The Lucky Agent contest for February called for books targeted to children and young adults.
Here are my four entries.
Well wishes, crossed fingers, and feverish prayers to all who enter this (especially for me!).
This contest/exercise helped me clean up and tighten up my openings of these works to meet the 150-200 word requirement.
No. 1
Log Line: After being transported to the alternative world of Penteract by a hacked iPhone app, the three Swain children find themselves caught in the middle of an epic battle of annihilation between two warring Dragon clans.
A Jabberwock of Penteract: Book One--Barmaglot
by
Larry Mike Garmon
Chapter One
Upon observing his somewhat curt conduct towards his younger sister and brother, the acute onlooker would conclude that Ethan Swain was not quite fond of his twin siblings, Emily and Elijah. To a point, the astute spectator would be correct. Ethan didn’t actually hate Emily and Elijah: He just had no use for them; especially since the day Ethan had emerged from his chrysalis childhood transformed into a full fledged teenager. At that exact moment, Ethan realized Emily and Elijah were quite childish indeed.
And now, two days shy of his sixteenth birthday (and on the verge of acquiring that all important symbol of adulthood—the driver’s license), Ethan had even more reason to dislike the thirteen-year-old twins: since the end of school and the beginning of summer vacation the Old Man had left Ethan in charge of the two younger Swains while he was busy with his antiques shop at the Junebug Market.
Ethan protested that he had better things to do than watch The Children (as he called them), and Emily and Elijah had protested that as teenagers themselves, they could very well didn´t need a babysitter.
No. 2
Log Line: For Eternal Chaos to once and for all rule the Universe of God and the Earth of Humankind, all the Fallen Angel Geddon must do is defeat the greatest of Archangels, Nona of Nth, as well as kill a 12-year-old girl to keep her from singing the "Gloria in Excelsis Deo" at her school´s Christmas pageant.
Angel Wars: Canon One--Exaltation
by
Larry Mike Garmon
Preludium
A Whisper of God
"Let us be silent that we may hear the whisper of God."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Something was about to happen.
Nona, Archangel of Nth, could feel it in her bones. She sat on the edge of the cloud, strumming her lute and wondering what the day would bring.
Of course, I know that you know for a teller of tales (or even a singer of songs or a reverend of rhetoric) to use the temporal words “bones” and “day” in reference to an eternal, spiritual Angel is rather bizarre at best and just down right stupefying to say the least.
But, there we have it: In order for you to fully understand how Nona, Archangel of Nth, was feeling at this particular moment in time, as well as all the moments in time which follow in this tale, I must use Human images, images I can describe and images you can comprehend.
If I were to use Angelic images, I’d have to stop the tale here and now as I could never truly tell the tale using Angelic images, and even if I could, you wouldn’t be able to understand such images, now would you?
For as we all know, at least most of us anyway, Angels don’t have bones as they are immortal beings made up of spiritual energy and an eternal substance known as Episteme Plasma.
No. 3
Log Line: To get to Necropolis, you merely take the second tombstone on the left and then straight on until Midnight.
The Necropolis Chronicles
by
Larry Mike Garmon
Book One: Necropolis
Part One
Where We Were and How We Got There
Chapter One
“I told you this wasn’t the kind of job I wanted!”
So -- there we were, my cousin Yeowzer Skelton and I, serving maggot spaghetti with roasted eyeball meatballs and garlic toasted toes to a couple of love-sick (and I do mean sick) ghouls who sat wooing each other with nauseous, meaningless small talk and quick stomach-retching flirtatious glances. As if their dead puppy-dog looks and hollow words weren’t bad enough, Yeowzer and I had to keep cleaning up the pieces of their flesh and the thick dark, slimy ooze dripping from their decaying bodies and onto the table and the floor.
Just as I sat down the male ghoul’s anti-pasta pasta, a silver dollar size hunk of his left cheek popped off and landed in his blood-red wine, exposing stringy, blackened muscle stretched over dull yellow bone. The love-sick ghouls laughed as Yeowzer growled and then pulled the bit of flesh from the wine and patted it back into place onto the male ghoul’s left cheek.
If I had eaten anything before coming to work that evening at Dead Man’s Diner, I would have tossed rainbow chunks of partially digested food all over the two ghouls.
No. 4
Log Line: Art shouldn´t be a crime, but when ace Feline sleuth Agatha Pixie gets her paws on The Omma Lisa, the world´s most famous painting, evildoers are determined to paint the town from a palette of mischief and mayhem to take the painting from her.
The Calamari Code: An Agatha Pixie Mystery
By
Larry Mike Garmon
Curiosity killed the Cat,
But Satisfaction brought her back!
Prologue
A View from the Bridge
“What’s it going to be then, eh? Ya gonna hand over da print, or ya wanna take a swim in da East Zuopolis River? The choice is yours, Sweetheart.” The Chimp pulled his lips back into a thin smile, revealing his large yellow and brownish teeth.
So, there I was, Curious Reader, standing midway on the pedestrian walkway that runs down the center of the famous Rooklyn Bridge face to face with an obnoxious Chimpanzee who was offering me the choice of giving in to his demands or being thrown off the bridge and into the river.
I didn’t particularly like my choice, not that my particular preference mattered at that particular moment. The idea of getting wet didn’t bother me so much as the manner in which I was about to get wet. I have nothing against water, as long as it’s coming out of my showerhead or the jets of my whirlpool spa. However, taking a dive 200 feet down into the brownish, smelly, cold East Zuopolis River had not been on my to-do list for that day.
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And there we 'em. More writing to do while awaiting word!
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