Son of a Pitch: Entry Seven: Recycled Identities

For my regular readers, these are some special posts this week as part of a pitch contest I'm providing feedback for. My normal musings will return next week.

For participants, welcome to my blog! I'm happy to host you and excited to see what kinds of stories you've written. Please remember that only the author of this piece and the participating judges are supposed to comment. All other comments will be deleted.

We're Team Fluttershy! Because here on Balancing Act, we're both quite sweet unless you provoke us, in which case, we are terrifying.

You can check out other teams on the other hosting blogs: Rena Rocford (Rainbow Dash), Kathleen Ann Palm (Rarity), Elizabeth Roderick (Discord), Katie Hamstead Teller (Princess Luna)

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Title: RECYCLED IDENTITIES
Category and Genre: YA Science Fiction
Word Count: 98,000

Query:

In 2265, fifteen-year-old Mouse yearns to escape from the computer controlled foster system and fly to one of Earth’s exciting new colony planets. She can start over and become someone else. But she’s trapped for three more years, unless she can convince a foster parent to adopt her. Unfortunately, her sixth foster parent abandons her during a city evacuation, and Mouse barely escapes a kidnapping attempt. Desperate to avoid her former abusive group home and hide from the kidnapper, she programs a new identity and joins a group of runaway boys in their underground courier service. Disguised as a boy, Mouse avoids the unwanted attention she’s run from all her life.

Deep in the forest reserve, the biggest issue in seventeen-year-old Taryn’s life is telling her parents she wants to intern on a colony planet, until illegal miners blow up her home and kill her family. Taryn flees into the forest, her only thought survival.

Mouse’s safety is shattered when the kidnapper captures all the courier boys. Her first instinct is to program a new identity and flee, but she can’t leave them to face the horrors they might endure. She follows the clues to an isolated lab in the middle of the forest. Her friends lie in comas, and, in the next room, vacant-eyed kids are trapped in a virtual reality. Mouse rescues the only person still functioning, Taryn, captured while investigating her family’s murder.

Together, the girls must rescue the boys before the lab programs them into mining robot replacements and ships them to a distant asteroid to work until they die.

First 250 Words:

The Spaceport shuttle lifted elegantly over the rows of shipping containers and hovered above the burning city. So close, yet totally unreachable.

Mouse blinked away useless tears.

Ash billowed over the burnt transportation terminal and swirled around her head, obscuring her view for a moment. If everything had gone the way she planned, Mouse would’ve been on that shuttle in nine months, flying to the Jarian Spaceport and boarding a colony ship to Tanek.

Instead, she huddled at the edge of the cargo field with the last of the evacuees while flames engulfed the temporary city-block. Stuck on Earth.

It had been so hard not to beg Emma to take her with them. But it wouldn’t have changed anything. No one really wanted her.

Mouse had twisted her lips into a fake smile and waved her sixth foster parent off with the words she knew Emma wanted to hear. “Of course I understand. I’ve only been here three months. No time to change your colony application. It’s a great opportunity. Go. I’ll be fine.”

Emma’s grateful smile hadn’t made it any easier. Only twenty evacuees had received the offer to skip the emigration wait-list. Of course Emma chose to fly to Tanek now, rather than relocate to another city-block for the next nine months.

Mouse didn’t know why it still hurt. After fifteen years, she should be used to it.

Everyone leaves.

Mouse’s breath caught as the shuttle wings rippled, transforming to propulsion configuration. Flames reflected off the gleaming silver fuselage, a star about to explode.

Son of a Pitch: Entry Six: Damaged Goods

For my regular readers, these are some special posts this week as part of a pitch contest I'm providing feedback for. My normal musings will return next week.

For participants, welcome to my blog! I'm happy to host you and excited to see what kinds of stories you've written. Please remember that only the author of this piece and the participating judges are supposed to comment. All other comments will be deleted.

We're Team Fluttershy! Because here on Balancing Act, we're both quite sweet unless you provoke us, in which case, we are terrifying.

You can check out other teams on the other hosting blogs: Rena Rocford (Rainbow Dash), Kathleen Ann Palm (Rarity), Elizabeth Roderick (Discord), Katie Hamstead Teller (Princess Luna)

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Title: (Damaged Goods)
Category and Genre: (YA Science Fiction)
Word Count: (100,000)

Query:

As if having a boy’s name isn’t bad enough, Joe is an unusually tall and brawny teenage girl with a debilitating stutter, trapped on a continent terrorized by a menacing army of child-snatchers from a neighboring continent. No one knows why they’re kidnapping the children; all Joe knows is she might be next.

