NAME: Kurt
Hartwig
MENTOR: Michelle
Painchaud
TITLE: THE
SOVEREIGN PALACE
GENRE:
YA/Magical Realism/Literary
WORD COUNT:
85,000
PITCH:
Mina must travel to the heart of a cruelly magical world
called the Weeping Monarchy to find escape before memories of the car crash
that killed her best friend – and the growing scab on her side – destroy her
from the inside out.
FIRST 250:
“When are we going?” yells the Made Up Girl over the
wind. She looks like me, almost exactly like me. Me from home, before I came
here, however long ago that was. A year? She looks like me without the plastic
porcupine quills. Short white spines don’t stick out of her body the way they
do all over mine. The ones on my face I can barely see out of the corners of my
eyes. They make me think of cat whiskers.
The air is thick with the musty, funky stench of mold, a
reek of mildewed basements stuffed with old cardboard. Even without the rain
there’s something miserable here in the Nearly Last Settlements.
No stars. No moon. The only lights are the meager fires
of the hill and the houses below. The gray clouds glow a spotty, dull
orange-brown with them. The sky looks sick. Everything here presses against the
Made Up Girl’s words. The land doesn’t want us to leave. That’s not what people
do here. What people do is give up.
It would help if I knew how to get to the Monarchs. How
long before the scab on my side digs farther into my body. It doesn’t only
spread across my skin. It burrows. I can feel it mining my insides.
I want my yellow brick road.
My fingers rest on it, leather-tough and warm underneath
my cold, wet shirt. I can’t think about it. I have to be strong for us both.
3 comments:
Kurt, this sounds fabulous--I'd love to see more! Please email the full manuscript as a word document with your query pasted into the first page to suzie@newleafliterary.com. Put REQUESTED MATERIAL in the subject line.
Kurt, I would love to read more; please send the full to natalie@bradfordlit.com with the query/pitch in the manuscript and email. Thanks!
I'd love to take a look at the manuscript! Please send it as a word attachment to andrea@harveyklinger.com, and put Pitch Wars in the subject. Thanks! - Andrea Somberg, Harvey Klinger Inc.
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