The Writer's Voice Entry: JETSTAR FIGHTER PILOT

QUERY:

Seventeen year-old Reeka Pendleton and her brother Dek have three rules: stick together, trust no one, and always go back for each other. When Dek is Recruited for the fighter pilot program at the JetStar Academy, the toughest, all-male school in their galaxy and disappears, Reeka finds their last rule difficult to follow. With the constant threat from the Iorge, a division of humanity intent on erasing all emotions from the population to create super soldiers, Reeka's options to find Dek are severely limited.

But Reeka is unable to stand by, and decides that she is going to join the Academy and track down her brother. Seizing an opportunity to be one of four female Recruits for the Academy, it is Reeka's chance to figure out what happened to Dek, and to get a taste of the skies. Her commanding officer, Bentley, who is Dek's friend, seems to know more about Dek's disappearance than he's willing to reveal.

With chauvinistic classmates wanting to beat her down and in the skies at every turn, Reeka must prove that she's meant for the Academy, and find out what Dek was really involved with before the imminent war with the Iorge explodes, and he is gone forever. 

JETSTAR FIGHTER PILOT is an 80,000 word YA sci-fi novel. It is a feminist spin on ENDER'S GAME, with a dash of Firefly. It is a standalone novel, with series potential. 

I have an MFA in Writing for Children from Simmons College in Boston. I'm currently employed at a local independent bookstore as a manager and the curator of the children's section. 

Thank you for your time and consideration. 

FIRST 250 WORDS:

       I collapsed in an alley, as the feeling in my ribs threatened to burst out of me in a fiery whip of pain. I barely had enough strength left to tap a message to Ari on my ion5: 
:Are you up?
       Several excruciating moments passed, and the hot, sharp jolts of my ribs acted as much more than a distraction. Finally, instead of a message, Ari sent me a vid-chat: “Reeka? What? Where are you?” she asked, her voice cloudy with sleep. 
      “Downtown?” My head throbbed, as I tried not to slip further down into the void that seeped into my consciousness. 
      “Wait, what time is it?” Ari’s eyes flashed to the digi-time. “Reek! It’s three AM! Why the hell are you out?”
       Her cursing made me laugh, but doing so made my ribs hurt, and I winced.  “Goozer. I tried going after Dek. Didn’t make it.” 
       Ari said, “You are so stupid, Reek. Why would you try to do that?” She sat up and turned on her bedroom low light. Her eyes were big behind her specs that she shoved up the bridge of her nose.  
       I braced myself against the wall so that I wouldn’t pass out. “I had to go after him, Ari.” I paused and closed my eyes. “I’m running out of options. But you’re right, it was stupid.”
       Dek and I had made three rules for survival when we were kids: stick together, trust no one, and always go back for each other.

***

Thank you to everyone involved in the Writer's Voice this year, and good luck to all the entrants!

I Need to Blog More

This is a short blog, kids, only because it is late, and I have seventy things on my plate right now. I need to catch up on both my writing and reading, and OH MY GOD, the weather has been so nice lately!

After that goddamn terrible winter, we fucking DESERVE this.

I was fortunate enough to travel back to California and New York recently. I'll be off again to New York for BEA, which I'm super stoked about, and where I'll get to stalk some more authors, as per usual. Hopefully.

I guess California can be pretty nice.

Granny and me

When I go to New York, I eat peanut butter...

...and turn into a child when a giant Clifford is available to hug.

Mostly, I've been having a blast at work and loving my job. This is the first time in a long time when I  wake up every morning, and think, "I can't wait to get to work." I am LITERALLY surrounded by books EVERY SINGLE DAY. There has yet to be a time when I turn into Emily Blunt's character from The Devil Wears Prada.



I've also started querying again. A new manuscript, and starting from square one. I have learned from my previous querying mistakes of last summer, if nothing else, and I guess if that old manuscript doesn't see the light of day ever again, that's okay. I do have some hope for this new manuscript, and that it might get somewhere, but time will tell. Keeping my fingers crossed.

I've read a few great books recently, some of which are not quite on the shelves yet — Shadowshaper, You Deserve a Drink, and Empire of Deception; and some that are — The Rise and Fall of the Gallivanters, Rites of Passage, The Cost of All Things, The Maid, and The Wilderness of Ruin. I just started a few titles as research for my current manuscript, including Starship Troopers and Ender in Exile. All of these books are (or will be, for the titles that haven't been released) on the shelves at my bookstore, so please feel free to stop by!

Next up, another New York update!