Free First 5 Pages Workshop Opens Saturday, June 6!

The First Five Pages May Workshop has come to an end.  The participants worked so hard, and did a great job with their revisions. A big thanks to our guest mentor, Diana Renn, and our guest editor, Georgia McBride, both of whom provided terrific comments and suggestions, and of course to all of our fabulous permanent mentors!  

Our June workshop will open for entries at noon, EST, on Saturday June 6, 2015. We'll take the first five Middle Grade, Young Adult, or New Adult entries that meet all guidelines and formatting requirements.  Click here to get the rules. I will post when it opens and closes on Adventures in YA Publishing  and on twitter (@etcashman), with the hashtag #1st5pages.

In addition to our talented permanent mentors, we have Shaun Hutchinson, author of The Deathday Letter, fml, and The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley.  And we have Tina Schwartz as our guest agent, founder of The Purcell Agency. So get those pages ready!

June Guest Mentor – Shaun Hutchinson

Shaun is a major geek and all about nerdy shenanigans. He is the author of The Deathday Letter, fml, and The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley. He currently lives in South Florida with his partner and dog and watches way too much Doctor Who.

THE FIVE STAGES OF ANDREW BRAWLEY

Andrew Brawley was supposed to die that night. His parents did, and so did his sister, but he survived.

Now he lives in the hospital. He serves food in the cafeteria, he hangs out with the nurses, and he sleeps in a forgotten supply closet. Drew blends in to near invisibility, hiding from his past, his guilt, and those who are trying to find him.

Then one night Rusty is wheeled into the ER, burned on half his body by hateful classmates. His agony calls out to Drew like a beacon, pulling them both together through all their pain and grief. In Rusty, Drew sees hope, happiness, and a future for both of them. A future outside the hospital, and away from their pasts.

But Drew knows that life is never that simple. Death roams the hospital, searching for Drew, and now Rusty. Drew lost his family, but he refuses to lose Rusty, too, so he’s determined to make things right. He’s determined to bargain, and to settle his debts once and for all.

But Death is not easily placated, and Drew’s life will have to get worse before there is any chance for things to get better.

June Guest Agent – Tina Schwartz

Agent Tina P. Schwartz, founder of The Purcell Agency , admits to being a reluctant reader as a child. In fact, she says she is still very picky when it comes to choosing a book. When not reading manuscripts, marketing website, social media, or industry blogs, you can find Schwartz on her laptop enjoying her own writing time. Tina is an active member of the Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators (SCBWI), and is the Co-Rep for her local chapter.

First 5 Pages May Workshop - Sin Rev 2

Name: Tabitha Sin
Genre: New Adult Science Fiction
Title: Skin Deep

CHAPTER ONE

DAILY FORECAST
TEMPERATURE: 95F high / 93F low
UV INDEX: High
CLOUD DISPARITY: 20%
Highly recommended to avoid any exposure to sunlight!
The nighttime air will bring an occasional breeze, but continue to guard your skin.

Before I start my job for the night and harvest organs, I imagine what my donors’ insides will look like, feel like. How heavy will their Inner Pangaeas, a dense and slimy mass of melted organs, be in the thin palms of my hands? How perfectly will their organs fit against one another, smooth grooves of a puzzle finally reuniting after an entire life of separation? It’s their way of saying: we were always meant to be together.

Will my donor’s intestines be molded together or stringy and limp? Can I weave them through my fingers, wrap them around my wrists like a snake handler? I handle my donors’ guts delicately as they share this intimacy with me.

Tonight starts off like every night on the job: my sunsuit, an employee benefit provided by Start Labs Corporation, is zipped all the way up to my neck and tucked underneath my helmet. Not an inch of my skin is exposed to outside conditions. If the Initiators botched their end of the job, the surveillance camera would only pick up a small androgynous figure clad entirely in black getting off at the 14th floor. However, I notice the eye of the surveillance system is not red, as if it has fallen asleep. Underneath my gloved hands, the doorknob to Apartment 14E quietly twists open. It’s unlocked as expected. So far, the Initiators have done what they need to do.

The apartment swallows me and any light from the hallway that follows behind. My breaths locks in my nose as my eyes wait to adjust to the darkness. There’s nothing inside: no other sounds, no other movements.

When I flick the light switch on, my eyes throb a little at the sudden contrast, even underneath my helmet. I take it off along with my gloves and boots, leaving them by the door, and pad slowly to the living room area. It’s easier for the Cleaners to wipe away sock-clad footprints as they eliminate all traces of our operation. I dump my backpack onto the nearest countertop next to the sink and take out a pair of latex gloves. Their snapping against my wrists punctuates the room as they seal against my veiny hands. The apartment’s air clings to my exposed face, and I stretch, rolling my neck from one side to the other.

Before I start the donation, I like to ascertain whether or not I can live in the space. Manhattan real estate: you can get a discount through a broker if you make a quick enough offer once the original tenant has died. Dead smells fade eventually. I could ask the Cleaners for some tips.

