Mentor Name: Kes Trester
Mentee Name: Jennifer Hawkins
Title: FALSE START
Category: Young Adult
Genre: Magical Realism
Word Count: 79,000
Pitch:
Friday Night Lights meets The Raven Boys.
Delaney will do anything to help her football-star-bestie score college recruitment—even open her family’s playbook of cursed magic. But when she accidentally gives him a love potion, he kisses his undefeated season goodbye. Delaney’s mistake reveals dark truths about her family, exposes quiet racism in her hometown, and threatens her friendship with the boy she’s secretly loved since childhood.
Excerpt:
Numbness seeps into my calves as I press the backlight button on my phone. 6:45AM. Shifting, I feed my legs a little blood flow.
Desperation and choke-a-skunk incense saturate the dim room. They swirl together in fingerlike tendrils, reaching through the crack of the closet door to my hiding spot. The funk tickles my nose. Wrapping my long hair around my face, I bottle a sneeze and hope the pressure won’t cannonball my eyes against the wall.
Mustn’t. Get. Caught.
Aunt Phoebe’s chipped onyx nails scrape the inside of the coyote skull—ch-ch-ch—like a macabre mortar and pestle. Squinting, I peek through the sliver of light. Blood-red liquid dribbles over her fingers with little clumps of not-quite-dissolved herbs.
Phoebe’s Potions add an extra shot of cheesy to Coyote Park’s charm. Tourists love her products, but residents prefer their Haterade to her little bottles of magic. Except for Old Man Sanchez. He won a modest cash prize in the Texas lottery after a swig of Prosperity Potion. The money helped him start the Coyote Park Carnival, which stuffs his pockets and keeps tourists visiting.
That’s the potion Marshall Renner asked me to steal.
Phoebe pours, tweaks, stirs and grunts—an obsession with Love Potions tugging her puppet strings. I roll my eyes. A supposed curse plagues the women in my family. We can only love once.
If that’s the case, I’m one-hundred-percent screwed.
7 Comments
Julia Alexandra weber · November 4, 2014 at 7:44 am
Hi Jennifer, I’d love to see the first 100 pages of this. Please send a query, a short full-plot synopsis, and the sample pages (as a .doc) to submissions(at)jaw-litagent(dot)com, mentioning PitchWars in your subject line. Thanks so much, Julia
Danielle Barthel · November 4, 2014 at 10:09 am
Hi Jennifer–this sounds great! I’d love to see more. Could you please send your first 50 pages and synopsis to query@newleafliterary.com as an attachment, with the subject line Pitch Wars Request–Danielle? Thanks!
Saba Sulaiman · November 4, 2014 at 3:21 pm
Hi Jennifer,
I’d love to read more of this! Please send a full synopsis and the first 50 pages of your manuscript (Word documents will suffice) to ssulaiman@talcottnotch.net — and don’t forget to mention #PitchWars in your subject line. Thanks, and let me know if you have any questions!
Good luck!
–Saba
Jessica Sinsheimer · November 4, 2014 at 4:32 pm
Yes please! Query, synopsis, and full manuscript (the last two as Word documents) to ESubmissions at SarahJaneFreymann dot com please. Thank you!
Sarah Negovetich · November 5, 2014 at 3:30 pm
I’d love to read more. Please send the query, synopsis and first 100 pages as an attachment to Sarah@Corvisieroagency.com.
Brianne Johnson · November 6, 2014 at 10:44 am
Hi Jennifer,
I know I’m a little late but I would love to read more of this. Can you e-mail me the first 50 pages in a Word doc with PITCH WARS and the title of your work in the subject line? Thanks!
Brianne
Pitch Wars Agent Round! - Brenda Drake | Brenda Drake · November 4, 2014 at 12:50 am
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