SVS AGENT Round Entry 12: TWIST OF FATE, NA Historical Fiction

Title: TWIST OF FATE

Genre: New Adult Historical Fantasy with romantic elements

Word Count: 81,000

My Main Character is most uncomfortable with:

As a 21st century goddess, a little thing like weather never stands in my way. If I perspire in the sun, one text to Apollo, and he tones it down. If heavy rain dampens my day at the beach, I’ve got the Goddess Eudora on speed dial. And if I’m ready to bust out my ski bunny attire, and the slopes aren’t quite up to par, a quick tweet to Chione, and fresh powder drifts from the sky. 

Query:

Dear God-like Agent: 

Twenty-two-year-old Pandia is in so much trouble she’s shaking in her Jimmy Choo’s. After the goddess-born NYC socialite travels through time and parties with Julius Caesar, she convinces him to ditch politics and become a gardener. Pandia’s father, Zeus, summons her to twenty-first century Olympus and chews her out for messing with a notorious human’s destiny. To teach her a lesson, he strips her power and sentences her to a stint of mortality in Italy.

Pandia refuses to let her punishment get her down. She’ll do her time, leave mortals’ destinies untouched, and be home before the next sale at Saks Fifth Avenue. But instead of modern-day Italy, Zeus dumps her in ancient Pompeii. Pandia’s mistaken for a prostitute and hauled before a local official. When she can’t pay her tax, and refuses to give the official a free sample in trade, she’s sent to work in Pompeii’s Gladiator School. There she’s assigned to Caladus, a brooding gladiator who makes her reconsider her vow to remain uninvolved.

To escape Pompeii, Pandia must show Zeus she’s changed, but staying out of trouble is harder than she thought. And her time’s running out: Mt. Vesuvius is rumbling.

First 250:

If I hadn’t traveled back in time to attend that party with Aphrodite, I wouldn’t have met Julius Caesar. Jules wouldn’t have taken my advice to ditch politics for gardening, and I wouldn’t be in deep shit with my father, Zeus.

I yanked down my red crop top with twitchy fingers, nodded to the guards, and swept into the Great Hall. My father and stepmother sat in gilded thrones at the end of the room, wearing Hawaiian shirts and matching scowls on their tanned faces.

A coffered ceiling stretched high above me. As I walked through the aisle leading to the receiving area, the click-click-click of my heels echoed in the stillness surrounding me. Normally, gods dressed in court costumes packed the aisle and the alcoves between the pillars, chatting as they waited to speak with my father. The fact that it was just me, Dad, and Hera was ominous.

I halted before the dais and squirmed under Dad’s white-hot gaze. “Pandia.” His sigh ground through my bones. “You’ve done it again.”

“Could you be more specific?” Sunlight filtered through the stained glass windows along the wall, spilling colorful patterns across the marble tiles. I traced an outline with my peep-toe Louboutin and avoided his eyes. When in doubt, pretend you don’t know what in Hades he’s talking about. 

Hera smirked and leaned forward, her talon-like fingers biting into the arms of her throne.

“Julius.” He raked his fingers through his hair and it shot in all directions. “When will you stop fooling around with notorious mortals?”