Pitch 15: Ghost Farm

Name: Wendy Parris
Title: GHOST FARM
Genre: MG Mystery


Word Count: 35,000

Pitch: Twelve-year-old Rebecca is convinced she’ll be totally bored spending summer break with family in Iowa. Then she follows a one-eyed cat to an abandoned farm, and an eerie ghost starts stalking her every move


EXCERPT: 

Car trips were the worst.

Rebecca winced as she shifted position, and her sweaty legs peeled away from the hot leather seat. Out the windshield stretched an endless two-lane-road and rolling green cornfields. The eighties music her mom insisted on playing pulsed from the speakers. The smell of french fires lingered in the air.

“There in one minute!” her mom chirped from the driver’s seat, blazing July sunlight glinting off her sunglasses.

At least this part’s over, Rebecca thought. She loved her family and everything, but she wasn’t thrilled to spend the rest of her summer in Iowa. She was supposed to be having a blast with her friends at Camp PineBirch. She slumped down in the seat.

The car slowed and turned onto a long gravel driveway. Ahead was a sunny yellow frame house with a wrap-around front porch. Tall trees stood over flourishing flowerbeds, and an old red barn towered in back. The familiar scene was picture-perfect, like something out of a movie, and despite her irritable mood Rebecca began to smile. Then a shadow flickered past the side window, inches from her face. She flinched and turned, expecting to see a bird flying off, but no bird was there. The blue sky was empty, hanging above acres of harmless corn.

Weird. A shiver skittered down Rebecca’s spine.

Her mom stopped the car with a lurch in front of the house and switched off the ignition. “This,” she said, stretching her arms above her head, “is going to be fan-tastic.”