Skip to main content

#4

Title: ELEMENTAL FIRE       
Genre: YA Fantasy
Word Count: 70,000


Query:

Fourteen-year-old Brook wishes she could merge the two halves of her life: the fearless girl who flies across the countryside on the back of a runaway horse and the timid misfit who flails at communicating with her friends and father after her mother’s death.

Her father’s repeated disappearances don’t help either. Brook hides in his workshop as he walks through a solid rock wall momentarily turned into a blinding doorway to another world. She follows and must confront all her insecurities to prevent the theft of five ancient talismans by a madman responsible for the bizarre blizzard that killed her mother.

Only by cooperating with two boys who fight their own desires to snatch the talismans, trusting them with the secret of her new ability to track hidden people by their Heartfires and harnessing the mind-healing power of the Fire talisman can she prevent the destruction of her path home.

ELEMENTAL FIRE is a YA Fantasy, complete at 70,000 words. It functions as a standalone book, but is intended to be the first of a five book Elemental series similar to Piers Anthony’s Incarnations of Immortality with touches of The Last Airbender.

I have a degree in Physics and train endurance horses—both of which play a role in this manuscript.


First Page:

I peered into the stone-walled room Dad used as his home laboratory. I’d never gone inside without Dad around, but I needed to punch holes in my stirrup leathers. I got my first horse three months ago, and my inherited saddle was made for someone much bigger. Even when Vienna behaved, my skinny butt slid all over.

Contraptions Dad built for the university physics lab littered steel workbenches. Shivering, I avoided bony metal arms bolted to magnifying glasses, laser tubes and LED displays. No idea what the latest project did, but Dad’s gadgets hadn’t topped our discussions for several months.
I dug through drawers filled with soldering irons, resistors and meters. Nothing looked capable of poking holes through leather, so I made sure nothing looked out of place and returned to the garage part of the old apple shed. Buried under unfinished projects, I found a large nail and hammer. Wouldn’t be pretty, but it’d get the job done.

As I raised the hammer, the lab door opened. A thin man wearing a ridiculous Futurama tee rushed through. Dad’s head above robot Bender’s body. I would have laughed, but maybe it was the perfect uniform.

“Dad? Where’d you come from? I was just in there.”

Brown eyes gawked from behind thick lenses. His mouth opened and closed.

“Brook, stay out of my shop. My equipment’s expensive.” He stabbed a finger in my face with each word. “Just. Stay. Out.”

Seriously? He appears in a locked room, and I’m the one in trouble?

Comments

  1. I would like to see the first three chapters of this!

    -Brittany Booker

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Send your requested material to:

      brittany@thebookeralbertageny.com

      I don't think she'd mind me letting you know...

      Delete
    2. Heehee, already tracked her down! Thanks!

      Delete
    3. You're one step ahead of me. Yay you:)

      Delete
  2. I like the pace of your writing. I'd like to see you work on some of the "facts" - dad coming out of an empty room rather than a locked room, the explanation (perhaps) of why it matters that a person is firmly seated in a saddle, etc. These aren't necessarily deal breakers, they're just things that need to be tidied up.

    Remember, this is a world and experience you're creating so it's important to tie up those ends that are left hanging so the reader doesn't wonder - and wander - through your pages.

    Good work, overall!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Operation Agent Ink

UPDATE: PLEASE FILL OUT THIS QUESTIONNAIRE AFTER YOU SIGN UP. Have you ever wondered what agents were dying to find in their inbox/slush pile? There have been many times I entered a contest and not even received a comment, not even from one of the agents. Or maybe the agent was kind enough to leave a comment that simply said, "Sorry, this just isn't what I'm looking for, but I love the premise and your voice." I always walk away feeling unsatisfied. If I had known exactly what the agent wanted beyond, "YA" or "Fantasy" I might not have even entered a contest I knew I wouldn't win! Even more, I wasted a very busy agents time! Well, your time of guessing is up! OPERATION AGENT INK to the rescue! That's right! This workshop will help aspiring authors get on the list of an agent's WISH LIST! When the workshop is over, your manuscript will be ready to view by a group of AMAZING agents who are dying to see what you've wri...

Writer In Motion CP feedback

Hey beautiful guys and dolls! Here it is! My CP feedback edited story. Had a hard time with this, but I hope it makes sense. I've got a post I'm working on I plan to put up after Thanksgiving. Here ya go. Enjoy... Every morning I wake to carnival day.  Today, though, I have my key. If I don’t use it before midnight, my way of escape will gone. It’s a silver key with a twisted metal handle, a sapphire stone half moon and engraved stars. There’s a tiny inscription on the moon, but it’s so small, I’ve never been able to read it.I’ve always kept mine in my jewelry box, but today, I string it on a ribbon and tie it around my neck. My two best friends will be wearing theirs, too, and I wonder how they will escape this carnival of dreams. “What’s it for?” Cress asks as we stand in line for the swings. I run my fingertips over the entire silver surface. “I don’t know. It belonged to my grandmother,” I say. “Whatever.” She shrugs her shoulder in a dismissive way. “Have ...

Workshop 10

Today, let's get readers hooked from the very first sentence. If you do, you are off to a great start and hopefully a great first chapter. We are going to focus on the first and second sentence and how you can draw readers in while introducing two major items about your book: 1. Your MC 2. The main conflict. How? Is it really possible to do this in only TWO sentences? YES! Example: My name is Snow, like the white powder that falls during winter, though I don't know what my mom was thinking because it was ninety degrees the day I was born. I turned twelve the year I married a man I hated and thirteen when my first baby was born. This sentence tells us a lot. It shows us a little about Snow's personality, it hints toward a shortened childhood and could possibly point to a different time era. I also can definitely see the conflict. Can you? You only have a few minutes to make a good, first impression. Make sure you wow your reader enough they'll actually t...