Pitch Slam Entry 4: Ride the Line Eternal, Speculative YA Thriller

Title: Ride the Line Eternal

Genre: Speculative YA Thriller

Word Count: 89,000 words


Hogwarts House: Claire would be in Gryffindor because she fights for those she cares about and fights even when all hope seems lost. Justin's street smarts and no-nonsense attitude would land him in Slytherin.

Pitch: Teenage runaways Claire and Justin fight to escape a train that never stops and take control of their lives while battling shadow creatures trapped between life and death.

First 250:


Chapter 1-Claire


An inhuman cry bleeds through the train car’s wall from the black night beyond, and I feel a pang of sympathy when little Andrew shivers at the sound. I see him shudder in my peripheral vision.

I’m taking my life in my hands, looking out the window like this, but sometimes I just need to remind myself there’s a real world past those train windows. The second the inky shadow blots out the bone-like branches beyond, I snap my gaze back to the boy tucked into bed and sit down at the foot of the musty mattress.

“What were you looking at?” he asks, his voice fighting sleep.

Lying isn’t an option—he’s only been here a couple of years, but he already knows me too well for deceit to be an option. “Nothing we haven’t seen before.”

But I shouldn’t have been looking. The last thing this train needs is another attack. I’ve got to do what I can to protect Andrew from the shapes that stalk us.

“Stupid monsters,” Andrew says. He clutches the sheet in his fingers and I lean down, make him lock eyes with me.

“You’re brave. Say it.”

He screws his face up, trying to look like a little man, and my heart breaks for him. Andrew was nine when he boarded. Now he’s trying so hard to look twelve. He reminds me so much of my little brother. He has that same determined look in his eyes. “I’m brave,” Andrew says.




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