QK Round 2: Nowhere Land vs. Estella +Ayron
Title: FOLLOW THE SUNEntry Title: Nowhere LandWord Count: 78,000Genre: #ownvoices historical YA (MC is biracial w/ black father, white mother)
Query:
In 1969, Rett syndrome is unheard of. But come hell or high water, Jackie is determined to discover the reason why her four-year-old sister, Evie, suddenly lost the ability to speak and control her hands. Her parents accept their small town doctor’s generic diagnosis that Evie was born with physical and mental impairments and will remain “slow” her entire life. Jackie doesn’t buy it. Evie wasn’t born that way; she regressed just before turning two. So, Jackie spends months secretly mailing letters to various doctors around the country, convinced that if she can find one expert with a possible explanation for Evie’s symptoms, it will force her parents down a path toward determining the cause.
That’s a lot to handle for a seventeen-year-old, though, and no amount of getting drunk with her flower child friends, flirting with a guy who’s caught her eye, or fighting with her June Cleaver-ish mother keeps Evie’s condition from constantly gnawing away at the back of Jackie’s mind. When she finally hears of a doctor in Austria who might have an answer to the riddle that is Evie, Jackie’s world begins to brighten. But, Evie’s disability becomes too much for her mother and father to handle, and they make plans to institutionalize her in another state.
Disgusted with her parents’ cruel plan, Jackie takes off on a planned trip to the Woodstock music festival with her friends. What they don’t know, however, is that she has no intention of returning with them. If Evie won’t be in Everton, Jackie can’t be either. But, the guilt of leaving weighs heavily on her mind. As Woodstock ends, Jackie must decide to find a new life elsewhere or return home to advocate for her sister and fight her parents in a decision she knows is not hers to make.
Written as a series of flashbacks during Jackie’s time at Woodstock, FOLLOW THE SUN brings attention to Rett syndrome, a rare and debilitating genetic neurological disorder discovered in 1966 that, as Jackie discovers, has no known cure. The search for an accurate diagnosis affects every single member of a family. This is a frustration I know all too well, as my own daughter, originally misdiagnosed with autism, was finally correctly diagnosed with Rett syndrome when she was three. This is also an #ownvoices manuscript, as Jackie and I are both biracial.
First 250:
Woodstock Music & Art Fair, August 1969Day One – Late Afternoon
I inhale the scents of lost inhibitions disguised as weed and booze. They’re so thick it’s as if I can reach out and touch them; literally get a contact high. After hours of waiting, the music’s finally starting. For most, time has no place here. You simply exist. It is today. The time is now. And it’s all good. But my mind flickers like the flashes of a camera between photos of the before and the after. The past and the present. The agony that brought me to this point and where it might lead me in the future.
Between Evie and this field full of strangers.
The odors surrounding me vanish, replaced by the memory of more comforting aromas: cookies and apple juice. I smile, in spite of myself. But those thoughts angle my mind toward others that curdle my stomach, like Evie at the supper table with my parents, her hands wringing all over themselves. I’m not there as I should be, and she doesn’t understand why. The image of her face in my head makes each beat of my heart push my chest one notch higher on my personal threshold of pain. Like some great chasm has cracked along my sternum, leaking a burning fire through the rest of my body.
I ache to see her, but I can’t go back home. Not after what I found out. Not after what I learned.
I swear I’ll never go back to Everton.
VERSUS
Title: Secrets in the StoneEntry Nickname: ESTELLA+AYRONWord Count: 77,000Genre: YA Historical Fiction
QUERY:
In 1912, eighteen-year-old Estella Ripley would rather study nude portraits in Paris than bow to the conventional duties her vain, judgmental aunt has deemed important. After another argument with her aunt, Estella makes plans to live in Paris, away from the family's eerie island manor that boasts peculiar perspiring stone walls and an ominous underground passage. But Paris is not in her future, because she learns she has inherited her beloved grandfather's estate nearly a decade after his death – and the estate is in financial trouble.
