Title: Twist of Fate
Genre: NA time travel romance
Pitch:
Twenty-two-year-old goddess Pandia’s shaking in her Jimmy Choo’s. When the NYC socialite travels through time to attend a party, she meets Julius Caesar, and convinces him to abandon politics for gardening. Her father, Zeus, summons her to twenty-first century Olympus after discovering the month of July no longer exists. To teach her the importance of fate, he strips her goddess power and sentences her to a stint of mortality in ancient Pompeii.
Pandia intends to do her time, leave destinies untouched, and be home before the next sale at Saks Fifth Avenue. Instead, she’s mistaken for a prostitute and arrested for inciting a riot. Condemned to serve in Pompeii’s Gladiator School, she’s assigned to Caladus, a gladiator whose washboard abs test her vow to remain uninvolved.
To escape Pompeii, Pandia must prove she respects mortals’ fates. But she’s falling for Caladus, and her time’s running out: Mt. Vesuvius is rumbling.
First Sentence:
Pacing outside the Great Hall, I yanked down my red top with trembling fingers, and wondered what I’d done to piss my father off this time.
Very interesting!
ReplyDeleteI love this pitch. The voice, the premise, the conflict, the humour. And Pandia sounds like a protagonist I'd love to spend time with. The last line is perfect- definitely leaves me wanting to read more.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for the comments!
ReplyDeleteStill LOVE this one.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much, Sharon!
ReplyDeleteHaha! Love the first line of your pitch. This will totally draw in potential readers. (Suggestion: you might even want to section this first line off by giving it its own little paragraph.)
ReplyDeleteShe has him switch to gardening??? Who is this chick. Already love her. One question about the first paragraph: are her actions (traveling through time to a party and messing with JC), the reason July disappears? If so, tweak the previous sentence to include that. The opening line of the novel is also a hoot. Best of luck!
Thank you, Judge Three! Yes, when Julius leaves politics, he no longer names the month after himself, which alters the calendar, among other things. I'll have to see how I can incorporate this into the previous sentence.
ReplyDeleteAdding the July bit cracked me up. You know I've read versions of your pitch/query in several different contests, Martha, and this stands out as the strongest. What really cleared things up for me was the simple addition of "to escape Pompeii..." etc. Now the conflict is perfectly clear. Well done!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Kara! If I make it to the final 25, I've tweaked it more, based on everyone's great advice, and believe it's even stronger. Regardless, I've learned so much through this contest. The query I'm using now is only 170 words!
ReplyDelete