Category: 2013 Nanowrimo

Rover by Shane Mohler

My best friend died today.  His name was Rover K. Datona and he loved Frisbee, spare ribs, and belly rubs.  He died chasing a hover car along Haight Street in the wee hours of dawn.

Rover was a Collie-Labrador mix born in 2142 near Santa Nella, California. When he died, he was 167 years old.  He worked as a tax accountant, and volunteered at the Masonic Children’s Hospital.  In his professional life, he took pride in solving people’s problems.  Never was this truer than when he spent time with the kids.  Hours of joy on a sick child’s face was the best gift he could give.  He owned one human, me.

He led me on a quest for knowledge and amazing journies. This is the story of his life, from an unremarkable puppyhood through brilliant adventures.  These are my memories of our times together.

David and Arielle: We love the misdirection of this pitch.  The first line is so great, and it sets up a whole series of expectations.  Rather than you just telling us Rover is a dog, you let us find out on our own, it’s a great example for everyone of showing and not telling.  Love that he worked as a tax accountant and a volunteer in a Children’s Hospital.  And there always seems to be room in the world for another great dog story.  People really love their dogs.  What can be improved?  The pitch is a bit skimpy right now.  Since you are making the narrator part of this story, we want to find out who the narrator is, and how he is changed by the dog.  We want to understand more of the plot, what’s actually going to happen.  We want to see an arc: a beginning, a middle, and right up to the very end where it seems like everything is falling apart and there’s no way our main characters will succeed, then we want you to leave us hanging by our fingertips off the edge of the cliff.  And a couple of comparable titles, again, would be great.  Is this an actual memoir, or is it a piece of fiction?  These are things that a reader, an agent and editor are going to want to know.

For Bearded or For Worse by Jennifer Bushroe

In most fairy tales, the princess yearns to marry Prince Charming. Not sixteen-year-old Princess Adelle. Her betrothed is more like Prince Alarming—a sadistic hunter who scarfs food and ogles maidservants. To escape the marriage, Adelle drinks a witch’s potion and unexpectedly sprouts a beard. Every eligible prince refuses to wed her, so her parents consider disowning her in the line of succession.

Adelle disguises herself as a boy to experience the freedom she craves, and in a seaport is forced into service onboard a merchant ship. Life at sea is fraught with storms, farting men, and other hardships, but Adelle learns to be a sailor through Captain Braxton’s gruff instruction. During lessons in flea-extermination and discussions on family and obligation, Braxton’s surliness morphs into friendship. Among the rough-and-tumble crew, Adelle finally feels like she belongs. However, Braxton’s family secrets endanger the voyage and his life at every port, causing Adelle to take risks that could expose her true identity.

Forced to repress her growing feelings for Braxton, Adelle must decide between facing her royal duties or remaining free at sea. Her choice will affect her kingdom and the man she loves, as well as determine if she’s bearded forever after.

For Bearded or For Worse is YA fantasy complete at 57,000 words. It has elements of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Disney-Pixar’s Brave, and Avi’s The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. I hold a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona and graduated magna cum laude.

Arielle & David: Love the fact that our Princess grows a beard!  Nowadays, there are all kinds of authors retelling all kinds of fairytales, and we haven’t seen this particular twist yet.  We also enjoy the running-away-to-sea part of the story.  There’s some wonderful specificity, like the flea-extermination.  And the final sentence of the pitch leaves us with a haunting question.  Plus, we really love the comparable titles. What can be improved?  You don’t need to tell us what we already know.  We know that princesses yearn to marry Prince Charming. You only have 250 words, and you have to use each one very very carefully.  And sometimes, this pitch gets generic: The family secret of the love interest, the risks that the Princess has to take. And we don’t know what “other hardships”  mean exactly.  We don’t understand why our heroine falls in love with the love interest.  So we don’t buy into it.  And that’s such an important part of your story.

