Wednesday, June 7, 2017

QK Agent Round 7: We Kinda Destroyed Paris, YA Contemporary Fantasy OwnVoices


Title: THE BONES OF PARIS
Entry Nickname: We kinda destroyed Paris
Word count: 72K
Genre: YA contemporary fantasy
It's OWN VOICES as Skye's gay (I identify as queer due to being physically attracted to men but bi-romantic)


Query:

Bermudian expat Skyeler Anders wants three things for his seventeenth birthday: to have a boyfriend, get his bloody memories back, and for his nightmares to stop.

Fate smiles upon him by giving him a boyfriend in Gavin, a cheerleader who is as shy as he is cute. Skyeler's memories remain elusive, even as he acclimates to living with his estranged father and stepmum. And the nightmares do stop, but only because he meets the three teens who haunt his dreams at his new school. It turns out Skyeler isn’t the only one having nightmares. 

The desperate need to learn what connects them takes the teens from the suburbs of Atlanta to the streets of Paris. Amid the search for answers, Gavin is kidnapped by a rouge group of mages. It's in the City of Lights they learn the mages are hell-bent on unleashing an ancient force that'll set the world back to the age of sorcery, starting with the bones of mages lining the Catacombs. Now, Skyeler must untangle the mysteries of his forgotten past and learn to trust the teens who've inhabited his nightmares because it’s not just his boyfriend's life hanging in the balance, but the entire city of Paris—and the world.

250:

"Now Entering Hell!”

That's what needs to shine in brilliant reflective letters from the sign by the exit ramp. Not this “Now Entering Douglasville” nonsense with a population estimate of thirty-two-thousand.

Thirty-two-thousand and one, now.

Douglasville, Georgia represents my own personal hell, one with a dizzying wash of green and grey, throat-coating cigarette smoke, and country music. I squint against the harsh light peeping from the overcast clouds—a night spent in the airport left my eyes aching.

My driver’s a court official who, due to some asinine legal technicality, has to drive me to my new home. His nasal singing is enough to make me wish for headphones. But both my sunglasses and headphones are broken. Some bloody git stepped on them during the flight from Bermuda. Given my lack of American money, replacing them will have to wait until I reach the court-determined destination—my father’s home. As far as days go, this one reeks of disaster.

Doubly so considering it’s my seventeenth birthday.

I roll down the windows, desperate for some air not tainted by cigarette smoke. Sticky humidity assaults me. The driver slides the windows back up as we turn into a subdivision, before slowing to a stop in front of my final destination: the two-story, red brick house where my life waits to be puzzled back together. 

I rub away the gooseflesh prickling over my arms. The front door opens and my dad and stepmum walk out. I should remember them but don't, can't. My memories of them are missing, like everything else.

4 comments:

  1. This sounds awesome! I'd love to see pages. Please send your query pasted in the body of your email to querylindsay@emeraldcityliterary.com and include #querykombat in the subject. Pages should be sent as a Word attachment.

    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sounds like a fun story. Would be happy to check out the query, synopsis, and first 3 chapters over at acquisitions@curiosityquills.com Good luck and congrats on making it this far!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'd like to see more. Please send query + first chapter (pasted) to query@thebookeralbertagency.com. And please mention Query Kombat.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I'd love to see this. Please include query in the body of the email, Query Kombat in the subject line, and attach the pages as a doc to mallory@triadaus.com

    ReplyDelete