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2020 Entries

Please note: These are the entries for the Pitch Wars season beginning in 2021 and continuing through 2022. Please note that our Agent Showcase ends at 9:00 p.m. ET on Monday, February 14, 2022. Agents will not be able to leave comments requesting material after that time.

PW2020 MG #16: YOUNGER DAZE (#OwnVoices Contemporary Fantasy)

Chase is the popular kid. Malik, not so much. When their dads enter an age-reversing machine and morph into tweens, they're forced to team up. To restore their fathers' adulthood, Chase and Malik must decipher a 200-year-old journal and uncover an age-altering element. They team with Desha, an eyebrow raising survivalist. But emotional upheaval from their dad tagalongs and betrayal from an unexpected foe thwarts their plans. To change their dads back before it's too late, Chase and Malik must discover they’re stronger together than they are apart. NEW KID x 17 Again.

PW2020 MG #17: MARZIPAN AND MAXIPADS (Contemporary)

In this middle grade MOXIE, best friends Helen and Gracie prank their way through 8th grade until a stinky stunt lands them in the VP's office—again. As punishment, they're forced to join the Community Action Club. When an early period catches Helen unprepared, the girls team up with their nemesis to lobby for maxipads in every bathroom, but they can’t conform to her Type-A ways and the school board isn’t listening anyway. Now they must use their disruptive voices (crocheted uteruses, anyone?) to shake up the system before the VP and their parents separate them for good.

PW2020 Adult #01: THESE FAMILIAR WALLS (Paranormal Horror – Contemporary)

GIRLS OF BRACKENHILL meets the film OCULUS in a dual-timeline paranormal horror.

As a lonely preteen, Amber ignores her family’s misgivings about the troubled new kid in the neighborhood and forges a turbulent friendship, brief but with lasting consequences.

Twenty-two years later, he resurfaces to kill Amber’s parents.

Amber moves into her childhood home with her husband and kids. All she wants is to put her strained past behind her, move on, and enjoy life. But Amber finds the familiar walls are haunted by more than bitter memories and lockdown anxiety. She loses track of her thoughts in dreamlike trances and her reflection won’t blink. A hateful voice whispers from nowhere and shadows gather with a will of their own. Maybe the stress is crumbling her sanity. Or maybe a spectral presence threatens her family.

PW2020 Adult #02: GIRL, FIRE, NIGHT (Literary Thriller)

WINTER COUNTS meets DROWNING IN FIRE in this heart-pounding narrative that explores gender identity through folklore. Girls, including Anna’s sister Grace, are going missing on the Tonnica Indian reservation, and Anna—silent and unseen as a maid at the tribe’s casino/resort—will do anything to get Grace back, even putting her faith in an old Tonnica tale that brings her close to death while revealing her two-spirited identity.

PW2020 Adult #03: THE AMETHYST CITY (Fantasy)

Airship captain Royce Darrow is suicidal following his wife’s death. Unwilling to give up on their captain, his crew kidnaps him for one last job: find missing adventurer Kit Harding, the man Royce walked out on years ago. The search takes them to the mythical Amethyst City, humanity’s lost birthplace. Trapped by an obsessed cult, Royce must find Kit and unlock the city’s secrets before his crew is sacrificed to a hungry god. UP meets FINAL FANTASY.

PW2020 Adult #04: YEAR OF THE TRICK (Science Fiction; Space Opera; LGBTQ)

A MEMORY CALLED EMPIRE meets NINEFOX GAMBIT

Esek Nightfoot has little regard for the destruction and suffering she causes across the Treble star systems. But now a figure from her past, known only as Six, has uncovered evidence that implicates her family in a genocide. If Esek doesn’t smother that evidence, it will fracture the interplanetary balance of power, and—most importantly—put her fortunes at risk. Her fight to stop Six will take her all over the systems on a brutal hunt to the death.

PW2020 Adult #05: WITCHMARK RIDERS (Fantasy – #ownvoices)

SAPPHIC WITCH HEIST

Witch-prospector Deliverance Jones hates people almost as much as she loves whiskey, except for her girlfriend Marlene. Her lone-wolf routine is shattered when a rival witch asks Deliverance to help steal a magical lodestone from a fanatical preacher hell-bent on using it to kill witches. When the preacher discovers they’re after him, Deliverance must decide if taking back the lodestone is worth risking her life—and her partner.

PW2020 Adult #06: THE JASAD HEIR (Fantasy – #OwnVoices)

CITY OF BRASS meets A GATHERING OF SHADOWS

Fugitive queen Sylvia has been presumed dead since Nizahl’s armies burned her kingdom to the ground. When the cold, calculating Nizhal heir discovers Sylvia’s outlawed magic, they strike a traitor’s bargain: she’ll compete as his champion in the kingdoms’ dangerous tournament, and in exchange, Sylvia will help him draw out the magic users he’s hunting—Jasadis, her own people. As rising political tensions threaten a new war, Sylvia is soon embroiled in a dangerous game of cat and mouse where discovery means death.

PW2020 Adult #07: SEA OF BONES AND FIRE (Historical Adventure Fiction)

In 1698, infamous pirate queen Evangeline will do anything for vengeance against Admiral Lovell of the Royal Navy after he slaughtered her beloved uncle years ago. But when Lovell builds a special ship to eliminate pirates, Evangeline must destroy it or become his next victim. BLACK SAILS meets GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO.

PW2020 Adult #08: ON GOOD AUTHORITY (Victorian Gothic/Romantic Suspense)

TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES meets SECRETARY

In the workhouse, games of dominance and submission give young Marian and Valentine the comforting illusion of control. But when they are hired as a maid and footman to a master who turns their game violently against them, they must draw the line between servitude and surrender—confronting their repressed desires along the way.