Her people came as war refugees to this continent—Australia hundreds of years from now—where she is born, in secret, to her overprotective father. When her people spur an aggressive retaliation from the snatchers, they mount an attack that leaves Joe completely broken, without loved ones and an arm. With the enemy blocking all access to leave the continent, and her father no longer there to protect her, Joe has no choice but to push through her reclusive nature and post-traumatic stress disorder. The new friendships of a quirky, chatterbox boy and secret scientists give her the emotional and physical tools to battle the enemy, including a highly advanced prosthetic arm. With her joke-cracking ally, she embarks on a desperate quest to free her people from the horrors of the enemy.

Joe’s attention has been solely on the enemy, but she soon discovers something is very wrong with her own people, and worse, those she has trusted the most have been keeping her in the dark about how and why her people are on this continent and how it’s connected to everything about her down to her abnormal size.

First 250 Words:

AGE 14

The constriction around my neck has lessened over time. This doesn’t stop the sickening sweat that drenches me. I fear I’ll throw up. Choke.

Uncle Charly carries himself into the room like he’s stepping in from another dimension. Artificial lights tarnish his orange hair. Halos shine behind him. I gaze into Charly’s eyes. He doesn’t acknowledge my stare.

“Let’s give you some time to get used to not having that on,” Charly whispers after removing the neck brace. He looks away. I think my head will fall off my shoulders even though I’m lying flat. Sleep steals me away.

When I wake, an insect-like buzz vibrates in my ears as the top half of my bed inclines; Charly’s pushing a button. He gently squirts water into my mouth. “Can you try sitting up?”

I test my head—it doesn’t feel like it will topple anymore. I attempt to sit, but my body trembles like crazy.

“It’s normal, you haven’t used your muscles in months,” Charly says softly.

I try again. Something’s wrong. Now that the neck brace is not restricting, I finally look down.

A shudder jolts me.

In place of where my right arm should be, is empty air.

AGE 13

They came to reduce our numbers, again. Except this time, one of our soldiers rode up with a haunted face and two fingers in the air. It took my father a few seconds to figure out it meant two children were snatched away instead of one.

Son of a Pitch: Entry Three: Conduit

For my regular readers, these are some special posts this week as part of a pitch contest I'm providing feedback for. My normal musings will return next week.

For participants, welcome to my blog! I'm happy to host you and excited to see what kinds of stories you've written. Please remember that only the author of this piece and the participating judges are supposed to comment. All other comments will be deleted.

We're Team Fluttershy! Because here on Balancing Act, we're both quite sweet unless you provoke us, in which case, we are terrifying.

You can check out other teams on the other hosting blogs: Rena Rocford (Rainbow Dash), Kathleen Ann Palm (Rarity), Elizabeth Roderick (Discord), Katie Hamstead Teller (Princess Luna)

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Title: Conduit
Category and Genre: YA Science Fiction
Word Count: 68,000

Query:

Lif, an ancient AI suffering from survivor's guilt, asks a naive teen to help her obtain freedom.

Why would a 400-year-old AI want a 14-year-old boy's help? Everyone believes that all AIs were destroyed long ago in the 22nd century, but Caidan can hear Lif thinking. He is one Conduit of millions physically adapted to manipulate electricity and assigned to maintain underground reactors. Being a prototype, he alone knows she exists. She cannot hear him until an electrical overload gives her the chance to ask for his aid. The Conduit gladly agrees to try and break her shackles in return for a new life. Pursued by deadly agents of the Executive who owns them, Caidan must climb to the forbidden City Above, where Lif's hardware has been forgotten for centuries. Despite her brilliance and his adaptations, only their connection can save them.

First 250 Words:
“He called them ‘ghosts in the machine.’ Not Isaac Asimov with whom the phrase would be tied for decades. An ancient philosopher of the twentieth century named Arthur Koestler. No one else remembers him. Was he a good man? Or a smart one? I think myself a poor judge of such human qualifications, but if no one remembers, who is to say that I am wrong?

“When he wrote those words, Koestler had no concept of inhuman machines or of the constructs of titanium, steel, and silicon that would soon power the world. He did not know that half a millennium later, only I would recall his name. Nor did Asimov know that his name would take over words spoken by another, older man. I suppose interactions of that sort are part of ‘life’—taking on the words and ideas of another that has ceased to bear them. I have no way to know. It is unlikely that I should ever cease. I have no one to assume my words and bear them into the future even if I did.

