Congratulations to our Race to Query Winners!
After dozens of queries and intriguing proposals and manuscripts, the Lucinda Literary team is pleased to announce the fiction and nonfiction winners for our first official Race to Query Challenge. Keep reading to find out more about the winning queries and why they were appealing to the Lucinda Literary team.
Fiction
Jonathan Jordan: The Questionable Quest of Dawsun Coppermoon (Adult Fiction)
Abandoned at Surlybrook Children’s Shelter, Dawsun Coppermoon grows up with both a gift and a curse: a photographic memory—and a condition in which he can only speak in questions. When he is forced to leave the shelter at eighteen, he sets out to discover his mysterious past with a scrap of paper as his only clue. Along the way, he’s helped by a young widow, a potentially magic hobo, and a three-legged dog who speaks Morse code.
This writer brings a unique voice to the familiar story of an orphaned protagonist whose life is just beginning. The characters are vividly described in both look and personality, and fit naturally into the whimsical yet grounded setting. The story is also excellently paced in the excerpt.
Nonfiction
Erica Lipper: Sing Me Awake (Memoir)
Sing Me Awake is a memoir about the decades-long journey to recover a lost history. At age fifteen, I uncovered a staggering family secret. After fleeing Nazi Germany and settling in the US, my grandparents had a disabled child who died in an accident as a teenager. His life was completely erased from our history. With an unflinching look at family dynamics, the book explores the strange ways history reconfigures itself in each generation, and the unexpected mission I had to complete.
We were drawn to several timely and timeless elements of this story, like mental health, immigration, the Jewish American experience, and family secrets. The warm, personal writing style is also great for this particular story.
Christopher Ferguson: Thieves of Forever (YA Fantasy)
For Alondra el Sol y las Estrellas, the strange and gruesome death of her mother shattered her life. But what if she could go back through time and steal the past so that her mother never died at all? At sixteen, she inherits from her mother the ability to open and create portals through space and time disguised as ordinary paintings. Alondra crosses through these panoramas in her desperate scheme to undo settled events. But a shadowy figure manipulates her every step toward a darker future.
In the vein of other successful YA novels, this story features an intelligent and outspoken protagonist whose capabilities ground the story’s otherwordly plot elements. Alondra brings emotionality and intrigue to the story, which is otherwise well-paced and eager to unveil its mysteries to the reader.
Congratulations winners! You have made great strides with your pitch (and your sample material) and we’re so pleased to give you this spotlight.
Lucinda Literary will run this contest again next year! Please make sure to stay on our newsletter list to learn about this and other free opportunities for writers in our community.
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