So you think you can pitch? Well, it's time! The Three-Two-One pitch contest takes place today and tomorrow (Thursday and Friday), April 25th and 26th. Are you ready? Great!
But before you begin posting, take one last look at the rules and regulations:
The Three-Two-One pitch contest goes like this:
THREE - Pitch your story in only three sentences.
TWO - Two days to enter: April 25th and 26th.
ONE - One awesome agent—Tricia Lawrence of the Erin Murphy Literary Agency—will judge and pick a winner.
This contest is open to unagented, completed and polished manuscripts in the genres of YA and MG.
To be eligible, you must:
- Follow this blog - go ahead and click "Join this Site" on the right if you haven't already
- Follow Dorothy on Twitter
- Follow Elizabeth on Twitter
- Spread the word! Tweet, Blog, or mention on Facebook about the contest linking back to this post
To enter, leave a comment in the comments section in the following format:
- Name and Email
- Title of Manuscript
- Genre
- Wordcount
- Three-sentence Pitch
Remember, no run-on sentences! Each person is allowed two entries. I will turn off comments on Friday at midnight.
Good luck, everyone! Can't wait to read your pitches!
49 comments:
Mia K Rose
miakrose [at] gmail [dot] com
YA Steampunk Fantasy
70,000 Words
Seventeen-year-old Idonea practices dark magic, but she doesn't see herself as evil. Yet when her mother disappears, Idonea has no choice but to go into the most dangerous place in the world for her kind—the Empire—to save her. But when a daemon starts murdering witches Idonea must uncover the truth to find her mother and stop the real evil before it's too late.
Stephanie
stephsmithperformer@gmail.com
YA Horror
60,000
17-year-old science prodigy Mary brings her dead boyfriend Adam back to life, but the creature who emerges from the machine isn’t the boy she loved. He’s a freak. When everyone the new Adam has encountered turns up dead and the evidence points to him, Mary is torn between destroying the monster she created – or trusting him in time to stop a killer after the secret of his resurrection.
Kathleen S. Allen
gaelicfairie AT gmail DOT com
I'M IN LOVE WITH A ZOMBIE BUT HE DOESN'T KNOW I'M ALIVE
Upper Middle Grade Humorous
50,000 words
13yo witch casts a spell to bring her boy crush back from the dead.
As a zombie.
Now they are on the run from a covert government agency determined to use them to start the zombie apocalypse.
Heather Davis
hdavis67@gmail.com
The New Eden Chronicles
YA Speculative Fiction-Romance
118,000
A charismatic slave laborer trapped in the paradise of New Eden, Alemana Aquino lives for one thing—to kill the corrupt Bishop who murdered his sister. When Alemana hears about the incredible photographic memory of a girl Citizen named Eve, he offers to bring illegal medical treatment to her brother in exchange for help destroying the Bishop. If Eve accepts, she’ll place her entire family in jeopardy and become entangled in an uprising that could leave New Eden in ruins; if she says no, her brother is as good as dead.
Jill Van Den Eng fromthekeyboard@gmail.com
What Goes Up, Must Fall Down
MG
30,000 words
Max Mavel, age 10, is used to life’s ups and downs living with a mother who has bipolar disorder. Then his problem gets literal, sending Max flying in the air or anchored the ground in an increasingly erratic up and down cycle. Now Max needs to find a way to come to grips with his anomaly and find stability before someone gets hurt.
Bonnie Staring
bonnie(at)bonniestaring(dot)com
Deflowered
Young adult contemporary with magical elements
70,000 words
In a twisted take on Beauty and the Beast, an honesty-challenged sixteen-year-old discovers the gorgeous boy who broke her heart has been magically trapped inside a daisy—and only she can hear him. To save her ex and their blossoming second-chance romance, she must share her secrets before his last petal drops, or risk him turning into compost.
Jessica Knauss
AlfonsoXelSabio at gmail dot com
THE SEVEN NOBLE KNIGHTS OF LARA
Historical
130,000
When a cocky young knight defends his pride at a wedding in tenth-century Spain, a nobleman pays for it with his life. His uncle wreaks a bloody revenge that will devastate the nation with unstaunched conflict spanning fifteen years and reaching as far as Córdoba, the shining capital of Muslim Andalusia. Can a powerful, but confused, young man from this exotic civilization make everything right?
