An Agent's Inbox #13

Dear Ms. Jeglinski:

When seventeen-year-old Nadari Clarke is blinded, her Damage is the second reason her society wants her dead. The first reason she kept secret, with the help of her father, for ten years. She is a violinist.

With her father's influence, she escapes death and is instead sent to a place that holds hundreds of people, all Damaged. She soon learns they are all phenomenal artists as well. Musicians, artists and designers, whose televised executions were mandatory viewing, practice their art freely. In fact, the government commissions their art as propaganda to keep the rest of the citizens in line.

Nadari must relearn even simple things, like how to walk and how to eat, but not how to play the violin. She's the virtuoso she's always been, and those in charge want her music. So do a group of revolutionaries, who are busy making propaganda of their own. They want to prove to citizens that the Damaged aren't all dead, and neither is art. Solomon, a deaf painter and Nadari's only friend, tells her the revolutionaries are trouble and she should avoid them.

Then news reaches them that Nadari's father has gone missing, and the revolutionaries are more enraged than she is. Every step toward finding out why takes her deeper into a conspiracy that seems more likely with every revelation. But accepting it means accepting her father as a man she never really knew. And if he really is wanted by the government, going back home to find him makes reason number three she should be dead.

DAMAGED is a YA light dystopian complete at 78,000 words. It should appeal to those who enjoy the themes and writing of Gathering Blue and the grit and sense of place of Makiia Lucier’s A Death-Struck Year. I have a Bachelor’s degree in English and work as a technical editor. Per your guidelines, the first 250 words are pasted below.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

R.D.

DAMAGED

I am a criminal. It’s been ten years and I’ve never been caught, but every televised shooting reminds me the inevitable is just a bullet away. There was another one at midnight. They’re always at midnight and always at full volume. Muting the television doesn’t help. It’s impossible to sleep through them. Hours after the blast, I’m still shaken.

Thirteen, my favorite Blue, slips into my bedroom to clean. She does her job and I don’t do mine, staying perched on the edge of my bed, half-watching as she picks up my laundry. She runs a hand along her shaved head. “You okay?”

She practically raised me. I don’t acknowledge her.

When she leaves, my father, Aba, appears at the door. “Nadari? Are you ready yet?” He intrudes when I don’t answer. “Not even dressed?”

I glance at my closet. The Blues organize my clothes onto wooden hangers, shirts ironed, jeans folded evenly. To the far right are dresses I never wear. They block the tiny entrance to a room only my father and I know about. Inside is my violin. I think about the woman whose execution still rings in my ears. Hers was a flute. Close enough.

Aba follows my stare. “The police don’t go digging around Lair Hill,” he says. “They don’t think we commit those kinds of crimes.”

He’s kept me safe from suspicion for ten years. I should trust him.

I don’t.