It's time for our June Mystery Agent contest.
Here's a quick reminder of what our fabulous Mystery Agent is looking for:
Any sub genre of YA, MG, and picture books. More specifically:
- Magical or inspiring MG in the vein of Savvy, The Tales of Despereaux, or Where the Mountain Meets the Moon
- Smart MG action/adventure novels, either high-concept fiction or re-imaginings of existing mythology (think Rick Riordan)
- MG or YA that hints at secret societies, espionage, film noir or high-stakes international intrigue (contemporary or historical)
- MG mysteries or YA thrillers
- Contemporary YA with humor and emotional resonance similar to John Green or Matthew Quick
- Intense, challenging or even gritty YA
The rules:
1) Entries must be left in the comments section of today's post (please don't email us your entries!) - don't pay attention to the comment numbers. We'll close the contest when we've reached our limit.
2) You must have a completed manuscript that's ready to send upon request.
3) You can only pitch once today (only one project). If you participated in previous MA contests, you can enter this one as well.
4) Please include TITLE and GENRE along with your pitch.
5) Your pitch must be one sentence long. The exact word count is up to you, but please remember: stick to the point!
6) The contest will close when we receive 50 entries.
7) The winner will receive a FULL manuscript request! Our Mystery Agent may or may not choose runners up as well, but it's totally up to them.
8) If the rules aren't followed, your pitch will be disqualified. Please read the guidelines and follow them.
Good luck to all who enter!
53 comments:
REMAKE
futuristic YA
In a time when people choose their genders, sixteen-year-old Nine can’t wait to ditch her weak girl body for a braver male one, but when her shuttle crashes on the way to the Remake facility, Nine learns girls can kick ass too as she fights to survive and return to a life she isn’t sure she wants anymore.
RACE TO BUTCH CASSIDY'S GOLD
MG Mystery
In a beat-up motorhome, two cousins and their quirky Grandpa Jim race against time and a dangerous thief to find Butch Cassidy’s hidden gold and save a ranch for troubled youth from closing its doors forever.
Title: The Recruited
Genre: YA thriller
Pitch: Recruited by the government to help fight Renegade terrorists, Naomi must keep her growing friendship with a gang member a secret from her employers—and the Renegades themselves—if both of them are to survive.
Thanks very much!
Title: THE FAMILY VYGIL
Genre: MG Magical Realism
When thirteen-year-old Jonathan Vygil becomes the newest member of his family’s secret order of monster protectors, he realizes humans have unfairly labeled the shapeshifting creatures as evil, and more importantly, the planet itself is in peril should the Vygils fail to keep their charges safe.
Title: LOCKER 43
Genre: MG Magical Realism
When eleven-year-old Chloe is assigned locker 43 on her first day of middle school, she begins finding some unusual surprises inside, each one leading her on a quirky misadventure as she tries to resist the truth . . . that her magical secret could be right behind her locker door.
Title: RESTLESS
Genre: YA ghost story
Eighteen-year-old Reuben Hall is tired of being a surrogate father to a little girl ghost who doesn't even know she's dead, but when his sister Imogen is targeted by a vengeful spirit, he realizes his ghost may be the only thing standing between Imogen and eternal sleep.
Title: Dragons Are People, Too
Genre: YA Urban Fantasy
Sixteen-year-old Kitty is a weredragon operative for the US government, but when the government turns its back on the dragons, she must choose between loyalty to her country and allegiance to her family.
AVALON RISING
YA Fantasy/Re-Imagining
When seventeen-year-old Gwen Masterson opens an enchanted book that whisks her back in time to Camelot, she not only must fight against Merlin's scheme to marry her to King Arthur – but try to stay alive as well, for Morgana wants her dead.
Title: A LEGACY OF FROST AND FIRE
Genre: MG SF/fantasy
Twelve-year-old Justin takes the blame when a dragon sets a house on fire and must accept a quest to return a dragon egg to its mother, but if he fails, all dragons will go extinct and he will never see home again, not even juvenile hall.
GRETEL, MG fairy tale re-telling
To save her brother Gretel must make a deal with a witch, and risk turning into a wicked witch herself.
Title: The Gifted
Genre: YA Supernatural
Learning how to control her telekinesis, sixteen year old Rebecca Stevens must also contend between two groups looking to kill her for her ability, the fact that her brother is involved makes it nearly impossible until she finds some surprising allies.
Title: HAVOC'S KNOT
Genre: YA/Fantasy
To stop a tyrant and save the persecuted from extinction, master introvert, Jake must trust his newly appointed dragon spirit and fulfill a prophecy he knows isn’t about him.
