Entry Nickname: Greek Gods Are the Best Kind of Trouble
Title: Not Set in Stone
Word Count: 94K
Genre: Adult Urban Fantasy
Query:
For humans, turning thirty involves reevaluating their lives and having mini panic attacks between celebratory margaritas. For Medusa, a gorgon with an all too common name, it entails taking a government-mandated test to determine if she has the gorgon curse. The curse means exile to the Isle, and to her mother, where she’ll spend the rest of her life as a pariah due to her relationships with the gods. A fate worse than death.
At least she thought so until the blood oath she took with her ex-boyfriend Ares resurfaces with an ugly side effect, telepathy. Now she’s bonded to her drama-fueled ex and it’s stirring up dangerous feelings. Sometimes a gorgon can’t catch a break.
Even worse, Medusa discovers the blood oath was illegal, sparking an investigation putting her immigration status at greater risk. With deportation and heartbreak looming in the distance, Medusa must find a way to make peace with the god of war or end up just like her mother, another gorgon statistic.
First 250 words:
I twirled a single snake around my index finger like a long green ribbon. The other snakes on my head annoyingly nipped at the bobbing zipper on the back of my dress. Surrounded by a mass of fellow Brooklynites who rarely blinked at a gorgon on Water Street; I marched down the sidewalk with a nervous focus. Here sidewalks were like a benevolent god to which we bowed our heads. Our sole prayer was to keep moving forward.
But each step forward added to the congregation of rocks in my gut. Especially today, on the birthday I feared the most. Did humans hate turning thirty as much as I did?
Hell, I'd relive the hangover again from Hermes’s summer birthday party last year, then to keep moving forward. Literal and metaphorical deaths lurked ahead. The safest option was to never move at all. Never leave the gorgon homeland, the Isle of Stone, in the first place. Never try to live among humans and the fallen Greek gods. Never attempt to make a life for yourself.
But I was never one to play it safe.
Instead, I made friends with the most flamboyant club hopping, druggie, gods in one of the most expensive cities in the world, thus aiding my foreseeable financial death, aka ruin. Racking up student loan debt in both my undergrad and graduate studies didn’t help either. My gorgon death (or birth, depending on your beliefs) now loomed ahead, blurring in the distance like a somber nightmare.
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- Rena