This apartment complex, a relatively new host for Section participants, has been around for so long without any modern renovations that it’s not worth the move. It’s a simple one-bedroom apartment, larger and older than mine, I can already tell. To the right of the entrance is a small kitchen with an electric stovetop. The cupboards’ ugly blush paint, dating this place back to when pastels were en vogue, is peeling, leaving behind jagged marks of plywood. Despite the overhead lamp, the place is still too dark, like being shrouded in shadow. I don’t like these kinds of places. Great closet space, though.

Finally, I look at what the Initiators set up for me.  Everything is how it should be: clear tarp neatly splayed out in the center, black lockcase next to it.

Except I am completely alone.

My heart almost skips a beat before pumping quicker, loudly beating in my ears. Cold panic rushes from my forehead to my appendages as I realize there is no body greeting me.

Have we been caught? No one knows about these donations -- IPs are such a new condition that Start Labs has been trying to collect as many as they can for research. We all work under secrecy, signing contracts with specific nondisclosure agreements. It’s unprecedented for there to be no donor by the time I, the Extractor, roll through in the procedure.

The job is simple: The Initiators dismantle the building’s surveillance system and prep the donor for me. I open the door, see the donor lying on the tarp, extract the IP, seal it in the sterilized case the Initiators leave behind, and then let the Cleaners know I'm done so that they can pick up the case and make it seem as if we were never in the apartment.

I step back towards the door, close to the small kitchen, and pull out my burner to call Branson, my liaison within the Initiators. As it rings, a warm breeze glides through the short, bristly hair on the back of my neck; a corner of a thin curtain by the back window lifts gently; a few spots glisten out of reach of the dim light on the floor by the side of the tarp next to a small table.

“There's nobody here,” I tell Branson as soon as he picks up, walking towards the spots. “I see you’ve set up, but there's nothing.”

“Hey, Shella, nice to hear from you, too.” Branson's deep voice fills the apartment, and from the tiny relief I feel slowly pool into my belly,  I think I’ve grown too fond of hearing from him. We’re not supposed to have outside relations as coworkers, but lately, our conversations have been lasting longer than they probably should. “What do you mean there's nobody?”

“Donor is missing.” My voice is a rushed whisper. In the moonlight, the spots shine like fluorescent tattoos.  “The door was unlocked, the tarp is rolled out, but there's no body.”

“Wait, wait. Take a deep breath. In through your nose, out through your mouth.”

I crouch above the spots to waft their smell, scratching at my hairline with the back of my hand, the latex harsh against my hair. Branson is repeating the same tactic our teacher taught us to bring clarity of mind in high-stress situations. I do as he says and reel back as the pungent aroma assaults and clogs my nostrils. I cough into the phone as I try to purge it out.

Rotting meat...with the faintest scent of...flowers?

“Hey! You okay?” His voice is sharp, concerned, now. “Tell me again what you see because a dead man doesn’t pick himself up and move.”

I sit back on my heels and look again. There is the midsized table next to me, and a vase of dark blue flowers wilts in murky water atop it. I press my finger against the spot, and it clumps like tacky residue as I rub it between my index finger and thumb. I don't recall ever seeing this before. The kitchen light flickers, on-off-on-off, like an ebbing tide before darkness settles into the apartment. The hair on my arms begin to rise.

I open my mouth but stop as a pressure accumulates in the center of my forehead, like someone has held their finger a breath away from there...or like someone has been staring at that spot for a long time. My vision tunnels briefly, a swarm of black bugs creeping into my pupils, and the outside air folds around me. My hearing expands: light shouts from the apartment next door, water pressure building in one of the pipes as a toilet flushes somewhere, and something wet -- a towel? -- slapping against hardwood floor feet away from me.

First 5 Pages May Workshop - Sussu Rev 2

Name: Sussu
Genre: New Adult speculative historical fiction
Title: NODEEN CITY 3


For the first time in decades, the city night-lights sprang from everywhere, inviting, warming up the streets swept by the buzz of hover cars. People didn’t have to follow any laws anymore. Even the windows of Nodeen University displayed playmates, and vampires feeding on religious figures, tacky reminders of the end of the religious wars.

A street vendor shouted, “Cupidon neon lights! Get your kit!”

Students on campus swayed to follow the drumbeats and brass tune of a distant fanfare.

The arteries of the capital shimmered with neon bling-bling popping in the dark, pumped up with the bumble and buzz of a new life.

My phone purrrp-purrrped and an air message lodged into my ear. The stern voice of my dad took over my mind: SILVER, WHERE ARE YOU? I’M AT THE LAB. YOU SHOULD JOIN ME. LISTEN, DON’T GO ANYWHERE TONIGHT. IT’S DANGEROUS.

I grinned. Dangerous for whom? For him and his time machine where he sent religious people to oblivion to Medieval Spain or me, a student of art perched in a studio with code access to the front door?

Giant spotlights shot up, scraping the belly of flying cars, gold over silver. A giant laser display on campus changed to spell: 10 COMMANDEMENTS BE GONE.

