Thanks
so much to Brenda, Monica, Elizabeth and Krista for organizing The Writer's
Voice!
Query
Dear
Amazing Agents,
I
hope you'll be interested in my YA science fiction novel, in which a girl
cannot let go of her friend's hand or she'll die.
The
walls surrounding the town of Jenn's Ferry keep out the genetically engineered,
flesh-eating monsters known as Fecs. Those same walls lock in
seventeen-year-old Echo, so she's thrilled to go on a rare field trip outside
the town. But when Echo's old crush Gavin scratches himself on the splintered
rib of a Fec corpse, a virus within the Fec blood sparks a mutation in his
body. According to the old stories, constant skin contact slows the
transformation from human to Fec. Before Gavin can turn completely and sink his
teeth into her, she grabs hold of his wrist. Echo's plan: bring him to town and
the sheriff will send them by coach to the last doctor with a cure.
Only
it turns out the townspeople don't believe the old stories anymore. Assuming
Gavin is a threat, they refuse to transport him to the physician and won't
allow him within the protection of the city walls. The sheriff figures Echo's
skin contact with Gavin must mean she's infected, so the town gate remains
closed to her, too. In a last ditch effort to save them both, Echo leads Gavin
on a two-week trek to Raven Rock, the one town that has the medicine he needs.
Every
day is filled with one-handed scrounging for food and evading traps set by the
Fecs. Echo hopes if she doesn't let go, Gavin will make it. Except it only
takes a few days before scales start growing up his arm, and his hunger for
fresh prey mounts. Then he tells Echo she's beginning to smell good.
BENEATH
OUR SKIN is a YA science fiction novel in which the journey through the
wilderness of Veronica Rossi's Under the
Never Sky meets the medical research of Dan Wells' Partials, but with monsters instead of modern technology. It's the
story of a girl's struggle between ridding her 1850s-like world of dangerous
creatures and accepting them as a thinking, feeling species. BENEATH OUR SKIN
has a diverse cast, stands alone and is complete at 79K words.
I
grew up in Michigan and now live with my husband and children in Germany. By
day, I work as a project manager, and I'm an active member of SCBWI.
Thank
you for your consideration.
First
250 words
My rope arced through the moonlit
night and slid down the wooden fence to land at my feet. Again. Damn.
Panting echoed from the empty yard
beyond the eight-foot fence—the blacksmith's dog must've heard me. I coiled the
rope and tossed it a third time. It caught the top of the post. Yes! I yanked it, testing the strength,
then braced my feet against the slats and scrambled up.
At the top, the points of the boards
dug into my torso as I twisted the rope around so it would fall into the yard
and provide an escape route. The big black mutt gazed up at me, sniffing for
the treat I'd brought him. Or smelling me. By now, we were old friends. He
hadn't barked at me in weeks.
When I dropped down, he whined
softly, and I pulled my ration of meat for this week out of my pocket. My mouth
watered, but I tossed it to the dog. A small price for a glimpse of freedom.
The two chicken pieces disappeared in seconds.
Despite the fence, the shop was
always locked at night, but there was a workstation set up outside. Sometimes,
nails fell down, and the blacksmith was too lazy to go after them right away. I
fell to my knees, inching past the sawhorses toward the lean-to, sifting
through the sand with my fingers as I crawled. Under the water-filled trough, I
grasped cool metal and snatched it up.
One. Only five more nails to go.
