Title: UNTIL THE END
Age Category: Adult
Genre: Women’s fiction with a light sci-fi element
Word Count: 94,000
Pitch: Lilia’s husband and son are on the shuttle to Mars, but she’s given up her seat to save a child. Now she must brave an apocalyptic Midwest to find another launch – before the asteroid hits.
First 250 Word of Manuscript:
I wasn’t planning to deceive him. Not after eight years of marriage. Not on his last day on Earth. I didn’t even know I was going to do it until it happened. It was as if the decision wasn’t my own, as if it had been made for me eons ago, set in motion by all these events tumbling beyond my control.
To clarify, I didn’t lie to my husband. But I certainly sucked him into my deception – my enormous, life-altering deception. And there was nothing he could do about it once it was spoken.
Conveniently, he was already strapped into his seat, positioned protectively next to our little boy, on the way to the shuttle that was destined to remove us from this world. So I didn’t have to worry about him leaping up to argue with me, beg me to change my mind, or simply pick me up and force me into my own seat, if he were the kind of guy to do that sort of thing.
The seat, though, was no longer my own. That was the crux of the accidental deception.
We planned for weeks to take our trip into the vast unknown. I’d obsessively made list after list of what we would bring in our allotted luggage – three bags, one for each of us. Our lives were meant to be crammed into three bags, and how on Earth can you do that?
How on Earth. What would the new expression be? “How on Mars” just didn’t sound right.