I gaped. Sweat dripped down my back. Smell of artificial vanilla rose from each street corner, wetting people’s appetite and dictating what they would crave next, like biscuits in the shape of crosses or stars cracking under their teeth. My dinner came back up and froze in my windpipe.

Did my dad allow the banner? The three major religions followed the Commandments. Even secular laws followed some of them. And for a reason; it was wrong to cheat, lie and murder.

The clicks of a camera chopped behind me, startling, with a high-pitched whine the flash made charging up. I swiveled around to bump noses with my roommate.

I put a hand on my chest and sighed.

“Darn it, Abi! I was ready to jump you.”

“With what?” Abi answered sarcastically, shaking an explosion of looping black curls. “With your frown?” Her waist disappeared in a tight bodice over a full on gown. Bronze googles with blue lenses circled her impressive top hat. That was my Mennonite friend Abigail Yoder, playing around with her antique camera. She even sang an inspirational tune older than dirt, “My knee touched the ground, and I reached the sky.”

I gnawed on the tip of my digital pen and struck an errant strand of blond hair behind my ear. “What’s going on? Why are you taking pictures?”

“I don’t know. Something’s steaming for sure.” Abi leaned over the window, and added, clicking away, “I think I saw something at 3 O’clock.” A group of people dressed in army surplus uniforms turned around a corner. She added, “Dum, dum, dum… your dad’s lab.”

Abi studied journalism, so details that escaped most found their way into her analog computer brain. Anyone could dismiss my dad’s underground lab as a piece of art with a 300 yards low wall in the shape of a snake that winded around three fourth of the building, but not Abi. She had noticed the police hustling people behind the lab, out of view. Some people queued willingly and others wriggled like trapped worms in magnetic shackles. It was hard to keep tabs of many bonnet, hijabs, turbans, and kippahs, but one thing for sure, down the lab and through the Chrono machine went our Ten Commandments, drained into the sink of time.

“Time to suit up,” I said.

“What does an itsy-bitsy girl like you want to do, Silver?”

“Shut down that giant laser fish bone stuck in my throat, to begin with.”

She grinned, “But you’re not even religious. There’s a hard-boiled atheist under the hoodie, not a religious-set-everything-right activist.”

“Oh, yeah? The Ten Commandments, seriously?”

She made an approving popping sound with her lips. “Yeah.”

You didn’t have to have any conviction to see that was wrong. I only had to gaze at the campus below the art department building. Sheltered from the rest of the town by the circle of university buildings, students gathered in schools of fish formations, swaying to follow drumbeats, sipping glowing drinks. Drugged, of course, to forget how much their lives sucked.

I pulled a sweatshirt from my fusion backpack, one of those bags that blended with your shoulders, and put it on. Mine said, LIBERTY & JUSTICE FOR ALL IS NOW BOGUS.
Yes, I was a hard-boiled atheist like my dad. God was dead for me too, but we lived worlds apart because my dad was in charge of the relocation of the people of faith and I was the only one of us to notice we were actually violating the American motto. I hated injustice.

I took in a deep breath. It felt so good to hide that neutral t-shirt my dad forced me to wear for my safety. I’M AN ATHEIST. Lame. Like we had to advertise.

The music that had been playing in the distance now escalated into a huge fanfare of metallic cacophony. The drumbeats made the walls of the campus vibrate like an eggshell under the pecking of life. The air shocked full of sulfur. People started to gather around the lab and threw objects that kaboomed and made gaping holes in the fiber turf.

A skinhead yelled in a loud speaker, “They might be going back, but they’ll still be on our planet! Is that what you want?”

A man with army pants and green t-shirt stole the speaker from him and said, “Crunch the cockroaches. Crunch, crunch ‘hem all!”

Steps resounded in the corridor and loud voices burst the surreal bubble around us. A student came in flushed from the sudden heat outside. She had sweated off most of her make up. My mind flailed about. Did someone trigger a bomb inside the building? Did a mob broke out of nowhere and ran through the floors, breaking stuff? Did something happen to my dad’s lab? A kidnapping, a hostage situation? Did the religious wars ignited again?

“Guys, come. It’s like the end of the world out there!”

I stood up and dropped my pen on the floor, a gift from my dad. It scattered in little pieces with a clattering against the metallic legs of the table.

“Dad! We need to get him out of there.”

I hurtled down a flight of stairs, out of breath.

Someone had picked up the damn speaker again, “Do you want the people of faith to come back with an army? No!”

When I pushed the front door open in one swift wave of the hand, a blast of colors and sounds assaulted me. Guards were firing flares into the night and yelled orders all around the campus. The smell of sulfur and the brightness of the laser flashlights made me cough and shade my eyes.

Abi grabbed the strap of my backpack and pulled me toward her. “What about your dad?”

“The entrance to the lab is blocked. We’d be lucky if we got past the barricade.”

A troop of militants yelled, “Go back where you come from. And good riddance!”

