAY COME TRUE is an 85,000-word YA contemporary fantasy that will appeal to readers of Maggie Stiefvater’s richly mythological THE SCORPIO RACES and THE RAVEN CYCLE and Laini Taylor’s lyrical DAUGHTER OF SMOKE AND BONE series. I am querying as an #ownvoices author fascinated with the intersection of world mythologies and am querying you because of your #MSWL interest in friendship breakups, which is key to this story.
Forget fitting in with her rural Colorado town, orphaned sixteen-year-old Rasmi would rather be singing to the stars and hearing them sing back, conversing about the myths and legends that show up in her dreams, and about how those dreams sometimes come true. It’s exhilarating—at least until the nightmare that kills her best friend’s mom.
Rasmi doesn’t know if she’s the one creating the dreams or if they’re premonitions but when a raging dream tornado devastates her hometown, she can’t stay quiet anymore. With the help of her best friend, who doesn’t know the whole truth, and mysterious advice from the stars, Rasmi discovers she comes from Ama, a world of people who create dreams in people’s minds and feed off the dreamer’s emotions. When the tyrant king of Ama uses the power of dreams to rebuild his world at the expense of Earth, Rasmi must learn how to use myths and memories collected with knowledge only she has to root out the king’s vulnerabilities and save both worlds.
My debut novel of historical fiction, WATERMARK: A NOVEL OF THE MIDDLE AGES, was published by HarperCollins/Avon A. I have published a number of short stories and essays, was a founding co-editor of the literary journal flashquake, and hold an MFA in Creative Writing. I have also served multiple times as the Historical Novel Society of North America’s Conference Chair, and am a member of the Author’s Guild, SCBWI and RWA.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Vanitha Sankaran
Katie
3 years ago
Dear Emily S. Keyes,
I am seeking representation for my YA fantasy TOUCHED WITH LIGHT (94k words), which blends survival with an exploration of identity and friendship that I think you’ll enjoy.
When hell and home are indistinguishable, only the most desperate creature survives.
In a world where deceits are traded like common currency, heiress Whitney is desperate to ally with the High Princess, the only person who could free her from the mother that nearly extinguished Whitney’s light magic. But when Whitney’s mother learns of her plans, she is exiled from the country and shipped off to a foreign land called Sefate.
A monster masquerading as a god, Sefate’s heretical tyrant doesn’t believe in smothering magic – he plans to eliminate its users entirely. Desperate to conceal her power and blend in with the land’s mortals, she realizes she isn’t the only deviant around and forms a rocky relationship with Roy, a not-quite-human amnesiac.
Sefate’s arcane secrets are slowly revealed as the pair navigate forbidden lands and uncover a statue of the island’s long-lost leader, which tugs at Whitney’s magic. The island’s native inhabitants, magic-users repressed by the tyrant, learn of Whitney’s power and recruit her and Roy for the grim war threatening to devour Sefate. The line between “human” and “not” is blurred when the fighting begins, and Whitney must decide between saving herself and using her light magic to prevent genetic cleansing.
TOUCHED WITH LIGHT mixes the self-discovery, magic, and female independence of Leigh Bardugo’s SHADOW AND BONE and Kristin Cashore’s GRACELING, and will appeal to fans of FOREST OF A THOUSAND LANTERNS by Julie C. Dao.
I graduated from the University of Oregon with a bachelor’s degree in English in June 2017, and am a full time writer and BookTuber.
Thank you for your consideration.
Alex Borns-Weil
3 years ago
Dear Ms. Keyes:
In your search for books with humor and heart, please consider WISTERIA (complete at 53,000 words), a middle grade fantasy told from alternating perspectives. It would appeal to readers who enjoyed the fairy world of Small Persons with Wings, and the personal journey of The Tiger Rising.
Ten-year-old Sophie is more inclined to fight than fantasize, but when she discovers a fairy realm hidden among the fronds of a neglected wisteria vine, she thinks she’s found the perfect escape from grief. She dreams of finding a fairy family to adopt her—anything to avoid feeling the loss of her mama. But the boy in the first floor apartment crushes her efforts to woo the fairies by crushing the bowers she builds for them and snatching their wings.
Quimsey, nephew of the fairy queen, feels the weight of the Wisterian realm on his shoulders. With the queen drowning her worries in wisteria wine, no one else will take action against the wing-snatching, vine-wrecking boy. If Quimsey can’t drive him away, Wisteria will remain on permanent lockdown and the fairies will starve. When all his efforts end in disaster, the only option left is to defy the fairy code and join forces with Sophie.
When the wing-snatcher’s father ends up being a greater threat to the vine than his son, Sophie convinces Quimsey that the only way to stop the destruction is to turn the boy into an ally. But to do that, she must find a way to empathize with this wretched boy—and face her own grief in the process.
I am a member of SCBWI, the International Literacy Association, and the Writers’ Loft in Sherborn, Massachusetts. In addition to writing and tending my own wisteria vine, I teach reading and writing as a literacy specialist for grades 3-8 in Brookline, Massachusetts. Thank you for your consideration.
Yours truly,
Alexandra Borns-Weil
Rebecca
3 years ago
Dear Ms. Keyes:
When Willow Nevarez, age 16, accidentally falls through a magical portal with her best friend Aella, she’s more concerned with keeping Aella alive than she is returning home. That’s just how it is when your best friend is Fate’s Champion. But Willow’s arrival in a world that was never hers could have deadly consequences in MIRRORS FOR THE LOST, a 72,000 word YA fantasy blending the concept of The Rest of Us Just Live Here with the adventure of The Girl at Midnight.
Upon their arrival, Willow quickly discovers staying safe in this new realm is no easy task. Nephuran – the conqueror son of the first magic-gifted human – has spent centuries in a sealed tomb as the last relic of Verdantia’s violent, brutal past. Desperate to cheat the fate that promises his permanent end at Aella’s hands, Nephuran is manipulating everyone in his grasp. Unfortunately for him, the natural order is clear: no one from Verdantia can alter fate.
Willow’s arrival, and the blank slate of her destiny, could change everything should it be discovered. As the girls gather allies and search desperately for a way to destroy Nephuran for good, an unexpected magical intervention becomes Willow’s ticket out of the role of moral support and into the front lines. With the true power to forge her own destiny just under the surface, nothing will stop her from fighting the darkness eager to swallow them all. Little does anyone know, that may be exactly what Nephuran is hoping for.
This is the first of a planned duology, though it stands on its own as a complete adventure, and is ready for your consideration.
Thank you for your time,
Rebecca Cadiz
Michelle
3 years ago
Dear Emily S Keyes,
PLANET ROVER is a high-paced, 70k YA space opera. Underdog Lia proves gender can’t be branded by crossdressing as a space soldier to pay for her sis’s lung transplantation, only to discover her new employers might be responsible for the delay in delivery.
When Lia’s mum bails with the family’s hospital savings, Lia must turn to the dangerous occupation of planet-exploring to keep her sister on life support. The job won’t only take her far from Earth and her dying sister—it also promises a life in jail if the all-man crew discovers they’ve got a woman onboard.
Crossdressing in space and struggling to avoid her young, handsome and far too observant general turns out to be the least of her worries. Lia uncovers some nasty secrets about the space soldiers, secrets that don’t just affect her sister’s transplantation, but everyone in desperate need of new organs. The deeper Lia digs, the clearer it becomes that she’ll jeopardize more than exposure to save the only family she has left—she’ll risk the lives of newfound friends in the process. Including the life of the general she certainly didn’t plan to fall for.
Emily Paxman
3 years ago
Seventeen-year-old Lizzie Logan is proud to inform you that she is the freakin’ best BFF any girl could ask for. That party at Vivian Grange’s house last Friday? Lizzie hired the caterer and picked out the tablecloths. That five-foot-nothing girl informing you that Vivian Grange has 100% dumped your ass? Pure Lizzie.
And that girl hiding in the bathroom, jabbing a needle full of insulin into her leg during lunch hour? Also Lizzie. Always Lizzie.
Playing back-up to the school’s Queen Bee suits Lizzie fine. Whether she’s helping Viv survive a wardrobe meltdown or journaling every carb she’s eaten for her doctor, Lizzie thrives on making order out of chaos. Until chaos shows up in the form of Adam Klein. Adam is smart, considerate, geek-chic cute… and the next target of Viv’s affection.
After years of hiding in Viv’s shadow, Lizzie’s got her work cut out for her if she wants Adam to notice her instead. The girls swear they won’t let Adam ruin their friendship. But with tensions high at home over health insurance, plus Viv’s so-not-over-it ex-boyfriend trying to force this triangle to become a love quadrilateral, there might be more chaos in store than even the best of very best friends can survive.
Complete at 72,000 words, SWEET PEE features a Type 1 Diabetic heroine in a plot that’s ARCHIE comics meets the work of Jenny Han. SWEET PEE was featured in the agent showcase of Pitch Wars 2017.
I am a recent graduate of Chatham University’s Masters of Fine Arts in creative writing program, where I specialized in writing for children and youth. \
Thank you for your consideration,
Emily
Christina
3 years ago
I thought you would be a wonderful match for my YA SciFi novel, THE RUNNERS. Told in dual, third-person POVs and with its diverse, ensemble cast, it’s THE WALKING DEAD meets MAZE RUNNER, perfect for fans of franchises like WORLD WAR Z and THE LAST OF US.
400 years after the first Pandemic season destroyed civilization, the only safe place from the infected is behind walls. Only a few brave souls risk going beyond them to trade for their city’s survival: the Runners.
Seventeen-year-old Rook Haxley can’t imagine leaving the safety of her village’s massive steel walls. Not since she watched as her parents were exiled outside them with the other infected villagers six years ago, leaving her to care for her four siblings. But when her older brother, the village’s lead Runner and their family’s breadwinner, is injured and a blood infection threatens his life, Rook volunteers to take his place.
Even if it means confronting the cannibalistic shells of her parents outside the walls.
Hundreds of miles across the wastelands of the Wandering, in the neighboring stone-walled city of Bardeen, resources and food are plentiful. They have the medicine Rook needs to save her brother’s life. But when disaster strikes Bardeen and their fields of crops are destroyed, all of the walled cities in the Territory face starvation. Suddenly, more than just her brother’s life is at stake.
Rook’s team of Runners must work together with Bardeen’s, led by the charismatic ladies’ man, Beau Galloway. To save their cities, they’ll risk the longest journey yet to the city of Lux, which no one has heard from in over a decade. Within Lux’s enormous domed walls technology has survived: technology that could save them all.
If they can survive the tens of thousands of infected in their path to get there.
THE RUNNERS, a debut with series potential, is complete at 87,000 words and finished after receiving my MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University in Bath, England.
THE DEVIL’S WALL is an 80,000-word retelling of the Anastasia legend, narrated by a hot-tempered communist girl who unwittingly saves the princess’s life. It is a YA alternate history set right after the Russian Revolution, and will appeal to readers of Elizabeth Wein’s Code Name Verity.
Sixteen-year-old Evgenia is poor and pissed off about it. Her father’s dead, her brother’s been crippled, and her mother is breaking her back to save their farm. When communists come to their village preaching revolution, Evgenia’s one of the first to join the Party. But the Tsarists won’t give up power easily. That means war.
While civil war rages, Evgenia drives her horse-drawn wagon from one Siberian town to another, delivering messages for the Party and trying to earn a few kopecks to support her family. But in 1918 Russia, there’s not much money to be made. So when Anna, a beaten, half-crazed bourgeois girl asks to buy a ride, Evgenia agrees to smuggle her out of communist territory.
Only it turns out Anna knows a secret that could destroy the communist cause. A fearsome Red Army commander is after her, and once he sees the girls together, he tries to kill them both. Evgenia has no choice but to flee with Anna, and the girls start relying on each other to survive. Hunted by those she considered her heroes, and seeking safety with her enemies, Evgenia will ultimately have to decide whether the life of one innocent girl is worth more than the revolution she so passionately believes in.
APM
3 years ago
Greetings Emily!
ixteen-year-old Ryn is a wingless one, a fairy without wings or magic. Those like her are barely citizens, without the same rights as other fairies. She is assigned as a servant at a school, where she picks up after the stuck-up heirs of fairy nobility and hauls iron that sickens winged fairies when they touch it. Only the handsome Damiel Rakir is kind to her, but Ryn knows better than to grow close to a true fairy, and a member of a disgraced noble family at that.
Ryn is able to peer through the portals that criss-cross the fairy realm into a strange, iron-laced world, a place full of wingless just like her where no one serves. But the royal family finds her when she accidentally crosses over into the wingless-filled city. The world she’s seen is secret, and the power to cross over forbidden under penalty of death to all but a select few. A wingless like Ryn doesn’t qualify. No one outside the royal family’s inner circle can know the truth—wingless aren’t born, but taken, stolen as infants from their families on the other side of the portal to do the dirty work of the realm the fairies can’t.
Ryn turns to Damiel, the only one willing to help, and he reveals a plot long in the making to weaken the Fae’s rule. If Ryn hones her power over portals and helps Damiel’s family rebel against the Fae, she could win new rights for wingless like her—and maybe even find a way to stop more children from being taken.
Wingless ones have two choices–serve the realm or die. But Ryn has seen a better world, and she has no intention of doing either.
Wingless is a YA reverse portal fantasy complete at 80k words, and is a stand-alone with series potential.
Loie
3 years ago
Dear Ms. Keyes,
Evren has a secret: she can navigate the sea without need of a compass.
Despite being able to chart a course for any destination, seventeen-year-old Evren is jobless and lives in a dingy boat near an impoverished island far away from the rich capital of Tarkais. The mainland is off-limits to her due to cursed invisible pirates – the Naja – who roam the beaches, looking to kill her. When Captain Sa’av arrives in desperate need of a sea-navigator, Evren sees her chance to leave Tarkais and the murderous Naja behind. Sa’av needs someone to guide him to the sinister Sea Queen’s lair to obtain a cure for an illness spreading through the capital, a lair that is impossible to find. Except for Evren.
