Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Last Call Logline Critique Round Submission Info

Last call, writers! There was enough interest, so here we go. Come get one more, FINAL look at your logline before Baker's Dozen submissions are due next week.

Please send submissions to ktcritiques [AT] gmail.com by 10 PM EDT Wednesday night, October 31. I will post them Thursday, November 1 at KTCROWLEY.COM for critiquing. I'll accept up to 30 entries.

In the subject, please state “BD LOGLINE” (and your original post number from past rounds here, if this is a revision).

Submit your logline just like when submitting to Miss Snark's First Victim. Your submission should look like this:

TITLE: Your Title Here
GENRE: Your Genre Here

(Logline here.)

A confirmation email will be sent, but it may not be right away. Only resend if you don't get one by the last hour of the submission window. Once I receive 30 entries, an email will be sent to notify you if you didn't make the cut, so get those loglines in quickly!

If you enter, please critique five other entries, so that it's fair for everyone (it's also a great learning opportunity to polish your critiquing skills before the big event). And spread the word please; the more critiques, the merrier! Let's help everyone involved get as much feedback as possible.

Good luck, everyone! Can't wait to read some more fantastic loglines.

P.S. If you're not a follower of my blog, I'd love it if you'd follow my journey and join the fun! There are several ways via the right-hand side of the screen. I try to offer open critique rounds monthly to help writers like you perfect your work. Our already amazing writing community only gets better when we help each other. :)

Sunday, October 28, 2012

One More Last Call, Anybody??

So these two rounds for Baker's Dozen loglines were incredibly successful, and I thank all of you for that. With each other's help and support, the sky is the limit. We're lucky to be in such an amazing community of people.

Now, I know this week is the official submission window for the Adult genres for Baker's Dozen and it's probably too late for them, but the YA/MG crowd still has another week to go. If anyone who participated in the "One Last Chance" critique round with a YA/MG entry is interested in another critique round for their revisions, let me know in the comments. If at least 10 people are interested by Monday evening, then I will host another round this week. So get commenting!! I'd be willing to host another 25-30 entries.

Continue to rock on, writers!! I'm super impressed with everything I've seen thus far.

Saturday, October 27, 2012

BD One Last Chance Logline #60

Title: Breeding Grounds
Genre: Literary Fiction

No one is all that surprised when a local fisherman’s wife ends up dead in a rock pile down at the Sand & Gravel. As an abused housewife, a beer-swilling old lesbian, a sexy young fisherman, a lonely barmaid and a meek new cop recount their lives, they reveal how doing what’s right is sometimes a luxury many can’t afford.

BD One Last Chance Logline #59

Round 3 Original Post #10

Title: RACE TO BUTCH CASSIDY'S GOLD
Genre: MG Mystery

Two cousins, with their quirky Grandpa Jim, search for Butch Cassidy's gold to save a ranch for troubled youth. Racing across Utah in a beat-up Winnebago, they must outsmart dangerous thieves to find the treasure first.

BD One Last Chance Logline #58


TITLE: The Letty House Mystery
GENRE: Middle Grade Mystery

A 12-year-old empath senses only family members’ pain and emotion until she experiences a neighbor’s terror and feels the woman’s death. Why was she open to the elderly Irishwoman’s intense feeling and pain? Why did the woman leave her a legacy of secrets in a metal box revealing painful truths about herself and her Irish immigrant parents as well as risking her life.

BD One Last Chance Logline #57

Round 3 Original Post #29

Title: THE ROAD TO SLANU
Genre: YA/Fantasy

Lost in purgatory and seeking entrance into the gates of heaven, sixteen-year-old Katie must endure the five stages of grief to live in eternal peace or risk the horror of capture by the elusive Wanderling and be damned to darkness forever.

BD One Last Chance Logline #56

TITLE: RIP HER TO SHREDS
GENRE: YA contemporary

Seventeen-year-old Charlie escapes a summer of trying to get her crush to realize all her songs are about him when her all-girl band the Wretched Gretchens goes on tour. But wild shows and parties also isolate Charlie from her bandmates. As they play the West Coast, Charlie struggles with what binds the Gretchens beyond catchy hand-clap choruses — and what happens when they get home.

