Category: 2013 Nanowrimo

The Viennese Soldier by Cristina Pippa

What’s a girl to do when she’s separated from her man by a world war? Join the Women’s Army Corps and ship out to find him. Otty completes basic training in Des Moines, which couldn’t be farther from Vienna, Austria, where she and her fiancé Fred grew up. She convinces her superiors to change her first assignment from an air base in Texas to overseas training. In Germany, Otty translates interrogations of Nazi prisoners of war and uses her spare time to search for the man she loves, who she fears also wears the enemy’s uniform. Since they lost touch, Fred became involved in a pacifist movement and was imprisoned by the Nazis for treason. One of few survivors in a prison massacre, Fred finally sends a letter to Otty with the help of an American G.I. He still loves her and promises to wait in a small town in Austria until he hears from her. Otty gets leave from her post in Berlin to go directly to the town, only to discover that her childhood sweetheart is no longer there. A soldier believes that Fred tried to sail a raft hundreds of miles down the Danube to Vienna, with Russian snipers firing at him on either sides of the bank. Otty has no choice but to conceal her American uniform and cross into the forbidden Russian district of Vienna in hopes of finding him. The Viennese Soldier is based on a true story of undying love and determination.

Arielle & David: The stakes are always high when you’re writing about the Nazi regime. And that’s certainly true for our heroine and her one true love. We can just see that rafting trip on the big screen! We also love the idea of getting inside the Women’s Army Corps. And you didn’t give away the ending—which is wonderful because we leave the pitch asking, “Well, what happened?!”, to which you get to reply, “Well, you’ll have to read the book.” What can be improved? We don’t get any sense of who these two really are, especially our heroine. There are no real descriptors of her. So it’s hard to fall in love with our featured players. We also found that while the story seems to have all kinds of great twists and turns, the language of the pitch itself is a bit like a book report. Lastly, we’d like to know a tiny bit more about who this is based upon, since you say it’s a true story.

Mrs. G’s Adventures in Dating by Dawn Reno Langley

It’s one thing to be dumped by your husband of 20 years, but when the other woman is only 5 years older than your oldest child and is named Petunia Birdsong, it’s enough to make any sane Southern woman think twice about ever dating again.

Chance Goodstone, a high school history teacher from Wake Forest, North Carolina, re-enters the dating world with the help of middle daughter, Cara.  Together they craft a snappy online persona and Chance becomes “Beachwalker.” She takes the ride with a sense of humor and one eyebrow askance, meeting dates that range from the sports star impressed with his own mirror image to the man who posts photos with all the fish he’s ever caught.

Chance’s family, friends and students often demand her attention and interfere in her relationships, but after some “frog dates,” Chance meets Reed Banfield, a handsome, grey-eyed college chemistry instructor and father to a Down’s syndrome teen. She’s convinced she’s found “the one,” until a tragic double suicide, her father’s heart attack, and a military accident bring Chance’s world tumbling down and force her to care for those she loves.

Mrs. G’s explores the world of mid-life dating when a woman’s need for love conflicts with her responsibilities and family life.  Chance’s strong persona and wicked sense of humor will tug at the heartstrings of anyone who has fought to start anew.

Arielle and David: The southern fried feeling to this pitch is wonderful, and we love the names: Petunia Birdsong, Chance Goodstone.  Really fun. We think the story of a woman being dumped for someone much younger, and reentering the world of dating, in this new cyber generation, would have a lot of interest to a lot of readers.  Love the specificity of stuff like the man who posts photos with all the fish he’s ever caught, we want more of that!  What can be improved?  This story is going along so nicely, and all of a sudden we have tragic double suicide, father’s heart attack, military accident, it seems like we’re in a different story all of a sudden.  It was very jarring.  And we need more of the sense of the arc of our main character.  We have a great beginning, not much middle, then this crazy ending.  And please, don’t tell us about the wicked sense of humor.  In fact you mention a sense of humor twice in this pitch.  This is for everyone.  Don’t tell us something is funny, make us laugh.  Don’t tell us something is thrilling, make our heart pound faster.  Don’t tell us something is sad, make us cry.  Again, there are no comparable titles here.  That would be very helpful.

Vengeance  by Jonathan Esterman

Vengeance is a 51,000-word supernatural horror completed during the National Novel Writing Month challenge of 2012. It’s premise? Framed for his family’s murder, a man is bent on hunting down the killer in the ultimate act of vengeance. In the book, we meet Jack Endsley, the main character that we follow. More than anything, he initially believes that he wants revenge from the slaying that happened before book begins. However, as he progresses and meets the man that killed his family, he finds himself back in time when he dreams, before his family dies. Reliving the moments and having knowledge of their impending deaths, he takes advantage of the time his is given and repairs his relationships. As he changes events in his dreams, he discovers that they are affecting the future – his future. With this armed knowledge, combined with the realization that his foe is a demon, he enters a deadly gambit to set the demon free in the past, which could potentially save his family. If he fails, not only will he suffer his family’s death once more, but possibly be lost in a time paradox. With time running out, he fights for more than he ever fought for before: his mission of vengeance is now one of hope and reconciliation. Can Jack accomplish this task that bends the very fabric of time and spirituality, or will he be destroyed in the process?

