Trick or Treat Bobbing for Slush Save #B14 – DRAGON DANCING

Title: DRAGON DANCING
Category: MC
Genre: Magical Realism
Word Count: 34,000

Pitch:

Rosalind Durrell has a dragon, which would be awesome except he won’t eat anything and she’s starting to worry that he won’t stay healthy for long. She finds an Instructor to help her care for her dragon, but when he goes missing, she has to enlist the smarts of a future astrophysicist, the guidance of a very old Instruction book, and the traveling powers of dragon fire if she wants to rescue the Instructor and help her dragon too. Unfortunately, Ros has always been better at doing things all on her own.

Question 1: In your MC’s voice, what costumed character do you relate most to and why?

Question 2: As an author, what makes your manuscript a tasty treat (aka unique/marketable)?

Having a dragon, traveling to other planets via dragon fire, and meeting not-exactly-human people with three arms or green skin is just as normal as having a cantankerous science teacher and missing the bus.

First 250 words:

Rosalind Durrell had a dragon. All the kids knew it, just like they knew to avoid meatloaf on Thursdays and to stay away from the second floor bathrooms at lunchtime so Nate Milas couldn’t write bad words on their foreheads with permanent marker.

Ros had started going to Kennedy last year, in the spring of fifth grade, and by the time school was back in session the following fall they’d all known about the dragon. It was a difficult thing to miss, perched on the fire escape outside the Durrell apartment in the converted factory on Ninth and Water Street. According to Ros the dragon’s name was Silverwind, but Ros’s brother Norton said his name was Peter. The kids agreed with Ros.

Yeng Moua was the first kid to see Silverwind up close, and since Ros was not the sort of person you could just walk up to and ask questions, Yeng was considered Kennedy’s expert on all dragons.

“Did it shoot fire at you?” Lilly asked.

“That’s stupid. I bet it had an egg though, right? Dragons lay eggs,” Alex said.

“If it was a girl dragon, but Silverwind is a boy.” Clarice nodded twice for emphasis.

“You don’t know it’s a boy. It could be a girl – you can’t tell boy and girl dragons apart from each other,” Lilly said.

“You could if it was sitting on an egg.”

Alex rolled his eyes. “If a dragon sat on an egg it would break! It just hovers over it to keep it warm.”