An Agent's Inbox #18

Dear Agent,

Please find enclosed the first 250 words of PLAYING PREDATOR, a steampunk New Adult retelling of “Little Red Riding Hood” with dark romantic elements. It will appeal to fans of steampunk authors Gail Carriger, Kady Cross, and Meljean Brook, and to readers who wish to see more diversity. The estimated word count is 85,000.

Scarlett Zhou vows to save her virginity for marriage. Haunted by the sexually-transmitted disease VAIN, which killed both of her parents, Scarlett studies at Sylva University with the hopes of researching for a cure. While she is determined to stay pure throughout her academic career, one wolfishly handsome professor, Jude Tanner, sees her virginity as a prize to be won. As much as Scarlett denies his advances, he knows that she is not as innocent as she seems. When Jude catches Scarlett violating a university policy, he makes a deal: she can choose to stay a virgin until marriage, or be expelled from Sylva University and become his slave.

Of course Scarlett chooses the former, and despite their growing friendship and common goal to find a cure for VAIN, Jude tempts her and slowly gnaws away her innocence. Will Scarlett be able to honor her parents’ deaths by remaining a virgin and finding a cure? Or will she succumb to her love and lust for Professor Tanner and become his slave?

I am a published writer specializing in speculative fiction with people of color, as demonstrated by Amok: An Anthology of Asia-Pacific Speculative Fiction (2014), and in gothic romance, as shown in the anthology Darker Edge of Desire (2014), in which my short story, “Devoured by Envy,” was praised by Publishers Weekly as the “most Gothic of the successful stories.” I am also an active member of the BDSM community in San Francisco, and a biology major at UC Berkeley--two very different experiences that have lent inspirations to the subjects and setting in my novel.

Thank you so much for your time and consideration.

Cordially,

J.W.

PLAYING PREDATOR

Chapter One--Deathbed

My mother did not want me to tell her good-bye. In her last moments, she refused to have me by her deathbed.

“Please,” she implored my father with the labored rise and falls of her chest, “take the children to the cellar.”

“Scarlett! Teddy! Hurry along now!”

“No!” I clutched my mother’s thin hand as I collapsed to my knees. I took no heed of the blue veins that bulged along her fingers, of the shadows staining the hollows of her eyes, nor of her parched, papery lips. She was immortalized in my memory with her midnight tresses, the flush of her fair skin, and the warmth of health blooming in her smooth, supple palms.

“Mama, I don’t want to go! I want to stay with you!”

Mother gasped. A bead of sweat rolled past her temple. She pressed her free hand to her throat as she coughed, lurching on her back, the final minutes of her life forcing spasms along her spine.

Baba yanked on my shoulder. He held my little brother, Teddy, by one hand.

“Scarlett, time to go! Down to the cellar.”

Turning a deaf ear to my screeches, he slung me over his broad shoulder, as easily as a burlap sack. He whisked Teddy and me out of the bedchamber to the kitchen. Coriander and ginger scented the air, and darkness slammed above my head. With the snap of the lock, Baba trapped my brother and me among the sacks of flour, rice, and dried fruit.