These guys killed me. Back? Back from where? All these people were from here! Really, who had informed them? Believe it or not, there were always stray cats in riots.

We took a few steps back.

Abi said, “What are we doing now?”

“We’re changing the laser display. My new slogan’s bond to grab their attention.”

First 5 Pages May Workshop - Pacelli Rev 2

Name: Atesa Pacelli 

Genre: Young Adult 

Title: The Minesweeper 

In the next one thousand years, somewhere in the universe, a Bender will be born. A human mind that can control the organized atoms of our existence: machines, objects, animals.

 

People.

 

-       The Writings of Dar Zacariah, The Father of the Golden Way

 

ONE: ON TENEBRIS        

 

The hand hit Aden so hard it knocked him to the ground.

 

Limbs became dangerous projectiles in the minefields, and this one was no exception. Aden swerved and flailed wildly but it was no use. It slammed into him, his blaster almost flying out of his hands. Just as his fingers closed again on the weapon’s grip, he went down, hard, hitting the rain-soaked mud with a wet thud.

 

He froze. He didn’t notice the pain, but he did notice that he was still alive. He had narrowly avoided falling directly on top of a Sunn mine. He wiggled his fingers and toes. All still there, or so it seemed. He gripped his blaster, fighting the animal instinct to stand up and run. That would get him killed. But he was out in the open, and he would have to get out of here – fast. 

 

He scanned the landscape, analyzing the ramshackle mud and brick huts that made up this village high up on the Sunn-Karal border: the blown open doors, the mounds of dirt and debris, the rusted-down machines, the flies buzzing around the dead people and animals. The ground underneath this village was riddled with mines in every direction: microscopic bits of coiled death that lay just inches under the soil, their vibrations visible to no one but him. To Aden, the air was different directly above each mine. It moved: darkened and swirled like an angry eddy. Aden’s ability to see this was a gift – a gift that meant that he was alive four years after being sold by his father to the Karali rebels as a minesweeper. It meant that he could graduate from minefield meat to an actual soldier in the cause of the Karali Liberation Movement. 

 

All around him, the ground darkened and swirled, darkened and swirled. Target-locked bullets whizzed by and high-powered lasers crisped the earth as the KLM rebels advanced, filling the air with the deafening roar of blasts, one on top of another.

 

He had to get to cover. A hopscotch skirting the dark swirls would get him to safety behind a hut, if he could trigger a mine nearby and run under the cover of its explosion. Aden rubbed the acrid black smoke out of his eyes. Slowly he reached out for the arm that had knocked him over. The fact that it was once attached to a kid registered in a part of his mind that he blinked away impatiently as he examined it. The hand was frozen in a death grip, still clutching the paradise key. Cheap metal that the rebels passed out to boys: the keys to the paradise ruled by the God of Spirits. Entry to this afterlife was naturally promised to each boy sweeping a minefield.

 

“What will you do for the God of Spirits to let you into paradise?”  

 

He had to hope the metal detectors in the mines would trigger at the metal in the key. He took a deep breath, then heaved the hand as hard as he could at a nearby mine. The arm landed with a moist thwack. Seconds later, a huge explosion blew it to bits.

 

“The Soldier is the most beloved hand of God.”

 

Then he ran. He made it to a hut. He slid along the wet, crumbling wall. For a second, a split second, he wanted to give up. Surrender to the dark swirls. Each time he went out, they became more and more irresistible. He hesitated.

 

Not this time.

 

He shrugged the impulse away as he rounded the corner of the hut, where he found a surprise: a minesweeper boy, crying and shivering, curled up in a tiny turtle-like ball on the ground. The chain that once bound him to the other boys spread out like a long tail behind him. The boys went into the battlefield in threes and fours, chained to each other. This was to ensure both compliance and coverage of the entire field. But it also meant almost certain death.  

 

A pang of something pricked Aden, at the spot where his conscience once was. The Karali Liberation Movement mostly wanted to liberate the lucrative Carabalt mines along the disputed Sunn border. They wanted those mines, if they had to kill every boy in Karal to get them. He was supposed send this one back out to the dark swirls. But he just couldn’t. 

 

He took a deep breath and shook the kid, who looked up at him with a tear-streaked, dirty face. He had to come up with a plan. Aden peered around the edge of the hut. They were not more than thirty steps away from a tree line. Behind the trees was a thick forest.

 

Cover.

 

Protection.

 

“When I give you the signal, run!” Aden screamed over the noise. The boy nodded, clinging.

 

Scanning the ground, he saw that the most direct line to the trees was seeded with mines, the neat circuits of death patiently lying in wait.

 

Dark swirls, everywhere.

 

He closed his eyes and breathed in and out, in and out, summoning up the energy for what he was about to do. He would have to bend a couple of mines. That’s what he called it, in his head. Bending. Bending something that wasn’t alive was easy. He could control objects. He could control machines. Turning off lights, retrieving items from across a room, closing doors.

 

Disabling mines.

 

Deep breath, eyes closed, and get it done.