Sarah G Marsh
AthenaDreaming [at] gmail [dot] com
NO SUCH THING
YA Southern Gothic
60,000 Words
Dare Cleaster doesn’t believe in ghosts any more than she believes in the Tooth Fairy. But on a sweaty summer night, the seventeen-year-old unintentionally wakes a sinister spirit that’s been dormant in the crumbling Waters residence for years, and it refuses to be ignored. Now Dare must figure out how to lay the ghost of Atheleen Waters to rest before she can add to the body count she began over a hundred and fifty years ago.
Meredith Mansfield
Meredith_Mansfield(at)msn(dot)com
THE BARD'S GIFT
YA Alternate History
83,000 words
Astrid is too shy to even talk to the boy she likes, so naturally she's the one the Norse gods choose for the bard's gift--the ability to tell the right story at the right time. Turns out, her new talent is the key to escaping starvation in medieval Greenland and finding a better future in the New World. When rebels anger the very dragon-like guardian of their new home, stories are all Astrid has to prevent a power grab that could ruin their chances to settle in this bountiful new land.
Jen Finelli
jenfinelli@virginia.edu
High-concept YA
81,000
Comic-book superhero Skye takes on awful plot twists every day, but when his parents die in a nasty cliche, he's had it. He shoots his author. Will murder save his world, or damn his soul?
Katie Teller katiejteller at hotmail dot com
Deceptive Cadence
YA Contemporary
85,000
Cadence’s husband and daughter are killed, so her guardian angel offers her the chance to save them - to relive her life from age fourteen. Cadence sees it as an opportunity to make amends in her life, as well as save her family. But she doesn’t expect the bad boy, James Gordon, to disrupt her plans.
Sarah Turnbull
saturnbull (a) gmail (dot) com
AND WE ARE ALL DAMNED
YA gaslamp fantasy
77,000
Orphans Haeden and Veanne are fifteen-years-old when their adoptive father, the sole doctor on an isolated island, mysteriously dies.
His death leaves the twins without knowledge of their parentage and defenseless against rumor of a spreading illness threatening to divide a decaying Victorian colony.
Combating plague, pirates, and moral corruption, Haeden and Veanne must unearth both the truth behind the sickness and their birth in order to survive the systematic destruction of the only home they have ever known.
Laura Emmons
jimnlauramiller@frontier.com
SEEING MAGIC
YA paranormal romance
70,000 words
Maggie Stewart travels to the wild Blue Ridge Mountains, finding a hidden world filled with magic, but not all of it is good. The villagers are slightly more than human, and other residents aren’t human at all. Humans, magical beings and animals are becoming deathly ill and only her dormant healing vision can find a cure before it’s too late.
Carla Cullen
carlalunacullen(at)gmail(dot)com
PIPER GIRL
YA Science Fiction
76,000 words
When crazed rats from a nearby research lab infest her rundown neighborhood, 17-year-old Marisa offers to help capture them. Like a modern-day Pied Piper, she possesses the magical ability to charm animals with her flute. But after a powerful scientist learns Marisa's powers also affect humans, she stands in danger of becoming his next lab rat.
Barbara Josselsohn
barbara.josselsohn@gmail.com
SEVEN WORDS
MG Contemporary
42,000 words
What if you could save the life of the person you love most in the world—but only by discovering seven missing words in a 150-year-old conversation? That's the challenge facing twelve-year-old Cara Walsh during one transformative summer. With help from her once-famous great-aunt and an unlikely new friend named Tyler, Cara sets out to discover the elusive words—and ends up learning a lot more than she bargained for.
Heather Raglin
heathercq(at)gmail(dot)com
CROSSING THE DIVIDE
YA Fantasy
76,000 words
When sixteen-year-old Becca Ford interferes with the potion-making operation of a wizard coven, a Magical Internal Affairs intern tries to wipe her memory of the incident...and fails. Becca didn’t even know magic existed until the coven uses it on her. Becca understands plants better than people, but to survive the summer she has to learn how to use newly discovered powers and get over her preference for solitude.
Donea Lee Weaver
donealw(at)aol.com
THE GLASS PRINCE
YA Contemporary Fantasy
73,000 words
17-year-old Clara will never forgive Rion, no matter how sexy his British accent is. When she travels to upstate New York to visit Grandma for the first time, she finds that Rion not only ruined her relationship back home, but he’s also the reason her father died when she was only one. Clara and Rion share a curse, and unless the glass prince can give her the clues she needs to break it, she’ll suffer the same fate as her dad.