With her plans for Paris now at a halt, Estella grapples with the difficulties of running the large manor on her own. She enlists the help of the estate's enigmatic attorney, Edward Maxwell, whose trustworthy assistance attracts her to him. When Estella discovers that Edward is conspiring with her aunt to usurp Ripley Manor by marriage to Estella, she flees, unable to face the betrayal of the only person she trusted.
Before she can get to Paris, Estella's boat capsizes, and she discovers a secluded glen in the middle of a remote forest where several clans of Irish fugitives have built homes and thrived for nearly a century. Estella befriends the Irish and, through keen insight and her affinity for interloping, they confess the glen's history is directly related to her grandfather. But when Edward Maxwell tracks down Estella to reveal that he, too, has discovered the glen's secrets and will use them to blackmail her into marriage, Estella must decide: yield to a restricted albeit financially stable life with Edward pulling all the strings, or find a way to extinguish his control before he exposes and destroys every precious secret her grandfather left her to protect.
250:
Stabbing someone was a messy endeavor. Still, it got the job done.
Admittedly, the closest Estella Ripley would ever dare come to touching her aunt was in her imagination, where she could plunge the tip of her mechanical pencil into Florence's chest. But since the woman had no heart, this would be rather ineffective. Stabbing her in the stomach would prove futile, as her whalebone corset would likely obstruct any puncture. A pencil to the neck might work—
No, Estella, she scolded herself. You are not her. You are better than Florence.
"Mrs. Allchurch will attend your party tonight," Florence said. They sat for tea in the chilly, stiff drawing room. "We'll have to open the double doors just to enable the entrance of that Clydesdale of a woman."
Estella bit her tongue, as she had for the past ten years in her aunt's presence. She promised herself she would not engage in this game of ignorance; it was too easy to become Florence, too easy to veer toward that clear, spiteful path. Estella must endure just a few months more until she was free of her aunt's hideous lacework of self-righteousness. Vicious daydreaming would only make Estella resemble Florence, which was the last thing Estella wanted.
Yet if her aunt could get away with murder, then so could Estella…
"Thank you for joining me, Niece. I see you so rarely. You're always tucked away somewhere with that pencil drawing God knows what. Sometimes I feel we live in separate residences."
If only, Estella mused.
Query:
In 1969, Rett syndrome is unheard of. But come hell or high water, Jackie is determined to discover the reason why her four-year-old sister, Evie, suddenly lost the ability to speak and control her hands. Her parents accept their small town doctor’s generic diagnosis that Evie was born with physical and mental impairments and will remain “slow” her entire life. Jackie doesn’t buy it. Evie wasn’t born that way; she regressed just before turning two. So, Jackie spends months secretly mailing letters to various doctors around the country, convinced that if she can find one expert with a possible explanation for Evie’s symptoms, it will force her parents down a path toward determining the cause.
That’s a lot to handle for a seventeen-year-old, though, and no amount of getting drunk with her flower child friends, flirting with a guy who’s caught her eye, or fighting with her June Cleaver-ish mother keeps Evie’s condition from constantly gnawing away at the back of Jackie’s mind. When she finally hears of a doctor in Austria who might have an answer to the riddle that is Evie, Jackie’s world begins to brighten. But, Evie’s disability becomes too much for her mother and father to handle, and they make plans to institutionalize her in another state.
Disgusted with her parents’ cruel plan, Jackie takes off on a planned trip to the Woodstock music festival with her friends. What they don’t know, however, is that she has no intention of returning with them. If Evie won’t be in Everton, Jackie can’t be either. But, the guilt of leaving weighs heavily on her mind. As Woodstock ends, Jackie must decide to find a new life elsewhere or return home to advocate for her sister and fight her parents in a decision she knows is not hers to make.
Written as a series of flashbacks during Jackie’s time at Woodstock, FOLLOW THE SUN brings attention to Rett syndrome, a rare and debilitating genetic neurological disorder discovered in 1966 that, as Jackie discovers, has no known cure. The search for an accurate diagnosis affects every single member of a family. This is a frustration I know all too well, as my own daughter, originally misdiagnosed with autism, was finally correctly diagnosed with Rett syndrome when she was three. This is also an #ownvoices manuscript, as Jackie and I are both biracial.
