QK Round 1: NO SUCH THING AS COINCIDENCE versus BEST(IARY) WESTERN
Entry Nickname: No such thing as a coincidence
Title: Coincidences
Word count: 80k
Genre: NA Paranormal
Query:
Being invisible is good for three things: bank vaults, men’s locker rooms, and saving the world.
For Ami and her partner, Luke, being able to become invisible is part of their job. Their unknown employer assigns them to make “coincidences” happen, from reuniting long lost lovers to toppling empires. But their next job goes way beyond what they’re comfortable with—stopping a bio-terrorism attack on San Francisco. Breaking into illegal laboratories and Federal buildings to figure out who’s behind the outbreak makes bank vaults seem easy.
It doesn’t help that Ami is too in love with Luke to even enjoy the locker rooms. She might finally have a chance to push their relationship past the friend-zone if it wasn’t for angry FBI agents chasing them down hilly streets and invading their homes in the middle of the night.
With the clock ticking down to the planned Independence Day attack, Ami and Luke must prevent the pathogen’s release, escape the FBI pursuers, and handle their feelings for each other. With thousands of lives hanging in the balance, they’re going to need more than a coincidenceto pull it all off.
First 250 Words:
Three big perks to invisibility:
1. Bank vaults
2. Men’s locker rooms
3. Saving the world.
Vaults, well, I’ve only done that once, and I had a good excuse. Men’s locker rooms could be fun, but really, there’s only one person who I want to see naked and he made it clear we’re just friends. Repeatedly. Like how over the past twenty minutes, as we’ve bumped along the pockmarked Mexican toll road, he’d said exactly three words to me. And one of those had been ‘no.’
And the saving the world bit?
Not as fun as it looks in the movies.
#
The car Luke rented looked like it had been in a demolition derby. My head hit the window as we bounced over a small crater, knocking my sunglasses into my nose.
I rubbed at my forehead, giving Luke, my partner, a pointed look.
He didn’t look over. Not that I was surprised—he was focused on the road and something else that took his mind miles away. Before I thought better of it, I reached over, chose an arm hair, and plucked it out by the root.
“Hey! What was that for?” His thoughts seared into my mind while he rubbed his arm like I’d stabbed him. One of the bonuses of our position: telepathic link. It’s great for when we’re both invisible and need to talk, but a serious liability when it means I accidentally start chattering in his head. I swear I busted the switch that keeps my thoughts to myself. Now it shorts out like wiring that’s been chewed by some neurological rat.
VERSUS
Entry Nickname: Best(iary) Western: Young Adult Paranormal Fantasy
Title: Fugitive Motel
Word count: 90K
Genre: Young Adult Paranormal Fantasy Bildungsroman
Query:
Teenage Iris overcomes her anger at her father’s deceits and accepts her birthright to become the next Innkeeper of a hotel for supernatural monsters.
During the day, Iris Vox sleepwalks through high school. At night, she plays the grown-up behind the reception desk of her father’s Kansas hotel: checking supernatural Others in and out, seeing to their out-of-the-ordinary needs, and dealing with their dangers. Keeping the Other world safe and secret is the only life Iris has ever known, but it’s one that's becoming harder now that her “juicer” dad spends so much more time pooled in his bathtub as a human smoothie.
Just as sleep is a luxury to Iris, so is the truth. Her father, always loving but never forthright, won’t admit that something’s changed in his "condition". Deeply angry at her father’s lies, Iris turns to her guests for human contact, learning about their curses and sorrows, finding her role as a listener and a solace. Confronted with the rise of a dangerous magical threat, Iris finally learns the truth of her father’s mortality and has to make peace with becoming the next Innkeeper, or get out of the secret business for good.
First 250:
5:45 a.m. and a man staggers in through the automatic, smoked-glass doors. Glad for some action, I look up from my magazine to take a better look at my customer. Nothing special about him, just a salesman coming in after driving all night from one meeting to the next. An older man with skin like a re-used paper bag.
But the stagger…it’s not quite right. Drunks usually weave. This guy is lurching forward like he’s got an absolute goal. Our desk. Me.
Yep. Pale, sullen, haggard with a side of desperate determination? Definitely looks like one of ours.
“Can I help you, sir?”
“Have you got a room, miss?” he slurs.
The man grips the rim of the counter to steady himself, his very clean fingernails pointing toward me. With a great effort he lifts his left hand and slaps it on the counter twice. That’s good. It’s half of the sign. Still, he’s not finished performing.
“What are you looking for exactly, sir?” I prompt.
You have to say it or you can’t come in!
There’s a long anxious pause as he tries to remember what to do next. He’s now gripping the countertop so tightly that his nail beds are turning whitish gray where the pink flesh should show through.
“Rest and feed,” the man answers, trawling the words out of some hard-to-access place in his brain, laying them heavily out on the counter.