But the moment they start the journey, the Sea Queen begins threatening her over the wind, and Evren realizes she may be in over her head. Along with the threat of sea serpents and water nymphs, she’ll have to fend off growing feelings for the handsome and eccentric Captain. She cannot go falling in love when she plans to leave Tarkais behind. If she fails on this trip, she won’t be able to escape the Naja. Worse still, she’ll be the reason why Captain Sa’av couldn’t obtain an antidote to an epidemic spreading across Tarkais.
Evren faces a tough decision. She can answer the call of a secret magical past and stay to help the man she’s come to love, or she can leave Tarkais and the murderous Naja behind forever, securing her future.
Winter’s Cradle is a YA Parananormal novel of approximately 85,000 words
In an alternative future dominated by ice and snow, encroaching glaciers force fifteen-year-old Ayra and her isolated community to embark on a journey to find a new home.
Ayra’s ghostly-pale skin, white hair, and light-coloured eyes, inherited from her deceased mother, have always set her apart. Unable to discover much about her mother’s life prior to her emergence from the supposedly uninhabitable Lostlands, she instead focuses on fitting in. So when latent, clairvoyant powers begin to emerge, Ayra is horrified. Not only do the visions petrify her, but she has no idea how to control them. Then one of them reveals that like her mother before her, a gang-boss from the equator belt is pursuing her.
Having encountered and fought off slavers, the villagers are then ambushed by the equator-belt gang. Ayra evades capture, but becomes separated, leaving her with only one option—to go in search of her mother’s people, where she hopes to find the answers to who and what she really is.
As the secrets of her heritage are revealed, she is faced with a grandmother who believes she destined to follow in her own Samanka footsteps and become a walker between the worlds. But Ayra, reluctant to give up her freedom, is not so sure. After what she was shown during a soul journey, she is convinced her path lies in a fate that will take more than her freedom. So when the equator men attack again, she confronts them, determined to put an end to the needless deaths, but fate hasn’t quite finished with her yet.
Barbara
3 years ago
Dear Ms. Keyes:
This story highlights family, friendship, humor, and when you least expect it, being able to do things you never thought possible. Mayhem in Mapleton is crafted for middle-grade readers and runs almost 26,000 words. In addition, there is an exciting sequel in the works but from a different point of view.
Sammy, Jenna, and Emmett love to go exploring. Actually, it’s one of their all-time favorite activities. Who wouldn’t enjoy investigating trees, bugs, and animal poop! While the town is in a frenzy getting ready for the high school homecoming game and parade – which are huge deals in Mapleton – the trio stumbles onto something dastardly being planned at the local Lake Neumann. From secret meetings to stakeouts, the trio fashion their own counterplot to stop the bad guys from destroying the lake… and Mapleton along with it.
Through this story, the reader will be introduced to a cast of characters including Jenna. She is one of those kids who is terrific at absolutely everything – schoolwork, sports, music – just everything. With her dark skin, bright fashionable clothes, and outstanding abilities, Jenna brings a calmness and sense of reason to the trio.
Emmett is the ‘character’ of the group. He is exceptionally funny and does impressions of people along with mimicking various sound effects – at both appropriate and inappropriate times. He travels in a wheelchair, but with few exceptions, can participate in their adventures and activities.
Sammy always means well, but his enthusiasm and school spirit have been known to cause visits to the principal’s office. His dad is a town hero having been the superstar quarterback in high school and then years later, taking over as coach. His mom, however, died three years ago. She taught middle school science and was responsible for instilling in Sammy, his love of the environment, animals, and adventure.
Thanks so much for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Barbara Miller
Lisa
3 years ago
Dear Ms. Keyes,
THE SOUPERKID CHRONICLES: WORD SOUP is a humorous 54,000-word MG novel with a Holes-meets-Origami Yoda vibe and a geeky protagonist reminiscent of The Losers Club.
Everyone dreams of superpowers. Just not this kind.
Defending state Word Bee champion Loïc Highstreet has a secret. He can make alphabet soup “talk.” But when the CanDo Soup Company phases out the soup he needs to train for competitions, Loïc has to spill his story to get it back in production.
Now he’s Souperkid, the company’s popular new mascot. Loïc’s unexpected celebrity upsets the sixth-grade hierarchy, and alphas Brian, Rob, and Perry (a.k.a. BuRP) are determined to bring him down. They deploy the ultimate weapon: Rob’s devastating cartoons on Perry’s drone-like paper planes.
When Loïc manages to survive their campaign of ridicule and recruit enough teammates for the upcoming Word Bee season, BuRP joins forces with Loïc’s underhanded rivals at another school. They implicate him in a scandal that costs him everything: his place on the Word Bee team, his state title, and his position as Souperkid.
Little do any of them know, Loïc will be the only one who knows what to do when one of the bullies suffers a dangerous allergic reaction. Wielding his Epi-Pen, the ex-pseudo-superhero morphs into a real-deal sixth-grade hero with the grace to save his tormentor and the power to change how the bullies see him—and themselves.
On the surface, Word Soup spoofs superhero tropes. Beneath the humor, our hero struggles against the powerful forces of celebrity, marketing, and image-making that can make it hard to accept yourself as you are and be recognized for your true talents, strength, and decency.
After a first career teaching language and literature, I now write full time for children. I am an active member of SCBWI and have published in Highlights High Five.
In DAWN OF THE GODS, an MG fantasy adventure at 66,000 words, ten-year-old Odysseus yearns to escape his boring life and become a hero. Learning lessons about family, loyalty, and true heroism, Odysseus finds his choices will reset the balance of power among both men and gods.
Working his father’s fields on a remote island where the “civilized” Akhaians and the rural perioikoi always seem at odds with each other, he’s elated when news arrives that Iason is assembling a crew to find the Golden Fleece. When his father answers the call, Odysseus joins him on the dangerous journey across Greece, confronting enemies both human and divine. But the bonds between them become dangerously frayed when they meet the legendary Theseus, who wants Odysseus to be his apprentice. Odysseus must choose between the father he loves but fears, and the charismatic man who promises to teach him everything he wants to learn, but whose mysterious motives grow increasingly sinister.
Set in a Bronze Age world soon to be plunged into global war, DAWN OF THE GODS has the history of Song of Achilles, and the boys’ adventure of the Young James Bond and Ranger’s Apprentice books. With series potential, it tells the origin stories behind the well-known mortals and gods, which is very different from the more contemporary Percy Jackson books. My work has previously been published in KGB Bar & Lit, Morpheus Tales, Crime Factory, Forge Journal and Mobius. Under a pseudonym, I have also published a crime novel and many short stories. I hope DAWN OF THE GODS interests you, and I look forward to hearing from you.
Yours,
John Radosta
Nicole
3 years ago
Dear agent
Teen bounty hunters Annora and Hellion are scratching a living in the forsaken streets of The Borderlands, still bruising from the bounty that got away.
Annora’s maimed hand is a constant reminder that Gabian Zola—renowned outlaw, killer, and feared Northman— is leaving a string of female victims in his wake because she failed to stop him. Unwilling to return home until they right their wrongs, the girls bloody their hands night and day to prove they’re a force to be reckoned with.
When they learn that Gabian has come out of hiding to compete in an upcoming blood tournament with a prize that could let them carve out a life of their own choosing, Annora and Hellion decide to risk their chances of survival and pursue him once again. Recruiting a runaway girl with her own cryptic bounty notice, they set out across the savage desert to finally claim their prize.
During their journey, tempers fray, water skins run dry, and Hellion finds herself drawn to Carina, despite her dangerous secrets. The girls join a dozen mercenaries and outlaws to joust, race, and duel, all the while plotting to capture their target. But when Gabian begins to methodically pick the competitors off one by one, it’s clear that Annora and Hellion are more the hunted than the hunters.
Surrounded by enemies, with secrets unravelling, the friends must fight to survive a world driven wild with bloodlust.
CHASING BLOOD & SCOUNDRELS is complete at 93,000 words, and is a young adult fantasy novel told in multiple points of view. It is standalone with series potential.
THE VALIANT meets Mackenzi Lee’s #BygoneBadassBroads, CHASING BLOOD & SCOUNDRELS features a f/f relationship and may appeal to fans of Susan Dennard and Ryan Graudin.
This manuscript was selected as a 2016 Pitch Wars novel.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Nicole Alana Brake
Tiffini
3 years ago
THE CHOICE is Young Adult fantasy and is 65,811 words..
Growing up as the heir of the kingdom is not an easy task- especially when you are seventeen and your over-protective father forbids you to leave the palace grounds. All Angelei wants to do is to be the best princess she can be for the country of Seton, but the only thing she knows about her land and life outside the walls of the palace, that exists after a war that almost destroyed the world, is what she has been taught by her tyrant of a father.
When her father declares that The Choice, the event where she must choose a husband from suitors he has picked out for her, she feels overwhelmed and trapped. The day before it officially starts, Angelei discovers a new hidden passageway that leads to a small poverty-stricken town. There she meets a boy, Emery, who shows her how corrupt her Father’s teachings have been, struggles to find the real truth of what happened to Seton and why her father has lied about the past. She can either go against her father’s wishes and continue to search for the true answers and run the risk of the wrath and furry of her father or continue without a second thought and be married off to a noble, allowing others to dictate what she knows. There are secret codes, covered up deaths, and a plot for her choices to be taken away forever.
Sandi van
3 years ago
Dear Emily,
Born in Vietnam War during the war and adopted by American soldiers, sixteen-year-old Anna knows little about her birth parents, and her adoptive mom left without an explanation shortly after they arrived in the United States. She and Dad are a two-man crew, ready to take on the world as soon as he returns from his final deployment. But when Anna finds an old trunk with letters to her father, she must decide whether to remain loyal to the one constant in her life, or finally learn the truth about her blurry past.
Anna doesn’t realize that the trunk once belonged to her grandma Francesca. During the Great Depression sixty years earlier, it accompanied then fifteen-year-old Francesca on a journey to reunite with her father who had been forced to leave their small town to search for work. But when she arrives, she learns her father is living with a new family, and there is an undercurrent of illegal activity that pious Francesca cannot reconcile. She must learn to accept the choices of those around her or end up alone.
LEAVE IF YOU MUST, a 67,000 word YA historical told in alternating POV and inspired in part by my grandmother’s memoirs, explores what it means to be a family and how tragedy can tear us apart or bring us closer together.
I am a member of Pennwriters and serve as membership coordinator for Buffalo-Niagara Children’s Writers and Illustrators (BNCWI). My YA verse novel, SECOND IN COMMAND, will be published by Rosen in January 2019.
Thank you for your consideration
Katie Mastin
3 years ago
Hi Ms. Keyes,
Thank you so much for taking the time to comment on all these queries. It is much appreciated!!
Complete at 68,000 words, THE PAINLESS PLACE is a dual-POV, middle grade novel about the power of sacrifice, the importance of family, and the idea that a world without pain might be a surprisingly painful place. The novel will appeal to readers reaching for a historical fantasy who like the adventure of Maiya Williams’ Golden Hour History Detective series and the balance between light and dark in Gregory Maguire’s Egg and Spoon.
Thirteen-year-old Joan Lang is furious when her father tells her they are moving to Istanbul to search for the lost treasure of Constantinople—the Ruby Dagger. With little league baseball tryouts less than a month away and her mother’s death still fresh in her memory, he could not have chosen a crueler time. Just when Joan thinks her life cannot get any worse, her father suddenly vanishes from his new office at the Topkapi Palace museum. Much to her dismay, Joan discovers that that he is still hot on The Ruby Dagger’s trail…in the year 1485!
Unfortunately, Joan’s father is not the only one looking for the dagger. The blade’s original owner, the deathless Shah Zoltan, has followed the professor back in time. With the help of a fez-wearing history wonk named Mert, an Albanian soldier-in-training with a secret vendetta, and a poem that contains the clue to unlock the knife’s power, Joan embarks on a whirlwind journey to recover the dagger and rescue her father from Shah Zoltan. As they travel from the crooked streets of Constantinople to the mountains of Northern Albania, the rescuers are caught up in the Albanian rebellion against the Ottoman Empire. As they struggle to navigate the armed revolt, evade Shah Zoltan, and find Joan’s father, Joan discovers that the Ruby Dagger and its power to take away pain may be the key to all three. But the knife’s power comes at a price, and she must decide how far she is willing to go to master the blade.
I am a graduate of the University of Virginia’s English department and a member of SCWBI. My most recent short story was published in the anthology, A Cup of Culture and a Pinch of Crisis, and my first picture book, The Adventurers, will be published by TalesMag Press in the autumn of 2018. I am currently working on my second MG novel, Case Files of an Invisible Lunatic.
Thank you very much for your time, and I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Katie Mastin
SusanAntony
3 years ago
Dear Ms. Keyes,
High school senior Ace McAlister is the family peacekeeper. She struggles to keep their secrets, while taking care of her autistic brother and “hanging out” with Cameron, the son of a close family friend, even though he’s possessive and, frankly, a little creepy. Despite all this, while they’re on a vacation in Cherokee, North Carolina with her and Cameron’s family, Ace’s mom falls off the wagon. Fed up, Ace rebels and sneaks off to the Cherokee Indian Reservation. There she meets John Spears, an eighteen-year-old tribe member with family issues that rival her own.
John is smart, really hot, and bound for Duke University in the fall. But all that doesn’t change the fact that his mother deserted the family or that he lives with a bossy grandmother determined to keep him on the Rez. Though hanging on to his dream isn’t easy, John is determined to follow through with his plans to go to law school. He’s intent on flying solo, too. That is until he nearly rams his truck into a car carrying a blue-eyed girl named Ace. And with a name like Ace, how can a guy go wrong?
