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NaNoWriMo Archives - Page 7 of 18 - The Book Doctors

The Book Doctors

Tag: NaNoWriMo

  • Jaclyn Reiswig

    Second Life by Jaclyn Reiswig 

    Wes Hastings was just another of her British actor make-believe boyfriends. She never expected she’d actually meet him—on the Tube, of all places.

    She never expected their train to explode moments later.

    Her dream trip to London morphs into a nightmare. She’s injured, stranded underground in the smoking ruins of the car. Alone, except for one familiar stranger. Turns out it’s easier to see your celebrity crush as a real person when he’s bleeding to death. Bombings are great for perspective.

    He’s not Wes Hastings the actor anymore. He’s the brave man showing her how to hold it together. She has basic first aid training. He has a dark sense of humor. They have each other—but his time is running out.

    Help finally arrives in the form of a medic, who gives her a terrible choice: she can watch Wes die, or risk her life on a chance to save him.

    Even if they both survive, moving on without him may prove a more difficult challenge. They’ll be separated by an ocean, by his fame—by her integrity.

    And he never even got her name.

    SECOND LIFE is a 70,000 word contemporary romance. I earned my BA in English with a concentration in writing, and am lucky to stay home with my two kids. SECOND LIFE is my debut novel, but I am an experienced pro at crushes on British actors.

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    Vote for your favorite pitch. The pitch that receives the most votes will be awarded the “Fan Favorite,” and the author will receive a free one-hour consult with us (worth $250).

  • Mica S. Kole

    The Goddess Candidate by Mica S. Kole 

    The day eleven Signposts fell out of the sky, Devon Lamont’s main concern was hiding makeup from her fundamentalist father. But when one of these fiery Signs appears outside her high school, Devon becomes one of the first people to read the strange words burned into the ground all around it: Walk through fire… and become God.

    A day later, a Portuguese bartender films himself touching the Sign, crossing dimensions, and meeting angels, and the world learns that the Signs are no hoax. God is dead, and His post is up for grabs… or Satan’s got a trick up his sleeve.

    But none of this matters to Devon. Touching the Sign would mean an end to her carefully cultivated double life as popular girl and pious child… and she’d rather be kissing Corey, a semi-mysterious, nerdy guitarist. But Corey has an otherworldly secret, and he—as well as half the modern world—thinks it’s worth severe burns to turn into a deity. Even worse, Devon’s father sees the flame-protected Sign as an opportunity to prove his family’s faith… and it is this steadfast devotion that could burn Devon’s world to the ground.

    At 72,000 words, THE GODDESS CANDIDATE is a contemporary YA LGBTQ fantasy that explores the various effects of religion on the human capacity for tolerance and love. It pairs Kiera Cass’s THE SELECTION with the modern-day darkness and diversity of Lev Grossman’s THE MAGICIANS. It is intended to kick off a series.

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    Vote for your favorite pitch. The pitch that receives the most votes will be awarded the “Fan Favorite,” and the author will receive a free one-hour consult with us (worth $250).

  • Joseph Dalton

    Parties for a Purpose: Hope Ridings Miller & the Golden Age of Washington Society by Joseph Dalton

    There was a time in Washington when our leaders acted with dignity and mutual respect.  As a result, things got done.  Formal dinners and other high society events had something to do with that.  Politicians found it harder to attack each other by day when they were breaking bread together by night.

    Reporting on the serious business of Washington parties through five administrations, from FDR’s New Deal to LBJ’s Great Society, was the journalist and author Hope Ridings Miller.  She arrived in DC at age 28, a small town girl with big ambitions.  Five years later she became Society Editor of the Washington Post.

    Miller was welcomed as a guest at countless state dinners, embassy receptions and private affairs — gatherings where teacup talk could make or destroy careers.  Her columns were a must-read for Washingtonians who wanted to know what was really going on.

    In the biography Parties for a Purpose: Hope Ridings Miller & the Golden Age of Washington Society readers are escorted into the Capital’s regal mansions and elegant salons.  Included are personal observations on the First Ladies; unpublished letters from the famed hostesses Evalyn Walsh McLean, Cissy Patterson and Perle Mesta; and intimate conversations between Miller and her fellow Texan and great patron Speaker Sam Rayburn.

    Author Joseph Dalton is an award-winning journalist, also Miller’s younger cousin.  Before her death Helen Thomas contributed the Foreword.

    Utilizing both charm and discretion, Hope Ridings Miller reigned over Washington society.  Parties for a Purpose tells how she did it.

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    Vote for your favorite pitch. The pitch that receives the most votes will be awarded the “Fan Favorite,” and the author will receive a free one-hour consult with us (worth $250).

