QK Round 1: Brain Gourmet v. A Pirate’s Life for Me

Entry nickname: Brain Gourmet
Title: BrainZ
Word count: 60K
Genre: YA Paranormal Romance

Query:

Jill (16) has been disguised as a zombie since second grade. It’s the only way she can stay with her family, since mixed living/zombie households are not accepted. Keeping her secret while growing up in an all-zombie community hasn’t been easy, but things get tougher when she transfers into a newly formed integrated high school.

She’s constantly caught off guard by new temptations like real food (instead of brainchow) and living boys -- especially Dave, the football team’s quarterback. He has athletic grace no zombie can match. And, since his team is integrated, he doesn’t have the prejudices most of the other living do… including the school’s administration.

Worse, even the zombies on staff treat “zits” as second-class citizens. But, if the football team is mixed, shouldn’t there be zombie cheerleaders?

Jill decides if she can form a squad, they can take a big step toward equal rights for zombies. Getting permission is tough. Finding routines for shambling zombies is harder. Dealing with the insults and dirty tricks from the living girls is toughest of all. It would be impossible without the help of Dave and other sympathetic “pumpers.”

But every success makes Jill more conspicuous, raising the chance that she’ll be torn away from her family and they will become outcasts. And her biggest challenge is her longing to be herself, a living girl.

First 250 words:
Jill sat on the edge of her bed and fingered the tray of prosthetics. A cheek with a gouge. Part of a lip. The shoulder scar she’d hated since fifth grade.

She snatched up the ragged, scarred nose and placed it in front of her own small nose. She looked in the mirror. Most of one nostril had been torn free.

Ugh.

“I’m not wearing this,” she told her mom. Not on the first day of junior year. Not when living boys were there to gawk at her.

She dropped the nose back onto the tray.

Her mother aimed her good eye at her. “Then you’ll have to stay home.”

“I’ll wear last year’s nose, okay?” It was a fair compromise. If her mom wanted more decomposition – and she would – she could do it with make-up.

“I recycled it.”

Jill twisted her face into a scowl. She rose and strode over to the makeup chair, but she couldn’t get herself to sit down.

“Fine,” her mom said. “I still have the old molds. I’ll make a replacement nose. It will be ready in three days.”

Three days was a lifetime. She hadn’t seen Betsy all summer. Worse, she’d have to wait to meet the living boys she’d been dreaming about.

Impossible.

Jill threw herself into the chair, slumped, and folded her arms.

Her mother went right to work, her hands practiced at turning her daughter into a zombie.

VS

Entry Nickname: A pirate's life for me
Title: Blue Tide
Word count: 85K
Genre: YA Romance

Query:

Set on a re-imagined Asian-Pacific island, BLUE TIDE (85,000 words) is a YA fantasy romance steeped in Middle Eastern culture.

Seventeen-year-old Lux is desperate to return to the comfortable life she had before the floods, but she’s stuck on the primitive tropical island of Sirbiad, where strange disappearances force the locals to train daily and fear the shore at night. Never fitting in on the island, Lux longs to go home and find answers about what happened to her home and her people. With a boat, a map, and high hopes, Lux plots her escape to a nearby island to gain passage home to the northern hemisphere. She’s about to set sail…

...and is promptly kidnapped by pirates.

She has seven days to make it back, or she’ll lose her one chance to go home. Worse, her fellow islanders are on board, the same people who took care of her when she needed it and Lux feels she must get them to safety before she can leave herself. Lux resorts to her Sirbiadian training, but Captain Draven is prepared for everything she throws at him—including her katana. She’s never met anyone like Draven. Armored. Arabic. Arrogant. Though they fight every nautical mile to their mysterious destination, the kindness the young captain shows his prisoners is anything but heartless.

Not knowing Lux is half-Middle Eastern, Draven shows her what it really feels like to belong. His culture and customs feel more familiar than her own world ever did. Suddenly, the luxuries she's been longing for don’t seem that important. But her seven days are almost up and she’s no closer organizing amutiny. As they sail farther and farther from both Sirbiad and her homeland, Lux discovers somewhere along the way she’s stopped hating Draven. Their relationship grows from animosity, to grudging respect, to something more. When Draven discovers Lux can speak Arabic, and now knows the truth about their destination —and his feelings about her— Lux must choose  between the life she's always wanted and a chance at love in a new world.

First 250:

Water here and water there.
Sailing around to who knows where,
With nothing to do I sing this tune.
Everyone died but me and you.
There’s only one man to thank and blame,
Because of Asmodeus we’re rich but insane.
Lands destroyed but now we rule the seas.
We’ll take what we want and do what we please.

Make it stop. I cringed, my head throbbing from the off-key voice. It was a song that most people would sacrifice their first-born to never have to hear. Most that heard it, never lived to hear it twice. Of all the dangers of the sea, nothing was worse than pirates.

Damp, musty smelling wood filled my senses. I was lying face-down in a small boat. I must have blacked out, because I had no memory of this: the boat, the swaying ocean, or why my head felt like a pounding island drum. Blinking away the fog of sleep, I pushed myself up, gaining my feet shakily.

I rubbed my temples, fighting nausea, the stench of fish making it worse. The contents of my stomach bubbled hotly and saliva pooled miserably in my mouth. Willing myself not to throw up, I blew out a measured breath. An uneven sharpness poked at my back. I hissed and flung my head around to find a pirate had poked me. My jaw dropped at the scene behind him. Not good. A line of people from my island stumbled up a wooden gangway onto a larger ship.

Lands destroyed but now we rule the seas.
We’ll take what we want and do what we please…