60. AWAKE AND ASTRAY – Adult Upmarket Contemporary

Mentor Name: Brianna Shrum

Mentee Name: Margarita Montimore

Title: AWAKE AND ASTRAY

Category: Adult

Genre: Upmarket Contemporary

Word Count: 93,000

Pitch:

After a tragic accident, Astrid wakes up to no job or home and unable to remember the previous twenty-four hours. In order to recover her memories, she must navigate a maze of eccentric Boston nightlife and find Theo, who might be the man of her dreams, or merely a figment. Memento meets Before Sunrise.

Excerpt:

I hear sirens and there’s a strange taste in my mouth, metallic and spicy—no, not spicy. Stinging. Blood. What the—? I move my tongue and feel tiny pebbles. They’re sharp and cutting my gums and the insides of my cheeks. Teeth? No. Glass.

I turn to spit the pieces of broken glass out, but my neck is encased in something that makes it impossible to move. I push them out of my mouth with the tip of my tongue and they roll down my chin on a trail of saliva and blood.

I open my eyes and see I’m in some kind of…storage room? With shelves of equipment, strange monitors, dials, wires.

Have I been kidnapped?

The room is tiny, and moving, and noisy. There are beeps, the hiss and tinny chatter of a walkie-talkie, the looped bellow of a siren.

Where the fuck am I?

It finally registers: an ambulance.

Next question: Why the fuck am I in an ambulance?

I try to sit up, but only manage to lift my head maybe an inch. I have a lot more questions. A hand on my shoulder prevents me from rising any further. No, it’s not just the hand. I’m strapped in.

“Nice to see you coming around, but don’t try to sit up. Do you know today’s date?”

“September ninth, 1999,” I mumble.

“It’s actually September tenth,” he corrects me. Close enough.

“What happened? Am I hurt?” Of course you’re hurt, genius.