Ace and John soon discover they have more in common than messed-up mothers and bigoted family members. They both love horses and the wilderness, and John gets along well with Ace’s brother. But when Cameron finds out about them, he kidnaps Ace, stages Ace’s and his own disappearance, leaving clues behind that implement John. It’s then Ace and John must fight to save their lives—and their love.
I attended WriteOnCon Convention and enjoyed your presentation. I especially liked how hard and long you worked to sell your client’s manuscripts. I hope you will enjoy CHEROKEE SUMMER, a dual POV YA Romance complete at 84000 words. It recently took first place in the New Adult/Young Adult division of the MORWA Romance Writer’s Gateway to the Best 2017. Along with online research of the Indigenous people, I have visited the Cherokee Indian Reservation in North Carolina several times, the last time staying on the reservation to attend a Powwow. My autistic character is loosely based on my own fifteen-year-old son, so I’m personally aware of the challenges autistic people and their families face in our neurotypical world. I also hired a First Nations sensitivity reader from “Writing in the Margins” who specializes in Indigenous culture to read my novel and edited my work according to her suggestions.
Thank you for your consideration.
Brenda Marie
3 years ago
Thank you for this pitching opportunity. I appreciate your time and attention.
Dear Ms. Keyes,
Months ago, a solar electromagnetic pulse fried the U.S. grid and motorized transport. Most adults in eighteen-year-old Keno Simms’s family were stranded away from home, and, without their mother’s supervision, his younger sister got pregnant then died in a tragic accident. Keno blames himself and is crushed with grief. Now his missing family has returned to pile on with judgment and accusations.
Bleak reality forced Keno to grow up fast and drove him to marry Alma, who shares a similar grief. When she becomes pregnant as well, he’s both elated and terrified. Still he persists in holding out hope for his family’s survival. Keno must find a way to keep Alma healthy despite scarce water, dwindling supplies, and the crop-killing Texas heat. With no medical care, people he loves die prematurely. Hungry, thirsty outsiders continually haunt the neighborhood, trying to take what little they have and leave Keno’s family to starve.
If Keno can repair his grandmother’s dead solar electric panels, he and his family could preserve the food they grow in their formerly-urban subdivision. With Alma’s help, he must work through the pressure and grief that plague him so that he can save the crops and fix the solar, and can make a safe home for Alma and their child. But gully-washing storms and desperate home invaders could thwart Keno’s plans.
At 121,000 words, IF THE LIGHT SHOULD COME is a New Adult Speculative novel, an environmental dystopia, similar to Mindy McGinnis’s NOT A DROP TO DRINK.
Thank you for your consideration.
Wishing you well,
Brenda Marie Smith
Carey Blankenship
3 years ago
STONEHAVEN is a contemporary fantasy MG complete at 45,000 words that will appeal to those looking for the heart and mystery of the Greenglass House by Kate Milford, the creepy world-building and an all-female cast of Netflix’s Stranger Things, and the concept of the characters from Steven Universe.
Em thinks of her mother’s gemstones as a burden. None of the locals in their small southern town of Gavenston ever visit the store her mom owns, except for during the Andrew Wright festival. For one weekend only, treasure hunters flock from all over the world for a chance to find Wright’s hidden treasure. Only then do her mother’s sparkling rocks bring in money, but it’s never enough to pull Em and her mother out of debt. Em’s best friend Gail isn’t faring much better, as she watches her family grow farther and farther apart after the disappearance of her brother three years ago. For a town full of legends and, supposedly, a treasure, there isn’t much left for them to believe in.
Then one of the gemstones starts to move and seems to have a mind of its own, especially when it leads them to the first key to Andrew Wright’s treasure. Suddenly, they find themselves face to face in a web of dangerous puzzles designed by the gemstones. And when they receive threatening notes from an angry treasure hunter, Em and Gail realize that solving the puzzle means risking everything, including their lives. But if they succeed, Em and her mom can keep the gemstone store, and Gail might finally be able to find her brother. Now that they believe in the treasure, it’s time to believe in themselves.
Kathy
3 years ago
Ms. Keyes,
CANTAR THE MAGIC GUITAR is first in the MELODY’S MUSICAL ADVENTURES early chapter book series. The word count is around 5300 words. Melody plays with friends and comes home for dinner but goes on after secret school adventures with a magical musical instrument, eventually finding an orchestra.
Eight year old Melody finds an old guitar, but doesn’t know that it is magical. Melody meets the neighborhood kids at a clubhouse and it’s boys vs. girls. She loses a bike race, cries after a boy throws her guitar on the ground, but happily discovers the mystery of the strings. Cantar, Spanish for song, was created by a Spanish magician and brought over to America on the Mayflower. As she strums, Cantar takes Melody to another world. They land on a tall sailing ship in a stormy sea then find a puppy onboard. Melody brings him home and her parents let her keep him and have guitar lessons. The last pages show chords so readers can learn the guitar. The next characters in the series are Giocare, the Italian violin (giocare is Italian for play) and Doux, the French flute (doux is French for sweet).
MELODY’S MUSICAL ADVENTURES would fit into the Scholastic Branches series of illustrated chapter books and it is similar to the Zoey and Sassafras series. A comparable TV show would be THE MAGIC SCHOOL BUS and LITTLE AMADEUS.
In addition to the Melody series, I’m writing my WWII aviation script, CLIPPER, into a novel. I’ve also written a non-fiction ebook, BIKINI HIP REPLACEMENT. I love flying and married a pilot.
Seventeen-year-old Riley Conrad needs only two things: a hot cup of well-roasted coffee and her trusty Bic pen. Since her dad left (a day she’s happily lost all memory of) Riley spends her after-school hours in a small, Czech-owned cafe, where she disappears in the pages of her notebook–until her heartbroken sister slips back into her life.
Jo’s return to their Michigan home brings painful flashes of lost memories, but Riley’s quickly forgetting what it was like to live without her, and determines to get her to stay. With Jo’s lying husband trying to win her back, though, she’s in for a fight. And it doesn’t help when Riley reveals she knew about the other woman long before Jo did. So when she meets Hall, a college boy with a past as complex as his case file is thick, she wants to tell Jo everything. But when she comes home, Jo’s gone. And it’s her fault.
Riley’s burgeoning memories might explain why she did what she did, but if she tells Jo the whole truth about that day, how could she ever forgive her? On the other hand, retreating to the safety of her notebook feels suddenly impossible. Sure, no one can touch her there, but is that really what she wants?
WHAT WE WERE MISSING is a contemporary young adult novel complete at 62,000 words. I currently live in Budapest with my husband and three sons. I have degrees in English literature and school counseling, and enjoy finding creative ways to combine the two.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Delara
3 years ago
Dear Emily,
Eighteen-year-old Ren isn’t much of a rule breaker. He prefers to be home in his workshop on the surface, tuning up house bots with his AI friend, Stray. Instead, he’s on Cascade—the station orbiting his planet—his twin sister’s life threatened by rebels, and a gun in his hand. No, if there’s a more horrible day, Ren can’t think of it.
But this space mechanic’s day is about to get worse. On the edge of his star system lies Seorsum Station, and in twenty-one hours its people will die when its energy source runs dry. The only way to save them is with a drastic plan by rebels to steal Cascade’s power core. Ren has the skills to make this happen. Roped in against his will, he’s paired with Josah, a bruiser who wants to throw him out an airlock, Together they must pull off the dangerous heist, escape crooked cops, all so he can rescue his sister… and then the station starts falling apart.
As the clock runs down, in order to fix both stations, Ren must chase down and repair the chain reaction of destruction triggered by the rebels’ actions. But when the brutal truth of why they recruited him is revealed, he’ll have to decide the lengths and light years he’ll travel for his family.
FURY OF STARS is a 93k YA science fiction with gay protagonist and series potential. It will that appeal to readers of Gemina and Nyxia.
Fourteen-year-old boxer Goldis is shocked when he receives a rare opportunity to compete against a world champion. The catch? The champion is the monarchal ruler of a faraway kingdom known as Grandhilla, where children are raised as fighters.
To avoid returning to a life on the streets, Goldis accepts the offer. He then learns that he is one of twelve recruited candidates, all of whom must battle against each other in a tournament for a shot at the title. On top of that, he attracts the interest of a strangely esteemed group of cultists, who award him a magical artifact and insist that he represent them in the tournament. But Goldis is not the tallest fighter, or the bulkiest, or the most renowned—why bet on him?
The tournament is his chance to prove himself. It’s a chance to be more than the lonely, punch-drunk kid at the end of the block. He enters the ring without looking back. But in the kingdom of Grandhilla, where scoundrels wear crowns and good men go hungry, he will have to decide what he is willing to do in order to win.
GOLDIS V. THE GRANDIOSE GAME is a young adult fantasy complete at 74,000 words. It will appeal to fans of Marie Lu’s Warcross and the 1976 film Rocky.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Michael J. Richmond
Casie
3 years ago
Dear Ms. Keyes,
When 18-year-old Sara Sterling’s long-time boyfriend gives her the boot one week shy of graduation, she’s just sorry she wasn’t the one to break it off first. Problem is, she doesn’t know who the hell she is outside the confines of a relationship. After a failed rebound fling, city girl Sara opts for the last thing anyone expects—she accepts her Uncle Dean’s invitation to work at his Colorado guest ranch for the summer.
Through endless hours of grooming horses and mucking stalls, she finds unexpected solace in the barn. Just as she’s settling in, however, she makes another hasty decision—bidding on an injured, slaughter-bound horse at a local auction. There’s something familiar in Treble’s soft, brown eyes; he’s as lost as she is. Sara hopes to give him a second chance at the ranch, but to her horror, Dean insists the horse is worthless and vows to sell him at the next monthly auction.
Sara’s repressed anger resurfaces; it appears no amount of progress will change Treble’s fate. But the parallel between saving an unwanted horse and finding her identity is not lost on her. If she’s learned anything this summer, it’s that she’s capable of more than she ever believed. She must put aside blame and take the reins of her life for good. After all, there’s not just one life, but two depending on it.
Complete at 65,000 words, SEEKING SARA STERLING is a heartwarming, coming-of-age story which will appeal to fans of classic YA, such as that of Sarah Dessen, but also to those who love flawed female characters, like the ones featured in novels by Courtney Summers.
HEIRS OF SILENCE, a 92,000-word YA dark fantasy filled with creatures from Slavic mythology, Russian fairy tales, and Yiddish folklore, where RED QUEEN meets SHADOW AND BONE.
Revolutions and deposed royalty mean nothing to Toma, a seventeen-year-old orphan who is more concerned with hunting, farming, and sewing her adoptive family’s severed limbs back onto their decaying bodies. Raised by benevolent undead known as upyry, Toma’s simple existence is threatened when she finds an unconscious youth, Mikhail, in the wreckage of a hot air balloon. After reviving Mikhail, she learns he is a dethroned tsar fleeing from the revolutionary leader, Zoran, and offers Mikhail a place to hide.
To provide Zoran with proof that Mikhail was devoured by upyry, Zoran’s henchmen kidnap Toma’s undead sister. Teaming up with Mikhail to rescue her sister, Toma leaves the safety of her home for a war-torn land rife with monsters and ruthless soldiers alike. As Toma witnesses the bloody consequences of a civil war fought between magic-endowed tsarists and the superstitious lower class, it becomes increasingly difficult for her to tell which side is good and which side is evil. Horrified by the tsarists’ brutality, Toma must decide if saving her sister by restoring Mikhail to his throne is worth the destruction it may cause.
When seventeen-year-old Taylor’s brother contracts a fatal neurological virus, he’s locked in a quarantine zone and denied proper medical treatment. She smuggles black market meds to him in her bra—until she catches Kalion’s Syndrome herself.
Taylor already has epilepsy, so when the Syndrome starts corroding her nervous system, one of her seizures mutates the virus to make her generate electricity. The doctors who denied her twin brother treatment decide she’s worth their attention and imprison her in a lab. After dozens of failed tests, they tell her she’ll never be able to control her electrogenesis. Without force fields or sedatives, she’ll fry anything she touches.
But Taylor won’t spend her life trapped in a lab.
When the criminals who provided the illegal medication offer her a chance at escape, Taylor breaks out even though she risks hurting the very person she needs to save. She’ll need all of her scientific knowledge and delinquent skills to adapt to a life with her new symptoms, but ultimately Taylor must decide who she can save: her brother or herself.
SYNDROME is a young adult science fiction novel complete at 80,000 words that will appeal to fans of Scott Westerfeld’s ZEROES and Marissa Meyers’ RENEGADES. It is a standalone with series potential and was selected for Author Mentor Match, a contest hosted by published and agented young adult and middle grade authors. I have a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature and work in a public library with young adults in the metro-Atlanta area.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sarah Brubaker
THE BLADELESS SWORD, a YA Fantasy novel, is complete at 80,000 words with series potential.
The Plains was once a quiet medieval village where nothing ever happened. Then one day, sixteen-year-old Rian Abanhart, the chosen protector of The Bladeless Sword, and his family showed up and everything changed.
In a world where beautiful demons, called the Kyldranan, are taking over, the last thing anyone wants is for Rian to bring the Kyldranan’s attention, but that’s exactly what he does when a beautiful woman magically appears, and he accidentally gives away his location. Fleeing their home, the village seeks The City of Refuge, Adalia, because it is the one place where the magic is strong enough to resist the world of darkness. However, once in the city, Rian quickly learns they refuse to take in any refugees who aren’t followers of their god.
