Alt M-4

NAME: Tiffany Turpin Johnson

MENTOR: Sharon Johnston

TITLE: The Phoenix

GENRE: Speculative YA thriller

WORD COUNT: 74,000

Pitch

Resurrection’s illegal, but somehow Brie wakes to a dead boy at her window. Her ex-bestie Evan died eighteen months ago but now he's back, and all he knows is someone's out to kill him. Again.

First 250

There's a dead boy at my window.

I slide out of bed and squint in the darkness to be sure my eyes aren’t playing tricks. I recognize the dead boy right away, and he’s at the wrong window.

My ex-best friend Evan huddles on the porch, clinging with both hands to my window frame in the moonlight. A year and a half ago we sprinkled his ashes (so we thought) behind the Coral Beach High School football field. His parents said some nice things, and a lot of kids cried. The principal even shut down school for a few days. Seemed like an overreaction to me, but when the most popular guy in school disappears and turns up dead, overreaction is status quo.

Yet somehow here he is, staring at me with eyes wide and bloodshot and definitely alive. His hair is all gone, his skin so sickly pale it glows silver in the moonlight, and there's a huge, jagged scar running across his skull. Beneath the flimsy hospital gown his body is shrunken, concave. Not at all the cocky quarterback I remember. Despite all that, I'm sure it's him.

"Brie," Evan says, voice muffled through the glass, "are you in there?"

I blink a few times, so hard that blue spots swirl on the backs of my eyelids. This can’t be happening. I must be hallucinating again.

Alt M-5

NAME: Rachael Buchanan

MENTOR: John Hansen

TITLE: Ersatz Wings

GENRE: YA sci-fi

WORDCOUNT: 66,000

PITCH: Everyone but Jena has a doppelganger, someone with identical looks but an opposite personality. With that secret hanging over her, Jena must avoid rebel Dissenters who seek her while her past threatens to ruin her.

FIRST 250:

The red panic lights flash above me as all of the other lights are cut off, plunging me into a ruby strobe-light darkness. I sit in the gloom, head tilted slightly to the side, and listen to the low thrumming alarm that has been triggered. It vibrates my whole body with its deafening, resonating tones: errr… err… errrrr…

The systems are much too old. In fact, this is one of the oldest Wings still in existence. It’s no wonder that something has gone wrong.

When Coptain barges into my meal, flushed and scared, I just look up at him, studying his fear for a moment with a sense of mild curiosity. His skin is sheet white, glistening with sweat, and he almost looks like the spooked horses I’ve seen in the history books, the ones that were forced to be ridden into battle. I watch as his eyes dart around before locking onto me.

I’ve never seen him so terrified before. And, in my experience, terror is not a good sign.

“We’re out of life support, Jena. You need to find someone to link with.” His voice is a hoarse shout that sounds almost painful as he fights to be heard over the alarms. For a moment I wonder if he is imagining the life-stealing expanse of space that is all around us, trapping us on this damaged Wing. Looking down at my hands, I daintily smooth a napkin out on the table, making sure the creases disappear from the white fabric before I look up.

Alt M-6

NAME: Rebecca Yarros

MENTOR: Molly Lee

TITLE: Aeolian

GENRE: YA Paranormal

WORD COUNT: 88 K

PITCH: To defeat power-siphoning drainers secretly preying on our world, 17 year-old Dayenara must accept her ability to channel energy, but to save her hidden society, who will she be willing to sacrifice… or even kill?  

FIRST 250:

Guilt and exhilaration warred for control of my heartbeat.  Sneaking out for a kegger was way outside Mom and Dad’s rules, but I took the chance and broke out of their comfort zone.  I lied; I wasn’t curled up at Emma’s house watching movies.  God, I hoped they didn’t find out, or I would say goodbye to swim team, and reunite with perpetual spelling bees.   

Music pulsed, echoing off the tiled aquatic center walls as if it kept rhythm with the dancing lights under the surface of the pool.  The legendary party was expressly forbidden by our school, but that didn’t stop the combined swim team from sneaking in the night we won Colorado’s State Championship to make a few new legends of our own.  Besides, given the ease with which we broke in, something told me the school turned a blind eye.  A few dozen of my teammates and their dates flooded the pool in a mix of water volleyball and badly-disguised make-out sessions while two girls next to me drove me insane with their senseless, insipid conversation.  Who invited these cheerleaders, anyway?  Their high-pitched boy drama consumed nearly the entire party, and now they wanted my take on what I considered to be their total lack of self-respect. 

“I don’t care how hot he is, no guy is worth throwing yourself off a cliff,” I answered.  Apparently my thought-to-mouth filter wasn’t working.