Name: Hanna Loren
Email: hannalorenwriter@gmail.com
Title: The Ugly Buckling
Genre: Contemporary YA
Wordcount: 55,500 words
Three-sentence Pitch:
Chloe Buckling, perpetual wallflower and gifted artist at the Sterling Academy for the Arts, knows she's ugly: she's albino. A too good to be true invitation from Sterling's hottest property, the unattainable Ethan Randall, draws Chloe out of her self-imposed shell, and into heartbreak when she finds out she's been set up 'Mean Girls' style. Chloe's dream of becoming an artist is shattered too when her poor eyesight is diagnosed as impending blindness, forcing her into the spotlight to secure her shot at winning a life changing scholarship before losing the only boy who ever cared and what remains of her vision.
Kate Larkindale: katelarkindale (at) gmail (dot) com
THE SIDEWALK'S REGRETS
YA Contemporary
84 000
When virtuouso violinist, Sacha, hears the boy in the music store play guitar, the energy, violence and unpredictability of the music thrills her and she falls hard for Dylan and his wild, inventive sound. As their lives entwine, she finds herself giving him everything – including her music. In return, he gives her his drug habit.
Donea Lee Weaver
donealw(at)aol.com
THE GRAVES
MG Paranormal Mystery
66,900 words
When 12-year-old Charlie stumbles over a dead girl in the cemetery behind his house, he works with the girl’s ghost to prove his grave-robbing father is actually innocent of her murder. His amateur sleuthing only provokes the real killer. Charlie realizes that he's running out of time to save his dad from serving time for a crime he didn't commit and also to save himself from becoming the real killers next victim.
Beth Pond
bethpond90@aol.com
Podium Finish
Young Adult
77,000 words
Seventeen-year-old Olympic hopeful Harper Kavanaugh has always had one love: hockey. Just when she thinks she's got her starting spot on Team USA sealed, injury strikes. So does romance.
Karen Y. Bynum
bynum(dot)karen(at)gmail(dot)com
BECOMING
YA Urban Frantasy
70,000 words
Three-sentence Pitch:
Unknown to college freshman Zoe, underneath the Frankenscar her transplant left beats a dragon’s heart. Terrified of intimacy, she starts an online relationship, but the boy she’s fallen for is her donor and a girl.
Jenn Soehnlin
jenn.soehnlin(at)gmail.com
Right State of Mind
YA contemporary sci-fi
60,000 words
When several of Ivy's classmates, her own brother included, begin writing, painting, sculpting, and designing masterpieces with complete unawareness of what they are doing until after their creation is complete, she rushes to research the cause. She discovers that not only are the creative episodes increasing in frequency, but they're also accompanied by dangerous side effects: one of which kills a classmate. Her brother joins her in a desperate attempt to piece together the mystery of the creative episodes before he or someone else gets seriously hurt--or before the source of the increased innovation can be unleashed on the entire unsuspecting school.
Ami Allen-Vath
amilouiseallen(at)yahoo(dot)com
PROM B*TCH
YA Contemporary
68,000 words
If Bree can’t handle panic attacks, her stalker ex, and mean girl bitchitude, she’s going to end up losing her best friend, her new boyfriend, and the trust of a dead girl.
After a night of sex, drinks, and video games, once again, Bree is faced with a chance to speak up or stay silent. If Bree lets fear be her guide, she’ll lose her first love, and be heading to Prom to avenge the death of the school outcast--as a ‘Party of One.’
Marie Langager
marielangager@yahoo.com
HAVEN
YA sci-fi
70,000
Seventeen-year-old Hope stubbornly believes the cruel simulations orchestrated by the alien Locals of planet CR-3 are meant to decipher human character. She endures nightmare after nightmare alongside other specimens, including the boy who won’t forgive her for crushing his heart, and continues to trust her intuition about the tall blue creatures who show no emotion. But when a specimen dies during a simulation, Hope is forced to question herself and the true motivation of her alien captors.
Fida Islaih, fida(.)islaih(@)yahoo(.)com
DECIDING HIJAB
realistic, girly YA
12k
15 year old Yasmeen decides and starts wearing her headscarf. She faces an atheist teacher giving mis-info & getting unwanted attention from a boy. Then meets a Christian interested in Islam.