Arielle & David: It’s a wonderful idea that this man gets to go back and repair his relationships with his loved ones.  Who wouldn’t love to do that?  And the stakes are very high.  If he doesn’t succeed, this whole family is going to suffer terribly.  What can be improved?  Well, we don’t need to know that it was completed during National Novel Writing Month.  You only have 250 words, so you have to really use them judiciously.  You don’t need to tell us that you’re going to tell us the premise.  This pitch tends to be a little hyperbolic: “the ultimate act of vengeance.”  I want you to show us, don’t tell us.  And don’t tell us that were going to follow the main character.  That is understood, it’s expected.  And we need to know what’s different unique and horrible about your demon that distinguishes it from all the other billions of demons that have come before it.  It’s really unclear what the fabric of spirituality is?  Also, from a technical perspective, you don’t get revenge from something you get it for something.

Paws for Consideration by Amy Butcher

Like Tales of the City but with more dogs, Amy Butcher’s murder mystery Paws for Consideration takes you on an intimate tour of gay San Francisco. Follow the exploits of citizen-detective Daisy: frumpy, wheelchair-bound, self-appointed mayor of her San Francisco neighborhood—Daisy likes dogs a little bit more than people. But when she discovers Skittles, a terrified Boston Terrier, still leashed to his very dead owner’s arm, she has no choice but to roll into action. Careening through the Castro and the Mission, past upscale restaurants and low-down dungeons, Daisy and Skittles brave gentrification, gay-bashing, and homelessness to paw and sniff their way deep into that most dangerous of all relationships: neighbor.

Richly illustrated by the author and including a built-in flipbook for added entertainment, this debut novel from San Francisco-based erotic writer Amy Butcher (Best Lesbian Erotica 2012) is a sensory immersion. It offers the reader a sneak peek under the drag skirts of San Francisco, letting them see the familiar city in surprising new ways. Be you a lover of dogs, gays, BDSM, or simply San Francisco (as if the city isn’t all of these–and more–all rolled into one!) you’ll find something to satisfy your guilty pleasure reading needs!

Arielle & David: Again, a really fun title.  We’ve been talking a lot about comparable titles, and you really nailed it right off the bat with Tales of the City but with more dogs.  Everyone should see how you set up exactly what your book is right from the get go. Great details which lead us into the plot, the terrified Boston Terrier with the leash still attached to the dead owner’s arm.  Love the built-in flipbook!  There’s such a strange and interesting amalgamation of dogs, gays, BDSM.  And who doesn’t love San Francisco as a location for a book?  Also some really nice use of language: “drag skirts of San Francisco”.  What can be improved?  We’d like to know more about the actual plot.  It seems like a great set up, and some fun details, but we need to know more about the twists and turns, because this seems to be a mystery.  And when you write a mystery, you have certain obligations, like having plots with twists and turns in them.  And you can’t just tell us that you have twists and turns, you have to show them.  We could also do with understanding Daisy a little more, what she desperately wants in life and doesn’t have, more about her relationship with this dog, and how they change each other. Lastly, unless you are approaching an unconventional independent publisher, having illustrations is going to hurt your chances of publication, not help. You might want to not offer these up in the pitch, but show them to people once you have an agent or editor on board.

Death’s Disciple Book One: White Stripe, Dark Deeds by Stella

Recipe

Ingredients

One lethal bitch of an assassin.

One Rhodes scholar, charter boat deckhand.

One black, inner city, teenage boy with an effed up ‘tude.

Boil

The assassin is immortal and possessed.

The deckhand is a disowned New Orleans good ol’ boy. And hot.

The inner city black kid is really a time traveling young black woman.

Simmer

The assassin doesn’t want friends, attachments, or liabilities.

The deckhand has combat skills and one hell of an education.

The inner city time traveler wants to be immortal. And she wants to kill anyone who pisses her off.

Which is damned near everyone.

Serve

The assassin’s 2,000 year old soon-to-be-ex lover.

A eunuch who wants to castrate the inner city, time traveling woman.

And, oh yeah, the deckhand digs the assassin.

And she digs him back. But doesn’t want to.

But can’t help it. But hates it.

You get the drift—but she’d consider doing him.

Garnish

A sex trafficking charter boat.

A Middle Eastern harem quarters.

Houston’s steamy docks.

