Manuscript Title: Silence
Category/Genre: New Adult Contemporary
Word Count: 84,000
If your MC was an Easter Egg, what flavor would s/he be?: I’m the cracked, unwanted egg in the back of the package, oozing chocolate cream.
35 Word Pitch: Carli struggles to be perfect, hiding her hearing loss and debilitating headaches. When she meets Reed, his deafness shows her imperfect can be perfect. She’ll lose his love unless she learns to accept herself.
First 300-words of Manuscript:
The minute the professor opened his mouth I knew it would be a long semester. The muffled sound struck a vein deep inside my skull, vibrating a nodule of tension destined to trigger one of my frequent headaches. I slid my hand up under my long brown hair, scratched my cheek as a decoy, and then ran my finger over the microphone of one hearing aid. Static rang loud and clear, confirming my suspicions. My hearing aids were fine.
The professor was the problem.
His booming voice ricocheted an accent off the walls of the small classroom. An accent I identified as…not from around here. Dr. Ashen’s thick, bushy mustache covered his top lip. He said something to the class and gestured to our textbook. Around me, students shifted, pages turned, pens moved.
I shifted too and flicked my pen against a random page of my thick book. Nerves battled with complete and utter boredom. Words spilled from his bottom lip and I couldn’t understand one fucking sound. Survival skill 101 of having a hearing loss: blend in. I’d grown skilled at blending, to the point where I had almost mastered the task of invisibility. No cloak required. Take that, Harry Potter.
I always, always, always heard my teachers. Until now.
Big Fuck Off Mustache + My Ears = Not Happening.
Mr. Scary Mustache glared my way. He tapped his textbook, and went right on speaking.
I couldn’t see his book, tapping it did not let me know what page we were on. Moron. I rolled my eyes and landed on my neighbor’s book instead. After memorizing the design of her page, I shuffled through my own until I found the corresponding layout.
I scanned through the words, hoping something, anything, would match what Mr. Scary Mustache said. Nothing did.
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