Alana is the daughter of the fallen king of the nation of Leviathan, who has sold his people over to the Kyldranan. After Alana is given against her will to the most terrible of them all, their leader, Thanos, she flees her city and heads to Adalia, a city that has already decided she isn’t one of them and therefore, not worth protecting. In Adalia, as Rian learns how to protect the hilt, he vows to protect the refugees they refuse, people like Alana, no matter the cost, even going against the Adalians and right into hands of the enemy to save them and the ones he loves. Even more unsettling, Rian begins to realize two things, one he doesn’t agree with the religion of the lost God of Light, and two, he quite possibly is the lost God of Light.
Dear Ms. Keyes,
Thank you for participating in this event.
Please consider A SMOLDERING FIRE, a completed 34,000 word middle grade fantasy about twelve-year-old Jon Bidwell, who discovers the teachers and other staff members in his school are dragons in human form.
When Jon and his friend Anna are caught eavesdropping on a staff meeting, the school custodian assures them that there’s nothing to fear from the school staff, even though they are dragons. But, he warns them, there are other dragons who live in Inner Earth, and they are intent on conquering the world. Jon realizes that even though his dad, who also knows the truth about the dragons, insists he not enter the tunnels of Earth, he needs to find a way to do just that.
Perhaps even more important, Jon finds out he has a twin sister no one bothered to tell him about. She was separated from him at birth, and his dad believes she might be a captive of the dragons in Inner Earth. All previous attempts to find her have failed. Jon is not going to let failure happen again. Armed with only their own wits, Jon and Anna learn to rely on each other as they go an adventure to save the world and find Jon’s sister.
I have the joy of teaching fifth grade students, am a member of SCBWI, and I might have a dragon living in my basement.
Dear Emily,
I read on your manuscript wish list (MSWL) that you were seeking a story about a woman running an empire, and I thought you might be interested in A THOUSAND SKIES OF BLUE, my 90,000-word YA gender-flipped retelling of Beauty and the Beast.
To end the war that claimed his brother’s life, Mutton Bolt – a failed Cleric with a deadly allergy to blue moss – must find the underground rebellion working to overthrow the reclusive Empress of Aberglyn.
For over a century, the Empress has failed to find a way to vanquish Noorland’s Ghost Warriors. The danger of total defeat, and destruction of the entire continent, creeps closer with each loss.
So when a chance arrives to become the Empress’ Scribe, Mutt seizes the opportunity to infiltrate her fortress, and attract the resistance. But his nefarious plans go up in smoke when he discovers the dangerous truth about the Empress, and the curse that’s imprisoned her for decades.
As the Empress begins to shed some of her secrets, attraction replaces his hatred. Then the Empire’s army suffers a catastrophic loss at their doorstep, and the resistance offers Mutt an agonizing choice. To save the Empire, Mutt will have to break more than the Empress’ curse. He may have to break her, and his own heart.
A THOUSAND SKIES OF BLUE will appeal to readers craving the lush worlds and antagonistic romance in Renee Ahdieh’s THE WRATH AND THE DAWN and CJ Redwine’s THE SHADOW QUEEN.
My feature writing has been published in The Boston Globe and The Washington Examiner. I am an active member of SCBWI and the Singapore Writers Group. Before repatriating to Louisiana last year, I managed the social media and press operations for the U.S. Embassy in Singapore.
Thank you in advance for your consideration.
R. Lille Moore
Dear Ms. Keyes,
Seventeen-year-old Rayne Robbins can’t keep a secret. As the FBI’s most valuable weapon, she’s been taken from her family and locked away for the past seven years, forced to use her ability to see secrets to reveal the terrible things criminals hide. But her government prison is safe. Familiar. And this alone keeps her from trying to escape.
Until the day she is forced to.
When Rayne is kidnapped from her sanctuary and on the run from the country’s most notorious hacker, her only hope is a boy named Sam, whose strangely colored eyes reveal nothing but the truth of his words. She decides to trust him, agreeing to use her ability to track down his missing father in exchange for his help to reunite her with the FBI. But when she discovers Sam’s unexpected ties to her ability, Rayne finds herself hiding a secret of her own, and she must make a choice: surrender to a lifetime of secure captivity, or take an innocent life to finally gain her freedom.
THE SECRETS OF RAYNE is a young adult urban fantasy with series potential, and is THE DARKEST MINDS meets LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD. It is complete at 110,000 words and will appeal to fans of the DELIRIUM series by Lauren Oliver and THE YOUNG ELITES by Marie Lu.
Thank you so much for your time!
Thanks for the opportunity for feedback!
Dear Ms. Keyes,
Seventeen-year-old Brynn anticipates being cryogenically frozen for her future spouse—after all, now that a ninety percent genetic compatibility link is required for marriage, four out of five teens are frozen until a link is found. But after witnessing the terrifying freezing of her claustrophobic best friend, she is desperate to avoid the same fate.
Instead of being frozen, the Linking System (the government’s match-making program) accidentally links Brynn with Matthew: the first boy ever frozen, the son of the man who created the Linking System, and the secret poster boy for the Romantics, the rebel group fighting against the government. When he’s thawed for her, they commit to exposing the two-hundred-year-old mystery behind the system’s creation—the mystery Matthew’s father kept secret by cryogenically silencing his own son.
When Matthew assists in a massive thawing orchestrated by the Romantics, he’s arrested for treason. With war looming between the Romantics and the government, Brynn must uncover the proof that reveals the flaws in the Linking System before the boy she’s grown to love is hanged and she’s frozen. But secrets that stay hidden for two hundred years aren’t easy to find.
LINKS AND LIES is a young adult novel complete at 96,000 words and suited for fans of Lauren Oliver’s DELIRIUM and Beth Revis’ ACROSS THE UNIVERSE.
I am a member of the SCBWI and a contributing author for PUTTING THE SCIENCE IN FICTION, which is scheduled to be published by Writer’s Digest in Fall 2018. I’m also a labor and delivery nurse, photographer, wife, and mom of 3.5 kids. I would be happy to send you a full or partial manuscript at your convenience. Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Karyne Norton
Dear Ms. Keyes,
When 12-year-old Mae’s Nana disappears right in front of her, she knows she’ll never be the same. Her mom thinks she’s “passed on” but deep down Mae knows the truth, even if it’s a little hazy: the faerie stories her Nana used to tell her are true and she ended up in the immortal realm of Beyond.
Even though her mother doesn’t believe her, Mae sets out in search of a doorway to the realm. Only, it isn’t as easy as she hoped, considering the annoying neighbor boy Jack decided to help her. When the two are surprised one day in the garden by Fin, the pixie from Nana’s stories, Mae knows Beyond is real and that she’s going to have to trust them both with her secret struggle: something her doctors called “adjustment disorder.”
However, when they reach Beyond, the unlikely trio of an anxious girl, popular boy, and obnoxious pixie are tricked into a bargain with the Dark Fae Queen, sending them on a quest to retrieve three specific items from across the realm. If Mae helps the Queen, she’ll release Nana and let them all return home where life can be normal again. But if they don’t succeed, they’ll be trapped in faerie forever. As Mae ventures deeper into the realm meeting new creatures and the Ancient Guardians, she realizes there is more to the stories she grew up hearing. Through her journey, Beyond begins to speak to Mae in a way she wasn’t expecting: teaching her she’s exactly who she’s supposed to be and that friends show up at the most unsuspecting times.
BEYOND (complete at 61,000 words) is an upper middle grade fantasy set in the alternate world of Fae. It will appeal to readers who enjoyed 13 Treasures, Foxheart, and The Spiderwick Chronicles.
This WIP is still in the third round of revisions. This is the revised query according the the above revisions if ya’ll wan’t to edit this one instead of the original!
In a society where being black can get you killed or taken, Liv is given the choice to survive by systematically killing her own people, or be killed herself, but is survival important when her loved ones are dying?
Black seventeen–year–old Liv Tate lives in Pinnacle, what’s left after the second American Civil War. In a totalitarian country the Patricians, the rich, administer a vaccine to the Plebians, the poor, through food genetically modified to inhibit emotions. Evaluations are conducted annually from puberty until seventeen years old to ensure compliance. Those who are immune are taken.
As a Plebian, Liv knows she’s immune, so her only goal is to ensure she and her mother survive.
Liv has made it to her final evaluation without detection, but, this time, she is taken prisoner to be a government test subject. When she arrives, her absentee father gives her an ultimatum: becomes a Taker, and systematically kill her own people, or die.
Liv agrees, but when she refuses to an arranged marriage, her mother dies. She realizes she can’t hold on to her morals and survive as a Taker. She decides to flee the country after aiding and abetting in the release of an innocent fugitive. But, when her own people and the government, both, want her dead, will she succeed?
SINS OF THE FATHER is a young adult sci-fi novel. Currently 55,000 words, it is the first in a series. It would appeal to fans of Sandcastle Empire.
I am currently a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, getting a Masters in Liberal Studies with a focus in Creative Writing. I hope to analyze the hypocrisy people exhibit when reading fiction juxtaposed against how they treat their neighbors. I also work at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte as an Administrative Graduate Assistant for Leadership in Housing and Residence Life. When I complete my degree, I hope to continue on to a PhD in American Studies.
I realize the word count is low, but that’s because in my current round of revisions, I decided to scrap some scenes that weren’t working. I’m currently working on new scenes and chapters that will bring it up.
Dear Emily S Keyes,
THE WINGED BASTARD is a 80k YA fantasy with a dual POV. In a world where old treasures hold the last of the world’s magic, a runaway thief and a rogue marine combine forces with a gang of female pirates to keep the power of reviving the dead from the authorities’ grasp.
When shy Cay from the isolated west steals an old pirate treasure to escape her abusive foster father and buy her parents out of slavery, she didn’t expect half the marine fleet to set out in pursuit. When shadows start to stir, bodiless voices begin to whisper of power, and dead things come crawling out of the ground, Cay realizes more than her parents’ freedom is at stake if she allows the treasure to fall into marine hands. Because whoever holds the artifact, wields its power—at the cost of one’s sanity.
The Admiral’s ocean-addicted son, Fever, never imagined he’d need to hunt down a thief to earn his place on the waters and bring his beloved mother back to life, but the rumors of a gateway into death is enough for him to put aside his lifelong doubts about magic. The closer he gets to his target, the clearer it becomes that the powers of revival are not only all too real—the treasure seems to have plans of its own: plans involving a badass crew of female pirates, his mother’s soul stuck in a place worse than death and Fever being banned from the seas forever.
Not only are the authorities’ true goals discovered as the hunt brings Cay and Fever together, but also the fact the thief and marine can make the others’ dream come true. The problem? They can’t both get what they want. Not without risk filling the world with those better left in their graves.
Dear Ms. Keyes:
A mad scientist’s niece must stop her uncle from experimenting on the alien creature who helps her deal with the death of her dad.
Twelve-year-old Kate seeks refuge in the woods saving trapped animals. She’s been stuck in small-town Minnesota with her mad scientist uncle ever since her dad’s unexpected death. She can’t relate to the gun-toting locals or the pesky boy who follows her around—not that she needs friends—and she definitely can’t relate to Uncle. He’s too busy punching holes in the universe to notice when she’s around.
Then a hulking, color-changing creature comes through one of those holes into the woods. It cares for Kate almost as much as Dad did, and she grows to love it in return. But even the woods aren’t big enough to hide a giant. When a local farmer mistakes the creature for a dangerous bear, he aims to put it down. And if Uncle catches it, he’ll dissect it—all in the name of science. To protect the creature Kate must send it back through Uncle’s rift. Except then she’ll lose her friend forever.
And Kate isn’t ready to let go.
GRAVITY AND MONSTERS is an upper middle grade, science fiction novel, complete at 52,000 words.
Emily,
Thank you so much for taking a look! I’m an award-winning author published by Ballantine. My agent has left the industry and I’m seeking new representation for my first foray into a new genre.
LEGACY OF ADYA, a YA sci-fi adventure with alternate history, tells the secret story of why the world did not end in 2012 as predicted by the Mayan calendar. When the apocalyptic date came and went, the world concluded the prophecy was a myth. But it was not. Disaster was averted by an extraordinary course of events that took place simultaneously on two different planets—Earth and Adya, an awakened civilization far more advanced than our own.
Told in dual POVs, the story opens on Adya where sixteen-year-old Mobius doesn’t fit in. He was born an Anomaly, less evolved than everyone else and without access to the Wisdom—the field of collective intelligence in the universe. After a failed bid for Adya’s space program, he struggles to find his value and place in his world. But then he finds proof that a rogue commander from Adya’s toxic, violent past planted a time capsule in a Mayan pyramid in 720 AD. When he discovers the capsule is about to implode and create a black hole, devouring the Earth, he steals a spaceship to save the precious blue planet and prove his worth.
On Earth, nineteen-year-old Diego is a paramilitary ranger in the lawless jungles of Guatemala. He’s on the take with a local drug cartel, hoping to wipe away his “poor kid from the barrio” status. While guiding Jillian, an eighteen-year-old American, around the endangered habitat, the narcos kidnap them both, holding her for ransom deep in the rainforest.
When Mobius lands in their midst, the gang flees and Diego and Jillian agree to help him navigate this strange, turbulent world and find the time capsule. Joined by a Mayan shaman, they embark on a geo-quest, racing through exotic Mayan ruins in search of clues that build to a shocking revelation. And Mobius realizes he will have to learn to access the Wisdom if there is any hope of preventing the Armageddon.
Thanks again,
Dayna
Dear Ms. Keyes:
The Red Pyramid meets I Survived … in Kingdom of the Serpent a middle grade historical fantasy, complete at 79,000 words.
Twelve-year-old Princess Ankhes hates how her older sisters steal everyone’s attention and shove her and her brother Tut into the background. So when the spirit of Maat-ka-ra, her many-times-great-grandmother, offers to teach her magic, Ankhes seizes the chance. After Ankhes masters journeying into the Netherworld and gains the gift of prophecy, the entire court takes notice, and she quickly becomes her father’s favorite.