BD One Last Chance Logline #55

Round 3 Original Post #2

TITLE: MARGARET ETHEL
GENRE: YA supernatural

Sixteen-year-old trouble maker, Margaret, returns from the grave to stop her best friend from committing the seven deadly sins. Failure means spending eternity apart. Margaret will go to Heaven and her friend will go to that other place — you know the one.

Imagine if Dennis the Menace were the guardian angel in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE.

BD One Last Chance Logline #54

Title: Transmigration
Genre: YA M
ystery w/ Paranormal Elements

17-year-old Anna isn't sure which life she's leading: her current one that confides in a psychiatrist;or the one that visits her only in her sleep, as a victim moments before her death. When a new classmate bridges the link between her two lives, she’s forced to solve a cold case murder before she takes her last breath.
 

BD One Last Chance Logline #53

Round 3 Original Post #12


Title: Forbidden Love
Genre: Paranormal Romance

A vampire princess, awaiting her arranged betrothal, has a one-night stand with an enigmatic stranger leading her to choose between duty and love, but when she discovers this encounter unexpectedly bonds them together it alters her future forever.

BD One Last Chance Logline #52

Title: Desiderium
Genre: YA Dystopian

With four billion people in the world, seventeen-year-old Rhiley Winters never imagined she could be the Desiderium, whose power to turn desires into reality forced the government to outlaw desire, until one day her life is put in jeopardy when she wishes for more time and finds it standing still around her.

BD One Last Chance Logline #51

TITLE: CALIFORNIA R.I.P.
GENRE: YA Contemporary

When her parents' divorce uproots Huntington Beach native Dani to the ski town of Sun Valley, Idaho, she isn't psyched to trade in her surfboard for a snowboard. Then she meets Cash, who is determined to make her fall in love with the sport--and maybe him, too. 

BD One Last Chance Logline #50


TITLE: Choosing Cherry Street
GENRE.: Middle Grade Contemporary

12-year-old Max’s summer camp dreams are dashed when his mother uses their meager funds for his father’s rehab. But with the help of a feisty, home-schooled neighbor, Chapin, Max finds hope in his plan to cure his dad once and for all by building a secret tree house in an abandoned lot. When bullies, panicky parents and a toxic allergy to peanuts threaten to ruin everything, Max must choose between his loyalties and learn how to take responsibility for his own actions and happiness.

BD One Last Chance Logline #49

TITLE: Admissions
GENRE: Commercial Fiction

Trapped in a suburb one ring road removed from the best high school in America, Clare and Doug Hart desperately battle the insider tracks, embroidered applications, and anti-Asian bias they fear will doom the college admission chances of their adopted Chinese daughter, Mei. When they decide to blackmail a Harvard admissions dean they discover that the true cost of college may well be their souls.

BD One Last Chance Logline #48



TITLE: The Death Clock
GENRE: Literary fiction

Everyone is born with the ingrained knowledge of when they'll die, but not everyone tells the truth about their death-date. Kit's ex, Jonathan, dies without warning her. He leaves her a watch, but she's too grief-flattened to give much thought to its odd inscription. However, as Jonathan's tight political family closes around her and more close friends die, Kit realises he's left her a clue to a closely-guarded government secret: death is not as predictable as it seems.

BD One Last Chance Logline #47

Round 3 Original Post #40

Title:  FLUTTER
Genre:  MG (magical realism)

Twelve-year-old Mandy finds an ancestor’s journal at Grandpa’s farmhouse, reads a flying spell… and grows strange, leathery wings! Flying is fantastic, but at school Mandy’s an outsider, too different. Her absentee mother shows up with Hollywood plans for her Winged Wonder Girl – but a glamorous life with the mother she longed for means leaving Grandpa and the two friends who stood by her – one is her crush, and he’s crushing back. 