Thank you so much!!
Title: DUET WITH THE DEVIL’S VIOLIN
Genre: MG magical realism
Being whisked into the music is ok when it’s “Ride of the Valkyries,” but violin prodigy Miranda could do without visiting “Psycho” or--even worse--being trapped forever in an alternate reality.
Thunderbird Dreams
MG Historical Fantasy
Tomboy Christine Miller finds a magic stick in some old Native American ruins and now she must be willing to do anything, even if that means lying to her dad, pretending to be a boy to get a job in the mine, and trusting someone she barely knows in order to complete the age old quest that has fallen to her to free the Thunderbird spirit trapped inside the mountain.
TITLE: IT'S ALL GEEK TO ME
GENRE: MG Contemporary
A well-intentioned seventh grade girl with style (and flair!) is forced to go to her father's summer computer camp where she tries to help the geeks with their love lives.
Title: Futures
Genre: YA
Guilt-ridden Dylan plots to escape into a mysterious world he alone can see--except that it will mean leaving Chess, the only girl worth staying for.
The Problem with Hiccups (picture book) is a quirky tale of capturing hiccups, which stalk our hero, only to be supplanted by another menace.
Title: THE BEAUTY OF DESTRUCTION
Genre: YA thriller with paranormal elements
A fifteen year old amnesic dead girl gets stuck helping another lip-glossed and venomous teen prevent a vengeful school shooting, only to discover the real story behind her own murder.
Title: 7 Shades
Genre: MG Adventure
When 13-year-old Ralph and his two friends enter a magical world called Norwaeja, they find themselves on an unexpected quest for seven keys, each of which leads them closer to a dark and dangerous kingdom.
Title: Soulspark
Genre: YA Contemporary Romance
When Jessica catches her Christian boyfriend kissing her stepbrother, Jason's, girlfriend, she runs to the last person she'd expect, Jason, but he isn't the confidant he appears to be and if Jessica can't decipher lies from truth, she'll never find the one thing needed to heal it all.
Title: THE IMAGINING OF ISADORA VELVET
Genre: YA/Fantasy
Isadora Velvet is part of a gifted race she is destined to save, but will her powers arrive before the black-blooded Melanocent kill her?
Title: THE CRICKET PROJECT
Genre: YA Science Fiction
Pitch: When Lyra discovers the government steals stars from the sky and converts them into any wish they desire, she vows to expose them and let the world decide the wishes worth the price of a star.
Title: Diamond Tears
Genre: YA Fantasy
When sixteen-year-old Emma ran away from her abusive father, getting trapped in another world definitely wasn't on the to-do list, let alone deciding to stay.
Title: DISCOVERING ISAAC
Genre: Contemporary Middle Grade
Eleven-year-old Isaac Sanchez doesn’t know what to expect when the mom who abandoned him as a baby comes back and begs for another chance, but he's ready for anything--including guarding a mysterious book and the secret code inside it, searching for clues about the father he never knew, outsmarting a pair of not-so-evil stepsisters, and following his destiny in the footsteps of greatest scientist in history, Isaac Newton.
Title: Wishes, Whistles and Frog Lips
Genre: picture book
Pitch: When whirling her wand, a spunky princess tries wacky tactics to make magic with surprising, frog-smooching results.
Title: REAPER
Genre: YA Paranormal
When a terrible accident leads seventeen-year-old Cade to discover he's the next Reaper, he must protect his loved ones not only from himself, but from an obsessed assassin who has sworn to kill him.
Thanks for these awesome opportunities! :)
Title: DESCENDANT
Genre: YA
15yr Tristan must use telepathic powers he can't control to escape secret societies, rescue the soul of a Valkyrie trapped in an enchanted emerald, and save the girl he loves even though she’ll hate him for it.
TITLE: MONSTERS IN THE PARK
Genre: Picture Book - Concept
Monsters play above, below, through and around the playground in this concept book about prepositional relationships - but beware of the mischievous kids.
THE OTHER SIDE OF SILENCE- YA fantasy
When the god of war kidnaps lonely Ava, she must decide if he’s a monster obsessed with global domination or the love she’s always wanted.
TITLE: KEEP IT UNDER YOUR HAT
GENRE: MG adventure/humor
Inspector Forrester must uncover why the Prime Minister of the British Empire has fallen into a coma, and his leading suspect is a green pygmy flying elephant (verdaphantium minisoarus) from Burma, who sprinkles bits of useful information amidst non-stop insults about the inspector’s chamberpot-scented breath and pregnant-with-rhinoceros-quadruplets potbelly.
