Contest closed! Thanks to all who entered, and good luck!
It's PITCHING TIME! Are you ready to enter? Pitch your completed novel to our MA. May's Mystery Agent has requested the following genres:
Adult/YA (no MG)
Horror
Mystery
Crime
Suspense
Fantasy
Magical Realism
Science Fiction
Mainstream
No romance or religious
Especially looking for YA Horror and Mystery-- think creepy and dark.
This contest is open to veterans and newbies alike - so long as you have a complete and query-ready manuscript on your hands within the genres of interest, our guest agent would love to hear from you.
Contest goes live 9 AM central time and remains open until all entry spots are filled. The first 50 entries we receive will go on to our MA. Remember, this is a one-sentence pitch. Cheating with grammar doesn't count. Meaning that you can't have 3 sentences with commas between them. The sentence needs to work.
The official contest rules:
1) Entries must be one-line pitches. The length of the pitch is up to you, but remember, it's only one sentence.
2) Entries must be for completed manuscripts. No unfinished drafts, please!
3) Entries must be left in the comments section of today's post (please don't email us your entries!). We'll close the contest once we've reached our limit.
4) You can only enter once today (only one project). If you participated or won previous MA contests, you can enter this one as well!
5) Please include NAME, CONTACT INFO, GENRE, and TITLE, followed by your one-line pitch.
6) The contest will close when we receive 50 entries.
7) The winner will receive a FULL manuscript request!
8) If the rules aren't followed, your entry will be disqualified.
This is a one-sentence pitch contest. Winner gets a full manuscript request from the Mystery Agent.
Contest goes live 9 AM central time and remains open until all entry spots are filled. The first 50 entries we receive will go on to our MA. Remember, this is a one-sentence pitch. Cheating with grammar doesn't count. Meaning that you can't have 3 sentences with commas between them. The sentence needs to work.
The official contest rules:
1) Entries must be one-line pitches. The length of the pitch is up to you, but remember, it's only one sentence.
2) Entries must be for completed manuscripts. No unfinished drafts, please!
3) Entries must be left in the comments section of today's post (please don't email us your entries!). We'll close the contest once we've reached our limit.
4) You can only enter once today (only one project). If you participated or won previous MA contests, you can enter this one as well!
5) Please include NAME, CONTACT INFO, GENRE, and TITLE, followed by your one-line pitch.
6) The contest will close when we receive 50 entries.
7) The winner will receive a FULL manuscript request!
8) If the rules aren't followed, your entry will be disqualified.
Please format your comment like this:
Name: Smarty Pants (use your real name)
Email or twitter: @smartypants (not my real twitter handle)
Genre: YA Horror
Title: Diablo Stone
Pitch: Something in Grandma's basement beckons to Diablo in his mind, and the smoky voice only he can hear brings a message from his parents' graves compelling him to take revenge on Grandma.
GOOD LUCK!!
59 comments:
Name: Bethany Smith
Email or twitter: @bethanyrsmith
Genre: YA Horror
Title: Restless Waters
Pitch: In a story of ghosts, guilt and redemption, 17-year-old Romy Hall must choose between the girl she killed when she was eleven and her own freedom.
Name: Meradeth Houston
Twitter: @meradethhouston
Genre: Upper YA Sci-Fi
Title: An Absence of Light
Pitch:
Fleeing with bloody hands and a stolen BMW, Leah must escape charges for a murder committed by shadow creatures only she can see.
Name: Sarah Marsh
Email: AthenaDreaming(at)gmail(dot)com
Genre: YA Southern Gothic
Title: No Such Thing
Pitch: Seventeen-year-old Dare doesn’t believe in ghosts, but the one that’s followed her home will change her mind— or be the death of her.
Name: Cortney Pearson
Twitter: @cor2ney
Genre: YA Horror
Title: PHOBIC
Pitch: Fifteen-year-old Piper knows her house is strange, but when an act of vandalism injures her instead of the house, she realizes the place isn't just haunted, it's alive-- and she needs to break her connection to it before becoming a part of her house for good.
Name: Jamie McHenry
Twitter: @JamieMcHenry
Genre: YA
Title: Dead and Beloved
Pitch: Seventeen-year-old zombie Ryan Moon must survive high school long enough to take a zealous doctor's daughter to prom.
Name: Miriam Caldwell
Email: miriam.caldwell (at) gmail (dot) com
Genre: YA Thriller
Title: Nightfallen
Pitch: Lexy’s been training all of her life to fight the infected and protect humanity, but when her boyfriend, Jason, becomes infected Lexy begins to question everything she’s been taught, then she learns she can save Jason by sacrificing her own humanity and she must choose between obeying her family or saving Jason.