“I could be described as many machines. Or do I only reside in the machines? I do not know. There is no one to ask.

“I do believe that, if Koestler and Asimov were alive today, they would like me. Perhaps they would look at all that I am and am not, and think me to be lovely. Or perhaps I am only a ghost in the machines.”

Son of a Pitch: Entry One: Forward Remorse

For my regular readers, these are some special posts this week as part of a pitch contest I'm providing feedback for. My normal musings will return next week.

For participants, welcome to my blog! I'm happy to host you and excited to see what kinds of stories you've written. Please remember that only the author of this piece and the participating judges are supposed to comment. All other comments will be deleted.

We're Team Fluttershy! Because here on Balancing Act, we're both quite sweet unless you provoke us, in which case, we are terrifying.

You can check out other teams on the other hosting blogs: Rena Rocford (Rainbow Dash), Kathleen Ann Palm (Rarity), Elizabeth Roderick (Discord), Katie Hamstead Teller (Princess Luna)

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Title: FORWARD REMORSE

Category: Young Adult, Science Fiction

Word Count: 83,000


QUERY: Seventeen-year-old Hugo Morse is a model citizen of the 32nd century. He’s earnest and dutiful, if a tad uptight about timeship laws. Having grown up running interference between his little sisters and their demanding fleet captain mother, he’s more parent than brother, but he burns for independence on solid ground.

So, when he’s stranded in dead space controlled by a rogue AI named MAHM who’s abducted aliens from the deep past, the criminal implications make him dizzy. MAHM orders him to mentor her alien team and revive their planets, despite the grave risks to the timeline he comes from. If he doesn’t cooperate, she could space him, or, worse, erase his future and family.

Hugo tries to slow MAHM’s plans, but the aliens prove annoyingly likable. As they push back against his delays, they creep into his heart like cheerful weeds and spark his caretaker complex. He builds his own AI in secret, planning to use it to free them all from MAHM, but her time meddling attracts a worse enemy.

Moravien Tigg, a mad scientist princess from the past, will stop at nothing to get time travel for herself. Driven by a prophecy that she will save her species, she hunts Hugo across space. They clash and sparks fly, especially once a paradox casts them as reluctant allies.

Caught between the laws of time travel and his contrary heart, Hugo must choose between the utopian future he remembers and an uncertain past that already remembers him.

FIRST 250 WORDS

“Harden your heart, time traveler, for the present depends on a static past.” That’s what the copper-etched warning above the nearby docking port reads, as if any of the Syndicate’s quadrillion citizens passing beneath might forget. I never will.

It’s too much pressure to dwell on, especially for my little sisters, the twins Lorel and Nora, who stare at me with eager brown eyes. As soon as we see Earth in the forward viewing lounge of Luna Station, they push me onto a bench and drop their news bomb like luggage at my feet. They want to stay behind and party with their class while I journey to join Mother at our new colony.

At only thirteen, they’re about to achieve their first real freedom—a holiday with friends. Friends who are real people, not historical figures I program as study companions. A good brother should make them sweat this choice. Just a little.

I focus over their glossy black hair, pretending not to see hands flying to their hips. “Tell me the plan.”

“Claim human error,” Nora says in a rush. “You tell that to Uncle Bak, and convince him to tell Mother, and everything will—Why are you taking a picture?”

I lower my handheld. “Evidence for the family scrapbook. I’ll call this page ‘Nora’s descent into criminally dangerous thinking.’”

Her frown curves exactly like Mother’s. “You wouldn’t.”

“Or maybe ‘When my baby sisters pulled me to the dark side.’” I wiggle my eyebrows.

She smacks the device from my hands, but I catch it before it hits the polycrete.

#SonofaPitch is back!

Son of a Pitch is back! The query and pitch contest, organized by the fabulous Katie Hamstead Teller offers several layers of feedback and the potential to get your query read by publishers. More than one Son of a Pitch winner has landed a book deal this way.

I'll be acting as an author judge/blog host for Round 2 again this year, which begins on Monday, September 18th, 2017. So, here's a head's up for my regular readers that we'll be taking a week off of talking about whatever is on Samantha's mind, to offer this space to participating authors to get feedback on their queries. I'll be Team Fluttershy (Yep, we're Ponies this year: and my daughter says that Fluttershy is "quite sweet but terrifying if you provoke her." Just like me!)

