21. TIMEKEEPER – Young Adult Historical Fantasy/LGBTQ

Mentor Name: Elizabeth Briggs

Mentee Name: Tara Sim

Title: TIMEKEEPER

Category: Young Adult

Genre: Historical Fantasy/LGBTQ

Word Count: 84,000

Pitch:

When clock mechanic Danny falls for Colton, a boy who controls time, he’ll have more to worry about than what his mother will think. A terrorist is freezing time across England, and only Danny and Colton can stop him before time separates them forever.

Excerpt:

Two o’clock was missing.

Danny thought it must be a joke. The clock tower and the silver timepiece in his hand read 3:06 in the afternoon, when not fifteen minutes before they had read 1:51.

Because the hour between no longer existed.

He looked back at the clock face and swallowed. Not a joke.

The man beside him wrung his hands together and cleared his throat with a sound like an engine stalling. “Can it be fixed?”

Danny wrenched his eyes away from the clock. The mayor of Enfield was sweating, but then again, so was Danny.

“Er, yes,” Danny said, trying not to make it sound like a question. “Yes, it can be fixed.”

The set of the mayor’s shoulders relaxed, but not by much. “Then, please, by all means.” He gestured to the tower as if Danny had forgotten where it was.

Colton Tower was a pillar of limestone and plated cast iron that gleamed bronze in the weak sunshine. A pointed spire stood like a sentinel above the shingled roofs of Enfield. The clock face shone yellow, its numbers and hands black against the opal glass, making it even easier to see the empty space between one and three o’clock.

The clock ticked on, but Danny felt the lost hour as he would a missing finger. That wrongness, sharp and shocking, bore down on his body until he could barely breathe.

Stolen. An entire hour, a chunk of time, taken like it was the last piece of cake on a neglected platter.