 

Or not.

 

Aden swore under his breath as he counted the mines in his head. Five mines on the path between them and safety. He had just enough in him for five. But these were five Hephaestus-class mines. The gold standard of planetary battlefield technology. Sunn was taking no chances with this village. They wanted to preserve their assets: the excellent quality Teneb in the ground, the dull green loamy rocks from which the precious Carabalt came.

 

No way could he bend five Hephaestus-class mines and activate their kill switches. Or explode them all, for that matter.

 

Aden closed his eyes for a second, running a finger along the raised tattoo of an exploding sphere on his inner elbow. No inspiration was forthcoming. He scanned the tree line. Flitting in and out of visibility behind the trees was an enormous bracken deer, bolting away from the fighting. Here, near the Sunn border with Karal, the bracken deer were moose-like: several tons of massive and lumbering animal.

 

He thought and scratched, thought and scratched, keeping panic at bay with the pain.  

 

And then the solution came, with all its terrifying logic.

 

The bracken deer. He would have to bend it. He would force it to run over the mines. They would explode. The path would clear.

 

They would run.

 

He was an expert at bending things now. But bending anything alive meant a countdown to a catatonic state that could last for hours. Five minutes, ten max and then he would be dead to the world. He would have to get somewhere safe, fast.

First 5 Pages May Workshop - Jauffret Rev 2

Name: Elle Jauffret

Genre: New Adult Historical Mystery

Title: SALTED (Revision 2)  

                       

PROLOGUE

 May 1785     

The thin layers of the millefeuille’s light and crispy pastry disintegrate like a thousand leaves between my tongue and palate, giving way to the soothing silkiness of crème patissière. A vanilla caress after a flaky explosion, concluded by the sugary taste of raspberry icing.

I feel a flush heat my face and shivers spread through my body. I’ve outdone myself with this dessert. I can’t wait for Papa to sample it, upon his return, and see that I have all it takes to be a chef.

When I open my eyes, the sun is rising and the copper pots reflect the birthing daylight, splashing an orange glow on the ash grey walls. The birds’ chirps and tweets fill the air, uninterrupted by the screams of rioting peasants whose uprisings have been halted thanks to concessions from the King - which my father obtained as Provence’s representative.  

The church bells sound five in the distance. I better hurry up. The kitchen staff will soon be rushing in with many ready to disclose my clandestine cooking to my mother in exchange for two pints of grain - if they catch me here, spoon in hand.

I check my day gown, assuring that no traces of cream or flour will betray my night spent in the kitchen and prompt another of my mother’s violent outbursts and endless tirades about the kitchen not being a place for noble girls.

I slide my millefeuille on the icebox’s top shelf as Marius, our cook, recommended, when I see a silhouette approaching on the wall. As I turn around, something hard and sharp hits me in the chest. I stagger backwards, looking down. A cleaver is lodged in my thick leather apron and a crimson stream is running down my feet.

Then, all I can see is black.

CHAPTER 1

April 1789

André-l’insomniaque, our oldest watchman, takes over the night shift from the sleepy soldier who guards the large wrought-iron gates of our domain. I watch him from the olive tree that stretches to my bedroom window, waiting for him to raise his bayonet over his head twice, signaling that the road is clear. Since my father’s disappearance, my mother has forbidden my wandering through the woods and to the sea, trying to mold me into the same perfect wall-confined aristocrat as my sister Marie. Which isn’t for me. At seventeen, I have no interest in marriage or bearing someone’s heir. So, for the past four years,André has facilitated and kept secret my nightly escapades in return for a weekly loaf of bread and bouteille de vin.

I start to run as soon as my feet touch the ground, ready to feel the elements, even so slightly. Except for my face, palms, and soles, my body is numb - completely insensitive to touch since the attack that almost killed me four years ago and has encased me in a shell impervious to tactile sensations.

I wear nothing but a light cotton nightgown, exposing without shame the raised thick cicatrix that disfigures my cleavage, that my mother deems repulsive; the reminder of my survival; the branding by a criminal who has yet to be found.

I run past the line of cypresses, through the orchard and the lavender fields, and disappear into the familiar abyss of the forest. I run blinded by the night, but guided by the scent of the sea that seeps into the woods, the gravel and the rocky ground deliciously piercing the skin of my soles. My scalp breathes, liberated from the constraint of a painful hairstyle. My legs move unrestrained by the fabric of any floor length gown. The soft texture of sand replaces the coarse dirt, welcoming my feet as it does every night. My sprint comes to a halt and my breathing slows down. The salty air is dry and cool, sticking roughly to my throat until I dive mouth open into the black liquid in front of me, welcoming the probing embrace of the Mediterranean Sea. Ce baiser salé... that enlivening salty kiss that I desperately try to capture and recreate in the meals I fashion in secret. That tactile-like essence that gives rise to internal frissons I crave my skin to experience.

Two hours later, a pine-scented breeze and the faint hooting of an owl greet me back to the shore, along with a wolf.  

