Author: Samantha Joyce

Title: The Goddess Candidate

Age Category: Young Adult

Genre: Contemporary LGBTQ Fantasy

Word Count: 81,000

Pitch:

When modern-day God offers up his job, popular-girl Devon’s father applies. Only taking his place can save Dad from martyrdom—but becoming God would reveal Devon’s intimate secret, causing global uproar and estranging her father.

First 250 Words of Manuscript:

You gotta have patience, to cut up a math book. You can only slice ten pages at once, and only that many because the pages are thin. But patience I’m good at, oh-you’ve-got-no-idea. I spent K-through-7 learning to be the popular girl, and by the day the Signs fell, I had made it.

It was a Monday, six-thirty in the morning, and the Earth Sciences room would be empty for fifteen more minutes. Mr. Burns wouldn’t be in until the last possible moment; he was half-retired already. So I sawed back and forth with what might have been relish, if my blade hadn’t been so damn dull. It was last year’s edition, and thicker than my old one. A rectangular nest between the pages would fit my compact, mascara, remover. My current hidey-hole was a skinny book from eighth grade, and as a sophomore, I’d need extra space.

My hand started cramping after five or ten minutes, and I gave it up. The old book would work until the end of the semester, when Dad expected me to get bumped into Algebra 2. He had no clue I was already in Pre-Calc. When report cards came out, Natalie would change the class on the printout, and I’d owe her six-to-ten Jolly Ranchers (lemon only), exchanged in the office like drug money.

I stuffed the 500-page monstrosity into my ugly black bag. Both textbooks had run me about two hundred bucks, and by the time I was a senior, I’d have to fork it over at least one more time.

Title: Sleepless

Age Category: Adult

Genre: Sci-fi Romance

Word Count: 80,000

Pitch:

Rose is finally earning her hard-won superhero license—if she can avoid breaking one important rule: No fraternizing between partners. But JiHo proves he’s just as irresistible as he is invincible. Talk about Kryptonite.

First 250 Words of Manuscript:

The superhero internship interview was my last chance for post-graduate success.

Which meant everything that could go wrong, did.

The elevator hummed as it carried me and the unconscious man up the floors. The guy sprawled at my feet, collapsed atop the duffel bag he’d left sitting in the middle of the elevator. The bag that had caused me to trip in the first place.

Which made the situation just as much his fault, in my mind. I’d stumbled, the sudden shock making my powers flare to life. It churned just under my skin, ready to defend me.

“No!” I managed just as the guy reached out to catch me.

One touch was all it took. His hands caught hold of my bare arms and down he went, my ability plunging him deep into sleep.

The elevator chirped, signaling our approach to the chosen floor. My pulse sped up, my hands turning cold. If my advisor heard about this incident, I could kiss that internship goodbye. I’d land right back in counseling. Or worse, remedial training.

So, what to do? Throw a table cloth and a potted plant over him? Tape a sign to his chest that said, “Sleep protest in progress, do not disturb?”

The elevator pinged open. I spun, frozen.

The corridor stood empty. I blew out the breath I’d been holding. I mashed the button for the lobby then ducked through the doors before they closed. Sending a silent apology the guy’s way, I headed down the corridor to the faculty offices.

Title: Temping for Death

Age Category: Adult

Genre: Fantasy

Word Count: 94,000

Pitch:

When night-shift worker Ana injures Death in a freak forklift accident, she must take over his job while he’s on disability leave. Then an assassin targets Death, and Ana’s left holding the scythe.

First 250 Words of Manuscript:

This was the worst funeral Ana had ever been to. The chapel’s frigid air made her regret not bringing a jacket. Her folding chair was making her butt numb. And it was extra hard to maintain the right solemnity with the guest of honor sitting at the front of the room, looking back at her. He didn’t even have the decency to be dead, a point Ana previously believed was a requirement for a funeral.

The music crackling through the Ellsworth Lockburn Funeral Home’s decrepit sound system didn’t help. It added extra creep factor to the way Stan sat next to his casket at the front, watching the crowd like a shark eyeing a school of anchovies. Ana shifted uncomfortably, then stopped as Stan’s eyes turned in her direction. She hadn’t given anything to Stan’s pet cancer charity, in spite of him being an executive at her company. She planned instead to donate to the charity of Keeping Electricity On at Ana’s Apartment. Her night shift position at the Lowlight Gazette didn’t pay well enough for both options.

The music finally ended, and Stan rose to his feet. He straightened his impeccable suit coat and smiled through gleaming white teeth. “Thank you for coming, friends. And coworkers. As you know, it’s been a tough road for me.”

Ana hadn’t known, she hadn’t even heard about his diagnosis until it was corrected as a misdiagnosis. Executives at the Gazette didn’t hobnob with distribution workers like Ana. Not that Ana was interested in either hobbing or nobbing with Stan.

Title: Eternal Cuckoo

Age Category: Adult

Genre: Paranormal Romance

Word Count: 90,000

Pitch:

Every time Rebecca and Adam die, they wake in the body of someone new. Finding each other could end their loneliness, but to stay together, they must cope with the moral implications of their condition.

First 250 Words of Manuscript:

Leo has a gun pointed at me. The wall clock over his shoulder goes tick, tick. I try to focus on it and not the gun. It’s an anniversary clock, our twenty-fifth.  “I want my wife,” Leo sobs. His finger trembles. This makes the whole gun shake. According to the clock it is 8:10 in the evening and four seconds… five seconds… six.  I take a breath. “Honey–”

He shouts: “Stop using her voice!” A few blond strands from his comb-over drift into his eyes. This is my husband, a balding Omaha veterinarian; and I am his wife, fifty-eight years old, pudgy, but pretty, with a sparkle in my brown eyes. I’m a bake sale queen, a church deacon, and until a moment ago, I was gripping a mug of hot cider labeled with the name REBECCA.

He steps forward to push the barrel against the skin above my left eye, right into the star-shaped chicken pox scar that Rebecca — I — got when she was nine years old.

“Tell me where she is,” he says.

Little, insignificant things I know about Rebecca rattle through my head in staccato, like how she abhors coconut and is allergic to lemon balm. She’s a size ten shoe, and she’s been embarrassed about that fact since college.  “Leo, put the gun down.”

“Stop talking like her!” he yells into my face. “Stop looking like her!”