First 250:
Woodstock Music & Art Fair, August 1969Day One – Late Afternoon
I inhale the scents of lost inhibitions disguised as weed and booze. They’re so thick it’s as if I can reach out and touch them; literally get a contact high. After hours of waiting, the music’s finally starting. For most, time has no place here. You simply exist. It is today. The time is now. And it’s all good. But my mind flickers like the flashes of a camera between photos of the before and the after. The past and the present. The agony that brought me to this point and where it might lead me in the future.
Between Evie and this field full of strangers.
The odors surrounding me vanish, replaced by the memory of more comforting aromas: cookies and apple juice. I smile, in spite of myself. But those thoughts angle my mind toward others that curdle my stomach, like Evie at the supper table with my parents, her hands wringing all over themselves. I’m not there as I should be, and she doesn’t understand why. The image of her face in my head makes each beat of my heart push my chest one notch higher on my personal threshold of pain. Like some great chasm has cracked along my sternum, leaking a burning fire through the rest of my body.
I ache to see her, but I can’t go back home. Not after what I found out. Not after what I learned.
I swear I’ll never go back to Everton.
VERSUS
Title: Secrets in the StoneEntry Nickname: ESTELLA+AYRONWord Count: 77,000Genre: YA Historical Fiction
QUERY:
In 1912, eighteen-year-old Estella Ripley would rather study nude portraits in Paris than bow to the conventional duties her vain, judgmental aunt has deemed important. After another argument with her aunt, Estella makes plans to live in Paris, away from the family's eerie island manor that boasts peculiar perspiring stone walls and an ominous underground passage. But Paris is not in her future, because she learns she has inherited her beloved grandfather's estate nearly a decade after his death – and the estate is in financial trouble.
With her plans for Paris now at a halt, Estella grapples with the difficulties of running the large manor on her own. She enlists the help of the estate's enigmatic attorney, Edward Maxwell, whose trustworthy assistance attracts her to him. When Estella discovers that Edward is conspiring with her aunt to usurp Ripley Manor by marriage to Estella, she flees, unable to face the betrayal of the only person she trusted.
Before she can get to Paris, Estella's boat capsizes, and she discovers a secluded glen in the middle of a remote forest where several clans of Irish fugitives have built homes and thrived for nearly a century. Estella befriends the Irish and, through keen insight and her affinity for interloping, they confess the glen's history is directly related to her grandfather. But when Edward Maxwell tracks down Estella to reveal that he, too, has discovered the glen's secrets and will use them to blackmail her into marriage, Estella must decide: yield to a restricted albeit financially stable life with Edward pulling all the strings, or find a way to extinguish his control before he exposes and destroys every precious secret her grandfather left her to protect.
250:
Stabbing someone was a messy endeavor. Still, it got the job done.
Admittedly, the closest Estella Ripley would ever dare come to touching her aunt was in her imagination, where she could plunge the tip of her mechanical pencil into Florence's chest. But since the woman had no heart, this would be rather ineffective. Stabbing her in the stomach would prove futile, as her whalebone corset would likely obstruct any puncture. A pencil to the neck might work—
No, Estella, she scolded herself. You are not her. You are better than Florence.
"Mrs. Allchurch will attend your party tonight," Florence said. They sat for tea in the chilly, stiff drawing room. "We'll have to open the double doors just to enable the entrance of that Clydesdale of a woman."
Estella bit her tongue, as she had for the past ten years in her aunt's presence. She promised herself she would not engage in this game of ignorance; it was too easy to become Florence, too easy to veer toward that clear, spiteful path. Estella must endure just a few months more until she was free of her aunt's hideous lacework of self-righteousness. Vicious daydreaming would only make Estella resemble Florence, which was the last thing Estella wanted.
Yet if her aunt could get away with murder, then so could Estella…
"Thank you for joining me, Niece. I see you so rarely. You're always tucked away somewhere with that pencil drawing God knows what. Sometimes I feel we live in separate residences."
If only, Estella mused.
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