  • Janelle Fila

    The Gravedigger’s Assistant by Janelle Fila

     

    Complete at 70,000 words, THE GRAVEDIGGER’S ASSISTANT is a YA, magical realism novel with an unreliable narrator in the vein of WE WERE LIARS.

     

    It’s Halloween, and the Blood Moon calls Reese’s ancestors to a family graveyard. Reese doesn’t know anything about Gravedigger, the spirit in charge of digging graves for her dead relatives, and she doesn’t care. After a stint in rehab for drunk driving, she’s finally free to go back to senior year. Except now, everything’s changed. Her parents fight about who forgot to defrost the chicken. Her best friend finds a replacement and demotes Reese to tagalong. Her boyfriend scurries down the hall without a word, expecting Reese to give him space until he’s ready to talk. She doesn’t even get the courtesy of a breakup text.

     

    Screw that. When Reese stumbles upon the graveyard, she befriends Gravedigger and replaces her fraying real-world relationships. She bonds with ghosts like Frances, a 1900’s suffragist, and Frances’s mother, who threw herself into a creek after her husband left to prospect gold and never came home. Reese promises to find her missing great-great-great-grandfather and return his ghost to the graveyard before the end of the Blood Moon’s cycle, a journey that will connect her worlds in ways she cannot imagine.

     

    My stories and poems have appeared in YARN, WORD HOTEL, Golfwell.net, and the PROUD TO BE Anthology. In May, I will earn my MFA in Writing for Children and YA from Spalding University.

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    Vote for your favorite pitch. The pitch that receives the most votes will be awarded the “Fan Favorite,” and the author will receive a free one-hour consult with us (worth $250).

  • Lorinda McKinnon

    Assisted Lovin’ by Lorinda McKinnon

    Janice, an aging female journalist, lands in an assisted living facility, bitterly determined to remain aloof and detached, only to discover that intrigue and romance aren’t just for the young. She is swept up in the drama of a corrupt facility administrator, the hilarious attempts at friendship by the oversexed ladies across the hall, and in the attention of the dignified gentleman in the unit next door.

    When a newspaper prints an exposé of romantic activities in the retirement community, it attracts the attention of the townspeople and alarms the residents’ families, who are worried by the possibility that it could be their loved ones who are involved in this risqué scandal. The residents find the notoriety thrilling, and go to great lengths to spy on one another―and to be featured in the next newspaper article.

    Janice teams up with the newspaper reporter and her new friends to reveal a plot to force the facility to close, and discovers she has found a new―if slightly dysfunctional―family.

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    Vote for your favorite pitch. The pitch that receives the most votes will be awarded the “Fan Favorite,” and the author will receive a free one-hour consult with us (worth $250).

  • Erin Roll

    Wind Dancer by Erin Roll 

    A race and an air show for up-and-coming young aerialists and airship builders. It was just the sort of news that sixteen-year-old aspiring pilot Emily Halloran had been waiting all her life for.

    Growing up in early twentieth-century Belfast – a city that prides itself on building ships of the air as well as ships of the sea – Emily longs to join the ranks of the world’s greatest pilots and airship designers. She has already designed and built her first aircraft, a small two-seater called Wind Dancer.

    When Emily sees the notice in the newspaper about the competition in England, she knows that she has to enter. It would mean a chance to make a name for herself; besides, with Belfast increasingly threatened by civil unrest, lost jobs and war in Europe, Emily’s family needs something to hope for.

    So Emily and her sister (and co-pilot), Katie, take Wind Dancer and join the other boys and girls flying their way to a chance at glory.

    As they make their way through the semi-finals, Emily and Katie see first-hand that the competition is fierce, and that the odds are decidedly against them. What good can a homemade, built-from-spare-parts airship like Wind Dancer be against the professionally-built airships that some of the other contestants are flying?

    It also becomes clear that someone is playing a dangerous game with the contestants’ lives.

    Will Emily, Katie and Wind Dancer triumph?

    Set in an alternate-history Ireland and England, Wind Dancer is a high-flying, thrilling steampunk adventure.

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    Vote for your favorite pitch. The pitch that receives the most votes will be awarded the “Fan Favorite,” and the author will receive a free one-hour consult with us (worth $250).

  • Mally Becker

    The Whiskey Code by Mally Becker 

    Set during the darkest days of the American Revolution, THE WHISKEY CODE tells the story of General Washington’s most reluctant spy, a fiercely independent young woman who races time and Turncoats to uncover, then thwart, a plot that threatens Washington’s life.

    Recently widowed Rebecca Parcell is too busy struggling to maintain her Morristown farm to give a fig about the Revolution. While the village gossips whisper that she betrayed her cheating late husband by turning him over to the British, George Washington has proof that he was in fact a Loyalist spy. Washington swears he’ll help Becca preserve her farm if she can uncover her late husband’s secrets.