Title: DON'T GO BREAKING MY HEART
Genre: YA contemporary
When her father suddenly goes missing, seventeen-year-old Amelia Taylor is forced to pick up the pieces, and take care of her sick, pitiless, and cigarette addicted momma who blames her for her failing health and wrinkled skin, while she also struggles with matters of the heart, her boyfriend or childhood sweetheart.
ON THE OUTSKIRTS
YA Fantasy
Sixteen-year-old Tessa must find a cure for the poison epidemic that has her mother on the brink of death, while avoiding burners searching for the witch responsible for this illness—a witch just like her.
Title: DEATH OF SLEEPING BEAUTY
Genre: MG. Novel-Graphic Novel hybrid
Alivia Fair finds herself trapped inside Sleeping Beauty’s castle far removed from the world she thought she knew, and must find a way home in time to stop the Black Witch and her blue-bearded son from killing everyone she loves.
TITLE: MONSTROUS
GENRE: YA Fantasy
When Kymera, a hybrid created to rescue the city’s children from an evil wizard, falls for a human boy, she’s forced to ask who the real monster is: the wizard, Father, or worse, herself.
Title: THE ADVENTURES OF BIC AND BILL
Genre: MG
To free themselves from Momma’s tyrannous return from the circus as a prize fighter, Bic and Bill must capture the giant six foot rat that has been making midnight raids on the butcher shop and train him to defeat their undefeated Momma in a circus held prize fight for their freedom.
Title: THE ALTERAE
Genre: YA Urban Fantasy
To save his own life, and the soul of the girl he loves, 17-year-old Alex must betray the Vigiles Nocturni, a secret order that polices the supernatural, to hunt down a killer before he strikes again.
Title: COVETED
Genre: YA urban fantasy
Caleb discovers he can raise the dead, which kicks him to the top of a murderous secret society's most wanted list.
Title: MINOTAUR
Genre: YA Sci-Fi
Banished to the mechanical Labyrinth, Ikki's only hope of escape is the maze's keeper -- a young man known as the Minotaur
Title: Planet Vacation
Genre: Picture Book
Pitch: On vacation Rosie wants to rollerblade on Saturn’s rings and dive for starfish on Jupiter, but each planet has other plans for her.
Title: HOME IS WHERE THE BIRD IS
Genre: PB
With winter looming, Bird thinks he's found his perfect birdhouse...until he meets its resident, Mouse, who leads Bird on a hilarious tour of unconventional housing options.
The Emerald Wood
MG Adventure
When ten-year-old Wyatt Cook and his older, jerk of a brother, Dustin, venture alone into the mysterious greenbelt behind their Pacific Northwest home for the first time, they have no idea the discovery of a strange, blue-haired creature will thrust them into a timeless battle between two raging realms of the forest, and it will fall upon Wyatt to save them all.
WARRIOR-MONKS
YA Rural Fantasy
A reluctant juvenile delinquent must achieve knowledge of self and let go of resentment amidst magic and martial arts at the world's strangest reform school.
Title: How My Video Game Came To Life
Genre: MG Urban Fantasy
Twelve-year-old Mike is a video game fanatic, except he gets in way over his head when a monster steps out of the TV to kidnap his baby sister, leading him and his friends on an adventure inside a video game to rescue her.
3 more after Leiann!
Title: The Girl with the Porcelain Wings
Genre: YA Urban Fantasy
Eighteen-year-old Rumor is pulled into a nightmare world at war when a beautiful statue with wings comes to life.
Title: BOUNCE
Genre: MG
When Appie tries on a pair of her mum's prototype sneakers she gains the bouncability of a rubber ball and b-b-boings all over the city!
Title: Unvisible
Genre: YA Sci-Fi
Owen, a high school senior in hiding from the organization that made him permanently invisible, risks his safety for a chance at the one thing he never thought he could have--a friend.
Title: BUDDY THE DOGBIRD
Genre: Picture book
Please consider BUDDY THE DOGBIRD, my 500 word picture book about a floppy eared, big-hearted hound dog who feels left out until he learns how to be a friend, and in the process, discovers his amazing talent: He can fly!
Title: CLAVENDOR
Genre: MG fantasy
When twelve year-old Ben Thomas learns he only has four days to help find a missing boy, he’s a little freaked out. He’s never been submerged in a pit of snakes, crossed a wicked talking bridge, or been chased by a roaming fireball. But that’s all a piece of cake compared to coming face-to-face with the kidnapper.
Contest is closed! Thanks and good luck!
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