BD One Last Chance Logline #46

Title: I DIED ON A TUESDAY
Genre: YA paranormal

Recently deceased seventeen-year-old Cate can’t remember anything from before the day she died. Command likes it that way. It limits the “complications” that accompany mourning their former lives or whatever. So when a freak accident during a routine Haunting triggers a recovered memory about the circumstances surrounding her death, Cate knows she should let it go. But because her infuriating Haunting partner, who she’s totally falling for, is involved, she can’t help but dig deeper.

BD One Last Chance Logline #45

TITLE: CASSANDRA OF THE CRESCENT MOON
GENRE: MG Fantasy

When her grandmother is betrayed by a fellow witch and kidnapped by magic-hating vigilantes, twelve-year-old Cassie has no one to help her but a handful of witches who've sworn never to use their powers against others. Now Cassie must convince them to help her find the traitor and stand up to the enemy - magic or no magic – in order to rescue the only family she has left.

BD One Last Chance Logline #44

TITLE: Issue 339
GENRE: YA (Magical Realism)

Comic book character and teen superhero Skye gets fed up watching the comics kill off everyone he loves, so he shoots his author. Now he struggles between his identity as a hero and his reality as a murderer as he's caught between his own suffering, and the suffering he's caused, and when the publishing company hires a new writer, Skye must decide whether one more murder will save his world, or damn his soul.

BD One Last Chance Logline #43

Round 3 Original Post #30

Title: Jumping Ants
Genre: Upmarket Commercial Fiction

Logline: With a talent for self sabotage, the charming but aimless Max gets himself hired, fired, and evicted in quick succession. While waiting in line at a fast-food drive-thru, the twenty-nine-year-old is carjacked at gunpoint. Max’s weekend-long journey with this peculiar stranger, an older, rounder, more desperate version of himself, leaves him with a black eye and a crush on a feisty bartender. Max learns that the unfazed grin he’s been honing hasn’t been fooling anyone, least of all himself.

BD One Last Chance Logline #42

Title: - TRIPLE B
Genre: - MG Contemporary

Thirteen-year-old Samantha tries to avoid her alcoholic father, but no one warns her that having a crush on her best friend’s brother would lead to cyber-bullying by the popular eighth grade girls, threatening her self image.

BD One Last Chance Logline #41

TITLE: Eisley
GENRE: YA Sci-Fi

Seventeen-year-old Juliet Eisley is a genetically engineered loner without much hope of a future – until she teams up with misanthropic medical genius Quinn Aldrick. Convinced Aldrick’s controversial work can save thousands, Juliet finally finds a purpose, and Aldrick’s dark and dangerous world starts to feel like home. But despite their growing bond, could Juliet be the unwilling subject of her new mentor’s ultimate experiment?

BD One Last Chance Logline #40

TITLE: Something Rich and Strange
GENRE: YA Science Fiction

Seventeen-year-old Hannah "Sasquatch" Bloom thinks her height is the only unusual thing about her until a boy arrives at her school to awaken her to the truth: she's an alien, like him.  Now she must choose between helping her race colonize the planet and projecting the humans she loves.

BD One Last Chance Logline #39

Round 3 Original Post #20

UNTITLED
GENRE: YA Contemporary

Jackie knows she can’t date her cousin, but she can no more stop loving Marcus than she can stop the Missouri River from freezing. Right when she works up the nerve to tell him, Marcus asks out a girl from school- a girl with a connection to a student who disappeared. When someone nearly kills Marcus, Jackie has to figure out why he’s being targeted or he’ll be the next one to disappear. 

BD One Last Chance Logline #38

Title: Anomaly
Genre: YA Fantasy

Fifteen-year-old Maya is the Yearbook Club nobody, the girl behind the camera documenting the lives of everyone cooler than her. A genetic glitch turns her into an unstable teleporter and she finds that being the main focus exposes nothing but trouble. When a series of bad decisions leave her friendless, boy-less, and strips her new-found ability, Maya must rely on her camera and her wits to prevent an international crisis at the G8 Summit in London.