But journeys into the spirit realm also have dangers. A god known as the Hidden One once protected Egypt from all supernatural creatures that would do it harm, but Ankhes’s father banished him. As a result, the Serpent of Chaos, a giant snake intent on devouring all creation, slithers free from his Netherworld prison and prepares to strike.
Without the Hidden One to stop him, the Serpent grows stronger. His demons break into the living world, killing royal family members one by one. Even the dead aren’t safe, and Maat-ka-ra falls. Determined to honor her lost mentor, Ankhes secretly seeks the Hidden One and discovers he can be restored. The only way to do this and save her rapidly dwindling family is by destroying the Serpent’s source of power—and that source may be her father.
I have been a devotee of ancient Egypt for over 30 years and am a board member of the American Research Center in Egypt (Chicago Chapter). My publications include the Egyptian-themed stories “The Book of Thuti” and “Imperishable Stars” in Leading Edge, and “Cleopatra’s Needle,” a Speculative Literature Foundation’s Fountain Award nominee, in Paradox. I have an M.A. in Writing and am a member of SCBWI and the Online Writing Workshop for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror.
Thank you for this opportunity.
Exploring the issues of female powerlessness and abuse of power, THE AGENCY (65,000 words) is a young adult science fiction novel where The Handmaid’s Tale meets The Bachelor to ‘Take Back the Night’.
Being young and female makes sixteen-year-old Cherry a rarity in a population-controlled world with an overwhelming preference for male offspring. Unexpectedly selected by The Agency, which has become the go-to choice for uber-wealthy, elite bachelors looking to secure a trophy wife, Cherry has to decide if marrying a stranger is a price she’s willing to pay to escape poverty.
Cherry signs The Agency’s contract, convinced she can find a loophole before receiving a proposal she’d be forced to accept. But she quickly discovers there is no way out. Trapped in a competitive and divided Academy, she is forced to fend off an all-powerful predatory Director, ultimately finding strength in unity. Ensuring no one is left alone, Cherry leads the girls in a coordinated campaign to thwart the Director’s tactics but her revolt has repercussions.
Breaking protocol by marrying off a girl of just sixteen, Cherry is graduated early to face a batch of bachelors far worse than she could ever have imagined. However, a defeated Cherry with no control over her destiny, manages to attain empowerment in the most unlikely of places.
Dear Ms. Keyes,
Hex Allen and the Clanksmiths is Nick and Tesla meets The Hobbit – a 46,000 word MG fantasy STEM adventure where the characters use science and engineering to fight goblins, ogres, and dragons.
In a world where everyone can do magic, twelve-year-old Hex Allen is a misfit because of her inability to cast even the simplest of spells. Her penchant for imagining creative workarounds won’t help her finish school or find a job. Her only hope is the Wishing Wyrm, a legendary dragon who grants a single wish every century. When she runs away to find the Wyrm, Hex meets rivals for the wish — the Clanksmiths, a group of three kids who also can’t do magic. They won’t tell Hex their wish, but they’re not interested in being healed like her. They claim they don’t need magic — instead, they’ve learned to build clank, creations that use the mysterious arts of science and engineering.
After Hex saves the Clanksmith’s lives from a fairy fiasco, they decide to travel together. Even though Hex knows that their truce is a temporary one, she can’t help but befriend and learn from the Clanksmiths. With their engineering know-how and her MacGyver-esque creative flare, they use clank to trick ogres with LED’s, escape from goblin using electromagnets, and knock out an unfortunate lion with a potato cannon. As they fight their way closer to the Wyrm, Hex must decide if risking her friendship with the Clanksmiths is worth the wish she isn’t sure she even wants anymore.
Pages from Hex’s design notebook illustrate the varied mechanical and electric projects so that readers can learn along with her.
I am a mechanical engineer with a BS and MS from MIT, and a member of SCBWI. My day job is building game arenas for robots.
Thank you for doing this pitch session!
Sincerely,
Jasmine Florentine
Dear Ms. Keyes,
There isn’t anything twelve-year-old Hope wouldn’t do to capture the perfect photograph to win an online contest. And as the daughter of field archeologists, she has a lot opportunities. The Taj Mahal in India? Anyone could take that shot. Elephants in Thailand? Been there, seen that.
So when she stumbles upon an ancient Incan ruin deep in the Peruvian Amazon, Hope breaks her parents’ only rule: never ever touch the artifacts. But uncorking the millennia-old jar will do more than get Hope grounded. Suddenly, people from the local village start disappearing one-by-one. With the help of a new friend–a Peruvian boy who can communicate with dangerous nature spirits–Hope tries to solve the mystery, but her search for answers only leaves her with more questions. How was a two-thousand-year-old Greek artifact found in a crumbling Incan ruin? Why is the jar covered with depictions of snarling, malevolent creatures? And what, exactly, did she release from the jar? When Hope’s Dad vanishes too, she realizes she must recapture the ancient Peruvian creature she freed before it’s too late.
Bad news is: Pandora’s Box doesn’t want to be closed again.
My middle grade adventure, HOPE TAYLOR AND THE PANDORA CURSE, is complete at 50,000 words.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Dear Ms. Keyes,
This Tiny Perfect World meets Out of the Darkness and Ashes of Roses in FIRE CURTAIN, my young adult historical that is based on the December 30, 1903, Iroquois Theatre fire. Using a real-life event that happened in my hometown, the story illustrates the importance of family, humanism, resourcefulness, and loyalty.
Seventeen-year-old Laura Castle loves two things more than anything in life: her family – especially her eleven-year-old sister, Nory – and the theater. She dreams of becoming a stage actress, and when the Castles move from Milwaukee to Chicago, she is thrilled that she will be able to take acting lessons. Once settled in, she and her family struggle to find their place in the social circles of the straight-laced movers and shakers of the city, where new money isn’t easily welcomed and doesn’t yet open doors. Lonely, Laura wishes she had Nory’s knack of making friends and endures get-togethers with girls her age from desirable families for the sake of her family’s betterment. Becoming someone the girls will accept is the toughest role she thinks she’ll ever undertake because she knows they call her “the prairie dog” in whispers between each other.
Over Christmas vacation, Laura tackles the most important role of her life during a theatrical matinee of famed comedian Eddie Foy’s Mr. Blue Beard at the brand-new Iroquois Theatre. When fire breaks out 15 minutes after curtain, Laura throws caution aside, assumes the part of the heroine to keep from panicking, and risks her life to save Nory and the girls into whose social circle she has not yet been welcomed.
One of Chicago’s stories of loss and strength is the Iroquois Theatre fire when 602 people – including women with their children on holiday from school – tragically met their deaths, 571 of them within the first 15 minutes of the fire. The heartbreaking irony is that the theatre’s owners touted the Iroquois as “absolutely fireproof.” Over 250 more theatre-goers were injured.
I am a member of SCBWI and the North Carolina Writers’ Network. My reviews of adult, young adult, and middle grade literature have regularly appeared in India Currents magazine, and I am a Books for Youth reviewer for Booklist magazine (ALA). Previously, I have worked behind the scenes in professional theaters in the Chicago area, taught high school English and Technical Theater, and have been a middle school paraeducator specializing in Reading, Language Arts, and Technology.
Thank you for your consideration,
Jeanne E. Fredriksen
Please send query and ten pages to [email protected].
Dear Emily,
THE PROPHECY THIEF is a middle grade fantasy-adventure complete at 48K words with series potential. It is perfect for fans of The Map to Everywhere’s whimsy, the characters from The Iron Trials, and The Very Nearly Honorable League of Pirates’ humor.
Twice Perkins lives in Cooktopia, where fish swim in the skies, dragons prefer drinking tea over breathing fire, and every twelve-year-old receives a prophecy. And Twice’s family always gets the best. The only thing worse than inheriting the paparazzi cannibals, who churn out sappy articles about his mild cerebral palsy, would be getting a pathetic prophecy. That would turn his famous family’s limelight sour.
When Twice cranks the handle, the Giant Fortune Cookie prints his destiny, and he learns there can be something worse than having a pathetic prophecy: having no prophecy at all. Stuck onstage with a blank piece of paper, Twice does what he’s best at—he gives a media-loving smile and tells the world’s Biggest Baddest Lie. He’s going to save the city!
Determined to earn a front-page article without his family’s help, Twice sneaks on board a flying ship with three other prophecy bound kids. He has three chances to steal one of their prophecies—and fulfill it—before his lie is outed and the headline turns from Perkins, a Prophecy Paragon to Perkins, a Prophecy Pretender. At least, until his catastrophic actions snowball, unleashing mortal danger upon Cooktopia, where his help might be needed after all.
My YA debut released last year and was hailed by Kirkus as “richly imagined…a propulsive, sharply crafted tale about a planetary war.” I’m currently under contract for the rest of the series. I’m drawn to characters with physical limitations due to my own disability. I’ve also spoken about writing, disability, and art at local conferences/workshops and a high school. I live in Colorado with my husband, two fluffy pups, and perpetually paint-stained hands.
Thanks for your time!
Dear Ms. Keyes,
It’s called an oath, but it’s more like a curse. When you feel another’s pain, when your life is tied to another’s, you don’t have a choice. If they die, you die.
Eighteen-year-old Corinne Montgomery faces constant migraines, nausea, and imminent death—all thanks to a cyst in her brain. She isn’t expecting any miracles when she and her mom move in with family friends in Vermont to seek a fifth ‘second opinion.’ But hey, at least Vermont in autumn creates a scenic backdrop for her photographs.
One photograph in particular has Corinne noticing shared scars between family friend Kim and her boyfriend. When the photograph is stolen and she goes looking for it, she meets Liam. He admits both he and Kim’s boyfriend are Guardians—beings sworn to protect the world from chaotic monsters trying to destroy it. The more she learns about Guardians, the more hopeless she becomes. Maybe dying isn’t so bad after all if the world is falling apart anyways.
Then Corinne discovers her connection with Liam. Every scar she’s ever had, he shares. When she bleeds, he bleeds. So when she dies, will Liam die too? Racing against her worsening symptoms, Corinne struggles to find a way for Liam to survive her death.
DELIVERANCE is a 115,000 word YA contemporary fantasy with series potential that’s told in multiple points of view. Deliverance shows how even at your physically weakest, you can still be strong, and saving people doesn’t always mean fighting. As a pharmacist, my passion for medicine as well as personal experiences with a brain cyst allow me to provide a sincerity and truth to Corinne’s struggles.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Rachel Bowen
Dear Ms. Keyes,
Sixteen-year-old Lucy Andrews fears the color red, compulsively draws graffiti in bathroom stalls, and avoids even numbers because they’re too perfect. Yet somehow she’s able to manage her OCD—until her artistic best friend Janice, her beloved art teacher, and two other art-driven classmates commit suicide, all within a few weeks.
On the verge of breaking down, Lucy is committed to a mental hospital for her obsessive-compulsive behaviors. At first, she’s willing to accept help, but soon she realizes something isn’t quite right. The art room has no artwork, four of her classmates have also been committed, and a woman is stalking her.
She’s offered an experimental drug with the promise of being discharged early. Though the drug helps her OCD, it takes away everything that makes her Lucy. When she fights back, threatening to expose the hospital’s sinister secrets, the head doctor threatens to never let her go. Lucy is left with the choice of doing as she’s told in hopes of regaining her freedom, or risking her future by revealing the truth—the medication causes people to commit suicide—before they unmake everything she is.
LUCY COUNTING STARS, a YA contemporary novel, is complete at 91,000 words. Comp titles include EVERY LAST WORD by Tamara Stone and a YA version of GIRL, INTERRUPTED by Susanna Kaysen. It was selected as a manuscript for the 2017 Pitch Wars Contest and placed second in the 2018 Serendipity Literary Agency YA Discovery Contest.
I work full time as a middle school librarian. I also worked as a middle school counselor for ten years and suffer from generalized anxiety disorder. Therefore LUCY COUNTING STARS is part experience and part research.
Thank you for taking the time, and I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Kristy F. Gillespie
Dear Ms. Keyes,
Since you like the nerdy stuff and also seem interested in unusual books, I’m querying you with my novel DECODING EMMA. It can be comped as WESTWORLD meets WE WERE LIARS and is a novel relevant in the #MeToo era. Chosen for PitchWars 2017, DECODING EMMA is 75,000 word YA contemporary with speculative elements and series potential.
Prototype cyborg Delta has one hundred days to pass as human, or she’ll be dismantled. To accomplish her mission, she’s been given an AI built on the memories of a dead teen named Emma. The Emma AI is more than a program, though; it’s Delta’s guide, her confidante, and the equivalent of her soul.
But the Emma AI is broken and having an existential crisis. Instead of helping Delta learn to act human, the AI begins sabotaging their mission. On top of that, Delta discovers her creators are keeping secrets from her: she’s not the only teen cyborg they’ve made. She has a competitor and only the winning cyborg will be allowed to survive.
Threatened from the inside and the outside, Delta explores the dead girl’s past, trying to help the Emma AI accept its fate so it will work with her. But the more she unravels the mystery of Emma, the more she uncovers her own dark and twisted relationship to the girl—knowledge that makes Delta question whether she even has the right to exist
I’m an active member of PNWA. When I’m not writing about the troubles of imaginary characters, I spend time with my family of six and I work, doing digital marketing, building websites, and writing boring—but effective—non-fiction.
Thanks for your consideration,
Neicole M. Crepeau
Dear Ms. Keyes,
I understand you are looking for middle grade filled with humor and heart, and peopled with unique characters. With that in mind, I’m pleased to offer FAUX REAL for your consideration. This contemporary caper is complete at 42,000 words.
