B1: MG Fantasy #ownvoices POC: THE NINE GRAVES OF GERALDINE GREY

Title: THE NINE GRAVES OF GERALDINE GREY

Age Category: Middle Grade

Genre: Fantasy #ownvoices POC

Word Count: 39,000

Pitch:

A young girl tasked with helping souls from a Louisiana cemetery pass to the other side must fight a powerful witch for control over the gate to the underworld.

First 250 Word of Manuscript:

If you ever saw Geraldine Grey, the first thing you’d notice, she was a very serious child. At twelve, she had already mastered the stern calmness of a professor, despite the fact she was at that awkward age of pointy elbows and knobby knees. She had curly black hair, a small snub of a nose, and a sharp, determined chin. Her most important features, however, were her eyes, which were eerie white, except for the faint black ring lining her pupils.

Geraldine’s eyes were important, because they allowed her to see ghosts.

“Bonsoir, Mister Thompson,” Geraldine greeted the groundskeeper when she arrived at the quiet, tree-lined graveyard that evening.

The bad-tempered ghost did not agree with this salutation. “I don’t see what’s so good about it.” He rose from his grave and stretched, his old bones rattling from the movement. Mister Thompson was as gaunt and bony in death as he had been in life.

The fact that his bones rattled did not startle Geraldine. At La Maison des Fantômes, that grand, ancient mansion in the backwoods of Louisiana, which housed the oldest cemetery in the state, ghosts became so powerful they could do all sorts of strange things. That included moving their skeletons when they felt like it.

Gabriel, a white wolf with bright blue eyes, trotted up to Geraldine. You’d think he’d lighten up just once, Gabriel’s thoughts whispered in Geraldine’s mind. Most people mistook Gabriel for a husky, or an Alaskan Mamalute, but he was one-hundred percent Siberian direwolf.

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