YA Contemporary: END OF DAYS

Genre: YA Contemporary

Title: END OF DAYS

Word Count: 56,000

Special Question: If your main character could be any Star Wars character, who would they choose and why? Gracie would love to be General Leia, because she would be jealous of the way Leia’s evolved into such a secure, powerful figure. I think she’s more like Finn, because they’ve both suddenly found themselves in a position different from what they’ve known their whole lives.

35 Word Pitch: 

Three ex-best friends have one last chance to reconnect on a 1,400-mile road trip, but they’ll have to confront the breakup between two of them that divided them in the first place.


First 250 Words:

When my mom is sad, she’s sad in Spanish.

Our relationship has always relied on her spotty English and my spottier Spanish somehow converging into a conversation, but sometimes, when she’s emotional, she forgets about that. I pick out love, call, and, miss you while she wipes away tears, and my heart clenches with each of them.

“I’ll come home for Thanksgiving break,” I tell her, even though we still haven’t decided that.

She nods anyway, hugging me one more time. She says a few more words into my shoulder, but I only hear Ada. I tense automatically.

“Be careful.”

I can’t tell if she’s referring to the trip or the girl.

“Don’t let her hurt you.”

I don’t know why I wondered. I squeeze her shoulders and don’t say anything, because I’d rather not lie to my mom right before I leave her for months. She looks tiny, standing in our doorway in her work clothes. She’s filling our small apartment with her big sadness, and there’s nothing I can do about it because Prudence won’t stop texting me from downstairs.

“I’ll call you along the way,” I promise.

“Have fun,” she says, like she’s just remembered.

My phone buzzes in my hand again like Prudence is agreeing with her. A part of me wants to have fun, wants to jump up and down and thrill at the idea of this trip. A bigger part of me, though, can only imagine my mom puttering around our apartment with me gone.

Jedi Council Force System

YA Contemporary: THAT YEAR

Genre: Contemporary YA

Title: That Year

Word Count: 79,000

Special Question: If your main character could be any Star Wars character, who would they choose and why? Sophie would be Yoda, because everybody loves and admires Yoda, and when it comes right down to it, Sophie just wants to be loved.

35 Word Pitch:

Everything changes when Sophie’s BFF swallows a bottle of pills, ending her life. To heal and move on, Sophie must search for answers about Hayley's life and death.

First 250 Words:

I’m trying to figure out what strikes me as more strange. The fact that I’m sitting in a Christian church that has jack-o-lanterns lined up on the pulpit and ghosts hanging in the rafters, or the fact that my best friend is lying in a coffin in front of four hundred of our closest friends and family members. I mean, is it sacrilegious to display ghosts and goblins in a church? I wouldn’t know, since this is the first time I’ve set foot in one in almost ten years. We’re not really a church-going type of family. Not even on Christmas or Easter. The last time I visited a church was when my grandma died and it was a blur of wet family kisses and too tight hugs from my smelly aunts.

I’m staring at the front of the room where the big mahogany coffin sits on a raised platform but I’m having a hard time comprehending the fact that Haley lies inside. Her red and silver pom-pons are artfully arranged on the top and there are about a million baby pink teacup roses arranged all around. She loves all things pink. Being inside her bedroom is like slipping inside a Pepto-Bismol bottle, but it makes her really happy. Or made her really happy. 
Is it time to start talking about her in the past tense?

I suppose it’s only fitting that the lining of that coffin is pink satin and every flower in the room carries her favorite hue.

Jedi Council Force System

Pitch Slam Entry 1: Fat Girl on a Plane, YA Contemporary

Title: FAT GIRL ON A PLANE

Genre: YA Contemporary

Word Count: 78,000


Hogwarts House: Cookie Vonn is sure she’d be a Gryffindor. But she’d like to speak with Dumbledore about those old-fashioned robes. Her sketchbook is full of new design ideas that may put Madam Malkin out of business!

Pitch: To be the next great fashion designer, overweight teen Cookie Vonn must take on an industry where thin is “in” and take down a fat shamer who’s after her internship and her crush.



First 250:

Skinny: Day 738 of Weight Watchers
No. You can’t just buy two tickets. That would be easy.

Let’s say you weigh five hundred pounds and know for a fact you can’t fit into a single seat on the plane. It doesn’t matter. One person equals one ticket. You can thank global terrorism for that one.

I watch the fat woman at the airline gate.

She’s in tears, wailing at the flight attendant. “What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to get home?”

Maybe I should tell her how it works. Two years ago, I was her. Two years ago, I weighed three hundred and thirty pounds. I was too fat to fly.

I would tell her one thing.

You can lose the weight, but you won’t get what you want.

You won’t get home.

Fat: One week before Weight Watchers
Here’s what you have to do. At the airport, you have present yourself to the flight attendants at the ticket counter. They get to decide if you’re too fat to fly.

I’m on my way to New York, to a fashion preview. I’m the SoScottsdale blog’s nod to the brave new world where forty-eight percent of Americans are overweight.

I don’t know if I’m going to make it there.

This is how it starts. There’s a plane change at O’Hare. I get the feeling they’re watching me from behind the counter. I tell myself how paranoid that sounds.





Team Slytherin  Points and Spells

Pitch Slam Entry 6: Little Black Box, YA Contemporary

Title: Little Black Box

Genre: YA Contemporary

Word Count: 56,000


Hogwarts House: Gryffindor because my MC goes for the underdog and wants to see justice served.



Pitch: As the school’s secret Advice Doctor, 16yo Charlie prescribes cure kits after reading a patient’s symptom sheet. But when her BFF’s sheet reveals she kissed Charlie’s crush, revenge jeopardizes Charlie’s anonymity—and chance at love.



First 250:

Charlie

I’d had to tell Luke about my double life. It was the only way he’d agree to chauffeur me around town while I made my special deliveries.

“How well do you know Penny?” Luke asked from the driver’s seat. He stayed well within the speed limit as we passed Taco Bell and headed to the Valley.

“You’re not supposed to use real names,” I said.

Luke smiled, the dimple in his cheek only a shadow in the dimness of the car. “You know we mute real names.” He glanced at the video camera secured on his dashboard. “We’re almost there, black box at the ready.”

“For the record,” I said to the camera, “this excursion is brought to you by Joan Jett and all the girls out there who are through putting up with shit—”

“Language. I have to mute that, too.”

“Bad Reputation,” a favorite of mine by Joan Jett, blared on the speakers, and I sang along in my throatiest rocker voice until Luke laughed.

In payment for his chauffeur duties, I’d agreed to let him film tonight: a documentary featuring me as the doctor, prescribing various forms of cheer to people after life had knocked them on their asses. Even if that meant a cupcake—or two.

Penny’s house sat at the end of the street, perfect for a ding dong ditch. Luke parked behind a tree with branches so low they almost touched the roof of the car.




Team Slytherin  Points and Spells