PW #225: YA Contemporary: WHISPER

Manuscript Status: Finished

Mentor Name: Lizzy Charles
Mentee Name: Tanya Spencer
Title: WHISPER
Category: YA
Genre: Contemporay
Word Count: 66,000

Pitch

When her family relocates to Wyoming to escape her dangerous ex, seventeen-year-old Chloe takes a summer ranch job rehabilitating horses. Vowing to remain guy-free, she doesn’t expect threats seeping up from her past, or a rugged cowboy competitor who just might break her old wounds wide open again.

Excerpt

Burgundy clouds threw a mystical glow over the streets of Jackson, Wyoming. My new town. So different from home. Better in most ways. It was the promise of a new life, a place where nobody knew me. My future was open and wild, and I was free.

I’d spent the last two hours posting my horse training flyers up and down the plank-wood sidewalks of town with its endless shops with western-style storefronts. Laughter and music tumbled out of cowboy bars and shots thundered from an old west show a few streets over.

Just as I taped my last flyer at the corner of Cache and Broadway, a sinewy arm reached over my head and tore it off.

“Hey!” I spun around. He couldn’t have been more than a year older than I, but he was a foot taller in his jeans and cowboy boots, with the sun glinting off the stubble on his chin.

“Don’t need any more horse trainers around here.” He crumpled my flyer in his fist. “Especially no punk-rock, SoCal wannabes.” His blue eyes challenged me from beneath his black cowboy hat.

The hair prickled on the back of my scalp. I stumbled back, but there were plenty of people on the sidewalks, and like hell was I going to let him treat me like that. I stepped forward and ripped the flyer from his hand. “Give me that.”

He gave me a sideways grin that was way too charming. “I’m the only trainer this town needs.”