The beast is unusually large, about twice the size of the shepherd’s watchdogs, and is at least two hundred pounds.  Except for a warm auburn shade circling its neck, its fur is of a perfect black unlike the now extinct Provençal wolves whose coats were in the browns or grays. It is standing straight on its four legs, at the edge of the woods, wagging a fluid pendulum-like tail, resembling a good domestic dog. Its presence surprises but doesn’t frighten me. The wolf has always symbolized protection and rebellion, which the people of Provence so direly need. And unlike humans whose greed has tormented their own race, animals only kill to satisfy their basic needs, which are met by the bountifulness of our woods.

A faint breeze carries its scent, a mélange of tree sap, young moss and lavender fields with a touch of a familiar je-ne-sais-quoi to my nostrils. The fragrance of Provence mixed with the animal musk is invigorating, inducing a shiver to form at the small of my back, crawl along my spine, and spread to my belly. The first shiver I've felt in four years.

Overhead, the Ursa Minor constellation tells me that dawn is upon me. I've to hurry home. When I look back down, the wolf is gone.

I grab my nightgown and dash back into the woods, retracing my path through the morning fog, leading back to my jail-like home. My wet hair flows, capturing the scent of the forest. My heartbeat echoes in my temples as fast as my strides, its drums rippling under my skin. Pictures of the wolf linger in my mind. The bouquet of its fur still in my nostrils injects life into me, as would strong smelling salts, awakening the start of another shiver, refueling my hope to see my skin retrieve its lost sensitivity.

I am about to exit the woods when I trip on something unusually soft that wasn’t there two hours ago. I squint down, catching my breath, when a metallic scent hits me. It permeates the air with a mix of alcohol, fear, and a hint of death. The smell monarchist soldiers carried with them when they were brought to the operating table, wounded by the protesting peasants’ pitchforks and hoes. The muted light bounces off a white cloth and pale face.

I tripped on a girl.

I kneel by her side, hoping to provide her with help, but to no avail. She has no pulse and blood's drenching her gown. She lies on the soil and decaying leaves as if still in motion, her hair flowing back toward the woods, but a worried grimace marks her face and large gashes her neck.

No crime has been committed on our domain, including the woods, in years. I swallow hard, feeling my heart pulsate faster beneath my skin; trying to ignore the throbbing of the scar marking my chest and the eerie similarity between the dead girl’s injuries and my four year-old wounds.

First 5 Pages May Workshop - Sussu Rev 1

Name: Sussu
Genre: New Adult speculative historical fiction
Title: NODEEN CITY 2


“Nodeen City belongs to you and your neon light kit,” screamed a street vendor over the night traffic.

The city lights sprang from everywhere, for the first time in the last decade, inviting, warming up the cold autumn streets swept by the buzz of hover cars.

I leaned over to watch, my hands crunched dead leaves on the windowsill of the art department of Nodeen University. Best spot to observe a town coming to life while the police drained out the souls of the city underneath, one person at a time.

Life bumbled and buzzed around the prisoners hustled into the jaws of the time machine. Something gripped me from deep inside as if wanting to tear my soul apart from my body. No, they will not cut my mind and body apart. Not me.
With the end of the religious wars and the abolition of curfew, the night-lights had thrown business and pleasure into the hours of rest. And now, our souls would have no respite anymore, no refuge from the void in our lives. Everything inspired fake and bling-bling without substance. Even the wide arteries of the capital appeared festooned with magical green dots popping in the dark as if someone had bejeweled them. Giant spotlights shot up, scraping the belly of flying cars, gold over silver. A giant laser display on campus spelled: 10 COMMANDEMENTS BE GONE.

I gaped. Sweat dripped down my back. Even the windows of Nodeen University took part in the city bioluminescence with displays of playmates and vampires feeding on religious figures. Smell of artificial vanilla rose from each street corner, wetting people’s appetite and dictating what they would crave next. My dinner came back up and froze in my windpipe.

Time to suit up and shut down that giant laser fish bone in my throat. Not that I had any religious convictions, but the Ten Commandments, seriously? You had to be such a garbage of mismatched nuts and bolts not to follow them. It’s as if they were saying, “Cheat and lie and murder.” The three major religions followed them. Even human laws followed them. And for a reason.

I had to stop the craze. You didn’t have to be twenty one to use your veto, and you didn’t need to join a sect. I jumped into a pair of black leggings and snickers.

While I laced my shoes, I gazed at the campus below the art department building. Sheltered from the rest of the town by the circle of university buildings, students gathered in schools of fish formations, swaying to follow drumbeats, sipping glowing drinks. Doped, of course, to forget how much life sucked.

My phone purrrp-purrrped and an air message lodged into my ear. The stern voice of my dad took over my mind: SILVER, WHERE ARE YOU? I’M AT THE LAB. YOU SHOULD JOIN ME. LISTEN, DON’T GO ANYWHERE TONIGHT. IT’S DANGEROUS.

