Blondie vs The Nuclear Family
Young Adult Speculative Mystery/ COMPLETED AND SHELVED
Blondie didn’t murder a billionaire with a PEZ dispenser, but when an incriminating amount of evidence suggests otherwise, she is sent to the town of Merriville, a community in the woods that replicates the 1950’s. Created by a mysterious group of wealthy businessmen, Merriville is the backdrop for a program that gives troubled youth the “perfect family” they never had, while embodying the ideals of an earlier era. But when Blondie’s complaints go from wearing dresses everyday and eating too much casserole, to finding a dead body at the school dance, she worries that smiling through her newly outdated lifestyle may not be her safest option.
After winning the trust of the town’s celebrity doctor, Blondie begins to unveil Merriville’s eerie secrets through his series of encoded messages and some sleuthing of her own. As she draws closer to the truth, the community’s picturesque portrayal begins to unravel. Cashiers glitch, cars randomly change colors, and her proxy parents show an uncanny emotional detachment. However, a hidden clock is ticking, and with her life and friendships on the line, Blondie must choose to trust the depiction around her, or destroy it all together.
If These Halls Could Talk
Young Adult Horror/ CURRENTLY ON SUBMISSION
Winnie knows a secret, and it’s eating her alive. Her entire town believes their star quarterback died because the local druggie started a barn fire, killing them both. But Winnie has discovered who really murdered her classmates: Juliet Talbot, town princess and the quarterback’s girlfriend. However, if Winnie reveals everything and destroys Juliet’s future, she also destroys her own mom’s livelihood as the housekeeper for Juliet’s family, and ruins her only chance of escaping her small town. Instead, she hides the dangerous truth, even as the guilt corrodes her into a husk of her former self.
When the attractive new kid invites Winnie to sneak into Heartbreak Hotel, a mysterious structure abandoned since the 1970s, she can’t resist breaking her self-isolation to chase her long-held curiosity about the infamous building. Little does she know Heartbreak Hotel has seen its own share of murders and holds a vendetta against secrets. It traps them inside, along with reformed bad-boy Jess, competitive soccer captain Cassie, and Juliet Talbot herself. Soon Winnie learns she isn’t the only one lying about the night of her classmates’ deaths. After finding the journal of one of the hotel’s former residents and being haunted by a ghoulish maid, they all must choose between keeping their secrets or reliving the hotel’s murderous past, at the risk of their lives.
If you are an editor or publishing house interested in this project, please contact Ali Herring at Spencerhill Associates.
The Shallow Dead
Young Adult Romance Horror/ CURRENTLY DRAFTING
Those who die in the town of Memento never leave. They simply carry on with their daily routines. But Theo doesn’t know that. When she’s kicked out of her mom’s house for self-destructive behavior, she’s sent to live in Memento with her estranged dad and ailing grandmother. The town’s remote location off the coast of Maine, and her strained relationship with her father, leaves Theo bitter and reluctant. Especially when the residents’ quirky behavior grows repetitive, her dad forbids her from leaving the house after dark, and her grandmother begins to lose her memory, leaving Theo with no one to confide in.
Until she meets Henry. Optimistic, with a troubled past, Henry is unrelenting in his pursuit of friendship with Theo. Just when she begins to let him in, and their friendship starts to grow into something more, Theo finds Henry’s obituary in last year’s newspaper and discovers the town’s ghostly secret. Horrified by the truth behind Memento, Theo withdraws from both Henry, and the strange residents she has begun to consider family. But when her grandmother’s condition worsens, Theo needs Henry and his knowledge of the town to unfold the mystery of why Memento holds onto its dead, and why their spirits are becoming increasingly feral with each passing day. As they draw closer to the answer, she must decide if she’ll doom the town to keep her newfound romance, or if she can let go of Henry, and the spirits she has grown to love, forever.