Twelve-year-old Tru Diaz craves popularity enough to chase fashion trends and wear pleather cowboy boots in blistering Las Vegas heat. But it’s tough to fit in when your parents moonlight as Elvis and Marilyn Monroe impersonators. Things go downhill fast when her crush shows up at her family’s struggling pawn shop. Tru attempts to impress him by taking out Elvis’s mortuary toe-tag, but when she’s not looking someone swipes it off the counter. The tag’s owner, who looks and talks like a mobster, is coming to redeem it in six days.
To keep her family from bankruptcy, Tru must track down the big-ticket pawn—even if it means crashing casinos and facing her fear of Elvi (in the plural) at the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll World Convention. She’s shocked by who stole the tag and why. However, to do the right thing means she might be forever banished to the loser lunchroom table.FAUX REAL is OCEANS 11—at ElvisCon. It explores how in a world filled with fakes, not being true to yourself is the greatest deception of all.
My experience as a journalist includes publishing more than 350 articles in national and regional magazines, and five novelty science books for children. A 2017 Pitchwars alum, I’m also a member of SCBWI where I oversee communications and edit KiteTales newsletter for the Rocky Mountain Region.
Dear Ms. Keyes,
Lucy Carranza isn’t Lucy’s real name. She’s hiding from a terrorist organization called the Legion, along with her mother, who used to work for the CIA. Meanwhile, her older brother is training to join the fight against the Legion at a spy school called the Abraham Institute.
Except Lucy doesn’t know any of this.
For her protection, she’s raised to believe they’re a normal family in Manhattan, and her brother simply goes to another prestigious (read: pretentious) preparatory school. But when she finds out she’s supposed to go to Abraham, too, she shuts her mother out before she can explain their family’s secrets. Lucy’s only concern is to stay in the city, go to a school without prepsters, and be with her best friend and forever crush, Nick. Until the Legion finds them, and her mother disappears.
Lucy learns their lives have been a lie, and until her mother is found and the Legion is stopped, she cannot return to New York or Nick. Begrudgingly, she goes to Abraham to learn how to protect herself; but there’s no guarantee the Legion won’t keep looking for her. She must find a way to protect her real identity in a school for espionage–on top of making new friends, learning Krav Maga, and surviving a merciless French teacher–while the CIA does its job to return her mother to safety. Except they don’t, and Lucy discovers that she isn’t the only student with a family member missing at the hands of the Legion.
Convinced a greater conspiracy is at hand, Lucy and her new spy friends embark on a mission of their own to save her mom and expose the truth behind the Legion’s ties to Abraham.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Claire
YA CONT
Sixteen-year-old Tess Malleck is convinced she’s responsible for her parents’ estranged marriage and is desperate to get them back together. She retreats to Silver Head, a river town where her family used to spend summer vacations with her grandparents, believing her parents will follow her there. They don’t. When she finds out a local shop owner is threatening to knock down the castle where her parents were engaged seventeen years ago, it’s too much for Tess to lose in one summer.
Tess is ready to protect the castle at all costs. Using a hidden painting, obituaries, and river folklore that may or may not be true, Tess unravels a link between the shop owner’s son, Ryan, a boy she’s grown unexpectedly close to, and the family that abandoned the castle years ago. Tess realizes finding out more about the castle’s history might be the key to saving it. But while trespassing, she and Ryan are caught by the castle’s vengeful caretaker. Forced to choose between preserving the past and embracing the present, Tess strikes a deal with the caretaker, foolishly believing if she can save the romantic relic, her world will stop falling apart.
Title: THE THINGS WE WISH TO KEEP
Dear Ms. Keyes,
Thank you for this opportunity.
WHAT DREAMS MAY COME TRUE is an 85,000-word YA contemporary fantasy that will appeal to readers of Maggie Stiefvater’s richly mythological THE SCORPIO RACES and THE RAVEN CYCLE and Laini Taylor’s lyrical DAUGHTER OF SMOKE AND BONE series. I am querying as an #ownvoices author fascinated with the intersection of world mythologies and am querying you because of your #MSWL interest in friendship breakups, which is key to this story.
Forget fitting in with her rural Colorado town, orphaned sixteen-year-old Rasmi would rather be singing to the stars and hearing them sing back, conversing about the myths and legends that show up in her dreams, and about how those dreams sometimes come true. It’s exhilarating—at least until the nightmare that kills her best friend’s mom.
Rasmi doesn’t know if she’s the one creating the dreams or if they’re premonitions but when a raging dream tornado devastates her hometown, she can’t stay quiet anymore. With the help of her best friend, who doesn’t know the whole truth, and mysterious advice from the stars, Rasmi discovers she comes from Ama, a world of people who create dreams in people’s minds and feed off the dreamer’s emotions. When the tyrant king of Ama uses the power of dreams to rebuild his world at the expense of Earth, Rasmi must learn how to use myths and memories collected with knowledge only she has to root out the king’s vulnerabilities and save both worlds.
My debut novel of historical fiction, WATERMARK: A NOVEL OF THE MIDDLE AGES, was published by HarperCollins/Avon A. I have published a number of short stories and essays, was a founding co-editor of the literary journal flashquake, and hold an MFA in Creative Writing. I have also served multiple times as the Historical Novel Society of North America’s Conference Chair, and am a member of the Author’s Guild, SCBWI and RWA.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Vanitha Sankaran
Dear Emily S. Keyes,
I am seeking representation for my YA fantasy TOUCHED WITH LIGHT (94k words), which blends survival with an exploration of identity and friendship that I think you’ll enjoy.
When hell and home are indistinguishable, only the most desperate creature survives.
In a world where deceits are traded like common currency, heiress Whitney is desperate to ally with the High Princess, the only person who could free her from the mother that nearly extinguished Whitney’s light magic. But when Whitney’s mother learns of her plans, she is exiled from the country and shipped off to a foreign land called Sefate.
A monster masquerading as a god, Sefate’s heretical tyrant doesn’t believe in smothering magic – he plans to eliminate its users entirely. Desperate to conceal her power and blend in with the land’s mortals, she realizes she isn’t the only deviant around and forms a rocky relationship with Roy, a not-quite-human amnesiac.
Sefate’s arcane secrets are slowly revealed as the pair navigate forbidden lands and uncover a statue of the island’s long-lost leader, which tugs at Whitney’s magic. The island’s native inhabitants, magic-users repressed by the tyrant, learn of Whitney’s power and recruit her and Roy for the grim war threatening to devour Sefate. The line between “human” and “not” is blurred when the fighting begins, and Whitney must decide between saving herself and using her light magic to prevent genetic cleansing.
TOUCHED WITH LIGHT mixes the self-discovery, magic, and female independence of Leigh Bardugo’s SHADOW AND BONE and Kristin Cashore’s GRACELING, and will appeal to fans of FOREST OF A THOUSAND LANTERNS by Julie C. Dao.
I graduated from the University of Oregon with a bachelor’s degree in English in June 2017, and am a full time writer and BookTuber.
Thank you for your consideration.
Dear Ms. Keyes:
In your search for books with humor and heart, please consider WISTERIA (complete at 53,000 words), a middle grade fantasy told from alternating perspectives. It would appeal to readers who enjoyed the fairy world of Small Persons with Wings, and the personal journey of The Tiger Rising.
Ten-year-old Sophie is more inclined to fight than fantasize, but when she discovers a fairy realm hidden among the fronds of a neglected wisteria vine, she thinks she’s found the perfect escape from grief. She dreams of finding a fairy family to adopt her—anything to avoid feeling the loss of her mama. But the boy in the first floor apartment crushes her efforts to woo the fairies by crushing the bowers she builds for them and snatching their wings.
Quimsey, nephew of the fairy queen, feels the weight of the Wisterian realm on his shoulders. With the queen drowning her worries in wisteria wine, no one else will take action against the wing-snatching, vine-wrecking boy. If Quimsey can’t drive him away, Wisteria will remain on permanent lockdown and the fairies will starve. When all his efforts end in disaster, the only option left is to defy the fairy code and join forces with Sophie.
When the wing-snatcher’s father ends up being a greater threat to the vine than his son, Sophie convinces Quimsey that the only way to stop the destruction is to turn the boy into an ally. But to do that, she must find a way to empathize with this wretched boy—and face her own grief in the process.
I am a member of SCBWI, the International Literacy Association, and the Writers’ Loft in Sherborn, Massachusetts. In addition to writing and tending my own wisteria vine, I teach reading and writing as a literacy specialist for grades 3-8 in Brookline, Massachusetts. Thank you for your consideration.
Yours truly,
Alexandra Borns-Weil
Dear Ms. Keyes:
When Willow Nevarez, age 16, accidentally falls through a magical portal with her best friend Aella, she’s more concerned with keeping Aella alive than she is returning home. That’s just how it is when your best friend is Fate’s Champion. But Willow’s arrival in a world that was never hers could have deadly consequences in MIRRORS FOR THE LOST, a 72,000 word YA fantasy blending the concept of The Rest of Us Just Live Here with the adventure of The Girl at Midnight.
Upon their arrival, Willow quickly discovers staying safe in this new realm is no easy task. Nephuran – the conqueror son of the first magic-gifted human – has spent centuries in a sealed tomb as the last relic of Verdantia’s violent, brutal past. Desperate to cheat the fate that promises his permanent end at Aella’s hands, Nephuran is manipulating everyone in his grasp. Unfortunately for him, the natural order is clear: no one from Verdantia can alter fate.
Willow’s arrival, and the blank slate of her destiny, could change everything should it be discovered. As the girls gather allies and search desperately for a way to destroy Nephuran for good, an unexpected magical intervention becomes Willow’s ticket out of the role of moral support and into the front lines. With the true power to forge her own destiny just under the surface, nothing will stop her from fighting the darkness eager to swallow them all. Little does anyone know, that may be exactly what Nephuran is hoping for.
This is the first of a planned duology, though it stands on its own as a complete adventure, and is ready for your consideration.
Thank you for your time,
Rebecca Cadiz
Dear Emily S Keyes,
PLANET ROVER is a high-paced, 70k YA space opera. Underdog Lia proves gender can’t be branded by crossdressing as a space soldier to pay for her sis’s lung transplantation, only to discover her new employers might be responsible for the delay in delivery.
When Lia’s mum bails with the family’s hospital savings, Lia must turn to the dangerous occupation of planet-exploring to keep her sister on life support. The job won’t only take her far from Earth and her dying sister—it also promises a life in jail if the all-man crew discovers they’ve got a woman onboard.
Crossdressing in space and struggling to avoid her young, handsome and far too observant general turns out to be the least of her worries. Lia uncovers some nasty secrets about the space soldiers, secrets that don’t just affect her sister’s transplantation, but everyone in desperate need of new organs. The deeper Lia digs, the clearer it becomes that she’ll jeopardize more than exposure to save the only family she has left—she’ll risk the lives of newfound friends in the process. Including the life of the general she certainly didn’t plan to fall for.
Seventeen-year-old Lizzie Logan is proud to inform you that she is the freakin’ best BFF any girl could ask for. That party at Vivian Grange’s house last Friday? Lizzie hired the caterer and picked out the tablecloths. That five-foot-nothing girl informing you that Vivian Grange has 100% dumped your ass? Pure Lizzie.
And that girl hiding in the bathroom, jabbing a needle full of insulin into her leg during lunch hour? Also Lizzie. Always Lizzie.
Playing back-up to the school’s Queen Bee suits Lizzie fine. Whether she’s helping Viv survive a wardrobe meltdown or journaling every carb she’s eaten for her doctor, Lizzie thrives on making order out of chaos. Until chaos shows up in the form of Adam Klein. Adam is smart, considerate, geek-chic cute… and the next target of Viv’s affection.
After years of hiding in Viv’s shadow, Lizzie’s got her work cut out for her if she wants Adam to notice her instead. The girls swear they won’t let Adam ruin their friendship. But with tensions high at home over health insurance, plus Viv’s so-not-over-it ex-boyfriend trying to force this triangle to become a love quadrilateral, there might be more chaos in store than even the best of very best friends can survive.
Complete at 72,000 words, SWEET PEE features a Type 1 Diabetic heroine in a plot that’s ARCHIE comics meets the work of Jenny Han. SWEET PEE was featured in the agent showcase of Pitch Wars 2017.
I am a recent graduate of Chatham University’s Masters of Fine Arts in creative writing program, where I specialized in writing for children and youth. \
Thank you for your consideration,
Emily
I thought you would be a wonderful match for my YA SciFi novel, THE RUNNERS. Told in dual, third-person POVs and with its diverse, ensemble cast, it’s THE WALKING DEAD meets MAZE RUNNER, perfect for fans of franchises like WORLD WAR Z and THE LAST OF US.
400 years after the first Pandemic season destroyed civilization, the only safe place from the infected is behind walls. Only a few brave souls risk going beyond them to trade for their city’s survival: the Runners.
Seventeen-year-old Rook Haxley can’t imagine leaving the safety of her village’s massive steel walls. Not since she watched as her parents were exiled outside them with the other infected villagers six years ago, leaving her to care for her four siblings. But when her older brother, the village’s lead Runner and their family’s breadwinner, is injured and a blood infection threatens his life, Rook volunteers to take his place.
Even if it means confronting the cannibalistic shells of her parents outside the walls.
Hundreds of miles across the wastelands of the Wandering, in the neighboring stone-walled city of Bardeen, resources and food are plentiful. They have the medicine Rook needs to save her brother’s life. But when disaster strikes Bardeen and their fields of crops are destroyed, all of the walled cities in the Territory face starvation. Suddenly, more than just her brother’s life is at stake.
Rook’s team of Runners must work together with Bardeen’s, led by the charismatic ladies’ man, Beau Galloway. To save their cities, they’ll risk the longest journey yet to the city of Lux, which no one has heard from in over a decade. Within Lux’s enormous domed walls technology has survived: technology that could save them all.