Wretched Whore: A Ravished Spirit by Berta Avila

“Get over here you wretched whore! We’re going to clean your ass!”-  Mother said. Funny, how she called it cleansing me – yet I always felt so dirty afterwards. Terrified, I shook in my boots, at all of 5 years old – much as I shook in my stilettos a few years later when I turned my first trick.

“♫I dreamed that love would never die,

I dreamed that God would be forgiving”… ♫

Meet Fantine from Les Miserables, with “Sybil” and her insanity, as a side kick. No music, no romance, just a beguiled child, a sociopathic mother, murdered cats, abuse and drama.

Wretched Whore; A Ravished Spirit:  A memoir of innocence betrayed, violation, self-destruction, prostitution and the journey towards spiritual & emotional restoration.

So many are quick to judge and condemn the prostitute, to dismiss and punish the problem child. How many upstanding citizens would gladly eradicate the countless misfits who are labeled insane or unfit for society? They’re thrown away into psychiatric institutions and overcrowded penitentiaries. This memoriesque recollection will shed the light of a different perspective on what leads some, although not all, into “the” life. It’s a story of brutality and the resiliency of the human spirit.

Arielle and David: First of all, we think you’re very brave for telling this story.  It’s a very important subject that needs to be brought out into the open.  The pitch has such a great beginning, it draws us right into the story, with a fantastic piece of harrowing action that makes us instantly sympathize with our main character.  Also love the Les Miserables with Sybil as sidekick descriptor.  It sounds like a story of real inspiration.  What can be improved?  We don’t think that you should use those song lyrics.  It takes us out of the story.  We don’t think the title is quite right, we think it will turn off people.  Yes, we wanna see the darkest part of your story, but we also want to know that there’s going to be light at the end of the tunnel.  And we don’t think that the way you end this pitch is right.  We want to hear your personal story, the details of what happened to you, how this damage affected you as you grew up. We want you to take us inside this crazy world that you lived in and show us the sites, sounds and, yes, even the smells.  But more importantly, we want you to take us inside your heart and your head.  Right now that last paragraph is so much more theoretical, about citizens in society and the human spirit.  We want your story.

Don’t Leave Me Behind by Jack Kay

Even in 2027, time travel is still science fiction.  But when Michelle Tracer gains access to a prototype machine, fantasy becomes a surreal reality.  The college sophomore finds herself in the body of a teenage student at Amat High 16 years in her past.  The machine thrusts her into the life of this stranger, leaving her stranded and alone in a place she’s only read about in history books.

There was nowhere else she would have rather gone.  Michelle never saw herself as strange or abnormal, but she always kept her morbid fascination a secret.  Then again, she never imagined that she would find herself face to face with the most infamous teenager of the millennia: Leon Thomas.

On May 1, 2012 Leon will commit the deadliest school shooting in American history. Michelle cannot help but gravitate towards him after having spent years studying the event that shook the country to its core.  Now she sees the opportunity to witness what actually happened.  Yet the closer they become the more she sees who he really is, causing her to question her own role in shooting that she is convinced must take place.  Michelle may have a strong influence on Leon, but what she doesn’t expect is the impact he will have on her; leaving her conflicted whether her presence there is saving lives, or dooming them.

Arielle & David: There have been so many time travel stories, so you are working in an area that has been well trodden.  But you have used time travel in a new and interesting way to address a hot button topic that’s on everyone’s mind these days: school shootings.  And you’ve set up a fascinating dynamic in which our heroine may be actually able to stop a bunch of kids from getting killed.  Fascinating.  It’s also a well constructed pitch, which leads me to believe that you can put together a well constructed novel.  What can improved?  We don’t really see what our heroine’s driving force is, what she desperately wants, and what’s stopping her from getting it.  You definitely could use some comparable titles. Is this a YA or adult book?  Publishing is absolutely assessed with categorization.  Readers, agents and editors will be different if this book is YA than if it is trying to reach an adult audience.  Of course, everyone wants a crossover book, but you have to start in the sweet spot, wherever that is.  Also, I’d like to know more about who Leon is, and why Michelle finds herself influenced by him.  What exactly is her morbid fascination?  That is a little unclear right now.  And why isn’t more of this story focused on her trying to stop Leon from killing a bunch of kids?

