Zombies ARE Real

I had a fascinating thought about our world and about how art can imitate life. A person who very kindly critiqued a single chapter of my zombie apocalypse manuscript commented she didn't believe my teenage heroine would leave a place of safety to live alone in a world of toxic rain and zombies. Now, I have (I hope) set-up several things to help the reader buy into my story: 1) my heroine is incredible impulsive and demonstrates this several times early in the story, 2) her place of safety has become anything but - everything she cares about has been taken from her and she is forced to do/become the thing she hates most, and 3) she is a very capable markswoman and has fought zombies first-hand for years. But still, would a teenage girl really leave "home" and go out in a dangerous and potentially-deadly world? My thought - they do it all the time. Girls run away from their families, choosing a life on the street rather than deal with whatever is happening in their home-life. According to girlshealth.gov, one in seven kids between the ages of ten and eighteen will run away at some point. And think about it. Our world is just as hazardous as one filled with zombies. Runaways deal with starvation, drug addiction, crime, pornography and rape. And one out of every three teens on the street will be lured into prostitution within forty-eight hours of leaving home. So who are the REAL zombies? PIMPS! And anyone else who takes advantage of a vulnerable child.

Story of a pitch contest participant

I entered the March Madness Agent Pitch Match about a week ago. To get in, there were three times during the day in which you had half an hour to email your 35-word pitch and first 150 words of your manuscript. Only the first 50 pitches at each time slot would make it into the contest. When the first time slot came around, I got online and waited for the clock to tick on the hour. When it did, I hesitated sending my email, wondering if there was going to be some indication of when to send. Twenty seconds after the hour, I went ahead and sent my pitch - and didn't make the cut. Fifty pitches were submitted in less than twenty seconds. Wow! So, when the next time slot came around, I sent my email the very millisecond the clock ticked on the hour - and got in! By the end of the day, the contest had 198 entries. (If you did the math, you realized 198 is more than 50x3. Anyone who had participated in a pitch workshop the month before got a special entry.) From there, the sponsors, Brenda Drake, Cassandra Marshall, and Shelley Watters chose sixty pitches for the "game" round of the contest. And my pitch made it! Yay! There are ten agents who will basically play poker for the pitches they want. They can play a hand to try for a query, partial or full manuscript. They can also use certain hands to trump another's play. All of this takes place between March 12 -14. You can follow the action on twitter with the hash-tag #PitchMadness. Should be fun!

Check out Brenda's blog about the rules here!

You learn about the participating agents here and here!

And Cassandra's blog with my entry is here! Wish me luck!

Six Sentence Sunday 1/29

For six sentence sunday this week, I wanted to share a few lines from my YA steampunk romance, HERITAGE. Moments from being married to the man of her dreams, sixteen-year-old Sylvia Long is carried off by Gabriel Villeroi, swept into a world of invention and the supernatural...

I glanced in the mirror a second time, praying the man was simply a fabrication of the mind brought on by my euphoria. My heart fell, along with my hopes. There he was, nonchalantly leaning against the bedpost like he had every right to be there.

Incensed at the man’s lack of etiquette, I spun around to face him, nearly toppling sideways from the weight of my hair.

“Sir, I do not know what has possessed you to enter my bedchamber but it is of no consequence, I insist you leave at once.”

“Alas, Sylvie, I am neither able nor willing to heed your request.”

Make sure to visit http://sixsunday.com/ to see more #sixsunday!

Pitch Blogfest

Brenda Drake is hosting a fun pitch contest and blogfest! See more details at:  http://brenleedrake.blogspot.com/
The official contest isn't until Tuesday, so I have the next two days to perfect my pitch. Let me know what you think, good or bad!

Here is my entry:

Title: BITERS
Genre: YA Dystopian Romance
Word Count: 80,000

Pitch: In a world of necrotic cannibals and fanatic survivors, a self-reliant teen must find a way to work with the boy who betrayed her to stop a madman from destroying the last remnants of humanity.

I haven’t slept soundly since the world ended.

Stuck somewhere between waking and dreaming, I hear a muffled thud.

I reach for my pistol. A few years ago, a seventeen-year-old girl might have kept a phone under her pillow, anxious for a call from a boy or a text from her best friend. Now it’s a firearm. Lucky me.

Odds are the noise is my new roommate – for the umpteenth time. I hate that damn cat. I never take chances, though, not anymore. That lesson is tattooed on my soul, inked in the blood of those I’ve failed to protect.

Gun in tow, I slide off the bed, careful not to make a sound.

The good news? The noise wasn’t the cat. It’s fast asleep in the far corner. I won’t have to kill it for waking me – this time. The bad news? The noise wasn’t the cat. That means trouble.

Six Sentence Sunday 12/4

This Sunday, enjoy six sentences from BITERS. Just a simple, fun interaction between Riley and her friend, Jason.

Jason named the object before I could. “Rain.”
“Oh, good, maybe it’ll wash some of the stench away.”
He tucked his nose in his armpit. “Didn’t think I smelled that bad.”
“From the rotting corpses, silly.”

Remember many other authors post six every week. See them here! Or at #sixsunday!