Name: Sage Collins
Email: author(dot)sagecollins(at)gmail(dot)com
Title: Taylor-Made
Genre: YA Sci-fi
Wordcount: 85,000
Taylor's thrilled to join the BOIS-rights club his crush, Rosie, runs, where he can simultaneously fight for her heart and equal rights for BOIS, androids built and programmed to be the perfect boyfriend. Then he discovers he's an android, programmed to love her. Devastated by Rosie's hypocrisy, Taylor is determined to prove he's more than his programming, even as a previous owner comes back to claim him and the BOIS are recalled.
Jenny Moyer
jenny(at)jennymoyer(dot)com
THE DREAMSPEAKER'S DIARY
YA Paranormal
85,000
16-year-old Brier can speak her dreams into existence, and she pushes the limits of her secret dreamspeaking abilities to fight her living nightmares and save those she loves. When enigmatic Keller Temms transfers to Grayson High, her dreams suddenly come to life in ways she never thought possible, exposing her to the ruthless agents pursuing her. But as the hunters infiltrate her dreams, Keller comes to her aid with skills of his own, and Brier must decide if he’s an ally or the reason she’s a target in the first place.
Michelle Hauck
Michelle9Hauck (at) aol (dot) com
Pygmy Hazards
MG Humorous
34,000
Classroom hamster Tom only wants to escape the pygmies before they dress him as Strawberry Shortcake again. Not cool. But the tie-wearing principal labels him a hindrance to learning and wants him flushed.
M.R. Buttars
m.r.buttarsbooks at gmail dot com
YA Fantasy
110,000
While confinement in a tiny community on the backwards Earth could cause any rational 16 yr old to go crazy, Keera worries when she hears strange voices, dreams of places she’s never been, and is attacked by random monsters intent on killing her. As if that isn't bad enough, she discovers an ancient text that turns everything she has ever believed about herself and her people upside down. Now, with the aid of her least favorite sorcerer, Keera must find a way to stop the Universe from plunging into eternal darkness--again.
Name: Sage Collins
Email: author(dot)sagecollins(at)gmail(dot)com
Title: Hero/Villain
Genre: YA urban fantasy
Wordcount: 65,000
Pitch: Shapeshifter Evie Dark would prefer to chase after her celebrity crush, Ace Starr, than chase after supervillains, but in the life of a superheroine it's always duty first, boys never. Chasing after Ace totally becomes duty, though, when his obsession with meeting her alter ego leads him to steal, threaten Evie's best friend, and brainwash the entire city...and, yeah, dating psycho supervillains is out of the question. But when she finds out she shares a body with him, it's Psychoville, population of, well, still just one.
Name: Ann M. Noser
email: annnoser@gmail.com
title: Desiderata
genre: YA fantasy
wordcount: 60,000
Pitch:
Two sisters discover that the ominous vow "until death do us part" is exactly what the wife-hunting Prince Bane has in mind. Anna and Maria lived quietly, charming plants and keeping their parents from starving until the prince came to town. Anna, his first choice, runs off with a stable hand; but Maria gets trapped in a marriage to protect her son.
name: Ann M. Noser
email: annnoser@gmail.com
title: How to Date Dead Guys
genre: NA (taking a chance here)urban fantasy
word count: 92,000
pitch:
When college sophomore Emma gets blamed for Mike’s drowning, she turns to witchcraft and a mysterious Book of Shadows to bring him back. Under a Blood Moon, Emma draws a pentacle on the campus bridge and casts her spell. Instead of resurrecting Mike, a stranger drags himself out of the waters.
Name: Cait G Drews
Email: notebooksisters(at)gmail(dot)com
Title: Blood
Genre: YA high fantasy
Wordcount: 84,000 words
Pitch: Allied with a teen assassin, Milo fights to save his people before his betrayal kills them. The kid is eight. No pressure.
Jennifer Moore
jennycmoore@hotmail.com
SLETTBYRD
YA
59,000 words
With his long red cloak and boots, his broad-brimmed hat and terrible beak-like mask, the Slettseeker stands like a great gash of blood against the white backdrop of Janeck Potetsky’s snow-locked world, a world turned upside down by the news of his mother’s pregnancy. Janeck’s baby sister will be no ordinary child, but a slettbyrd, one of the white haired, three thumbed ‘others’ whom the Sleetseeker has vowed to eradicate. Aided by a crazy one-eyed old woman and a haughty fortune teller, fifteen year old Janeck must take on the wild wastelands and the brutality and prejudice of a century-long regime in a desperate bid to save his ‘evil’ baby sister from the Slettseeker’s merciless clutches.
