NoQS YA Thriller: FLASHES

Title: FLASHES
Genre: YA Thriller, Own Voices
Word Count: 71,000
My MC and MA (main antagonist) are dressed as:
Levi, being a huge horror movie fan, would opt to pay homage to Freddy Krueger.  He would wear Freddy’s classic red and green striped sweater, but would forego his trademark hat and gloves, and any sort of mask.  The nod would be enough.  Levi’s antagonist is Fate.  In “Flashes,” Fate appears to Levi in several disturbing ways, while its most unsettling form is a doppelganger of Levi, but…off.  Expressionless, dead eyes.  If Levi ran into Fate at this Halloween party, he would be facing himself, but his doppelganger would be all-out Freddy Krueger, scorched skin and all.

Query:
When Levi Mitchell drowns, he dies for three minutes and forty seconds.  In that time, he sees his entire life flash before his eyes – not just his past, but his future as well.  When he is revived, he remembers everything and hates the lonely, miserable man he’s destined to become.  Attempting to change the future before it’s too late, Levi shakes up his life:  New friends, new goals, a whole new direction for himself.  Not wishing to have his heart destroyed, Levi even decides to avoid meeting Gavin, the boy he fell in love with in his future life, only to have their relationship end in a devastating break-up.
On top of his complicated feelings about his love life, Levi also knows that the school’s star football player, Chase Preston, is destined to go missing.  His body will be found one month later, brutalized.  Levi wants to do everything in his power to prevent Chase’s abduction and death, and uncovers unnerving secrets about himself and those close to him during his quest to befriend Chase.  Levi’s life begins to careen out of control as Fate deals a cruel hand, and his attempts to save Chase put others, including Gavin, in deadly peril.
First 250 Words:
Levi Mitchell stared at the sky, unable to shake the feeling that the roiling storm clouds were a portent of doom.  They swirled, curling into each other like a swarm of eels, and it seemed rather appropriate when a low rumble echoed threateningly over San Francisco Bay.
“You okay, Honey?” his mom asked, tapping him on the shoulder.
Levi glanced back her, where she sat on the speed boat behind him.  He could barely hear her over the roar of the motor, and the stinging water that the wind slapped into his face didn’t help matters, so he just nodded.
Levi’s stomach lurched as the small boat barreled through the waves like some ungodly porpoise.  God, he hated the Bay.  The water wasn’t so deep here, with the Golden Gate Bridge still in sight, but it unnerved him nonetheless.
He’d always hated water.  Riptides and currents, sharks and brain-eating amoebas…who knew what the hell was out in that vast blue, waiting to attack humans who had no business being in water.  But what he hated most was deep water.  Ocean-deep.  The thought of all of that water below him, around him, made him panicky.  Even with a life vest on, he couldn’t help but shiver.  But his mother had insisted that a little trip along the coast would do him some good.  Maybe even help him shake his fear a little, a fear that she insisted had stemmed from watching Jaws at too young and impressionable an age. 
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6 Comments

  1. I'm SHIVERING for this! Please send your query, 1-2 page synopsis, and the first ten pages to queries at azantianlitagency dot com with "NoQS: TITLE by Name" in the subject line. Thanks! I look forward to reading on! -Jennifer Azantian

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