Pitch Wars Mentee Ready to Wage War

Tomorrow is the BIG day for #PitchWars, a huge contest hosted by Brenda Drake. 30 mentors worked for six weeks with a selected mentee to polish their pitches and manuscripts. Now, 17 agents will have the opportunity to make requests based on the first 250 words and pitch. In addition, mentor/mentee teams compete for the highest number of requests for prizes.

My fantabulous mentee, Janet Taylor, has worked her tail off to whip her manuscript into shape. Now we’re ready to wrangle!  *cracks knuckles* GAME ON!!!!!

 

Here’s a sneak peak of Janet’s INCREDIBLE book.

 

NAME: Janet B Taylor
MENTOR: Heather Webb
TITLE: THROUGH THE DIM
GENRE: YA/Fantasy-Time Travel

PITCH: When Hope discovers her mother isn’t dead, but marooned in the twelfth century by a vindictive time traveler, the teen joins a team of time-jumping Indiana Joneses to stage a rescue. But Hope isn’t prepared for the brutal medieval world, or the handsome traitor whose betrayal could leave her trapped in the past forever.

 

FIRST 250:

Everyone in town knew the coffin was empty.

I think that was what drew the crowd, the pure curiosity of the thing. In beauty shops and diners, people would brag how they’d been there, at Sarah Walton’s memorial service. Oh, it was big news. An empty casket. The poor husband who waited months before finally accepting his odd, foreign wife was gone. A woman who didn’t even have the decency to show up for her own funeral. And then there was that strange daughter.

As for the strange daughter, all she—I–wanted was to have it done. The service, the unendurable visits from ‘well-wishers’. The burial.

The wooden pew dug into the underside of my thighs. I heard the whispering, but didn’t turn. And I didn’t look once at that polished, detestable box.

The first mourners had shown up only hours after we got the call. In far-off India, a city had collapsed. After that, the news came in dribbles of pain. A catastrophic earthquake. American and British volunteers crushed under concrete and smoking rubble. Recovery of their bodies unlikely, then impossible.

As my dad and I sat white and stunned at the kitchen table, we heard the first, timid knock on our back door. I didn’t so much as blink. I knew if I did, my skin—like a shattered windshield held in place by the seal around it—would collapse into a million pieces, and the pain roaring inside would rupture and devour me.