Arielle & David: Love the way this is put together like a recipe.  We have seen approximately 1,000,000,000 pitches, and we have never ever seen anything like this.  There’s just so much competition, and so few slots available, anything you can do that makes you stand out, if you do it in a compelling, fascinating and skillful way is going to set you apart from the herd. It makes us think that you are smart, imaginative, outside-the-box writer.  Your pitch, as unorthodox as it is, made us really want to read your book.  What can be improved?  Well, we don’t really get a sense of the plot twists and turns, how the characters change, those kinds of things. It’s hard to get a sense of the arc through the recipe vehicle. We hate to sound like a broken record, but a couple of comparable titles would be great, especially since the pitch is so unconventional.  Also, there wasn’t quite enough of a climax.  Maybe you should add Desert?  After dinner cocktails?

Untitled by Cassie Doyle

Four people dead. 
Blood on your hands. Two choices: wait for the police, or accept the offer of sanctuary from a passing stranger.

August is in more trouble than he expected. The summer holiday was going perfectly, leading him to the girl of his dreams. Then the slaughter started. Now, Caitlin’s disappeared into the back of a beaten-up van with a complete stranger and August is stranded with a pile of incriminating evidence. Hell, he can’t even blame the police for arresting him. 
It’s not exactly what he’d planned on doing the summer after high school.

Caitlin isn’t ready to face what happened. She threw herself into her new life, travelling the country with the enigmatic Zach under promise of anonymity.  Her eyes are firmly set on the horizon and she can’t look back. But Zach’s got a job to do. Disguised as a backpacker, he moves from state to state tracking serial killers that prey on tourists and elimintating them. The only thing he’s missing is bait: something to lure the killers into his traps. Or should he say someone. Someone young and fast. Someone who’s already proven she’ll do anything to survive. Someone just like Caitlin.

Haunted by guilt over the friends she couldn’t save, Caitlin leaps at the opportunity for redemption. Together, she and Zach are an unstoppable, formidable killing team. Caitlin’s found her calling and, maybe, her soulmate. Then a familiar face appears on the TV news.
August has been charged with multiple murders.
Including hers.

Arielle & David: This pitch has a very distinctive and compelling writing style.  Again, we see so many pitches that are so generic, written like book reports.  This is your audition to show us what a great writer you are, what a great prose stylist, and you have done that successfully.  Love the way this starts out.  Very staccato and exciting.  And it has a wonderful twist at the end.  Again, it’s hard to have a great ending to a pitch, and you really nailed it.  What can be improved?  Some of this pitch is very vague, and it takes us out of the story.  Example: “Then the slaughter started.”  We don’t know what that means exactly.  It seems like you take something very dramatic and impactful, and reduce it to something vague and confusing and flat.  We don’t get a clear idea of what these characters look like, and what they desperately want in life that they don’t have.  What is the relationship between August and Caitlin?  There’s not enough there to hang our hat on.  And frankly, the serial killer who kills killers is almost a cliché now, what with Dexter and all.  Again, we have to say it, where are the comparable titles?  Also, you spelled “eliminating” wrong.  I know it seems like a tiny thing, but again, agents and editors are just looking for reasons to say no to you.  And spelling seems like the simplest thing in the world, given the fact that we have Spellcheck.

A Wrinkle in Crime by Caroline Spencer

In the year 2491, Bumwold owns the only licensed time machine which makes it pretty easy to frame other people for his crimes.  Ejected six hundred years into her past, Ranger Giles is condemned to live out her days in Time Lockup 221-B-1887, with only a platinum class death-level security guard-bot for company.  Then she discovers there’s a glitch in Bumwold’s system: Doctor Watson is already living there.  At first, Watson objects to the arrival of a strange young woman in his neat, ordered world until he meets the guard-bot, whose malfunctioning torture programme jolts him out of bachelorhood.

While her guard-bot and Watson are otherwise occupied, Ranger stumbles across a case that has stumped Scotland Yard.  Using her encyclopaedic knowledge of Detective Gallactica (Star Trek for the twenty-fifth century), she figures out the solution.  With the reward money, she buys materials to build a new time machine and escape.

But when Bumwold learns that the Time Lockup isn’t secure, he must stop Ranger from proving she was framed.  Desperate to escape before Bumwold’s Time Wards find her, Ranger poses as Sherlock Holmes and takes on crime in the city; alludes the envious Detective Gregson; evades Detective Lestrade’s advances on her alter-ego; and hopes that Watson’s affair with her guard-bot doesn’t turn him into charcoal.  As London fills with subjects from across the Empire, who’ve come to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, can Ranger finish off the time machine before Bumwold can finish her off, permanently?

