Super Intern Contest – DAUGHTER OF THE MOON

Genre: YA Urban Fantasy
 Word count: 57,000

Query:

Seventeen-year-old Selina Kane always knew she was different, but never imagined she was last-living-necromancer different.Not until she starts speaking the language of the Underworld and visiting Acherusian Lake in her dreams. Caught between chasing a destiny she doesn’t yet understand and wanting to protect her parents, she leaves home on across-country bound Greyhound bus. A few stops into the journey, Blake storms into her life, charming his way into the seat next to her and making her blush and stumble over her words.

Blake claims to be her bonded protector. And as if that wasn’t hard enough to believe, he tells her that she’s immortal and has lived through many lifetimes before this one. At first,she doesn’t believe him, but Blake knows all about the place of her dreams: the Underworld, and not really a dream at all. And that moon-shaped birthmark she’s never shown anyone? He knows about that, too. There isn’t much time to decide whether or not to trust him; Selina is in danger. Ciara, queen of the undead,is determined to murder the last living necromancer before she can take up her traditional duties and cleanse the living of the undead.

Selina doesn’t have time to process everything Blake has told her, or to completely sort out her feelings for him,before Ciara’s undead attack. She watches helplessly through the only spell she can conjure – a protective shield – as Blake is dragged away in her place.Selina assumes the undead have murdered him and she turns to the necromantic powers she hardly knows how to use, risking her life to search for Blake in the Underworld. But Selina doesn’t find his soul resting peacefully in Acherusian Lake. Blake’s been transformed into one of the undead, and the guards of the Underworld expect her to find and destroy him.

Selina doesn’t care what the guards’ idea of her duty as a necromancer is;she’s determined to get Blake back in one piece. There is one spell, one that would save Blake’s soul, but she’d have to kill him to use it,and worse, transform him into a ferryman for the Underworld. There may be other ways to save him though, if she’s willing to make dark alliances with the undead. Selina knows she shouldn’t, but with Blake’s life in jeopardy, the line between good and evil starts to blur.

DAUGHTER OF THE MOON: ACHERUSIAN BOUND is a YA Urban Fantasy complete at 57,000words and will appeal to readers of both Garth Nix and Lauren Kate. It is a stand-alone novel with series potential.

250-word excerpt:

As far as Selina knew, she was the only seventeen-year-old with her own burial plot. And once a year, she looked forward to nothing so much as visiting her grave. She’d stared at the glowing red digits of her clock all night, picturing the cemetery in her mind, until finally, the alarm went off. She’d already been dressed beneath her comforter so all she had to do was pull on a sweatshirt and slip into her sneakers and she was ready to go.

She hurried downstairs, darted through the kitchen, and quietly closed the front door behind herself with outdrawing any attention. But before Selina could get to her bike, her older sister appeared from around her car where she had been strapping their twin brothers into car seats.

“I have to get these two to a doctor’s appointment, but I can drop you off at school first. Since it’s your birthday,” Jess said, jingling the keys to the old Chrysler she’d inherited from Grandpa last summer. It had been two years since Jess’s decision to take a year off after high school. Selina wouldn’t make the same mistake. She was leaving for college this summer, which meant this would be her last chance to visit her grave for at least four years.

“Thanks, Sis, but actually, I want to visit my mother on the way so I’ll just ride my bike.”

Only fifteen minutes until sunrise.

“We can stop at the cemetery on the way home,” Jess offered.

I should already be there.