YA Science Fiction: ABDUCTED HOPE

Author's Name: Tracy McMechan

Category: YA
Genre: Space Opera (or sci-f/romance)

Stage of Completion: currently querying

Preferred Critique Style: A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Medicine Go Down... I'm looking for honest opinions with suggestions for improvement

Cat Person or Dog Person: Dog

Tea or Coffee: coffee

Short Pitch

In Abducted Hope, college student Melissa Field is abducted and impregnated by an alien species called the Phaeites.  She falls in love with her unwilling captor, Orion, with whom she escapes to flee the Phaeite breeding program.  Upon birth, their daughter, Hope, is kidnapped by a species named the Dexese.  Melissa has to overcome her fears as she encounters spies, torture, imprisonment, brain surgery, and aliens with telepathic abilities. She must find strength that she didn’t know she had in order to survive in the midst of an interplanetary war that not only threatens her baby and her family, but Earth as well.  

Writing Sample

             I would like to say that I knew someone was following me; I heard rustling of branches, snapping of twigs.  My sixth sense alerted me to the fact that a person lurked in the shadows behind me.  But that would be a lie. 

            Midnight drew near as I headed back to my dorm room after a long practice session with my a cappella group. I had my scarf tightly wrapped around my neck trying to block the blustery wind.  I hummed to myself as I walked, trying to get that new part down, and thinking about how early I needed to get up to finish reading a few chapters before my philosophy lecture class in the morning.  I didn’t even have time to react.  A hand clasped over my mouth so tightly that I couldn’t scream or bite and an arm forcibly yanked my hands behind my back and cuffed them together.

            I squirmed, kicked and flailed, to no avail.  A part of my subconscious reminded me to pay attention to my attacker so that I could recognize him in a line-up one day.  Or at least I think I recalled having heard that advice somewhere.  But before I could see his face, a second pair of hands restrained my head as a blindfold was tied tightly over my eyes. 

            Cuffed and essentially gagged by a strong, cold hand, I felt like a fish in a barrel just waiting to be taken out.  Fear overwhelmed me.