    Her search for the truth pairs her with an escaped British prisoner, Daniel Alloway —the last person to see her husband alive—as they embark on an espionage mission through British-occupied New York City. Moving from glittering balls to an underworld of brothels and prisons, Becca and Daniel uncover a plot that threatens the General’s life and the new country’s future. Will they move quickly enough to prevent Washington’s death? Will Becca learn who betrayed her husband? And as she grows more confident in her own independence, will she continue to cling to the farm and her past?

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    Vote for your favorite pitch. The pitch that receives the most votes will be awarded the “Fan Favorite,” and the author will receive a free one-hour consult with us (worth $250).

  • Lynn Katz

    The Surrogate by Lynn Katz

    The Surrogate is a 78,000 word psychological thriller.

    On the verge of returning from another disappointing summer vacation visiting dead authors’ homes, Jenn Cooper, an English teacher from Connecticut, meets her doppelganger in a Key West bar, and agrees to swap lives for one month.  Jenn believes she has nothing to lose; she could not be more wrong.  As she struggles to make sense of her new situation while hiding her actual identity, she discovers her double’s teenage son, Martin, has isolated himself behind his locked bedroom door.  With each passing day, Jenn uncovers clues that shed light on Martin’s disturbing behavior and the twisted family dynamics.  Jenn confronts the school system that has failed Martin.  She seeks guidance from the new school psychologist with whom she has an affair.  As his home-school tutor, Jenn plans American Literature assignments designed to lure him out of his isolation.  Martin’s obsession with violent videogames and guns, his unsuppressed rage, his verbal threats, and missing firearms from the family’s arsenal above the garage, lead Jenn to suspect that Martin may be plotting a mass shooting.  With every plot twist, Jenn faces more obstacles and fewer options.  She must reimagine her life’s purpose, and use her teaching skills to prevent another American tragedy.  Convinced that Martin’s mother was psychologically unable to prevent her son’s downward spiral, Jenn Cooper believes she is the surrogate who has the skills to help him, and if necessary, she has the will to stop him. 

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    Vote for your favorite pitch. The pitch that receives the most votes will be awarded the “Fan Favorite,” and the author will receive a free one-hour consult with us (worth $250).

  • Carol Mackela

    Noon Skate by Carol Mackela

    Monica Jones stared with horror at the smoldering ruins of the apartment building that had been her home.  She and her teen daughter had lost everything in the blaze and must now rebuild their lives.

    Monica’s parents had disowned her after she became pregnant in high school, and she had struggled to provide for her daughter for years.  Now a 37-year-old paralegal in Michigan, Monica races to the ice rink every day during her lunch hour for exercise, lessons and camaraderie.  She dreams of a gold medal in ice dance (akin to a black belt in martial arts), an accomplishment that would represent years of hard work and considerable investment in coaching, ice time, and expensive skates.  When Monica’s friendship with skating partner Brad Peltonen takes a romantic turn, Monica wonders if she and Brad have enough in common off the ice to make their relationship work.  Will the apartment fire and its aftermath draw them closer or hasten the end of their romance?

    When Brad suffers a medical emergency, Monica prays that he will survive to be her partner on and off the ice.  She continues to work on the last dance she needs to complete her gold medal.  Will she pass the test and become a gold medalist?

    Monica was introduced in my first novel, On Your Feet! (Indie Excellence Award winner, 2009) (about ballroom dancing).  As a gold medalist in ice dance, I have drawn on my 20 years of skating experience in writing Noon Skate.

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    Vote for your favorite pitch. The pitch that receives the most votes will be awarded the “Fan Favorite,” and the author will receive a free one-hour consult with us (worth $250).

  • Janelle Greene

    The State Beverages Club by Janelle Greene

    The last time Claire Watkins saw Famous Jam Study play, she ended up sobbing on the sidewalk outside Verdigris Town Hall as an ambulance drove away. Now the band is getting back together, and somehow an invitation to their reunion show ended up in Claire’s mailbox. 

    Despite all advice to the contrary, Claire kind of wants to go. Not just because her ex-boyfriend is the guitarist, and not just because their best song is about her dead dad, and not just because she spent three years selling their shitty t-shirts and cassette tapes. But because when she lost the band, she lost the only leadership position she ever loved—president and founding member of a club designed for bored-stiff band girlfriends (even the ones she hated).

    THE STATE BEVERAGES CLUB follows Claire as she relives and tries to reclaim her merch girl years and abandoned friendships. From the pioneer plains of South Dakota to a tomato survivalist festival in Ohio to the alcohol-soaked campgrounds outside the Indianapolis 500, Claire struggles with her own still-bubbling bitterness—and searches for the courage to face the pain she left in her wake.

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    Vote for your favorite pitch. The pitch that receives the most votes will be awarded the “Fan Favorite,” and the author will receive a free one-hour consult with us (worth $250).