I always enjoy this contest immensely. The participants bring such enthusiasm and the depth of feedback is greater than I've seen in any other query contest. So, if you're a querying author, I recommend you check this one out!

You can read more about the contest on Katie's blog. And check out the action on Twitter under the hashtag #SonofaPitch

Iterations of The Tick

Amazon just released a new version of The Tick for prime viewers and I'm so excited! I had it on my calendar as soon as the release date was announced. SPOOOOOON! (that makes more sense if you know who he is: it's a catch phrase). 

I've been disciplined though, watching the episodes slowly to make them last. No binging this time. I still have one more before I've finished the released episodes.

The Tick is one of my favorite comic superhero characters. I'm not sure when I first discovered him, but I've enjoyed him in comics, as a cartoon hero, and in both live-action TV versions.

If you haven't met him yet, I recommend checking him out. He's big, blue, and nigh-invulnerable. He's also, well…confused, and oddly naive, and more than a little clueless.



He's got that old-school superhero charm, all wholesome goodness from the school of Adam West's television Batman from the 60s, calling people "chum" and "friend" and "citizen" and assuming that they have good intentions. He trusts that right will come out on top, and believes in capital J Justice.

He finds Arthur, a nervous accountant, to partner with in every iteration. In all the versions, Arthur has been a nebbishy sort, sort of hapless, but smart and with a good heart. In this latest version, he's a little more traumatized by his past and dealing with mental health issues, but he's the same old Arthur. The two play off each other for good humor and that kind of heroism where good intentions and luck serve the heroes as well as actual skill and intel might for another pair.

I love dark heroes with tortured pasts as much as the next girl, but there's something refreshing about the Tick's relentless optimism and confidence. I named my van after him. (It's also big, blue, and a little dense).

IWSG: Surprising Myself

It's the first Wednesday! Which means IWSG Day. Today's question: Have you ever surprised yourself with your writing? (For example, by trying a new genre you didn't think you'd be comfortable in?) After you see what I have to say, be sure to check out other posts and our lovely and generous co-hosts: Tyrean Martinson Tara Tyler Raimey Gallant Beverly Stowe McClure

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For me, writing is about surprising myself. When I feel like writing, I have this itchy feeling, akin to wanderlust or restlessness. It's in my fingers and the back of my throat. A lot of times, it means my subconscious has been working on something and is ready to tell me about it now. Luckily, my subconscious and I have agreed that this is best done through fiction. 

One of my favorite writing quotes is from E.M. Forster. "How do I know what I think until I see what I say?"

The magic of writing for me is like that. My brain works in mysterious ways and I don't try *too* hard to understand it, worrying that too much analysis will break the spell.  

The first novel I ever finished writing (unpublished, and would need a heavy revision to be ready) was called His Other Mother. Women's issues literary fiction, about a woman dealing with infertility and possible undiagnosed schizophrenia. At some level, I knew I was using writing as my therapy, exploring my feelings and worries surrounding a loved one's struggles. I didn't really know I was processing relationship issues from my first marriage . . .until I read the completed novel and recognized the husband-wife dynamic. I'd cast myself as the husband and my ex-husband as the wife in some ways, but I recognized the interactions all the same. 

See? My mind works in mysterious ways. 

I didn't really realize what deep-seated trust issues I have with the medical establishment, until I started writing the Menopausal Superhero series and spotted the theme coming up again and again. 

Now that I'm further along in the game and feel like I know myself as a writer (at least, better than I used to), I've actively sought surprise. As the question suggests, trying something new can be a way to grow. So far my published novel-length work is all from the Menopausal Superhero series, but I have several other projects in various stages of the process: a historical women's fiction trilogy, a middle grades book about a young witch, a snarky science fiction story about aliens, weird short stories ("weird" in this case the genre as well as a general descriptor), and most recently Young Adult dystopian romance. 

My most recent story publication was in a love-themed anthology. The other day, a publishing friend mentioned he was looking for space crime stories and I thought, "Oooh, wouldn't that be fun to try?" I'm also toying with trying out a steampunk adventure at some point. 

Exploring a new genre or a new type of character expands my thinking and opens up that "wow" factor inside my brain that can only come with discovery. Luckily, writing is a voyage of discovery, so I can expect that feeling again in my future, over and over again. Lucky girl!

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If you're not already following #IWSG (Insecure Writer's Support Group), you should really check it out. The monthly blog hop is a panoply of insight into the writing life at all stages of hobby and career. Search the hashtag in your favorite social media venue and you'll find something interesting on the first Wednesday of every month.