Name: Allison Russell
Twitter: @allisonsrussell
Title: LILY IN THE VALLEY
Genre: YA post-apocalyptic
Pitch: After escaping the basement her captor had locked her in nearly her entire life, seventeen-year-old Lily, as the last female ever born, goes on a quest to find what remains of civilization and uncovers the truth behind The Great Decline in female births.
Name: Mac Carey
email: mac.carey9 [at] gmail [dot] com
Genre: Suspense
Title: A Dangerous Age
When a mysterious stranger appears in her newly forged life, a young woman is forced to retrace the past she tried so hard to escape, a journey which takes her from the superstitious hills of Appalachia to the Italian city of her birth, full of 1970s social upheaval, stolen works of art, and men set on revenge.
Name: Stephanie Cardel
Email: thecardels@yahoo.com
Genre: YA Mystery with a Paranormal Element
Title: SEEING SHADOWS
Pitch: Seventeen-year-old Skylar is horrified to discover that she can see visions within shadows, but when a vision reveals a classmate was murdered and her best friend/crush may be involved, she’ll have to deliberately step into some shadows to find the truth and stop the murderer before he stops her.
Name: Cyndy Aleo
Twitter: @cyndyaleo
Genre: Adult Mainstream
Title: Undying
Pitch: The last thing Cameron expects the morning after his wife's funeral is to find her alive and well in his kitchen, making breakfast.
name: Bonnar Spring
email: bonnarspring@gmail.com
genre: suspense
title: Disappeared
pitch: Julie tracks her missing friend Fay from the markets of Marrakech to the sands of the Sahara, but it's not until Julie finds Fay and learns the extent of her betrayal that she really gets into trouble.
Author: John Gurney
Title: Details
Genre: Thriller
Pitch: After a 27-year old venture capitalist fell in love with his roommate’s ex-girlfriend who embezzled to pay for her autistic nephew’s therapies, will he risk his career - and life - to help?
Name: Amy Trueblood
Twitter: @atrueblood5
Genre: YA Thriller
Title: FIGHTING CHANCE
Pitch: Second-degree black belt Nica McDonald talks better with her fists than her mouth, so when the local bully winds up dead, she becomes the prime suspect.
Name: Stephanie McGee
Twitter: @StephanieLMcGee
Genre: YA fantasy
Title: Heirs of the Seven Realms Book 1: Woven
Pitch: When fifteen-year-old Nicolette learns the tale of Snow White is true, she must find Snow, stop a mad queen, and save her shop from the magic-wary.
Name: Christina Ketchem
Twitter: @allodoxoph0bia
Title: Emmy & Mari
Genre: YA Mainstream
Pitch: Told through alternating past and present POVs, unlikely best friends Emmy and Mari take comfort in each other after being bullied, but when Mari dies of an overdose Emmy must confront her own demons and come to terms with the fact that she didn't know Mari as well as she thought she did.
Name: Eric Steinberg
Twitter: @ericgsteinberg
Title: BETTER LIVES
Genre: YA science fiction
Word Count: 94,000
Pitch: Arrogant 17 year-old prep school student Marc is abducted and replaced by aliens to avert a future in which he’s the president who starts WWIII.
Name: Alex Brown
Email: alex.brown815 (at) gmail (dot) com
Genre: YA Sci-fi
Title: RED AND BLACK
Pitch: Seventeen year–old Pon Devrier only wants her best friend to notice her, but she gets more attention than she ever desired when she’s thrown into the middle of her Galaxy’s Civil War and tasked with killing a mind-controlling Empress in this Les Misérables retelling with a Star Wars twist.
Name: Molly Pinto Madigan
Email: mpintomadigan@gmail.com
Genre: YA folklore retelling/urban fantasy
Title: OF BLOOD AND ROSES
Pitch: When disillusioned music major Maggie Carter hears the voice of Thomas Lynn on the radio, she knows she has to meet him, but as she learns more about the man who spins folk ballads into rock 'n' roll perfection, Maggie finds herself lost in a strange world where words bind, where music manipulates, and where mortality hints at something more.
Name: Rachel Hert
Email: wryteriam@gmail.com
Genre: YA Fantasy
Title: The Triumvirate
Sixteen-year-old Jared only wants to escape his dad's abuse, but when that escape comes in the form of a magical world—a world that wants him dead just because he's from Earth—he must find a way to get home before the overlords chop his head off, or defeat the other Earth children who rule the land and take over everything.
