Monday, September 17, 2012

GUTGAA Pitch Contest #30: IGNITE

IGNITE
YA Paranormal Romance
72,000

Query:

Like most humans, Abigail Montgomery has a Watcher—a trained guardian angel sent from Nevaeh—assigned to look after her. Unlike most humans, she knows it.

But it's not until Abbi's seventeenth birthday—the day her Gram dies and she plunges thirty feet to almost certain death—that her protector is revealed. Determined to trust William Reed—a charismatic fire-wielding angel with an arsonist’s past, Abbi must fight to keep her humanity, or risk it—and her newly unearthed ability over the element of Water—when the exiled leader of a rebel-sect of Watchers begins re-gathering a following, and that trust is put to the ultimate test.

Written in the vein of the SHIVER series by Maggie Stiefvater, IGNITE is a character-driven novel which will appeal to readers who enjoy urban fantasy tangled with romance.

First 150 Words:

Here lies Abigail Montgomery: Devoted daughter. Sister. Dog-lover. One slip and that will be chiseled into the headstone above my eternal resting place.

I cross over the hand railings that are designed to keep visitors from falling over the edge, and white knuckle the wood rail behind me. There's no false sense of protection now--nothing but a blanket of black ocean; the murky water thirty feet below taunting me.

“Don’t jump,” floats a familiar musical sound through the sea breeze.

“I won’t,” I whisper, blushing. But it’s well past midnight and the pier is deserted. Besides, I didn’t come here to jump. No. I'm here to remember my gram--to honor her memory--to feel close to her.

Yet, I wasn’t expecting the stillness of this place to strangle me. A tear threatens to leap to my cheek and this how I celebrate my seventeenth birthday. 

4 comments:

  1. The first line of your query hooked me. Great work!

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  2. You have a great plot, intriguing in deed. Good luck

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  3. I love the premise, and I think the writing on the first 150 is great - the first sentence definitely hooked me. In the query, I'd re-work the last paragraph. I know there's a lot you need to say, but it's coming across a little clunky - especially the last sentence. Maybe something like this?

    Determined to trust William Reed—a charismatic fire-wielding angel with an arsonist’s past, Abbi must fight to keep her humanity, or risk losing it to a rebel-sect of Watchers mounting a rebellion in heaven. (don't know if that last part is true, but hey, they're angels!)
    On the strength of your writing and the premise YOU HAVE MY VOTE!

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  4. PITCH: Very well-written. The only thing I’d recommend is striking the line about her new ability to manipulate water—it clogs up that sentence and made me pause. Would it be possible to work that in somewhere else, or make it a sentence of its own? I’m not a fan of angel stories, but this pitch might pull it through.
    FIRST 150: Also easy on the eyes! Because I have nothing else to complain about, I’d urge the writer to work in some sensory description to help me feel really grounded in the setting.

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