Genre: Contemporary Fantasy. The Adamant
Status: Completed. Polished. In the paranoid, neurotic stage of 'is this good enough'.
Feedback: I am looking for understandable prose, flow, and everything in between. Line editing would tickle me fine. Looking for help on my query, synop, and first chapter and willing to do the same.
Pitch: A sentient relic made from the
horn of a unicorn believes Shamira Kelley is its willing acolyte but possession doesn't sit well and she fights the relic and those who would use it against
mankind
First Two Pages:
His lazy strides across the mall caught my attention. Like
he had time to kill and everyone else could wait at his leisure. Most galling was
how people moved out of his way. No glares. No commotion.
He appeared to be about
my age early twenties with black hair that curled just below the collar of his
white shirt, height under six feet. With the body of a dancer, slender waist,
and broad shoulders, his physique should have been drawing stares. But that wasn’t what piqued my interest. What
set me off was his arrogance. Not his looks. Totally secondary. I barely noticed.
Really.
Glances from the people
in the crowded mall slid off, went around him like light bending around the
source.
“Will you look at
that,” I said to Olive, my former guardian.
She turned away from
matching towels, threw me a hard look, and shot a quick glance around us.
Olive has experience
with my intricacies. Self-preservation is strong with her.
Slender, taller than
me, with shoulder length honey-blonde hair, Olive looked younger than her forty-two
years. But even with the body of a model, a fluff head she was not.
“What?” she said, her voice low.
I gestured. “That
guy. The one walking like he thinks no one will touch him. He’s the picture of
arrogance, isn’t he?”
Olive’s shapely brow
gathered as she focused on the area where the black-haired man paced unimpeded.
He moved like a king among his subjects.
“Who?”
I gaped at her.
“Him. That man strutting across the mall.” I pointed.
Her gaze sharpened but
then shifted to me again.
“I don’t see what
you’re dithering about.” Olive shrugged. “You have the weirdest notions.” She huffed
and went back to sorting through towels. “Which do you think? Peacock blue or
this aqua?”
“That guy,” I said.
For some reason it was important that she acknowledge me. “The one walking
there. Those shoppers just moved out of his way.”
“So? A man is walking
across the mall. Why is that arrogant?” She wasn’t paying attention, still
measuring one color of blue against another.
A couple had paused
with a stroller in the man’s path then casually shuffled out of his path like
magnets of opposite polarity.
“You don’t see
that?” My voice rose into a higher octave.
Olive made an
exasperated sound. “I see shoppers. I see people,” she said shortly then gave
me a hard look. “Why? What do you see?”
“A guy, white shirt,
long sleeves, black jeans. Right there,” I said and gestured with one hand,
“parting the masses like King Kong. Everyone just moves out of his way.”
The arrogant man had
stopped to watch a bunch of teens that braided around him. He was smirking
behind his hand. Kids towed their harried parents to one side making crow-like
calls of excitement.
Olive’s attention was
on the teens not the man. I had an inclination to stomp my foot.