If they can survive the tens of thousands of infected in their path to get there.
THE RUNNERS, a debut with series potential, is complete at 87,000 words and finished after receiving my MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University in Bath, England.
Thank you for your advice, Emily! So excited.
———
THE DEVIL’S WALL is an 80,000-word retelling of the Anastasia legend, narrated by a hot-tempered communist girl who unwittingly saves the princess’s life. It is a YA alternate history set right after the Russian Revolution, and will appeal to readers of Elizabeth Wein’s Code Name Verity.
Sixteen-year-old Evgenia is poor and pissed off about it. Her father’s dead, her brother’s been crippled, and her mother is breaking her back to save their farm. When communists come to their village preaching revolution, Evgenia’s one of the first to join the Party. But the Tsarists won’t give up power easily. That means war.
While civil war rages, Evgenia drives her horse-drawn wagon from one Siberian town to another, delivering messages for the Party and trying to earn a few kopecks to support her family. But in 1918 Russia, there’s not much money to be made. So when Anna, a beaten, half-crazed bourgeois girl asks to buy a ride, Evgenia agrees to smuggle her out of communist territory.
Only it turns out Anna knows a secret that could destroy the communist cause. A fearsome Red Army commander is after her, and once he sees the girls together, he tries to kill them both. Evgenia has no choice but to flee with Anna, and the girls start relying on each other to survive. Hunted by those she considered her heroes, and seeking safety with her enemies, Evgenia will ultimately have to decide whether the life of one innocent girl is worth more than the revolution she so passionately believes in.
Greetings Emily!
ixteen-year-old Ryn is a wingless one, a fairy without wings or magic. Those like her are barely citizens, without the same rights as other fairies. She is assigned as a servant at a school, where she picks up after the stuck-up heirs of fairy nobility and hauls iron that sickens winged fairies when they touch it. Only the handsome Damiel Rakir is kind to her, but Ryn knows better than to grow close to a true fairy, and a member of a disgraced noble family at that.
Ryn is able to peer through the portals that criss-cross the fairy realm into a strange, iron-laced world, a place full of wingless just like her where no one serves. But the royal family finds her when she accidentally crosses over into the wingless-filled city. The world she’s seen is secret, and the power to cross over forbidden under penalty of death to all but a select few. A wingless like Ryn doesn’t qualify. No one outside the royal family’s inner circle can know the truth—wingless aren’t born, but taken, stolen as infants from their families on the other side of the portal to do the dirty work of the realm the fairies can’t.
Ryn turns to Damiel, the only one willing to help, and he reveals a plot long in the making to weaken the Fae’s rule. If Ryn hones her power over portals and helps Damiel’s family rebel against the Fae, she could win new rights for wingless like her—and maybe even find a way to stop more children from being taken.
Wingless ones have two choices–serve the realm or die. But Ryn has seen a better world, and she has no intention of doing either.
Wingless is a YA reverse portal fantasy complete at 80k words, and is a stand-alone with series potential.
Dear Ms. Keyes,
Evren has a secret: she can navigate the sea without need of a compass.
Despite being able to chart a course for any destination, seventeen-year-old Evren is jobless and lives in a dingy boat near an impoverished island far away from the rich capital of Tarkais. The mainland is off-limits to her due to cursed invisible pirates – the Naja – who roam the beaches, looking to kill her. When Captain Sa’av arrives in desperate need of a sea-navigator, Evren sees her chance to leave Tarkais and the murderous Naja behind. Sa’av needs someone to guide him to the sinister Sea Queen’s lair to obtain a cure for an illness spreading through the capital, a lair that is impossible to find. Except for Evren.
But the moment they start the journey, the Sea Queen begins threatening her over the wind, and Evren realizes she may be in over her head. Along with the threat of sea serpents and water nymphs, she’ll have to fend off growing feelings for the handsome and eccentric Captain. She cannot go falling in love when she plans to leave Tarkais behind. If she fails on this trip, she won’t be able to escape the Naja. Worse still, she’ll be the reason why Captain Sa’av couldn’t obtain an antidote to an epidemic spreading across Tarkais.
Evren faces a tough decision. She can answer the call of a secret magical past and stay to help the man she’s come to love, or she can leave Tarkais and the murderous Naja behind forever, securing her future.
I’m sorry, it is a YA fantasy.
Winter’s Cradle is a YA Parananormal novel of approximately 85,000 words
In an alternative future dominated by ice and snow, encroaching glaciers force fifteen-year-old Ayra and her isolated community to embark on a journey to find a new home.
Ayra’s ghostly-pale skin, white hair, and light-coloured eyes, inherited from her deceased mother, have always set her apart. Unable to discover much about her mother’s life prior to her emergence from the supposedly uninhabitable Lostlands, she instead focuses on fitting in. So when latent, clairvoyant powers begin to emerge, Ayra is horrified. Not only do the visions petrify her, but she has no idea how to control them. Then one of them reveals that like her mother before her, a gang-boss from the equator belt is pursuing her.
Having encountered and fought off slavers, the villagers are then ambushed by the equator-belt gang. Ayra evades capture, but becomes separated, leaving her with only one option—to go in search of her mother’s people, where she hopes to find the answers to who and what she really is.
As the secrets of her heritage are revealed, she is faced with a grandmother who believes she destined to follow in her own Samanka footsteps and become a walker between the worlds. But Ayra, reluctant to give up her freedom, is not so sure. After what she was shown during a soul journey, she is convinced her path lies in a fate that will take more than her freedom. So when the equator men attack again, she confronts them, determined to put an end to the needless deaths, but fate hasn’t quite finished with her yet.
Dear Ms. Keyes:
This story highlights family, friendship, humor, and when you least expect it, being able to do things you never thought possible. Mayhem in Mapleton is crafted for middle-grade readers and runs almost 26,000 words. In addition, there is an exciting sequel in the works but from a different point of view.
Sammy, Jenna, and Emmett love to go exploring. Actually, it’s one of their all-time favorite activities. Who wouldn’t enjoy investigating trees, bugs, and animal poop! While the town is in a frenzy getting ready for the high school homecoming game and parade – which are huge deals in Mapleton – the trio stumbles onto something dastardly being planned at the local Lake Neumann. From secret meetings to stakeouts, the trio fashion their own counterplot to stop the bad guys from destroying the lake… and Mapleton along with it.
Through this story, the reader will be introduced to a cast of characters including Jenna. She is one of those kids who is terrific at absolutely everything – schoolwork, sports, music – just everything. With her dark skin, bright fashionable clothes, and outstanding abilities, Jenna brings a calmness and sense of reason to the trio.
Emmett is the ‘character’ of the group. He is exceptionally funny and does impressions of people along with mimicking various sound effects – at both appropriate and inappropriate times. He travels in a wheelchair, but with few exceptions, can participate in their adventures and activities.
Sammy always means well, but his enthusiasm and school spirit have been known to cause visits to the principal’s office. His dad is a town hero having been the superstar quarterback in high school and then years later, taking over as coach. His mom, however, died three years ago. She taught middle school science and was responsible for instilling in Sammy, his love of the environment, animals, and adventure.
Thanks so much for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Barbara Miller
Dear Ms. Keyes,
THE SOUPERKID CHRONICLES: WORD SOUP is a humorous 54,000-word MG novel with a Holes-meets-Origami Yoda vibe and a geeky protagonist reminiscent of The Losers Club.
Everyone dreams of superpowers. Just not this kind.
Defending state Word Bee champion Loïc Highstreet has a secret. He can make alphabet soup “talk.” But when the CanDo Soup Company phases out the soup he needs to train for competitions, Loïc has to spill his story to get it back in production.
Now he’s Souperkid, the company’s popular new mascot. Loïc’s unexpected celebrity upsets the sixth-grade hierarchy, and alphas Brian, Rob, and Perry (a.k.a. BuRP) are determined to bring him down. They deploy the ultimate weapon: Rob’s devastating cartoons on Perry’s drone-like paper planes.
When Loïc manages to survive their campaign of ridicule and recruit enough teammates for the upcoming Word Bee season, BuRP joins forces with Loïc’s underhanded rivals at another school. They implicate him in a scandal that costs him everything: his place on the Word Bee team, his state title, and his position as Souperkid.
Little do any of them know, Loïc will be the only one who knows what to do when one of the bullies suffers a dangerous allergic reaction. Wielding his Epi-Pen, the ex-pseudo-superhero morphs into a real-deal sixth-grade hero with the grace to save his tormentor and the power to change how the bullies see him—and themselves.
On the surface, Word Soup spoofs superhero tropes. Beneath the humor, our hero struggles against the powerful forces of celebrity, marketing, and image-making that can make it hard to accept yourself as you are and be recognized for your true talents, strength, and decency.
After a first career teaching language and literature, I now write full time for children. I am an active member of SCBWI and have published in Highlights High Five.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Lisa Bansen-Harp
[email protected]
Dear Ms. Keyes,
Thank you for taking part in WriteOnCon!
In DAWN OF THE GODS, an MG fantasy adventure at 66,000 words, ten-year-old Odysseus yearns to escape his boring life and become a hero. Learning lessons about family, loyalty, and true heroism, Odysseus finds his choices will reset the balance of power among both men and gods.
Working his father’s fields on a remote island where the “civilized” Akhaians and the rural perioikoi always seem at odds with each other, he’s elated when news arrives that Iason is assembling a crew to find the Golden Fleece. When his father answers the call, Odysseus joins him on the dangerous journey across Greece, confronting enemies both human and divine. But the bonds between them become dangerously frayed when they meet the legendary Theseus, who wants Odysseus to be his apprentice. Odysseus must choose between the father he loves but fears, and the charismatic man who promises to teach him everything he wants to learn, but whose mysterious motives grow increasingly sinister.
Set in a Bronze Age world soon to be plunged into global war, DAWN OF THE GODS has the history of Song of Achilles, and the boys’ adventure of the Young James Bond and Ranger’s Apprentice books. With series potential, it tells the origin stories behind the well-known mortals and gods, which is very different from the more contemporary Percy Jackson books. My work has previously been published in KGB Bar & Lit, Morpheus Tales, Crime Factory, Forge Journal and Mobius. Under a pseudonym, I have also published a crime novel and many short stories. I hope DAWN OF THE GODS interests you, and I look forward to hearing from you.
Yours,
John Radosta
Dear agent
Teen bounty hunters Annora and Hellion are scratching a living in the forsaken streets of The Borderlands, still bruising from the bounty that got away.
Annora’s maimed hand is a constant reminder that Gabian Zola—renowned outlaw, killer, and feared Northman— is leaving a string of female victims in his wake because she failed to stop him. Unwilling to return home until they right their wrongs, the girls bloody their hands night and day to prove they’re a force to be reckoned with.
When they learn that Gabian has come out of hiding to compete in an upcoming blood tournament with a prize that could let them carve out a life of their own choosing, Annora and Hellion decide to risk their chances of survival and pursue him once again. Recruiting a runaway girl with her own cryptic bounty notice, they set out across the savage desert to finally claim their prize.
During their journey, tempers fray, water skins run dry, and Hellion finds herself drawn to Carina, despite her dangerous secrets. The girls join a dozen mercenaries and outlaws to joust, race, and duel, all the while plotting to capture their target. But when Gabian begins to methodically pick the competitors off one by one, it’s clear that Annora and Hellion are more the hunted than the hunters.
Surrounded by enemies, with secrets unravelling, the friends must fight to survive a world driven wild with bloodlust.
CHASING BLOOD & SCOUNDRELS is complete at 93,000 words, and is a young adult fantasy novel told in multiple points of view. It is standalone with series potential.
THE VALIANT meets Mackenzi Lee’s #BygoneBadassBroads, CHASING BLOOD & SCOUNDRELS features a f/f relationship and may appeal to fans of Susan Dennard and Ryan Graudin.
This manuscript was selected as a 2016 Pitch Wars novel.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Nicole Alana Brake
THE CHOICE is Young Adult fantasy and is 65,811 words..
Growing up as the heir of the kingdom is not an easy task- especially when you are seventeen and your over-protective father forbids you to leave the palace grounds. All Angelei wants to do is to be the best princess she can be for the country of Seton, but the only thing she knows about her land and life outside the walls of the palace, that exists after a war that almost destroyed the world, is what she has been taught by her tyrant of a father.
When her father declares that The Choice, the event where she must choose a husband from suitors he has picked out for her, she feels overwhelmed and trapped. The day before it officially starts, Angelei discovers a new hidden passageway that leads to a small poverty-stricken town. There she meets a boy, Emery, who shows her how corrupt her Father’s teachings have been, struggles to find the real truth of what happened to Seton and why her father has lied about the past. She can either go against her father’s wishes and continue to search for the true answers and run the risk of the wrath and furry of her father or continue without a second thought and be married off to a noble, allowing others to dictate what she knows. There are secret codes, covered up deaths, and a plot for her choices to be taken away forever.
Dear Emily,
Born in Vietnam War during the war and adopted by American soldiers, sixteen-year-old Anna knows little about her birth parents, and her adoptive mom left without an explanation shortly after they arrived in the United States. She and Dad are a two-man crew, ready to take on the world as soon as he returns from his final deployment. But when Anna finds an old trunk with letters to her father, she must decide whether to remain loyal to the one constant in her life, or finally learn the truth about her blurry past.
Anna doesn’t realize that the trunk once belonged to her grandma Francesca. During the Great Depression sixty years earlier, it accompanied then fifteen-year-old Francesca on a journey to reunite with her father who had been forced to leave their small town to search for work. But when she arrives, she learns her father is living with a new family, and there is an undercurrent of illegal activity that pious Francesca cannot reconcile. She must learn to accept the choices of those around her or end up alone.
