Wednesday, February 8, 2017

SVS Agent Round 11: THE LONE EARTH GIRL, YA Science Fiction

Title: THE LONE EARTH GIRL
Genre: YA Science Fiction
Word Count: 78,000


Is Main Character hot or cold?
Nova is both; she has to be. Her peers are smarter, stronger, and have no problem letting her know it. But’s she’s adapted, having lived with them her whole life, so she chooses her battles. When something strikes her close to the bone she sidesteps, letting it pass. When the blade lodges into her marrow, run for the ships because the mountain flows molten rage. 

 
Query:

Seventeen-year-old Nova aches to touch the ground, to feel unwavering earth beneath her. She craves pure air and longs for real sunlight to warm her skin, not the synthetics on the ship. Above all, she must get away from the Gen Ones, cadets engineered to be superior versions of the officials who govern them.

It’s dangerous being the only Earthling on a starship full of humanoids from another solar system, especially when the crew prefers violence over decency. Nova’s only relief comes from the few cadets she can trust and Haylun, the first cadet to befriend her. The boy she’s afraid to love.

Sentenced to the brig for an accident she believes is her fault, Nova must confront Primo, the new captain. A Gen One with zero tolerance for weakness, Primo reveals a secret that catapults her emotions into riot and leaves her questioning the truth of why she’s on the ship. With a revolt among the crew fueling a war, the boy she loves determined to kill her, and the boy she can’t trust fighting to save her, Nova is forced to choose sides. But stuck in space with a crew capable of annihilating itself, she isn’t convinced anyone will make it to the ground alive.

THE LONE EARTH GIRL is complete at 78,000 words. It’s a Young Adult science fiction novel with series potential that will appeal to readers of Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff’s Illuminae and Kass Morgan’s The 100.

 First 250 words:

I shoot upright in my bunk, the weekly inspection alarm throbbing in my ears. It’s not enough to drown out the nightmare of our last scout mission. Cadet Kam’s screams surge through my veins like rocket launched needles. They settle into an empty space inside me where I can’t shake them free.

My eyes haven’t adjusted to the dark room, but I jolt out of bed anyway. My toe catches a rung in the bunk ladder and I cringe, trying not to yell out. Rhoeni wouldn’t have missed a beat if she’d twisted her toe. She wouldn’t have been clumsy to begin with.

I shake it off and fetch a clean uniform from the closet, leaving a hanger when it clangs to the floor. My skin pricks in the cold, and even in a long-sleeved shirt I can’t get warm. The ship is always cold. Cold and rigid and unforgiving. The temperature wouldn’t matter if I were engineered like the Gen Ones. Maybe nothing would matter. It has to be blissful when emotions don’t rule you.

I tug on the black cargo pants, straining when I reach my thighs. My legs have beefed up. Good. The extra training sessions are paying off. But all the training in the stars won’t keep my muscles from flinching when I’m around the Gen Ones. Not until I can beat one in combat. The thought humors me, but my confidence quickly fades when I rotate my shoulder, still sore from Rhoeni’s baton hit.

2 comments:

  1. Don't freeze up on me — send along a synopsis and the first 3chs to crubinobradway AT lkgagency DOT com! Thanks!

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  2. I'm intrigued! Please send the full to mallory[at]triadaus[dot]com, thank you!

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