QK Round 1: Sunnyside Up versus Lowlife Extraordinaire

Entry Nickname: SunnysideUp
Title: If I Promise You the Sun
Word count: 89,000
Genre: YA Contemporary Thriller

Query: 

Sixteen-year-old Eve Thomas doesn’t mind that she can’t leave Nova Vita, an Amish-like religious community that rejects most technology and has perfected solar power. Except for the compulsions and tics linked to her photographic memory, life in her mountain home is paradise.

But when her little brother shows signs of a genetic disorder the cult won’t treat, she questions everything she’s been taught. As she searches frantically for a cure, Eve has no idea that someone is watching her, an eighteen-year-old boy named Mana Aquino. A migrant worker from the garbage slums of Manila, Mana is determined to kill the cult’s leader—the bishop who used his sister as a human sacrifice and treats all laborers like slaves. He just can’t seem to get anywhere near his prey, not even by sleeping with the wife of the bishop’s right-hand man.

After Mana learns about Eve’s memory, he offers to sneak medicine to her brother, if she’ll serve as his human camera, gathering information that could ruin the bishop. If Eve accepts, she’ll commit a crime that will destroy the only home she’s ever known. If she says no, her beloved brother’s as good as dead.

I hold an M.A. in creative writing from Syracuse University, am a member of SCBWI, and have published several reviews of children’s books in The New York Times.

First 250 words:

Mama and I use all our muscle to pin my sister in the kitchen chair so medics can find a vein and fill a vial with her blood. Every child in Nova Vita is being tested for an illness so rare it has no name, and each one who tests positive will die. The Bishop agreed to let researchers study us, as long as they don’t interfere with our beliefs. This year, we’ll know ahead of time who we’re going to lose.

“Let me go!” Theresa shouts, her arms and legs flailing.

Restraining a furious six-year-old is no easy task. I gasp for breath as her bare foot wallops my gut. Miraculously, once the needle’s in, she stops resisting—her limbs relax and her hazel eyes widen. The thin red stream shooting up into the glass is beautiful. After we release her, I grunt and tap the back of the chair four times. Not because I want to, but because I can’t stop myself.

About two children fall ill in each of our four settlements every year. It can take months for them to die, as muscle control, then eyesight, then breathing fail. When you turn thirteen, your parents finally explain that there’s no cure, maybe not even outside of Nova Vita. The cause may be genetic, which means it’s in God’s hands. The Book of Healing reminds us that illness is part of Nature and Nature doesn’t make mistakes.

Sarah’s next. Nearly nine, she’d rather live in a chicken coop than let anyone see she’s scared.

VERSUS

Entry nickname: Lowlife Extraordinaire

Title: THE MADMEN'S CITY
Word count: 73K
Genre: YA Noir

Query:

Teen vigilante Gwen Kane uses her fists and a strict moral code to flatten any lowlife who dare prey on the innocents of Towton City. Her rival, Silas Snow, opts for a pistol, a silencer and a shot in the dark. To Silas, death is the only suitable punishment for the iniquitous criminals who prowl the seedy streets. And to Gwen, Silas is just another murderer. Working together would only end in World War III.

Their paths collide when a masked mobster frames Gwen’s father for a violent hit. Silas claims to have a lead on the truth, and they agree to put their moral disputes aside to hunt down the real killer–together. They hatch a plan to trap the true culprit, involving a trek through the metro tunnels and a fight that leaves them bruised, bloody and back at square one. And when the puppet master behind it all shifts the target to Gwen’s friends and loved ones, Gwen finds evidence that Silas may have shot the bullet that started everything.

With no one left to trust, Gwen sets out alone to stop the killer from claiming his next victim, even if he turns out to be Silas, a corrupt cop or the Boss of the mafia himself. The clock ticks down to her father’s date with death row, and Gwen refuses to let him die. It’s time to stop playing nice.

First 250 words:
The corpse weighs down my arms as I drag it into the middle of the silent street. I drop it onto the pavement and begin arranging the limbs so that it resembles a filthy, rotting log. Humming, I settle the feet onto the center white line as a thick breeze rustles my trench coat. I’d caught this one stalking a girl home from her waitressing job at Four Points Pizzeria, knife glinting in the moonlight. A quick squirt of metal into the side of his head, and that’s the last time he’ll ever see that girl. Or anyone else.

His vacant eyes stare up at me. Nicky D’Amico, a Soldier in the infamous Nerozzi crime family. A trickle of blood runs down his face and pools onto the pavement. It’s not often enough I bag a mobster, and this one will send the appropriate message.

I’m watching you, I think, as I twist toward the slums. Enjoy cleaning up the mess.

I only make it half a block before the crunch of boots on broken glass freezes me mid-step. Crunch.

Slipping my hand into my pocket to finger my pistol, I eye the street before me. Nothing there other than an emptiness swallowing up the space where cars and buses rumble by during daylight hours. Another crunch. Slowly, I turn. Nothing there either. Someone else skulks down these streets, and anyone hugging the darkness is surely someone on my long list of lowlifes extraordinaire. 

And he just saw me dump the body.