Thursday, February 13, 2014

Blind Speed Dating #26 (YA)

Title: SKYFIRE
Genre: YA Fantasy Thriller
Word Count: 88,000

Query:

For sixteen-year-old Jesse, discovering with practice he can control time creates a unique opportunity: return to the past, convince his past self to grow a pair, and tell his best friend Brycen he loves him.

Jesse’s dream dies when Project Genesis learns of his ability. But this isn’t your typical terrorist organization—it’s composed of daphirs, creatures surviving on life energy. Not all daphirs are violent, but after centuries of existing secretly under orders from the U.S. government, Project Genesis plots a bloody revolution to reveal their existence and exact revenge.

With a plot to implant a mind-control device in Jesse’s brain and force him to freeze time, Project Genesis could guarantee their massive bombings a success. With the US weakened internally, Project Genesis wouldn’t encounter resistance to their revolution.

Jesse depends on Brycen to help defeat Project Genesis, but when Brycen reveals he’s a daphir, everything changes. Now Jesse must fight for his free will and to protect the future of Brycen’s species. Otherwise, his hope to finally be more than lifelong friends is over.

Set in present day New York City, SKYFIRE is told from both Jesse’s and Brycen’s points of view.


First 250:

Jesse

“Neither of them wants custody of you?”

“That’s what I gathered,” I repeat and twist the end of my scarf around my finger. It’s not Brycen’s fault that he doesn’t believe it. I wish I didn’t, that I’d stop caring, but the whole thing still forms a nauseous empty hole in my stomach. “But I mean, what’s new, right?”

“Nothing, I suppose,” Brycen says. “Once they settle this thing, will you have to move?”

Thank God the crosswalk signal changes to red and we have to stop at the corner—my legs turn to jelly and that hole in my stomach rips open, sucking in worries like a black hole. Moving.

Brycen turns to me, looks up at me with those big green eyes and distinct, slanted eyebrows. Unintentional on his part, but I’ve never spent a day without a fluttering burn in my throat when he watches me like this. And I’m not ready to start.

“They broke their company in half and Mom’s taking her part to South Dakota for the virtually nonexistent taxes. I don’t want her to take me. I can’t leave.”

I can’t move away from the liberal honking surrounding us or the shine of lights reflecting off skyscrapers, buildings daring to touch the sky because no one can stop them. No one can tell all these people, filling the sidewalks despite the time of night, where they should be or who they should be. That charisma, persona, individuality would disappear from my life.


And be replaced with a state that believes I don’t deserve the right to marry.

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