LEAVE IF YOU MUST, a 67,000 word YA historical told in alternating POV and inspired in part by my grandmother’s memoirs, explores what it means to be a family and how tragedy can tear us apart or bring us closer together.
I am a member of Pennwriters and serve as membership coordinator for Buffalo-Niagara Children’s Writers and Illustrators (BNCWI). My YA verse novel, SECOND IN COMMAND, will be published by Rosen in January 2019.
Thank you for your consideration
Hi Ms. Keyes,
Thank you so much for taking the time to comment on all these queries. It is much appreciated!!
Complete at 68,000 words, THE PAINLESS PLACE is a dual-POV, middle grade novel about the power of sacrifice, the importance of family, and the idea that a world without pain might be a surprisingly painful place. The novel will appeal to readers reaching for a historical fantasy who like the adventure of Maiya Williams’ Golden Hour History Detective series and the balance between light and dark in Gregory Maguire’s Egg and Spoon.
Thirteen-year-old Joan Lang is furious when her father tells her they are moving to Istanbul to search for the lost treasure of Constantinople—the Ruby Dagger. With little league baseball tryouts less than a month away and her mother’s death still fresh in her memory, he could not have chosen a crueler time. Just when Joan thinks her life cannot get any worse, her father suddenly vanishes from his new office at the Topkapi Palace museum. Much to her dismay, Joan discovers that that he is still hot on The Ruby Dagger’s trail…in the year 1485!
Unfortunately, Joan’s father is not the only one looking for the dagger. The blade’s original owner, the deathless Shah Zoltan, has followed the professor back in time. With the help of a fez-wearing history wonk named Mert, an Albanian soldier-in-training with a secret vendetta, and a poem that contains the clue to unlock the knife’s power, Joan embarks on a whirlwind journey to recover the dagger and rescue her father from Shah Zoltan. As they travel from the crooked streets of Constantinople to the mountains of Northern Albania, the rescuers are caught up in the Albanian rebellion against the Ottoman Empire. As they struggle to navigate the armed revolt, evade Shah Zoltan, and find Joan’s father, Joan discovers that the Ruby Dagger and its power to take away pain may be the key to all three. But the knife’s power comes at a price, and she must decide how far she is willing to go to master the blade.
I am a graduate of the University of Virginia’s English department and a member of SCWBI. My most recent short story was published in the anthology, A Cup of Culture and a Pinch of Crisis, and my first picture book, The Adventurers, will be published by TalesMag Press in the autumn of 2018. I am currently working on my second MG novel, Case Files of an Invisible Lunatic.
Thank you very much for your time, and I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Katie Mastin
Dear Ms. Keyes,
High school senior Ace McAlister is the family peacekeeper. She struggles to keep their secrets, while taking care of her autistic brother and “hanging out” with Cameron, the son of a close family friend, even though he’s possessive and, frankly, a little creepy. Despite all this, while they’re on a vacation in Cherokee, North Carolina with her and Cameron’s family, Ace’s mom falls off the wagon. Fed up, Ace rebels and sneaks off to the Cherokee Indian Reservation. There she meets John Spears, an eighteen-year-old tribe member with family issues that rival her own.
John is smart, really hot, and bound for Duke University in the fall. But all that doesn’t change the fact that his mother deserted the family or that he lives with a bossy grandmother determined to keep him on the Rez. Though hanging on to his dream isn’t easy, John is determined to follow through with his plans to go to law school. He’s intent on flying solo, too. That is until he nearly rams his truck into a car carrying a blue-eyed girl named Ace. And with a name like Ace, how can a guy go wrong?
Ace and John soon discover they have more in common than messed-up mothers and bigoted family members. They both love horses and the wilderness, and John gets along well with Ace’s brother. But when Cameron finds out about them, he kidnaps Ace, stages Ace’s and his own disappearance, leaving clues behind that implement John. It’s then Ace and John must fight to save their lives—and their love.
I attended WriteOnCon Convention and enjoyed your presentation. I especially liked how hard and long you worked to sell your client’s manuscripts. I hope you will enjoy CHEROKEE SUMMER, a dual POV YA Romance complete at 84000 words. It recently took first place in the New Adult/Young Adult division of the MORWA Romance Writer’s Gateway to the Best 2017. Along with online research of the Indigenous people, I have visited the Cherokee Indian Reservation in North Carolina several times, the last time staying on the reservation to attend a Powwow. My autistic character is loosely based on my own fifteen-year-old son, so I’m personally aware of the challenges autistic people and their families face in our neurotypical world. I also hired a First Nations sensitivity reader from “Writing in the Margins” who specializes in Indigenous culture to read my novel and edited my work according to her suggestions.
Thank you for your consideration.
Thank you for this pitching opportunity. I appreciate your time and attention.
Dear Ms. Keyes,
Months ago, a solar electromagnetic pulse fried the U.S. grid and motorized transport. Most adults in eighteen-year-old Keno Simms’s family were stranded away from home, and, without their mother’s supervision, his younger sister got pregnant then died in a tragic accident. Keno blames himself and is crushed with grief. Now his missing family has returned to pile on with judgment and accusations.
Bleak reality forced Keno to grow up fast and drove him to marry Alma, who shares a similar grief. When she becomes pregnant as well, he’s both elated and terrified. Still he persists in holding out hope for his family’s survival. Keno must find a way to keep Alma healthy despite scarce water, dwindling supplies, and the crop-killing Texas heat. With no medical care, people he loves die prematurely. Hungry, thirsty outsiders continually haunt the neighborhood, trying to take what little they have and leave Keno’s family to starve.
If Keno can repair his grandmother’s dead solar electric panels, he and his family could preserve the food they grow in their formerly-urban subdivision. With Alma’s help, he must work through the pressure and grief that plague him so that he can save the crops and fix the solar, and can make a safe home for Alma and their child. But gully-washing storms and desperate home invaders could thwart Keno’s plans.
At 121,000 words, IF THE LIGHT SHOULD COME is a New Adult Speculative novel, an environmental dystopia, similar to Mindy McGinnis’s NOT A DROP TO DRINK.
Thank you for your consideration.
Wishing you well,
Brenda Marie Smith
STONEHAVEN is a contemporary fantasy MG complete at 45,000 words that will appeal to those looking for the heart and mystery of the Greenglass House by Kate Milford, the creepy world-building and an all-female cast of Netflix’s Stranger Things, and the concept of the characters from Steven Universe.
Em thinks of her mother’s gemstones as a burden. None of the locals in their small southern town of Gavenston ever visit the store her mom owns, except for during the Andrew Wright festival. For one weekend only, treasure hunters flock from all over the world for a chance to find Wright’s hidden treasure. Only then do her mother’s sparkling rocks bring in money, but it’s never enough to pull Em and her mother out of debt. Em’s best friend Gail isn’t faring much better, as she watches her family grow farther and farther apart after the disappearance of her brother three years ago. For a town full of legends and, supposedly, a treasure, there isn’t much left for them to believe in.
Then one of the gemstones starts to move and seems to have a mind of its own, especially when it leads them to the first key to Andrew Wright’s treasure. Suddenly, they find themselves face to face in a web of dangerous puzzles designed by the gemstones. And when they receive threatening notes from an angry treasure hunter, Em and Gail realize that solving the puzzle means risking everything, including their lives. But if they succeed, Em and her mom can keep the gemstone store, and Gail might finally be able to find her brother. Now that they believe in the treasure, it’s time to believe in themselves.
Ms. Keyes,
CANTAR THE MAGIC GUITAR is first in the MELODY’S MUSICAL ADVENTURES early chapter book series. The word count is around 5300 words. Melody plays with friends and comes home for dinner but goes on after secret school adventures with a magical musical instrument, eventually finding an orchestra.
Eight year old Melody finds an old guitar, but doesn’t know that it is magical. Melody meets the neighborhood kids at a clubhouse and it’s boys vs. girls. She loses a bike race, cries after a boy throws her guitar on the ground, but happily discovers the mystery of the strings. Cantar, Spanish for song, was created by a Spanish magician and brought over to America on the Mayflower. As she strums, Cantar takes Melody to another world. They land on a tall sailing ship in a stormy sea then find a puppy onboard. Melody brings him home and her parents let her keep him and have guitar lessons. The last pages show chords so readers can learn the guitar. The next characters in the series are Giocare, the Italian violin (giocare is Italian for play) and Doux, the French flute (doux is French for sweet).
MELODY’S MUSICAL ADVENTURES would fit into the Scholastic Branches series of illustrated chapter books and it is similar to the Zoey and Sassafras series. A comparable TV show would be THE MAGIC SCHOOL BUS and LITTLE AMADEUS.
In addition to the Melody series, I’m writing my WWII aviation script, CLIPPER, into a novel. I’ve also written a non-fiction ebook, BIKINI HIP REPLACEMENT. I love flying and married a pilot.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Kathy Panzella, [email protected]
Dear Ms. Keyes,
Seventeen-year-old Riley Conrad needs only two things: a hot cup of well-roasted coffee and her trusty Bic pen. Since her dad left (a day she’s happily lost all memory of) Riley spends her after-school hours in a small, Czech-owned cafe, where she disappears in the pages of her notebook–until her heartbroken sister slips back into her life.
Jo’s return to their Michigan home brings painful flashes of lost memories, but Riley’s quickly forgetting what it was like to live without her, and determines to get her to stay. With Jo’s lying husband trying to win her back, though, she’s in for a fight. And it doesn’t help when Riley reveals she knew about the other woman long before Jo did. So when she meets Hall, a college boy with a past as complex as his case file is thick, she wants to tell Jo everything. But when she comes home, Jo’s gone. And it’s her fault.
Riley’s burgeoning memories might explain why she did what she did, but if she tells Jo the whole truth about that day, how could she ever forgive her? On the other hand, retreating to the safety of her notebook feels suddenly impossible. Sure, no one can touch her there, but is that really what she wants?
WHAT WE WERE MISSING is a contemporary young adult novel complete at 62,000 words. I currently live in Budapest with my husband and three sons. I have degrees in English literature and school counseling, and enjoy finding creative ways to combine the two.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Dear Emily,
Eighteen-year-old Ren isn’t much of a rule breaker. He prefers to be home in his workshop on the surface, tuning up house bots with his AI friend, Stray. Instead, he’s on Cascade—the station orbiting his planet—his twin sister’s life threatened by rebels, and a gun in his hand. No, if there’s a more horrible day, Ren can’t think of it.
But this space mechanic’s day is about to get worse. On the edge of his star system lies Seorsum Station, and in twenty-one hours its people will die when its energy source runs dry. The only way to save them is with a drastic plan by rebels to steal Cascade’s power core. Ren has the skills to make this happen. Roped in against his will, he’s paired with Josah, a bruiser who wants to throw him out an airlock, Together they must pull off the dangerous heist, escape crooked cops, all so he can rescue his sister… and then the station starts falling apart.
As the clock runs down, in order to fix both stations, Ren must chase down and repair the chain reaction of destruction triggered by the rebels’ actions. But when the brutal truth of why they recruited him is revealed, he’ll have to decide the lengths and light years he’ll travel for his family.
FURY OF STARS is a 93k YA science fiction with gay protagonist and series potential. It will that appeal to readers of Gemina and Nyxia.
Dear Ms. Keyes,
Thank you for this opportunity! Here’s my pitch:
Fourteen-year-old boxer Goldis is shocked when he receives a rare opportunity to compete against a world champion. The catch? The champion is the monarchal ruler of a faraway kingdom known as Grandhilla, where children are raised as fighters.
To avoid returning to a life on the streets, Goldis accepts the offer. He then learns that he is one of twelve recruited candidates, all of whom must battle against each other in a tournament for a shot at the title. On top of that, he attracts the interest of a strangely esteemed group of cultists, who award him a magical artifact and insist that he represent them in the tournament. But Goldis is not the tallest fighter, or the bulkiest, or the most renowned—why bet on him?
The tournament is his chance to prove himself. It’s a chance to be more than the lonely, punch-drunk kid at the end of the block. He enters the ring without looking back. But in the kingdom of Grandhilla, where scoundrels wear crowns and good men go hungry, he will have to decide what he is willing to do in order to win.
GOLDIS V. THE GRANDIOSE GAME is a young adult fantasy complete at 74,000 words. It will appeal to fans of Marie Lu’s Warcross and the 1976 film Rocky.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Michael J. Richmond
Dear Ms. Keyes,
When 18-year-old Sara Sterling’s long-time boyfriend gives her the boot one week shy of graduation, she’s just sorry she wasn’t the one to break it off first. Problem is, she doesn’t know who the hell she is outside the confines of a relationship. After a failed rebound fling, city girl Sara opts for the last thing anyone expects—she accepts her Uncle Dean’s invitation to work at his Colorado guest ranch for the summer.
Through endless hours of grooming horses and mucking stalls, she finds unexpected solace in the barn. Just as she’s settling in, however, she makes another hasty decision—bidding on an injured, slaughter-bound horse at a local auction. There’s something familiar in Treble’s soft, brown eyes; he’s as lost as she is. Sara hopes to give him a second chance at the ranch, but to her horror, Dean insists the horse is worthless and vows to sell him at the next monthly auction.
Sara’s repressed anger resurfaces; it appears no amount of progress will change Treble’s fate. But the parallel between saving an unwanted horse and finding her identity is not lost on her. If she’s learned anything this summer, it’s that she’s capable of more than she ever believed. She must put aside blame and take the reins of her life for good. After all, there’s not just one life, but two depending on it.
Complete at 65,000 words, SEEKING SARA STERLING is a heartwarming, coming-of-age story which will appeal to fans of classic YA, such as that of Sarah Dessen, but also to those who love flawed female characters, like the ones featured in novels by Courtney Summers.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Casie Bazay