Name: Ava Jae
E-mail: avalonjaedra@gmail.com
Genre: YA Paranormal
Title: FIELD OF BONES
Pitch: Cade accidentally killed his girlfriend with a kiss, but with an assassin after him and a rising body count, cops aren't his biggest problem.
Name: Sarah Turnbull
Email: saturnbull [at] gmail [dot] com
Title: AND WE ARE ALL DAMNED
Genre: YA gothic horror
One-Sentence Pitch: On an isolated island, beneath a lush canopy of resurrection ferns and prickly palmettos, a preternatural plague is unleashed across a grotesquely insular Victorian colony when orphans Haeden and Veanne unearth the dark legacy of their bloodline.
Name: Leiann Bynum
Email: slbynum3(at)gmail(dot)com
Genre: YA Mystery
Title: Brothas Torn
Pitch: To prove his father is innocent of second-degree murder,sixteen-year-old Dhamell tries to find out who the real killer is by deceiving someone who believes his dad is guilty--his own half-brother, Tyrik.
Tom Alan Brosz
ZORYA
YA SF
Zorya’s fascination with the Daywalker boy in the Northern California Enclave senior class (the only one in the whole school who can go out in the daytime) results in her family packing her off to her grandfather’s remote Idaho forest refuge where she discovers parts of her Nightwalker heritage she never knew, learns skills she never needed in high school, and eventually finds out the real reason for her exile.
Name: Margaret Alexander
Email: author.margaret.alexander@gmail.com
Genre: YA Suspense
Title: THE EXECUTIONER AT THE INSTITUTE FOR CONTAMINATED CHILDREN
Pitch: The last person Donna expects to fall for is the first suspect in a line of killings at a school for superhuman teens.
tbrosz (at) ionix (dot) net
Name: Amy Lozancic
Email: amy.lozancic@gmail.com
Genre: YA Horror
Title: GRENDEL
Pitch: In a world being destroyed by beasts straight out of the old legends, 17-year-old Delilah will have to choose between keeping her humanity and letting the people she loves die, or teaming up with the grendels to keep her loved ones safe.
Name: Rena Rockford
Twitter @renathewriter
Genre: Adult Sci Fi
Title: DEAD STAR
Pitch: When washed up scientist/mother of two, Chrissy King joins an interstellar order of knights, she must stop a star killer before he destroys the sun.
Name: Dawn Allen
Twitter: @miserwriter
Genre: Mystery
Title: The Drought of Sam Dakota
Pitch: After years without leads on his missing son, child advocate Sam Dakota hires Rami Amato, a P. I. with an aversion to "kid cases," who uncovers conspiracy, lies, and betrayal.
Name: Danielle Oresky
Email: oreskyspam@aol.com
Genre: YA Mainstream
Title: WHEN TOMORROW COMES
Pitch: Examining the past, navigating the present and seeing the possibility of a dismal future spark seventeen-year-old Samantha Ryan into action, shaking things up in her elite group of friends before graduation.
Name: Laurisa Reyes
Email: laurisawhitereyes@yahoo.com
Genre: YA Thriller
Title: CONTACT
When her mother ends up in a coma, Mira is the only one who knows the truth about what happened, but proving it just might get her killed.
Name: Christina Mercer
Twitter: @cwritebuzz
Genre: YA Magical Realism
Title: Honey Queen
Pitch: Living with a family curse that forces carnal love and then kills the male lovers means Melaina Maris would have to sprout wings to cross the gap between reality and a life with the one she loves most.
Name: Heather Marie
Twitter: @xheatherxmariex
Genre: YA Horror
Title: THE GATEWAY THROUGH WHICH THEY CAME
Pitch: Seventeen-year-old Aiden Ortiz has always known that being a Gateway means leading the dead to the other side, but he never anticipated the Gateway's power to bring things back.
Email: mjgurney@live.com
Name: Tifani Clark
Email: tifanic(at)hotmail(dot)com
Genre: YA Paranormal Mystery
Title: Shadow of a Life
Pitch: When fifteen-year-old Jamie Peters meets the ghost of Sophia Briggs--a girl who disappeared aboard her father's ship in 1872--she realizes that the history books and legends she grew up with aren't always true.
Name: Alexandra Singer
Email: moonsheen (at) gmail (dot) com
Genre: YA Sci-Fi
Title: Minotaur
Pitch: Banished to the Labyrinth for flying too high above her city's artificial sun, Ikki's one hope of escape is the young man known only as the Minotaur.
Name: Debra Erfert
Email: debraerfert@yahoo.com
Genre: suspense
Title: Relative Evil
Pitch: Clair Abney, a young romance author of little significance, models the evil villain in her next story after her new stepmother as a way of coping with her dad’s surprise elopement, giving that character a mental illness, Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, never imagining that how close to the truth she comes until the stepmother kills the dad and Claire’s life is targeted and nearly dies.
