QK Round 1: Feeling Fictional vs We Kinda Destroyed Paris

Title:  #letcharalive
Entry Nickname:  Feeling Fictional
Word count:  68K
Genre:  YA Contemporary Fantasy

Query:

Reed Santos is a straight-A high school junior whose biggest worry is getting elected Student Body President so she can demonstrate the all-important trait of leadership on her college application. The dream is to get into Stanford and become a biomedical engineer. The only problem is it’s not her dream; it’s her mother’s.

Reed’s real passion is reading books. In fact, the latest book in her favorite fantasy series has just been released and Reed and her best friend, Julia, can barely wait to get home to dive back into the world of Apatheia, a land where feelings are non-existent. Reed is lost in the story when Chara, a beloved character from the book, suddenly appears in the flesh and pleads for help. It turns out that Reed is her one true reader, the one that connects her to the larger world, and Chara has quite a favor to ask. She is going to die in the next book and wants Reed to save her life. Moved by Chara’s appeal, Reed agrees to take on the quest.

Reed and Julia must track down the famous author and convince her to change Chara’s fate. But things do not go well; authors generally don’t respond favorably to other people telling them what to write. So Reed must regroup and devise a new plan. It’s a plan outside her comfort zone that will risk public humiliation on a grand scale and put all her important relationships in jeopardy. In the process Reed learns that sometimes people (fictionalized or not) need to veer from the path someone else has imagined for them.

First 250:

Reed tried to ignore the fact that she couldn’t breathe. If she just focused on the index cards and recited the words in front of her maybe her pulse would slow down and she could finish her speech. Maybe she would stop imagining her heart was going to break through its cage of bone and flesh and throw itself onto the floor, flopping around like a dying fish.

Turning to look at her best friend Julia who was sitting on the bed, Reed dropped her index cards onto the floor and put a hand to her chest, as though that might calm the monster inside. She was still for a few seconds, listening, feeling. “I think…I’m having a…heart attack,” she announced between breaths. Then she fell backward onto the bed and focused on the plastic stars glued to her ceiling. “Can seventeen-year-olds…have…heart attacks?”

Julia jumped up and put a hand over her mouth while she studied Reed. “Omigod. Your face is really red. Here.” She stuffed a pillow behind Reed’s head and slid off her pink Converse knock-offs. Then she went into the bathroom and returned with a damp washcloth. She patted Reed’s face with it, getting her sleek black bangs wet in the process. “I’m getting your mom.”

Reed grabbed her arm. “No. Give me…a minute. I think I might actually be starting to feel a little bit better.”

“Maybe you’re having a panic attack or something. I’ve read about them on Dr. Google. Do you feel panicky?”

V.

Title: THE BONES OF PARIS
Entry Nickname: We Kinda Destroyed Paris
Word count: 72K
Genre: YA Contemporary Fantasy (#ownvoices)

Query:

Bermudian expat Skyeler Anders wants two things for his seventeenth birthday: to get his bloody memories back, and for the nightmares to stop.

Instead, he comes face-to-face with the three teens who haunt his dreams. Keil’s the drifter from New York with mysterious ties to a genetics lab. Nicky’s the grieving hacker weighed down by too many secrets. Her cousin, Rachel, is a rising starlet plagued by premonitions. And it turns out Skyeler isn’t the only one of them having nightmares. But before they can figure out why, their elemental powers emerge—an advent the four barely survive.

The desperate need to learn what connects them takes the teens from the suburbs of Atlanta to the streets of Paris, where their magic draws the attention of a group of rogue mages hell-bent on unleashing an ancient and powerful force. Amid the search for answers, Skyeler’s boyfriend is kidnapped. Now, Skyeler must untangle the mysteries of his past, learn to control his magic, and trust the teens who've inhabited his nightmares—because it’s not just his boyfriend's life hanging in the balance, but the entire city of Paris.

First 250:

"Now Entering Hell!”

That’s what needs to shine in brilliant reflective letters from the sign by the exit ramp. Not this, “Now Entering Douglasville” nonsense with a population estimate of thirty-two-thousand.

Thirty-two-thousand and one, now.

Then again, Douglasville, Georgia represents my own personal hell, one with a dizzying wash of green and grey, throat-coating cigarette smoke, and nauseating country music. I squint against the harsh light eeking down from the overcast clouds—I’m tired from the night spent in an airport and the early morning flight did little more than provide a power nap.

My driver’s a court official who, due to some asinine legal technicality, has to drive me to my new home. His nasal singing is enough to make me wish my forgotten parents had picked me up, or for headphones at the least. But both my sunglasses and headphones are broken. Some bloody git stepped on them during the flight from Bermuda. Given my lack of American money, replacing them will have to wait until I reach the court-determined destination—my father’s home. As far as days go, this one reeks of disaster.

Doubly so considering it’s my seventeenth birthday.

I roll down the back windows, desperate for some air not tainted by cigarette smoke. Sticky humidity assaults me. I put them up before we turn onto a street and follow the curve, before slowing to a stop in front of the two-story, red brick house where my life wait to be puzzled back together.

Not likely to happen now that Mum's dead.