PW #375: Young Adult Contemporary: VERY CAREFULLY AND NOT ALL AT ONCE

Manuscript Status: FINISHED

Mentor Name: Lindsey Frydman

Mentee Name: Elissa Hunter

Title: VERY CAREFULLY AND NOT ALL AT ONCE

Category: Young Adult

Genre: Contemporary

Word Count: 63,000

Pitch:

Geeky Thea just wants to nab her crush and get her driver’s license, but a hot new guy’s arrival is going to make her junior year more complicated than explaining emotions to a Vulcan.

Excerpt:

There were some things in life I would never understand. How some people thought you could like either Star Wars or Star Trek, but not both. Why chocolate milk gave me the hiccups. And most importantly, why Alan Merkel, über-goth and total hottie biscotti, had yet to fall hopelessly in love with me.

The last of these had been on my mind for months, ever since Alan complimented me at my best friend’s birthday party. As soon as I looked into his so-brown-they-might-as-well-be-black eyes, I was a goner. He haunted my dreams and waking moments. He crept in at the most inconvenient times  like, say, when I was trying to make important purchase decisions in the back of Cool Comix, Northwest Florida’s finest purveyor of geek accoutrements.

“I suck so hard at flirting,” I said to Madison. “What do I have to do to make him notice me?”

“Try actually talking to him, Thea,” she said while browsing through the shelf of trade paperbacks.

“I can’t just go up and talk to him.” I rifled through the one-dollar boxes on the floor. “He’s a guy. I have no experience socializing with them. I’m afraid I might puke all over him. In fact, I know I will. I’ll yack on his combat boots and then I’ll find out if it really is possible to die of humiliation.” I pushed the last box away and stood.

“You’re overthinking this too much. Just chill out and let it happen naturally.”

And there, sitting in the top left corner, was just what I needed to squash my gloom.