PW #111: Adult Urban Fantasy: NIGHTMARE INK

Manuscript Status: Finished

Mentor Name: Michelle Hauck

Mentee Name: Jason Hine

Title: NIGHTMARE INK

Category: Adult

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Word Count: 108,000 words

Pitch:

Professional curse magnet Wayne is doomed to live forever and watch everyone he loves suffer lethal accidents—including his daughter. Until he snags a contract offering one genuine miracle—for a price. He has two days in Las Vegas to ensure the witch-girl who’s dreamt up a new breed of nightmares never wakes. Trouble is, he’s not the only one after her, and damned if she doesn’t remind him of his daughter.

Sample:

Not even the Devil himself wanted to buy Wayne’s soul. When he’d offered it at a steep discount, the fork-tongued prick just laughed, a hissing sound like air escaping a deflating tire. Even said Wayne’d bring the whole place down with him. That’d seemed like a stretch at the time, since it didn’t get a whole lot lower than hell, but that was before Wayne set foot in the Armadillo Cantina.

The Armadillo squatted about six miles outside of Tucson and was as deep a dive as you could sink to without an oxygen tank. Cigarette smoke merged with the smell of deep-fried greasebombs. College kids wouldn’t even come here. Only a half dozen shit-faced bikers chugging cerveza and shooting pool. When Wayne’s eyes passed over them, each gave their best I will pound your teeth down your throat stare. With the matching patches on their jackets and paunches hanging over their belt buckles, they looked like mall cops playing at Sons of Anarchy.

Wayne thought about pointing that out, but it’d been a while since he’d been shot, stabbed, or beaten—might as well keep the streak going a little longer. Taking a beating hurt worse than the other two, but he’d had plenty of experiences with each over the past three-hundred years. Anyone saying they wanted to live forever had never tried it.