BD One Last Chance Logline #37

Title: Price of Refuge
Genre: Psychological Suspense

When a pregnant mother of two believes she is being stalked by a ghost from her past, she needs to prove to everyone – including herself – that the danger isn’t all in her head, or risk losing her mind and maybe her life.

BD One Last Chance Logline #36

TITLE:  Middledom
GENRE:  MG Fantasy

It’s hard enough for Violet to be a middle child, let alone a middle princess trying to muddle through her terrible teens, especially when her bossy elder sister declares her intention to be King (not Queen), while her “fairest of them all” younger sister has a little fire-breathing problem, courtesy of a fairy christening gone awry.  When the constantly upstaged Princess Violet overhears some indiscreet fairy godmothers discussing how middle princesses tend to fade out of the story, she embarks on a quest to determine her own fate before she disappears completely. 

BD One Last Chance Logline #35

TITLE: Ignite
GENRE: YA Urban Fantasy

Branded with PTSD, seventeen-year-old Alison is desperate to find her grandma’s killers and prove she’s not crazy. With the help of a fire-wielding Watcher from a top-secret protection agency, Ali is led to a discharged agent determined to eliminate supernatural abilities. When he learns Ali can manipulate Water, she is next on his to-cure list.

BD One Last Chance Logline #34


TITLE: A Question of Faith
GENRE: YA Paranormal

Learning that she's magic incarnate turns fifteen-year-old Crystal's religious beliefs upside down, but she has more to deal with than questions about faith and her soul when her boyfriend is kidnapped by a witch hunter and shamans snatch her aunt.

BD One Last Chance Logline #33

Title: Moon Fire
Genre: MG Fantasy Adventure

When Zephyr, a half-Asian boy, embarks on a wild adventure with Ming, his magical Time Keeper, and Zeela, a failed witch, into the world of Asian wizards to save his parents from being lost forever in the ether, he learns that his true biological father is Lepton Black, the evil Lord of Black Magic who was responsible for the disappearance of his parents and seeks revenge on him.

BD One Last Chance Logline #32

TITLE: FOOTPRINTS
GENRE: MG contemporary thriller

In a "Beauty and the Beast" twist, thirteen-year-old disgraced socialite Jessa Hughes is sentenced to summer camp in the Trinity Alps where she discovers Isaac, a fourteen-year-old boy who is seven feet tall, hairy, and just might be Bigfoot.

BD One Last Chance Logline #31

TITLE: The Clockwork Cricket
GENRE: Steampunk

When a pair of corrupt spies kidnap Chinese immigrant Ying-Shi Fong’s only friend Molly, he must locate the Clockwork Cricket—a mechanical recording device containing military secrets—in exchange for her safe return. But when the Cricket’s owner, one of the Gold Rush Era mining town’s original Forty-Niners, is found brutally murdered, tensions between the townsfolk and the immigrant population escalate into deadly race riots, forcing Ying-Shi to choose between his friend and his family.

BD One Last Chance Logline #30

Title: The Market
Genre: Wall Street Thriller

Adelaide Taggart is an electrician from Jersey, who scammed her way into a job at the richest hedge fund on Wall Street. After her first deal gets the green light, the money hits the bank and she realizes it’s dirty and she should run for the hills. She doesn't. She knows the risks, she can land in jail or get herself killed - but Adelaide needs the cash and plans on playing by her own rules. 

BD One Last Chance Logline #29

TITLE: DEATH BY NAIL GUN
GENRE: Mystery

Kimberly Murphy’s quiet vacation is disrupted by a dead body that keeps disappearing. Kim must find the body, again and again, before the killer sends her on a vacation – permanently.

BD One Last Chance Logline #28

TITLE: Dreamcatcher
GENRE: YA Speculative

Upon discovering she’s living in a coma-induced dream world where she can have anything she wants, sixteen-year-old Lauren thinks she’s found her lucky break. However, when she learns her family is crumbling without her in real life, her dream quickly becomes a nightmare; while she sleeps, her subconscious rules, and it will do anything to keep her from waking—even if it means driving Lauren out of her mind to keep her living inside it.

