Writer's Voice Entry: Nineteen Minutes

Okay, so I was lucky enough to win 1 of 150 spots in The Writer's Voice Competition. Don't know what The Writer's Voice is? Well here's an explanation courtesy of Monica from Love YA:

“The Writer’s Voice” is a multi-blog, multi-agent contest hosted by Cupid of Cupid’s Literary Connection, Brenda Drake of Brenda Drake Writes, Krista Van Dolzer of Mother. Write. (Repeat.), and Monica of Love YA. It's based on NBC’s singing reality show The Voice, so the four of us will serve as coaches and select projects for our teams based on their queries and first pages.






So basically I now have to post my query letter and the first 250 words of my manuscript for the world to see and so (hopefully) the lovely judges can fight over me. Wishful thinking, I know. Anyway, let's get this going, shall we?


QUERY:

Dear Judges:

Nineteen minutes. That's all the time it took for seventeen-year-old Brynn's life to unravel. Nineteen minutes that left her scarred and three people—including her boyfriend Will—dead. Nineteen minutes she can't seem to remember.

Now, after nearly a year in a psychiatric hospital, Brynn is returning to her small hometown along the coast of Maine. Determined to move on, Brynn wants nothing more than to spend her final summer before college enjoying some fun and sun with her sister Keira and her best friend Ginnie. Unfortunately not everyone is as anxious to forget about the past. There's the police, who are still investigating the accident, and Ian, Will's trouble-making cousin in exile in Maine following a run-in with the law, who doesn't think it was an accident at all, and then there's Will, who seems to be reaching out to Brynn from beyond the grave.

At first Brynn thinks it's all in her head, a nasty side effect of her new medication. But as the hauntings intensify and the body count multiplies, she's forced to face the fact that a killer may be closer to her than she realizes.

NINETEEN MINUTES is a young adult psychological thriller complete at 63,000 words. I am a member of SCBWI and an active member of many online writing communitites including YALitChat and WriteOnCon. Thank you in advance for your time and consideration.


FIRST 250 WORDS:

Maybe I’m invisible. I watch the minute hand move another fraction of an inch on the round black and white clock affixed high on the wall above my doctor’s head. Thirty seven minutes. That’s how long I’ve been sitting here listening to the two adults in the room speaking to each other without so much as acknowledging my presence. I’ve gotten good at watching time. Stalker good. It’s my little obsession now. Something crazy I do in an effort to convince myself I’m NOT crazy.

I sneak a peek at my father seated to my right. He looks happy. Too happy. His face is contorted in the same awestruck expression little kids get when a clown manages to transform a balloon into a poodle. You’d think he’d been the one stuck in a ten by ten cell for the last nine months and the doctor had just signed his release papers.

“I’ve arranged an appointment next week for Brynn to meet with a psychiatrist in your area,” Dr. Halstead advises my father while extending a manicured hand to slip him a business card. Her voice is soft and syrupy, like honey, like the color of her over-processed hair. “It’s important that she continue her current course of treatment.”

Dad nods like a deranged bobble-head doll. He doesn’t realize my current course of treatment involves alternating solitary confinement and group therapy with kids infinitely more screwed up than I am. Like the cutter whose only unmarred skin is the webbing between her fingers and toes, and the boy whose parents locked him up here because he was skinning the neighborhood cats.

--------

That's it from me. Hope you enjoy and thanks for stopping by!!!