Manuscript Status: 1 week delivery
Mentor Name: Jaye Robin Brown
Mentee Name: Allie Schellong
Title: YIELD
Category: YA
Genre: LGBT Speculative Thriller
Word Count: 90,000
Pitch:
Adam Furling’s life is in neutral—busted car, no college plans, and a wordless crush on his best friend, Dion—until he carries a mysterious box across the road. Now, he has twenty-one days to help the FBI with their otherworldly case, or he disappears, for good.
Excerpt:
Adam would not drive today.
Not anywhere.
Not anyone.
He tensed against a twist in his stomach. He’d loved telling Dion and Kanya he’d get himself to work that morning. Even Golden’s transportation system, with its erratic, unscheduled bus stops and wildly mistaken departure times, was worth the independence. Worth this relief from feeling like a little brother his friends had been roped into driving.
Adam glanced at the wall clock above the service counter. Seven thirty-something, the minutes didn’t matter, all he saw was the studio’s closing time and too close. He wiped his palms on his khakis and turned to the window. Whiting Street stretched like a gritty brown river under the haze of a blazing June sun.
Damn.
He walked halfway to the door and stopped. Maybe the hesitation set it off, but Dion’s voice replayed without warning, bright and crisp as an audio stream, through his head. Adam ran a hand behind his neck. Dion had positively pined to meet Kanya when her class got back to town. The field trip had taken her from Golden for a whole week.
Adam knew his reliably faulty memory well, but he couldn’t forget the winsome quality to Dion’s voice.
“How’d that sound?” Dion had asked Adam a breath later. “Think she’d like a deeper sigh? Or something more gravelly, or…yeah, I see, you think no sigh. Let her think this week was easy.”
Adam hadn’t said anything.
Dion had looked at him like whatever he did say would undoubtedly be best.