The Writer's Voice Submission

Query:

Dear The Writer’s Voice Judges:

With the death of his one true love, seventeen-year-old Adam Rhodes lost everything. Now science needs his help to bring her back. 

The world may have loved rock star, Sunshine, but Adam loved Marybeth, the troubled girl behind the superstar persona, and when she died, life as he knew it ended. Now, thanks to The Sunshine Project, a breakthrough in cloning and memory implantation technology, Adam can give her--and himself--another chance at life. But as Adam assists in the memory recreation, reliving his life with Marybeth and the devastating path that brought them both to fame, he must confront not only the secret surrounding her death but also his growing relationship with The Sunshine Project’s mysterious Genevieve, a girl with secrets of her own. In the process, Adam must decide whether the cost of resurrecting Sunshine is just too high, even as he risks losing the girl he loves for a second time…and this time forever. Complete at 70,000 words RESURRECTING SUNSHINE is science fiction meets teen relationship novel and will appeal to readers of Mary Pearson’s The Adoration of Jenna Fox.

           

The full manuscript of RESURRECTING SUNSHINE is available upon request. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Lisa A. Koosis

First 250 words:

           The process starts, a tug low in my belly, like I’m made of string and someone’s trying to unravel me.  Then white light flashes behind my eyes, and suddenly I’m engulfed by blowing sand.  It bites at my cheeks, blinds me.  Beyond the sand, there are only shadows

            “Dial it down,” a voice commands, and then softer, “Sorry.  Bear with us a second, Adam.  This happens sometimes.”

            Squeezing my eyes shut doesn’t help because no matter how real the sand feels, it’s in my mind, nothing more than a memory. I grit my teeth and curl my hands around the arms of the chair that I know I’m sitting in.

            “I said: ‘dial it down!’” Dr. E says again.

            Sweat runs into my eyes, and I let go of the chair arm long enough to wipe it away.

            “Great,” she says finally, “There.”

            The blowing sand disappears.  I let out my breath as the sandstorm settles into a grainy image, and then a memory so clear that I’m in two places at once.  I know I’m in a white-walled room with Dr. E and her technician and a shitload of equipment that hums and beeps and flashes, but I’m also at Smitty’s Point with Marybeth, on a day that long ago became history.

            We’re walking through a concrete underpass that smells like piss and stale beer and rotting fish.  The memory is so vivid I can read the graffiti on the walls--Rita is a WHORE; Cindy Luvs Chris...