Oct 28, 2015

NoQS Monster 18 - The Stolen Girl, YA Contemp

Name: Lora Douglas
Twitter Handle: @LoraWrites
Title: THE STOLEN GIRL
Genre: YA Contemporary
Word Count: 70K



My Main Character's Most Fearsome Obsession is:

Discovering your Mom and Dad kidnapped you as a toddler is pretty terrifying. Spending the summer before college digging into their pasts like an overaged, hipster Nancy Drew is Hailey’s worst nightmare. With only three weeks left on her juvenile probation sentence, Hailey can’t risk getting into more trouble. But a box in the attic exposes a horrifying secret her parents have been keeping. There has been a kidnapping, but it’s not the one that’s brought the FBI to Hailey’s front door.

Query:

When seventeen-year-old Hailey Larson spots her face on a missing persons poster, she’s forced to question if the people she calls Mom and Dad are even her parents. Not that she’d mind an upgrade in the parental units department. No more neurotic Mom popping Xanax just to function. No more Dad, a.k.a. The Warden, and his impossible house rules. Still, with three weeks left on her juvenile probation sentence—a wrong place, wrong time, totally not her fault situation—Hailey’s not about to stir up any more drama with the cops.

Determined to find out as much as she can on her own, Hailey starts digging into her past. The massive house fire that allegedly destroyed all of her baby photos is starting to look more convenient than tragic, and discovering her birth certificate was “amended”—so not helping. But when there’s no record of her parents ever living in the small town they claimed to be from, and the house that should have been reduced to a pile of ash is still standing, Hailey’s convinced her parents are kidnappers.

When Hailey discovers a box buried under insulation in her attic, she realizes THE STOLEN GIRL isn’t her parents’ worst secret. Exposing the truth means altering her family forever. But if she keeps her mouth shut, Hailey abandons the one person that needs her most.

First 250:

BRING HANNAH HOME, the sign demanded. Please help, it begged. Red, block letters labeled Hannah Shea a missing person.

Labeled me a missing person.

Bile, hot and acidic, flared up the back of my throat. This had to be a joke. A sick, sick joke.

All the pertinent information was listed.

BIRTHDAY: AUGUST 30, 1997.

My birthday.

BROWN EYES. BROWN HAIR.

Yup. Well, brown under the purple highlights, but whatever.

ESTIMATED HEIGHT: 5’ 5”

ESTIMATED WEIGHT: 125 LBS.

It was only an estimate because no one had seen Hannah Shea for fifteen years.

Fifteen. Years.

There was a reward for information. A hotline number and a Bring Hannah Home gmail address.

IF YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION ON HANNAH’S WHEREABOUTS, PLEASE CALL THE FBI MISSING PERSONS HOTLINE AT 1-800-FINDHAN.

A woman carrying a screaming toddler cut in front of me, her massive diaper bag bumping my arm. “Sorry. ’Scuse us.”

“Uh huh,” I mumbled, barely aware of her, my gaze skimming the other lost faces crowding Walmart’s community bulletin board before snapping back to Hannah.

Hannah Shea. Last seen October 21, 1999.

Two years old.

I counted backwards on shaky fingers, not trusting my rattled brain. 2002, 2001, 2000…1999. I was two years old. Of course I was. We had the same freaking birthday. The height and weight estimates were exact. The picture… The picture made me want to throw up.

It was me. My nose was smaller, my cheekbones a little more pronounced. But the eyes—the eyes were dead on.

16 comments :

  1. Scream. Please send to crubinobradway@lkgagency.com with a synopsis.

    ReplyDelete
  2. *SCREAM* Please send ms to stacey@donaghyliterary.com as a word.docx attachment. Include query/synopsis in body of email. Use #NoQs in email subject line with Title of story.
    Looking forward to the review.

    ReplyDelete
  3. SCREAM. Please, send the full to uwe@triadaus.com as an MS Word attachment. Looking forward to reading.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Screaming...please send a biography and a quick blurb on other wips you may have to vselvaggio@windstream.net --Please put "NoQS" in the Subject line. Thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Scream! Can you send to penelope.gsliterary at gmail.com, with NoQS in the subject line and your query in the body?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Scream! Please send query letter in body of email and pages as Word attachment to Melissa.Jeglinski@knightagency.net. Please put NoQS request in subject line.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Shivering! Please include query and send to alex@inklingsliterary.com with #NoQS in the subject.

    ReplyDelete
  8. *Shriek*! Please send your query, a 1-2 page synopsis, and the first 50 pages in an attached Word document to queries at azantianlitagency dot com. Also, please include "NoQS REQUESTED" in the subject line. I look forward to reading!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Shriek! Please attach first 50 pages, with NoQS Request in subject line. Send to erin@aplusbworks.com

    ReplyDelete
  10. Shriek. Please attach the first 50 pages with NoQS Query Request in the subject line and send to bookfishbooks@gmail.com

    ReplyDelete
  11. Shriek. Please attach the first 50 pages with NoQS Query Request in the subject line and send to bookfishbooks@gmail.com

    ReplyDelete
  12. SCREAM! Please send the full ms along with a complete synopsis to thao(at)dijkstraagency(dot)com using the subject line "NoQS - The Stolen Girl, YA Contemp". Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  13. I too am giving this a VERY enthusiastic SCREAM!!!

    In addition to your full, please send a detailed synopsis to bcampbell@bookendsliterary.com with "NoQS" in the subject and your query in the body of the email.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Scream! Please send the requested pages as a Word or PDF attachment to querysara (at) fuseliterary (dot) com, as well as a synopsis, with "NoQS" in the subject line and your query letter in the email body. Look forward to reading!

    ReplyDelete
  15. SCREAM

    Please do email the full manuscript and query letter to the email address in my signature line.

    To tell you a little bit about our literary agency, which closes more deals for authors than any other agency worldwide: tridentmediagroup.com
    Trident Media Group (TMG) is a prominent literary agency located in New York City that originally formed in 2000. TMG represents over 1,000 bestselling and emerging authors in a range of genres of fiction and nonfiction, many of whom have appeared on the New York Times Best Sellers Lists and have won major awards and prizes, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the P.E.N. Faulkner Award, the P.E.N. Hemingway Award, The Booker Prize, and the L.A. Times Book Award, among others. TMG is one of the world’s leading, largest and most diversified literary agencies.
    For more than ten consecutive years, TMG continues to rank number one for sales according to publishersmarketplace.com in North America. TMG is the only U.S. literary agency to consistently be in the top ten in both UK fiction and UK non-fiction and has ranked as highly as number one in UK fiction deals.
    I look forward to hearing from you.
    All the best,
    Mark
    Mark Gottlieb
    Literary Agent
    Trident Media Group, LLC
    41 Madison Avenue, Floor 36
    New York, NY 10010
    (212) 333-1506
    tridentmediagroup.com

    ReplyDelete