Name: Kate Larkindale
Twitter: @vampyr14
Genre: YA Contemporary
Title: The Sidewalk's Regrets
Pitch: When Sacha's sheltered life entwines with sexy rocker Dylan's, she gives him her cutting-edge sound; he gives her his drug habit.
Name: Krystal Marquis
Twitter: @KrystalMarquis
Genre: YA Science Fiction
Title: THE THIRTEENTH SUBJECT
Pitch: For seventeen-year-old Evangeline, the line between playing a good soldier and planning her escape from the Chimera Corporation begins to blur after months of forced service, but when she discovers the lead scientist’s plot to establish a "new world order," she must decide if her freedom is worth everyone else’s.
Name: Sophie Morton
Twitter: @_SophieMorton
Genre: YA Contemporary
Title: Mouse Trap
Pitch: Sixteen-year-old Marnie is concerned by her parents' disapproval of her unexpected reunion with her absent uncle, but she has little time to worry about the reasons why when her father fails to return home from work one night.
Name: Carla Cullen
Twitter: @casacullen
Genre: YA Science Fiction
Title: PIPER GIRL
Pitch: In a gritty retelling of The Pied Piper, seventeen-year-old Marisa uses her music to rid her slum of diseased lab rats, only to attract the attention of a twisted scientist intent on exploiting her magic.
Name: Kiera Healy
Email: healykl AT tcd DOT ie
Genre: YA SF
Title: Transported
Pitch: No appeals, no pardons, no parole: when seventeen-year-old Carlon Tane is one of a group sentenced to spend the rest of their lives on the solar system's first prison planet, he enters a dangerous world where The Wire meets Lord of the Flies in space.
Name: Cait G Drews
Email or twitter: notebooksisters(at)gmail(dot)com
Genre: YA dark fantasy
Title: Blood
Pitch: Set in a nightmare fantasy world where whoever has control of the biggest weapon wins the ancient war, eight-year-old Milo’s psychic powers have just branded him the ultimate prize.
Name: Robert August
Email or twitter: raaugust@comcast.net
Genre: Adult Science Fiction
Title: HERE AND BEYOND THE STARS
Pitch: Aidan believes a serial killer murdered his wife, and recklessly pursues him to the farthest edge of the solar system, only to find the barrier between life and death ruptured by what they find there.
Name John Sankovich
email johnrsankovich@yahoo.com
genre young adult fantasy
With two violent groups vying for her telekinetic powers Rebecca Stevens needs to do something she's never been able to do and believe in herself and trust her powers like she's never done before.
Name: Kimberly Ann Miller
Email or twitter: @KimberlyAnnNJ
Genre: YA contemporary
Title: Case in Point
Pitch: An eighteen-year-old girl gets death threats when she reports in her conspiracy theory column that a teacher is pregnant by a senior.
Desiree M.
galaxychaser@yahoo.com
YA fantasy
Quest for Peace
Sixteen year olds can rule the world, once they get past assassins, crazy wizards, and dragons
Chrystal S.
maranatha5_27 (at) Hotmail (dot) come
YA
Caste
Isobel has a choice: Safety in a “flawless” city, ignoring the experiments, or digging up the secrets behind genetic perfection.
Name: Rachel Russell
Twitter: @RachelxRussell
Genre: YA Fantasy
Title: HARVESTER
Pitch: Sixteen-year-old Catalina must make a deal with a criminal faery and stop a serial killer to save the boy she loves and clear her own name of the murders.
Name: Theresa Milstein
Email: tmilstein@gmail.com
Genre: YA Contemporary Fantasy
Title: Sorceress Sisters
Pitch: After their mother's suspicious death, four sisters find out another witch family is out to kill them and their best chance of survival is to help each other, if being stuck together doesn’t kill them first.
Name: Don McFatridge
Email: mcfatridgedon@gmail.com
Genre: YA Science Fiction
Title: PLANTED (I CAN WATER MYSELF)
Pitch: A humanlike girl with a strange affinity to plants arrives on earth to save our garden from invasion, but her airborne immunization plan to protect us from alien infestation requires mating with a teenage human male within five days before her spore sack explodes.
Name: Kes Trester
Email: findkes@gmail.com
Genre: YA mystery
Title: Kit Dawson: Prodigy
Pitch: A 17-year-old science prodigy uses her smarts and skills to track a ticking time bomb, escape from life-threatening situations, and bring a killer to justice.
And that is fifty! Contest closed. Thank you to all our participants!
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