Arielle & David: Again, a really cool title.  Wonderful play on one of the greatest and most popular books in recent memory: A Wrinkle in Time.  We love the specificity of this pitch.  Time Lockup 221-B-1887.  Lots of cleverness: Detective Galactica (Star Trek for the 25th century).  And we love how you combine the time travel idea with Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes, Scotland Yard and Detective Lestrade, even the Golden Jubilee.  And you really create a wonderful climax of this pitch, which is very hard to do.  Again, after reading this pitch I believe you can write a really good book, and that’s as important as anything when you’re trying to convince a reader, an agent or an editor to take a chance on you.  What can be improved? Comparable titles, comparable titles, comparable titles.  We feel like a broken record, but it’s just so important as a shorthand for readers, agents and editors.  It’s not exactly clear what Ranger Giles wants desperately in life that she doesn’t have as well as what is the character flaw that is stopping her from getting what she desperately wants in life.  And it’s not clear that the guard-bot is someone that you could hook up with until the very end.  I thought the guard-bot was some tiny little robot thing, not a very attractive sexy female robot.

Nightmares of Neverwas by Marjee Chmiel

Nothing’s wrong. Go back to sleep.

Soma’s life is nightmares.

Not “a” nightmare.  Nightmares in general. They are all she thinks about.

Not her nightmares. Yours and mine. Every living creature, in fact.  Soma knows the monsters within us. At night, she tends our  monsters as we sleep. In our sleep we see how secretly terrible we can be.

Soma is an aspiring nightmare-writer, and her aspiration seems possible when she learns  she is one of only ten humans accepted into The Scholomance —the legendary academy where students learn to compose dreams and delusions, fabricate premonitions, interject déjà vu, conduct mass hysterias, and invent cults and religions.

Her demon professors are brilliant and intimidating. The ancient Professor Skree watched humans evolve from tree-dwelling primates.  He writes nightmares that remind us of our ancestral fears: falling from our arboreal homes, being chased by predators.  Krasset provides terrifying releases of violence and depravity among criminals and the insane. And Soma’s mentor, Celeste, uses nightmares to shape the inspiration of scientists and artists. Soon Soma develops talents that threaten to revolutionize the field.

As Soma’s success breeds jealousy and pettiness among the faculty and students, she becomes disillusioned with what it means to live the life of the mind.  She leaves The Scholomance for the lucrative, shadowy, business.  Soma innovates nightmares for a 21^st Century, globalized economy where her talents take her to a far darker place.

Wake up. Something’s gone terribly wrong. 

Arielle & David: We love the way this pitch starts.  There’s something very ominous, spooky and scary about someone telling our hero that nothing is wrong, that they should go back to sleep.  It makes us absolutely think that there is something wrong.  And we love the way it comes full circle at the end, where someone is telling our heroine to wake up, that something’s gone terribly wrong.  And the whole academic environment you take us to is quite fascinating. The professors seem very unique and singular.  It’s a well constructed pitch which leads me to believe you can actually write a book that will be suspenseful, deep and fascinating.  What can be improved?  We keep harping on this, but comparable titles are called for.  We need to know what kind of books your story is like.  Where does it fit in the bookstore?  Also, it kind of peters out at the end.  It doesn’t build to a climax.  And how these nightmares are used, how they impact the world, is kind of confusing.  Obviously you don’t want to give the whole thing away, but right now you don’t give us enough to really understand how this is going to work.

Random Acts of Nudity by Susan Taitel

Nobody ever died of embarrassment. That’s what Viola has heard, but she’s certain she’ll be the first.

Fifteen-year-old Vi is devastated after Ethan, her first love, dumps her for a skinny popular girl. Just as her broken heart begins to mend, a sex tape featuring Vi and her ex goes viral.

In the course of a day, she transforms from a quiet honors student to the school’s biggest joke. She can’t travel from one class to the next without hearing cries of “slut” and taunts about her size sixteen figure. Mortified that her most private moments are now public, and crushed by Ethan’s betrayal, she’s torn between striking back and hiding in her room until graduation.

Things start looking up when she falls for Oliver, a boy from a neighboring school who doesn’t know her reputation. With him, she gets to be Vi instead of that sex tape girl, but she can’t help worrying he’ll be another Ethan. She’s wary of trusting him with her heart, not with the video just a click away.

Arielle and David: First of all, great title.  A great title can sell a book by itself.  We’ve seen this over and over again.  And it’s a great beginning to your pitch.  It really displays the voice of the book.  Many writers make the mistake of writing a book report.  We need to know what the voice of the book is, and you do a wonderful job of establishing that right off the bat.  And you really make us sympathize with your main character. We are rooting for her, which is such an important part of any story.  This whole idea of sex tapes going viral is also so current, such a hot button topic.  What can be improved?  We don’t get enough sense of the plot, the arc, what’s actually going to happen.  There is a great set up here, but we don’t know enough about the twists and turns of the action that’s going to keep us captivated.  Also, we should know that she is size 16 earlier in the story, because it will make it more poignant that she’s dumped for a skinny girl.  Also, again, a couple of comparable titles would be really good.