BD One Last Chance Logline #27

Round 3 Original Post #22


TITLE: Waterstone
GENRE: Literary Historical Fiction
All her life, Mattie Calhoun has yearned for Pa’s gift—the ability to dowse water. His death, in Spring of 1900, followed by the arrival of Hill Bell seeking a dowser for his family’s hotel, sparks her determination: she’ll imitate Pa’s every move, then, take his place. Her failure costs her freedom when she must go to work as a servant, ironically leading to a journey of self-discovery and renewal in Atlanta, the Phoenix City.

BD One Last Chance Logline #26

Title:   THE GAMMY GAT LETTERS
GENRE:   Upmarket adult fiction
 
In THE GAMMY GAT LETTERS, nothing is going right for ten year old Jake Gatlin, as he begins school in a new town. He needs to talk to somebody. He figures his grandmother, Gammy Gat, is just the person. Only she’s dead. He writes to her anyway. Ten years later, after Jake is killed in Afghanistan, Marshall, his father, discovers the secret letters.

BD One Last Chance Logline #25

TITLE:  SUSPENDED STATE
GENRE:  YA paranormal thriller

When a hospital employee preys on unconscious patients, a seventeen year-old girl’s soul becomes trapped inside his body. Now Lauren must find a way out before she disappears like his other victims. Or worse…becomes a permanent part of him.

BD One Last Chance Logline #24

TITLE: Rachel on Fire
GENRE: YA Contemporary

 Rachel knows in her heart that rumours about Tom killing his parents in a house fire are only embers of broken truths – truths that she will uncover and embrace as she moves through a fiery series of firsts in a courageous fall into love. 

BD One Last Chance Logline #23

TITLE: Five Man Fugue
GENRE: Author-as-character Meta Fiction/Urban Thriller

On a winter night in Chicago, four men cross paths: a septuagenarian mourning his deceased wife, a homeless man defending his secret love, a penniless dilettante anticipating his inheritance and an ex-convict struggling to reform.  Each overlapping story sheds further light on the others, and on our mysterious author, Robin Love, who intends to craft a love story for himself even if it means sacrificing his characters along the way. 

BD One Last Chance Logline #22

Round 3 Original Post #31

TITLE: Drego's Sword
GENRE: YA epic fantasy

Drego's journey to stop the evil conqueror, Gordar, takes him far from home, into the arms of a headstrong young woman, and to a darker, more violent part of himself he hadn’t known existed.

BD One Last Chance Logline #21

TITLE: WISHLOCK
GENRE: MG Fantasy

When eleven-year-old Timothy delivers a box concealing dark magic there are unwanted aftereffects: grey fur and a ferocious appetite for cheese. A hidden manuscript offers Timothy hope, something written in its pages could reverse the magic that has transformed him into a part-mouse, but he must use all his smarts to retrieve it; housed in a library, the lock on the door is forged from unbreakable magic.

BD One Last Chance Logline #20

TITLE: Codename Eagle Chick
GENRE: YA Spy Thriller

When a Secret Service Agent tracks down the president’s missing son, he finds him with a battered CIA recruit, an overly-suave CIA operative, and an Irish coffee-loving tech guru, all out to find “the faction” and why they want the president’s son dead.

BD One Last Chance Logline #19

TITLE: Imminent
GENRE: YA Paranormal Romance

Seventeen-year-old Alexa discovers, after falling for a new boy, that she's at the center of a paranormal war and must protect humans from her enemies while saving herself from them in the process.

BD One Last Chance Logline #18

Round 3 Original Post #13

Title: The Truth About Titus Oates
Genre: Historical Fiction

Nat Thompson blames the loss of his post as the Licenser on Titus Oates, a preacher who has sent Restoration London into crisis with revelations of a Popish Plot. Eager to provide for his young wife Anne, Nat attacks Oates in the press, a lucrative but dangerous decision When Oates blackmails Anne, forcing her to become a spy in her own home and has Nat arrested on the night their newborn baby dies, the only way out of their predicament is to prove that the Plot is a complete fiction and make public the shocking truth about Titus Oates.

