Son of a Pitch: Entry Two: The Camp

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)

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Title: The Camp
Category and Genre: Adult SciFi
Word Count: 94,000

Query:
Three hundred years ago, the colonies of Drea and Baile were established, safe havens for the people when their home planet died out. Two hundred year ago, Drea went silent. Ten days ago, missiles rained down on Baile.

As a prisoner of war, twenty-four year old Celia does not make it to the work camp before she has her first run in with her captors. Beaten for using the restroom without permission, separated from the young charge she has sworn to protect, and ogled by the guards during her first shower in weeks, Celia is terrified, angry and lost. But she rejects an opportunity for an easier life in camp because it means accepting, even supporting, the Drea in their conquest. Better food and an easier job are not worth that price.

Then a chance conversation reveals Celia’s ultimate fate. The Drea plan to send her and all the other young women to breeding houses. Spending the rest of her life as a brood mare for the enemy is a future that she will do anything to avoid. When she receives an invitation to join the resistance, it’s the opportunity she has been waiting for, escape and the chance to deal a blow to the people who took everything from her.

The problem: the resistance is led by a traitor, a Bailen soldier turned Drea stooge and the man who abandoned her during the invasion. If he betrays her again, Celia will face public execution.

First 250 Words:

There is only one rule and it is strictly enforced: Stay in your seat.

But Oona’s squirming has become increasingly frantic. It’s been hours since the guards have been through and, with no one to grant permission, a trip to the train car’s single restroom is out of the question. At least it is until the little girl starts sobbing with the pain of holding it. Despite knowing her for less than a week, I can’t bear to watch her humiliate herself.

I decide to risk it.

Horrified stares follow us as we hustle down the aisle but no one says a word. No one dares, even as I stand outside the door, waiting for her to come out. And once she’s done, I place her in the only empty seat nearby while I take my turn. 

When I come out, she’s gone, her empty seat a hollow gap that draws me in. The three people remaining in the section don’t look over. They continue to stare out the window, riveted to the monotonous landscape that flashes past.

“Where is she?” I ask the woman who had been sitting next to Oona.

“We sent her away. They could have come through and she would have caused trouble.” I have to stoop low to catch the words.

I would like to ask her how much trouble a tiny, frightened child could possibly make but, when I look at her, the words crumble in my mouth.

Son of a Pitch: Entry Five: The Savage

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: The Savage
Category and Genre: Adult / SciFi
Word Count: 109,000

Query:
Manu Talib always does the right thing. Always. Even Manu’s betrothed can’t tempt him to disobey the onerous rules of the all-powerful god Thoth. Manu achieves his wildest ambition when he prevails in a brutal set of trials and wins the right to join Thoth’s elite warriors. But when Thoth sends Manu to exterminate the savages living beyond the eastern border, Manu’s faith is set on a collision course with his conscience.

Manu is injured during the campaign and rescued by Rafiq, one of the heretics he was sent to slay. Rafiq’s kindness leads Manu to question his obedience to Thoth’s ruthless decrees. When Manu’s fellow soldiers discover them and kill Rafiq, an enraged Manu retaliates, killing one of his former comrades. Manu is sentenced to death for his crime, but escapes with the help of his betrothed and stows away on Thoth’s flying chariot.

Manu’s exile leads him to a centuries-old secret: Thoth is a fraud used by an advanced society to control Manu’s people. Left with no master but his conscience, Manu refuses to accept the murderous lie on which his society depends, even if exposing the truth means facing execution and risking the survival of his civilization.

First 250 Words:
Manu fidgeted on the cart’s high bench, eager for the caravan to depart. Father climbed up beside him, graceful despite his size, and gathered the reins.

“The Old Jackal’s nearly down,” Father said, nodding at the setting sun. “We’ll be leaving soon.”

“Do you think we’ll see any Eastlings?” Manu asked.

“I pray to Thoth we don’t. The supply depot is supposed to be well away from the fighting. We’ll have a couple of Judges with us, just in case.”

“Do you think we’ll see Hanif?”

“I don’t rightly know,” Father said. His eyes tightened. “But don’t you go talking to a Judge unless he talks to you first. Even if it’s your brother.”

“I’m not a child anymore. I’ll remember.”

The carts and wagons ahead began to move. Father snapped the reins gently. Their horse snorted, but lurched into a walk. The Old Jackal sank quickly, and soon Manu’s view was limited to the swaying circle of light cast by a lamp hanging from the cart in front of them. He squinted into the gloom but could see little but Father beside him, the horse ahead, and other circles of light bobbing in front and behind like luminous islands in a dark stream.

Manu's breath misted and clouded in the cool air. He leaned back against the forage sacks filling the cart bed. Hay stalks poked through the burlap and tickled his cheeks around the edges of his keffiyeh. At least the makeshift cushion provided some warmth.

Son of a Pitch: Entry Eight: Robot Dreams

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: ROBOT DREAMS
Category and Genre: YA Science Fiction
Word Count: 80,000 words

Query:

Wayward android Ada has never seen the outside world, until a mistaken outburst leaves her a liability to the eccentric humans who took her in. Cast out into the night, she soon finds herself an unwilling recruit at a human army camp.

At the mercy of humans taught all their life to hate her kind, Ada is forced to disguise her true identity or risk deactivation. When she is sent on a vital mission with teenage commander Nico to the heart of machine controlled territory, with the most powerful anti-robot weapon at their disposal, Ada has to decide where her allegiances lie.

She's never had a choice before. Zigzagging through a landscape ravaged by war, her journey of discovery will show her both the kindest and cruellest depths of humanity and reveal horrific truths about her world. When the 'big bad' and you are one and the same, it's hard to catch a lucky break.

Danger is closing in on all sides. It's time for Ada to decide which she'd rather be: (wo)man or machine.

First 250 Words:

They both closed their eyes and murmured words of thanksgiving together.

“Thank you for our home, for this food we eat today and for our safety from the metal-lovers outside.”

“May I be excused?” I asked, shifting uncomfortably in my seat, the charging wire plugged into my spine rubbing against the back of the chair.

Scott looked up first, peering at me over his wiry glasses.

“Stay, Ada. There are things you can be thankful for too. Why don’t you share them?” Scott’s voice was low and melodic, almost as if he was trying to hypnotise me.

“I’m thankful for...”

I looked over at Janet for clues, but today she wasn’t in the mood to be helpful. She shook her head insistently, looking like the little nodding dog in the old commercial they made me watch once. We were two hundred feet below ground, playing at happy families, and I was completely reliant on them for the electricity I needed to survive. I might never have seen the outside world but I wasn’t dumb enough to think that a family consisted of Mum and Dad and a metal-girl.

“I’m thankful I won't starve to death when the food stores run out,” I said, their eyes widening in response. I could never quite work out what they wanted me to say. The truth was always too blunt, but I couldn’t quite get the hang of delivering just the right strength of lie to lessen the blow.

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.