I grinned. Dangerous for whom? For him and his time machine where he sent religious people to oblivion to Medieval Spain or me, a student of art perched in a studio with code access to the front door?

I pulled a sweatshirt from my fusion backpack, one of those bags that blended with your shoulders, and put it on. Mine said, LIBERTY & JUSTICE FOR ALL IS NOW BOGUS.
Yes, I was a hard-boiled atheist like my dad. God was dead for me too, but we lived worlds apart because my dad was in charge of the relocation of the people of faith and I was the only one to notice we were actually violating the American motto. I hated injustice.

I took in a deep breath. It felt so good to hide that t-shirt my dad forced me to wear for my safety. It said: BELIEVING IS BREAKING THE PEACE with the image of a hologram of a hand killing a dove. Ew! So gross. It stuck to my back like a bloody warning.

The clicks of a camera chopped behind me, startling, with a high-pitched whine the flash made charging up. I swiveled around to bump noses with my roommate.

I put a hand on my chest and sighed.

“Darn it, Abi! I was ready to jump you.”

“With what?” Abi answered sarcastically, shaking an explosion of looping black curls. Her waist disappeared in a tight bodice over a full on gown. Positively steampunk, especially with the bronze googles with blue lenses etched on an impressive top hat. That was my Mennonite friend Abigail Yoder, playing around with her antique camera. She even sang an inspirational tune older than dirt, “My knee touched the ground, and I reached the sky.”

I gnawed on my lips and struck an errant strand of blond hair beneath my violet hoodie before I closed the window.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “Why are you taking pictures?”

“I don’t know. Something’s steaming for sure.” Abi leaned forward, and added, clicking away, “I think I saw something in the ‘Area 51.’ Your dad’s lab, as usual.”

Abi studied journalism, so details that escaped most found their way into her analogue computer brain. Anyone could dismiss my dad’s underground lab as a piece of art with a 300 yards low wall in the shape of a snake that winded around three fourth of the building, but not Abi. She had noticed the police hustling people behind the lab, out of view. Some people queued willingly and others wriggled like trapped worms in magnetic shackles. It was hard to keep tabs of many bonnet, hijabs, turbans, and kippahs, but one thing for sure, down the lab and through the Chrono machine went our Ten Commandments, drained into the sink of time.

Abi was right. Some kind of parade was taking place underneath the high towers surrounding my dad’s lab, a parade that hadn’t been advertised or had apparently been organized in great secret, away from prying eyes.

The music that had been playing in the distance now escalated into a huge fanfare of metallic cacophony. The drumbeats made the walls of the campus vibrate like an eggshell under the pecking of life. The air shocked full of sulfur. People started to gather around the lab and threw objects that kaboomed and made holes in the immaculate fiber turf.

Steps resounded in the corridor and loud voices burst the surreal bubble around us. A student came in flushed from the sudden heat outside. She had sweated off most of her make up. My mind flailed about. Did someone trigger a bomb somewhere? Did a mob broke out of nowhere and ran through the building, breaking stuff? Did something happen to my dad’s lab? A kidnapping, a hostage situation? Did the religious wars ignited again?

“Guys, come. It’s like the end of the world out there!”

I stood up and dropped a digital pen on the floor, a gift from my dad. It scattered in little pieces with a clattering against the metallic legs of the table.

“Dad!”

I hurtled down a flight of stairs, out of breath.

The noise from the city sipped through the glass doors, muffled and incoherent. I had no idea what happened outside until I pushed the front door open in one swift wave of the hand. A blast of colors and sounds assaulted me. Guards were firing flares into the night and yelled orders all around the campus.

The smell of sulfur and the brightness of the laser flashlights made me cough and shade my eyes. Abi grabbed the strap of my backpack and pulled nervously at the laces on her corset with the other.

“What about your dad?”

First 5 Pages May Workshop - Jauffret Rev 1

Name: Elle Jauffret

Genre: New Adult Historical Mystery

Title: SALTED (Revision1)  

                       

PROLOGUE

 May 1785     

            The thin layers of the millefeuille’s light and crispy pastry disintegrate like a thousand leaves between my tongue and palate, leaving place to the soothing silkiness of crème patissière. A vanilla caress after a flaky explosion, concluded by the sugary taste of raspberry icing.

I feel a flush heat my face and shivers spread through my body. I’ve outdone myself with this dessert. I can’t wait for Papa to sample it and see that I have all it takes to be a chef.

When I open my eyes, the sun is rising and the copper pots reflect the birthing daylight, splashing an orange glow on the ash grey walls. The birds’ chirps and tweets fill the air, uninterrupted by the screams of rioting peasants whose uprisings have been temporarily halted thanks to concessions from the King which my father has obtained as Provence’s representative.

            The church bells sound five in the distance. I better hurry up. The kitchen staff will soon be rushing in with many ready to disclose my clandestine cooking to my mother in exchange for a kilo of grain.