Frankasaurus by Stacy McAnulty

Nine-year-old Frank Mudd knows a lot about dinosaurs. His parents are paleontologists after all. So when they discover an egg fossil under the frozen ground in Greenland, Frank should know better than to sit on it.

While everyone else sleeps, the egg rattles and shakes beneath Frank’s butt. It’s hatching! Frank jumps off, puts the egg on his cot and watches as the baby dinosaur tumbles free. He wants to name him Real Live Awesome Dinosaur, but that’s too long. So Frank names him Rudolph because of the smooth red horn on the tip of his snout.

Caring for a baby dino is hard work. Frank feeds him gummi worms and Cheerios. He washes him with hand sanitizer. He teaches Rudolph to use the dino-litter box. (Well, he tries, anyway.) But even harder than caring for a dinosaur is keeping it a secret. The fossilized egg is promised to the Royal Paleontology Society in England. If Rudolph is discovered he’ll be shipped off.

A dinosaur can only live in a boy’s room for so long. Rudolph escapes and Frank must find and save the world’s only dinosaur, even if it means losing him forever.

Arielle & David: This pitch is so much fun.  It has such a wonderful beginning, which sets up the whole story: a nine-year-old who has to raise a dinosaur in his room, on Gummi worms and Cheerios.  It also works in a tradition that includes the recent hit movie How to Train Your Dragon.  Love the fact that the dinosaurs’ name is Rudolph, and that he uses a dino-litter box.  Also, it has a great closing line that makes me ask the question that every pitch should make every reader ask: What happens next?  What can be improved?  You definitely could use some comparable titles.  And I’m assuming this is a middle grade book, but you should tell us that.  I would also like to know a little more about the relationship between the dinosaur and Frank.  It would also be fun if you showed the dinosaur outgrowing Frank’s room, and some difficulties with his parents, schoolmates, stuff like that.

The Wilds by Rebecca Paula

Prudence Dawson is a woman with her back against the wall after she’s nearly killed for rightful inheritance. When she takes a governess position in the country, she believes she may have finally outrun the nasty solicitor, Mr. Shaw. But nothing is as it should be when she arrives at Burton Hall, the crumbling ancestral home of the estranged Brooks family. An exotic menagerie, a secret duke, three orphaned children, and the vulgar Mr. Brooks, push Prudence to abandon Victorian propriety for the chance of finally belong to a family she never had. But has she really found a safe haven from her troubles?

Edward Brooks, the mad man, the explorer, the spy, was a man unbridled until the passing of his older brother in India. Charged with returning his young nephew and nieces to the family’s ancestral seat in the English countryside, Edward’s forced to abandon his role in a fiery international intrigue and take on the role of a family man. Nagged by the prim miss of a governess who’s past is unknown and burdened with a crumbling estate, Edward must battle the family secrets that led to his exile from England fifteen years earlier as quickly as possible. Adventure calls his name, but his past comes calling before he can escape the clutches of his new circumstances. Can he protect what he suddenly comes to hold dear?

The Wilds is a historical romance set in late Victorian England. It is complete at 85,000 words. I have a B.S. in Journalism from Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts. I have written for several news outlets, including the Boston Globe. My fiction has been featured on Figment.com and my short story, Truly, was recently published in a literary magazine. I am a member of the RWA and NHRWA.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I hope very much to work with you and look forward to hearing from you.

Arielle & David: The stakes are very high in this story.  And you’ve chosen a time in history that seems to be of constant interest to many readers.  You’ve also created two very interesting characters with lots of interesting flaws.  We like the way you use words, it feels like you can really write a book that we’d like to read.  It’s nice that you give us some of your credentials, too.  What can be improved?  It would be great to have some comparable titles, books that are similar to yours in the broadest sense of that word.  And it’s almost like there are two pitches here. One for the story of Prudence, and one for the story of Edward.  They don’t really quite seem to connect.  Would also be great if you showed us some word pictures of this fantastic world that you’re going to take us to, Victorian England.  It would help if you showed what these characters look like physically.  The brain works in word pictures, and if we can see your characters, it will go a long way to relating and rooting for them.  And some of your language is a bit vague, “the family secrets” could be anything.  “Adventure calls his name, but his past comes calling” could apply to so many different stories.  Also we don’t like the way you use calls and calling in the same sentence so close together, it feels clumsy.  Everyone should know, your pitch is your audition to show everyone what a great writer you are.

