If you write YA, send in your submission to the Dear Lucky Agent Contest! First 150-200 words and two social-media postings to be eligible, otherwise it’s FREE!!!
Here’s what I’m sending, from my YA novel AFFINITY:
A ball the size of Diana’s fist knotted in her stomach and tightened with a pinch. Nothing felt right. She scanned the crowd of bodies before her, surging like a tide, pushing and pulling, turning and reaching. Diana’d come home eager to get back to normal life, excited about the future: junior year! But home felt tilted and this back-to-school party was the kind of fun house that warped your body image and made people scared of clowns.
Mercury must be in retrograde, Diana thought. She’d forgotten to check her horoscope in her excitement to get home. Not the best time to reunite with her boyfriend of six months. You’re just nervous, she told herself. Lock it down. Get a grip. She searched the faces of the dancing teenagers once more and wondered, He wouldn’t be sweating up some girl, right? She hadn’t seen Greg in a month and even though they’d talked and texted, it was still a month.
All Diana could see was her best friend, Michelle, whirling and writhing in the center of the makeshift dance floor in a classmate’s basement. Diana laughed and felt the tension in her stomach release just an inch.