            I check my day gown, assuring that no traces of cream or flour will betray my visit to the kitchen and prompt another of my mother’s violent outbursts and endless tirades about the kitchen not being a place for noble girls; about my father having aberrationally named me Génépy, after the liquor men drink to forget their struggles, and the medicinal, yet deadly, herb that grows free in the heights of Provence.

I slide the millefeuille on the top shelf of the icebox like Marius, our cook, suggested, when a voice calls my name. I turn around feeling something hard and sharp hit me in the middle of the chest. I wince and look down to see. A cleaver is sticking out of my leather apron and a thick crimson stream is running down my feet.

Then, all I can see is black.

CHAPTER 2

April 1789

André-l’insomniaque, our oldest watchman, takes over the night shift from the sleepy soldier who guards the large wrought-iron gates of our domain. I watch him from my bedroom window, waiting for him to raise his bayonet over his head twice, signaling that the road is clear. Since my father’s disappearance, my mother has forbidden my wandering through the woods and to the sea, trying to mold me into the same perfect wall-confined aristocrat as my sister Marie. Which isn’t for me. So, for the past four years, André has facilitated and kept secret my nightly escapades in return for a weekly loaf of bread andsaucisson.

I start to run as soon as my feet touch the ground, ready to feel the elements, even so slightly. Except for my face, palms, and soles, my body is numb - completely insensitive to touch since the attack that almost killed me four years ago and has encased me in a shell impervious to tactile sensations.

I wear nothing but a light cotton nightgown, exposing without shame the raised thick cicatrix that disfigures my cleavage, that my mother deems repulsive; the reminder of my survival; the branding by a criminal who has yet to be found.

I run past the line of cypresses, through the orchard and the lavender fields, the gravel and the rocky ground deliciously piercing the skin of my soles. Breathless, I disappear into the familiar abyss of the forest. I run as fast as I possibly can, blinded by the night, but guided by the scent of the shore that seeps into the woods. Each stride takes me closer to the sea. My scalp breathes, liberated from the constraint of a painful hairstyle. My legs move unrestrained by the fabric of any floor length gown. I am savoring freedom, as temporary as it may be.

 The thick black canopy of trees thins out, revealing a bright half-moon. The soft texture of sand replaces the coarse dirt, welcoming my feet as it does every night. My sprint comes to a halt and my breathing slows down.

I inhale the salty aroma of Méditerranée, my sea. The air is dry and cool, sticking roughly to my throat until I dive mouth open into the black liquid in front of me, welcoming the sea's probing embrace. Ce baiser salé... that enlivening salty kiss that I desperately try to capture and recreate in the meals I fashion in secret. That tactile-like essence that gives rise to internal frissons I crave my skin to experience.

A pine-scented breeze and the faint hooting of an owl greet me back to the surface along with something else. A familiar scent that I cannot identify lingers in the air. I squint in the darkness until my eyes find its source.

The beast is unusually large, about twice the size of the shepherd’s watchdogs, and is at least two hundred pounds.  Except for a warm auburn shade circling its neck, its fur is of a perfect black unlike the now extinct Provençal wolves whose coats were in the browns or grays. It is standing straight on its four legs, at the edge of the woods, wagging a fluid pendulum-like tail, resembling a good domestic dog. Its presence surprises but doesn’t frighten me. Unlike humans whose greed has tormented their own race, animals only kill to satisfy their basic needs, which are met by the bountifulness of our woods.

A faint breeze carries its scent, a mélange of tree sap, young moss and lavender fields with a touch of je-ne-sais-quoito my nostrils. The fragrance of Provence mixed with the animal musk is invigorating, inducing a shiver to form at the small of my back, crawl along my spine, and spread to my belly. The first shiver I've felt in four years.

Overhead, the Ursa Minor constellation tells me that dawn is upon me. I've to hurry home. When I look back down, the wolf is gone.

I grab my nightgown and dash back into the woods, retracing my path through the morning fog, leading back to my jail-like home. My wet hair flows, capturing the scent of the forest. My heartbeat echoes in my temples as fast as my strides, its drums rippling under my skin. Pictures of the wolf linger in my mind. The bouquet of its fur still in my nostrils injects life into me, as would strong smelling salts, awakening the start of another shiver, refueling my hope to see my skin retrieve its lost sensitivity.

I am about to exit the woods when I trip on something unusually soft. I squint down, catching my breath, when a metallic scent hits me. It permeates the air with a mix of alcohol, fear, and a hint of death. The smell monarchist soldiers carried with them when they were brought to the operating table, wounded by the protesting peasants’ pitchforks and hoes.

The muted light bounces off a white cloth and pale face. I tripped on a girl.

I kneel by her side, hoping to provide her with help, but to no avail. She has no pulse and blood's drenching her gown. She lies on the soil and decaying leaves as if still in motion, her hair flowing back toward the woods, but a worried grimace marks her face and large gashes her neck.

I swallow hard, feeling my heart pulsate faster beneath my skin; trying to ignore the throbbing of the scar marking my chest and the eerie similarity between the dead girl’s injuries and my four year-old wounds.