Sennight by Tara Dugan

Once upon a time in a faraway land, there was a kingdom—a tyrant—a humble peasant—and a narrator stuck with the gig. But in this economy, you know.

When Asen, our unfortunately pragmatic hero, learns that he’s luckless enough to be the Prophesied One, he’s shown the fine print: because of rules of the bored ancients, all prophecies have expiration dates. He has a single week to vanquish the villain before his destiny’s akin to sour milk.

There’s no more time to be original.

Thus Asen sets out on a quest of epically condensed proportions. There are mountains to climb, plot-holes to bear up under, and swords to drop at the most unhelpful times. At his side is the book Questing: the how-to manual hammering out the basics of what those nobler, stronger (and taller) heroes did long ago. All he has to do is follow each step. And survive to the last page.

Somewhere between the minions, the demented gnomes and the speed-knitting, Asen starts to wonder if there isn’t more to his own story—and that the epic everyone else is hell-bent to get right might not have the ending they’d expected at all.

For even in fantasy, life doesn’t always go exactly by the book.

With loving irreverence similar to Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and a search for significance like Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth, Sennight aims for the heroic, fails, and somehow finds a point in there anyway.

Arielle & David: This sounds like such a fun story, between the speed knitting and the sour milk deadline and demented gnomes.  Great specificity in these details. We also loved that the economy sucks in your world, too. It makes your story very relatable. You’re also working in a long and glorious tradition, with flawed heroes who can’t possibly succeed, except when it comes to entertaining and illuminating readers.  Love the comparable titles.  What can be improved?  Your pitch starts with a cliché, which could really turn off an agent or publisher.  Everyone has to understand, publishing professionals are so overwhelmed and inundated.  And they’re trained to say, “No!” They  look for a reason to turn you down.  If you don’t wow them from the very first sentence, chances are you’ll get back that horrible e-mail that everyone hates: “Dear Author, I reject you, Love, Agent”.  And again, because you’re working in an area where there’s been so many books and so many stories, you have to distinguish what’s unusual and unique about your hero’s quest, the world you’re building, and the villains that must be overcome.

Undoing the Laces by Laura Petracek

Who doesn’t fall in love with their therapist?  But Laura Petracek is not your average client. Not only is she a psychologist herself, she’s a lesbian in love with her straight male therapist. Join Dr. P. for a nail biting, dish-throwing adventure as she learns first-hand about the transference process she’s only read about in textbooks and humored from her clients. In this brutally honest memoir, Dr. P. bares it all. In one moment she wants to get rid of her obsession, the next she pines “why can’t we be together?” You’ll live through her confusion and torment of “unrequited love,” the risks of sharing her music and poetry with “C,” and her humiliating disappointment when she tries to encroach on his marriage.  On the positive, she discovers the powerful healing effect transference has on every aspect of her life. All the while, she’s trying to stay on track starting new relationships, working at a men’s prison and caring for her teenage daughter.

“Undoing the Laces” is a funny, sexy eye-popping glimpse into the normally closed world of the therapeutic transference.  Laura Petracek is a psychologist and the author of the best-selling “The Anger Workbook for Women.”

Arielle & David:

How fun, funny and deep. That’s what we thought when we finished this pitch. If anything can show the power of transference, it’s a lesbian therapist falling for her male shrink! The fact that you’ve already written a bestselling book (and on a subject that is related) will help entice agents/editors. What can be improved? If this is for a broad, popular audience, you need to give the therapeutically uneducated a quick explanation of what transference is and how it helped you. You also need to do a bunch more showing and less telling. How was your relationship “nail biting”? How was it a “dish-throwing adventure?” While you say your memoir is brutally honest, we’re not really seeing the naked truth in this pitch. Lay out the most embarrassing moment, or the craziest thing you did. Lastly, let us know if you give workshops, write a column, if you’ve been on TV, featured in the press. In the crazily crowded world of memoir, your platform is sadly what’s going to be even more important than what’s inside your book.

