PW #246: YA Gothic Horror: A SAVAGE MISCREATION

Manuscript Status: Finished

Mentor Names: Meredith McCardle and Ron Walters
Mentee Name: Elizabeth Runnoe
Title: A SAVAGE MISCREATION
Category: Young Adult
Genre: Gothic Horror
Word Count: 80,000

Pitch:

When 16-year-old disfigured Talmage apprentices to his deranged uncle, they create a living, breathing clockwork boy.  But when its flesh-and-metal body rots, the once gentle boy becomes increasingly monstrous, and Talmage must decide whether to save his creation or turn against the only friend he’s ever known.

Excerpt:

My father always told me his brother, Mordecai True, was a wicked and ungodly thief.

“Steer clear of him, Talmage,” he would often warn, “for he is no brother of mine.”

They’d quarreled when I was young although I didn’t know why, and since then my father had forbidden him to enter our house. I grew up hardly knowing the man, and didn’t think of him often, if ever at all—a boy of sixteen only had so much capacity for thought. Besides, I had troubles enough to manage on my own. You see, I was born with a very unfortunate appearance.

My ears were deformed, my teeth pointed—every single one of them like a series of notches upon a serrated blade. On my face, each cheekbone swelled up and pinched my eyes. I looked more like a long-eared bat than a boy. My father said I would grow out of it, but I never did. As for me, I never understood why Nature created me so.

“What a frightening child,” people whispered. “His eyes are clouded with such an awful gloom it’s as if he’s thinking something quite sinister.”

And so I was, most of the time.

Needless to say, because of these God-given traits, friends were elusive to me and rarely, if ever, did I leave the farm. And for good reason—the people of the Vale were a superstitious lot. But my life changed forever one night at the end of summer. Let me tell you how.