Jennifer Moore
jennycmoore@hotmail.com
AGENT SPARROW AND THE GREAT ROMAN ESCAPADE
MG
18,000 words
An imported stash of nappy pins and surplus baked beans might seem harmless enough, but in the wrong hands and the wrong millennium they can do a surprising amount of damage. With only a photo-booth time machine, a handful of Roman coins and a pocket history guide at their disposal, 10-year old Oliver Sparrow and the bungling Agent Wolf are sent back to Roman Britain to stop the world’s premier evil genius changing the course of British history forever. What starts as a normal school day soon becomes a whirlwind of exciting captures and desperate escapes, of underwear calamities, disgusting Roman food and a very close encounter with a hungry lion.
Lyndsay Johnson
lyndsayjohnson@gmail.com
FIRE OF THE SEA
YA Fantasy
124,000
A mermaid's path to monarchy is changed by fate when she falls in love with the human she rescues from Iceland’s dark waters. But as eighteen-year-old Aeva renounces the sea for a life on land with Gunnar, she finds herself endowed with a dangerously coveted immortality that will bring her face-to-face with a murderous demigoddess from her past. Now the talents of ocean and earth must combine to save both worlds.
Ava Jae
AvalonJaedra[at]gmail[dot]com
FIELD OF BONES
YA Paranormal
85,000 words
Seventeen-year-old Cade Shor just murdered his girlfriend Hailey with a kiss, and the body count is on the rise. Of course he didn't mean to kill Hailey—but with an assassin now hell-bent on taking his head and new instincts driving him to kill again, he doesn't have time to figure out what's happening to him, or how to stop the bloodshed. But if Cade doesn't learn how to fight his body's new addiction to the life force of the living, an assassin will be the least of his problems—try as he might, he can’t outrun an army of Reapers.
Laura Hurlburt
LauraHurlburt [at] att [dot] net
The Changeling Alliance
Middle Grade Fantasy
Approximately 50,000
Thirteen-year-old introvert Bree Albina would rather play the panflute in the giant cedar stump in the woods than hang out with other kids her age; so when she finds out she’s an elf Changeling, it explains a lot.
Thrust into a fantastical world of bizarre trainings and experiences with The Changeling Alliance, Bree struggles to adapt but is encouraged by six other newbie Changelings – the first friends she can really relate to.
When someone threatens to destroy everything Bree has begun to care for, all the town of Andoree is suspect, and the Changelings must discover the traitor’s identity to save themselves.
Chrystal Schleyer
CSchleyer678 (at) gmail (dot) com
CASTE
YA Dystopian
73k
Seventeen-year-old Isobel Anders lives in safety from the monsters that roam outside her city—deformed creatures from failed experiments. But despite genetic manipulation being outlawed for years, someone is experimenting again and kids are dropping like flies. Now, Isobel has to make a choice: live in safety and ignore the experiments or uncover the lies that hide behind the pretty faces.
Jenny Moyer
jenny(at)jennymoyer(dot)com
THE DREAMSPEAKER'S DIARY
YA Paranormal
85,000
16-year-old Brier can speak her dreams into existence, and she pushes the limits of her secret dreamspeaking abilities to fight her living nightmares and save those she loves. When enigmatic Keller Temms transfers to Grayson High, her dreams suddenly come to life in ways she never thought possible, exposing her to the ruthless agents pursuing her. But as the hunters infiltrate her dreams, Keller comes to her aid with skills of his own, and Brier must decide if he’s an ally or the reason she’s a target in the first place.
Deborah Kreiser
deborahkreiserfrancis (at) gmail (dot) com
YA Contemporary Fantasy
74,000 words
Genie needs a master if she wants to keep the new body she got the instant she turned 17 ½. But she wishes most for love--and finding Master (or Mr.) Right is tricky. With help from her dead mother’s interactive diary and a mentor with questionable motives, Genie uncovers the family history and genie rules she never knew.
Joan He
joanart6 (at) gmail (dot) com
YA light scifi: INGENICIDE
65k
In the year 2089, education has been reinvented; prodigies run rampant in every imaginable work field. Before the Normals started the "Genocide", a violent movement designed to topple the meritocracy, 16 year old Sibyl Kenschild only wanted to be a Space Manipulator and to design rooms that evoked the deepest stirrings of human emotion. But when the the bullets go off at the post-graduation dance, she realizes that it'll take not a Space Manipulator, nor a prodigy, but a traitor to survive.
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