PW #361: Young Adult Contemporary LGBT: EVERYTHING IS EPHEMERAL

Manuscript Status: Finished

Mentor: Judi Lauren
Mentee: Alice Reeds
Title: EVERYTHING IS EPHEMERAL
Category/Genre:  Young Adult Contemporary LGBT
Word Count: 87,000 words

Pitch:

When boyfriends Joey and Benji embark on their first European tour promoting their debut album, Joey’s happiness slowly begins faltering as he struggles with inexplicable sadness and negativity. Insecure, he keeps it hidden from Benji, until Joey passes out on stage during their London gig. Now he must face his diagnosis—severe depression—and learn to accept and manage it or else he and Benji could lose everything.

Excerpt:
Ever since Benji and I were twelve, we dreamed of becoming rock stars. We’d find our way onto the radio, get interviewed by some famous radio DJ, and show the world that we were the shit.

But when our manager, Cody, pushed open the glass doors leading into the BBC Radio building, all I felt was anxiety, fear, and the ice cold need to run.

Inside the building, I stopped to look at a 3D screen showing videos of the different DJs working. One of them walked toward the camera, stuck his tongue out, and then twirled out of the camera’s view.

“Joey,” Benji said, his hand wrapping gently around my wrist a second later, pulling me away from the screen and toward our impatient manager standing near the elevator. As we walked I looked at him, into his beautiful brown eyes and the reassuring smile he gave me. Slowly, it calmed me down. A little.

I was excited, of course I was, we’d been waiting for this chance for years, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I shouldn’t be there, that I didn’t deserve to be there. But wasn’t this the outcome of the hard work Benji and I had put into our music since we were ten? It took us eight years of tears, anger, frustration, and dedication to be here, so why did I feel this way?