Bingo.
It’s the right answer, the part of the code he missed before.
Title: Coincidences
Word count: 80k
Genre: NA Paranormal
Query:
Being invisible is good for three things: bank vaults, men’s locker rooms, and saving the world.
For Ami and her partner, Luke, being able to become invisible is part of their job. Their unknown employer assigns them to make “coincidences” happen, from reuniting long lost lovers to toppling empires. But their next job goes way beyond what they’re comfortable with—stopping a bio-terrorism attack on San Francisco. Breaking into illegal laboratories and Federal buildings to figure out who’s behind the outbreak makes bank vaults seem easy.
It doesn’t help that Ami is too in love with Luke to even enjoy the locker rooms. She might finally have a chance to push their relationship past the friend-zone if it wasn’t for angry FBI agents chasing them down hilly streets and invading their homes in the middle of the night.
With the clock ticking down to the planned Independence Day attack, Ami and Luke must prevent the pathogen’s release, escape the FBI pursuers, and handle their feelings for each other. With thousands of lives hanging in the balance, they’re going to need more than a coincidenceto pull it all off.
First 250 Words:
Three big perks to invisibility:
1. Bank vaults
2. Men’s locker rooms
3. Saving the world.
Vaults, well, I’ve only done that once, and I had a good excuse. Men’s locker rooms could be fun, but really, there’s only one person who I want to see naked and he made it clear we’re just friends. Repeatedly. Like how over the past twenty minutes, as we’ve bumped along the pockmarked Mexican toll road, he’d said exactly three words to me. And one of those had been ‘no.’
And the saving the world bit?
Not as fun as it looks in the movies.
#
The car Luke rented looked like it had been in a demolition derby. My head hit the window as we bounced over a small crater, knocking my sunglasses into my nose.
I rubbed at my forehead, giving Luke, my partner, a pointed look.
He didn’t look over. Not that I was surprised—he was focused on the road and something else that took his mind miles away. Before I thought better of it, I reached over, chose an arm hair, and plucked it out by the root.
“Hey! What was that for?” His thoughts seared into my mind while he rubbed his arm like I’d stabbed him. One of the bonuses of our position: telepathic link. It’s great for when we’re both invisible and need to talk, but a serious liability when it means I accidentally start chattering in his head. I swear I busted the switch that keeps my thoughts to myself. Now it shorts out like wiring that’s been chewed by some neurological rat.
VERSUS
Entry Nickname: Best(iary) Western: Young Adult Paranormal Fantasy
Title: Fugitive Motel
Word count: 90K
Genre: Young Adult Paranormal Fantasy Bildungsroman
Query:
Teenage Iris overcomes her anger at her father’s deceits and accepts her birthright to become the next Innkeeper of a hotel for supernatural monsters.
During the day, Iris Vox sleepwalks through high school. At night, she plays the grown-up behind the reception desk of her father’s Kansas hotel: checking supernatural Others in and out, seeing to their out-of-the-ordinary needs, and dealing with their dangers. Keeping the Other world safe and secret is the only life Iris has ever known, but it’s one that's becoming harder now that her “juicer” dad spends so much more time pooled in his bathtub as a human smoothie.
Just as sleep is a luxury to Iris, so is the truth. Her father, always loving but never forthright, won’t admit that something’s changed in his "condition". Deeply angry at her father’s lies, Iris turns to her guests for human contact, learning about their curses and sorrows, finding her role as a listener and a solace. Confronted with the rise of a dangerous magical threat, Iris finally learns the truth of her father’s mortality and has to make peace with becoming the next Innkeeper, or get out of the secret business for good.
First 250:
5:45 a.m. and a man staggers in through the automatic, smoked-glass doors. Glad for some action, I look up from my magazine to take a better look at my customer. Nothing special about him, just a salesman coming in after driving all night from one meeting to the next. An older man with skin like a re-used paper bag.
But the stagger…it’s not quite right. Drunks usually weave. This guy is lurching forward like he’s got an absolute goal. Our desk. Me.
Yep. Pale, sullen, haggard with a side of desperate determination? Definitely looks like one of ours.
“Can I help you, sir?”
“Have you got a room, miss?” he slurs.
The man grips the rim of the counter to steady himself, his very clean fingernails pointing toward me. With a great effort he lifts his left hand and slaps it on the counter twice. That’s good. It’s half of the sign. Still, he’s not finished performing.
“What are you looking for exactly, sir?” I prompt.
You have to say it or you can’t come in!
There’s a long anxious pause as he tries to remember what to do next. He’s now gripping the countertop so tightly that his nail beds are turning whitish gray where the pink flesh should show through.
“Rest and feed,” the man answers, trawling the words out of some hard-to-access place in his brain, laying them heavily out on the counter.
Bingo.
It’s the right answer, the part of the code he missed before.
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