Six by Christopher Staskel

Cris Montenegro went by a different name in the sixth grade. He was a different boy altogether before he was framed for the ritualized torture of a fellow classmate. And no one—not the Dean of Students who expelled him, not his parents who moved him cross-country, not even the therapist who made the next five years of his life a living Hell—absolutely no one believed Cris was innocent.

But now it’s senior year, and the prestigious Caulston Abbey Boys’ School has a fresh-faced transfer student. Armed with a brand new identity, Cris has until graduation to exact his revenge on each of the six boys who betrayed him back in middle school. Only then can he permanently slash out their yearbook photos and move on with his life.

What Cris wasn’t counting on was a self-proclaimed best friend who won’t leave him alone, an overly involved guidance counselor who’s a bit too “hands-on” with her students, and a secret brotherhood that would sooner kill one of its members than be exposed to the school administration.

And as if that weren’t enough, someone at Caulston knows Cris’s true identity and doesn’t seem too keen on keeping it a secret.

Arielle & David: In this pitch, you really make us believe that we know what’s inside the pages of this book. Whether that’s actually true or not isn’t important—you’ve made us trust your narrative abilities and we feel certain that we’re in for an entertaining and exciting novel. You leave us at the precipice and we want to know more! What can be improved: We need a little more about Cris. Who was he before in a word or two? And who is he now? Do you want us to have any doubt that he committed this terrible crime? Or do you want your readers to know from the outset that he definitively didn’t do it? That’s not quite clear. Also, we also really need comparative titles here. We’re quite sure this is YA, but does it have the new adult feel of Donna Tartt as well? Is this all plot-driven or are the words as important as the plot?

Untitled by Katie Neipris

On the last night of a summer camping trip, seven friends stayed up all night talking. This would be their last night together before leaving for college and they intended to make it special. The cabin glowed with the warm of their conversation and nothing was off-limits: goals and fears and love and sex.  They made their plans for the future, confident that they would remain together in the scary unknown, irrevocably linked by the unbreakable chain of their oldest friendships. And in their sphere of naiveté, it seemed impossible that they would not stay exactly as they were: the best of friends, the happiest of lovers, the simplest of dreamers.

Exactly one year later, the group finds themselves back in the same cabin, yet nothing could be more different. One year of college has changed them in more ways than they ever thought possible. A death has shattered their innocent existence. The perfect couple is now two strangers, torn apart by an unspeakable secret. The easiness of their friendships has fallen victim to the harsh reality of time and distance. They are no longer seven childhood best friends; they are seven adults, each with their own year’s worth of individual pain and triumph. They have grown too much in too little time, and this loss of innocence has changed them more than they know.

On this night, they will try to figure out just how everything fell apart. On this night they will try to put themselves back together.

Arielle & David: How much people can change in one year is a wonderful premise and a very rich and timeless subject. To analyze a whole group through the vehicle of a novel is a fun and interesting idea that is full of possibility. And to chart the passage from childhood to adulthood via this vehicle is terrific! It’s like a contemporary Big Chill for the 20-something audience. What can be improved? It sounds like the novel is really about the one day when they come back together, not about the year before. If this is correct, you need to concentrate much more on the second paragraph—filling it out—than on the first. You can easily cut the last line, for example, to “It seemed impossible that they would not stay the best of friends.” In fact, the prose gets a little purple without these cuts. If we’re wrong, then you need to make clear that the novel either is divided or cuts back and forth between the two. The one other big issue you have is that there is not a protagonist, at least as far as we can tell. At least for the pitch, it’s very helpful to name a couple characters and let us know who they are. Read the copy on books with a cast of characters to help you pull this off.