BD One Last Chance Logline #17

Title: GHOST RIVER
Genre: Paranormal Mystery

When Veronica moves to a quiet river marina, she finds her peace shattered by murder, mystery and Clara, the ghost of a shopaholic nun with an addiction to Liz Claiborne Outlets. A friend is accused of the murder but Veronica thinks he’s been framed, even if the police don’t. So, led by clues from the ghost, she sets out to find the real killer, unaware the killer wants to find her first.

BD One Last Chance Logline #16

TITLE: Maid-of-the-Wave
GENRE: Literary

Rob Walsh, a world-class sailor paralyzed in a mysterious car accident, confronts daunting odds to regain his life, but his biggest challenge lies in his own forgiveness.

BD One Last Chance Logline #15


TITLE: Jane, Body and Soul
GENRE: YA Light Sci Fi

When his first love is killed in a prom night car accident, Daniel, a teen science geek, stuns the world by using his knowledge of radical new medical research to bring her back from the dead. But now Jane’s body is failing, her condition defies scientific explanation, and she’s more interested in her “near-death experiences” than in recovering her health. Daniel must find a way to save her—or watch her suffer and die again.

BD One Last Chance Logline #14

TITLE: The Treasure of a Dragon's Heart
GENRE: Adult Paranormal Romance

A shapeshifting dragon must choose between love and survival when she falls for the modern-day knight who catches her stealing the jewels she needs to defend herself from her murderous father.

BD One Last Chance Logline #13


TITLE: Imperfectly Fine
GENRE: YA Contemporary (with thriller elements)

Sixteen-year-old Skylar Benson lives with cystic fibrosis and a singular truth: She's supposed to die first. But after witnessing her rockstar father's murder, she must do the one thing she never expected--survive. Skylar resents being broken by birth and scarred by life, and even faking fine is impossible once she starts having flashbacks to the night her dad died.

Skylar must choose between self-destructive escape and finding a way to embrace her imperfect life. A choice made easier with Dad's favorite white powder but more complicated by Noah Stillwater, a fiercely loyal friend with an enigmatic past and an infuriating tenacity for hope. Then there's Cole Monroe, the younger brother of an ex-boyfriend Skylar can't quite shake. Cole is as lethal and alluring as his cocaine habit, and all her friends think she should know better.

But Skylar knows Cole is dangerous. She's counting on it.

BD One Last Chance Logline #12

Round 3 Original Post #36

Title: Lifeweaver
Genre: Epic Fantasy

When Talyn gained the ability to transfer death from one person to another, he never imagined the king would exploit such miracles to incite a war. Now, he'll have to commit treason and rely on the honor of a convicted murderer if he wants to prevent thousands of deaths -- including his own.

BD One Last Chance Logline #11

TITLE: Beyond The River
GENRE: Literary Fiction

1999: Brad Lucas has just made a fortune selling the dot-com he started in college with his cocksure business partner, Dean. Their odd, antagonistic friendship has deteriorated over the years, but before going their separate ways, Dean invites Brad on a fly-fishing trip. Hiking into the wilds of Northern California, Brad begins to question Dean’s motives. When Dean’s elaborate hoax unravels, Brad must not only save himself, but also decide whether Dean is worth saving.

BD One Last Chance Logline #10

TITLE: SHADOW OF A CRESCENT MOON
GENRE: contemporary with a paranormal twist

When twelve-year-old Sadie Elliott’s secret psychic vision
reveals a horrific car accident, she must make a choice: continue
hiding her ability from her skeptical mother or search for the girl
who has lived only in her visions, until now.

BD One Last Chance Logline #9

TITLE: Faithless Rose
GENRE: YA Paranormal
Killed at the hands of King Henry VIII’s men and brought back to life as a succubus, seventeen-year-old Amelia Godwin cannot change her fate. But, she can change the fate of her kidnapped twin brother, if only she can find him. In a journey of self-discovery and revenge, Amelia must decide what is more important, family or retaliation.