Okay, we have our first winner, chosen in random fashion by my own son. And the winner is Kimberly! Hopefully there is much rejoicing in the frozen wastelands of Canada (just kidding, I love the place).
I'm starting to feel bad that we'll only have a few winners. This morning made me feel like we chose over thirty losers instead of one winner. Oh well. Sorry. I promise I'll do something else when the actual ARCs come out in November.
Okay, time for our next topic for the comments. Kimberly, remember that you are still eligible for the Grand Prize, so you can keep entering. For complete rules, CLICK HERE.
Today I'd like you to share a one-sentence idea for a book. Or a movie. Or a play. Or a ballet. Whatever. This is often called your pitch, and I really love it when it can be condensed to one short sentence. You don't have to be a writer to do this! And don't worry, I won't steal it. I already have 1,734,962 ideas in my head. If you can't think of anything new, give a pitch for your favorite book or movie. You can do it.
Today's example: Brandon Mull has a picture book coming out, and his pitch was simple: It's about a boy's imaginary friend becoming his imaginary enemy.
Have at it!
Here's an idea:
ReplyDeleteA girl's addiction to Chinese food becomes dangerous, even deadly, when all the strange fortunes she finds come true.
hm, i would have to say:
ReplyDelete"its a book about a boy that can manipulate dreams, until he is trapped in his own nightmare unable to excape"
~DreamWeaver
An idea: a college freshman reluctantly becomes roommates with her estranged mother.
ReplyDeletejust read: Retelling of Cinderella, where stepmother is good and father, still alive, is "bad guy".
ReplyDeleteMelinda, that was too good.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea what to writer, I am NOT a creative writer...a girl goes on a date with "mr. Perfect" only to find that he is entirely something different.
ReplyDeleteUGh!
Congrats to Kimberly!
ReplyDeleteAn idea: A modern love story based on the legend of Tristan and Isolde.
Congrats on one year of blogging Mr. Dashner Dude! :)
OK This is weak, but I couldn't think of something else so its from a short thing I wrote:
ReplyDeletePuck, the King of Tricksters, curses a young boy with the curse of the light switches. No matter where he goes or the time of day, if he sees a light switch he is forced to flip it.
How about:
ReplyDeleteOn her way home from work, an honest girl gets caught up in a supernatural robbery and ends up in a world where she must turn into a robber to survive.
(I'm not very good at this!)
"A collection of true stories capturing each woman's life during their fifth pregnancy."
ReplyDeleteA YA novel:
ReplyDeleteWhen an excrutiatingly shy 17 year old girl wins a national competition, she is thrust into a world of fame and fortune, which wreaks havoc on her vertigo.
Yeah. That's why I'm not published yet. Egads!
But this torture is worth a chance to win an ARC! :)
An idea: A 12 year old boy is told that he and every thing else in his magical land have alternate selves in an alternate dimensions, and he is taken to be taught how to communicate with them.
ReplyDeleteHappy Anniversary!
ReplyDeleteI’m sad I missed Day One.
Here’s a pitch for a YA Sci-fi/fantasy, which I hope to write after my current projects:
A cell-phone-shaped time-travel device, preprogrammed to enlist a brilliant scientist in an effort to save Earth from an attack by ‘killer cell phones’, recruits the scientist’s audacious teenage daughter instead.
A one-sentence pitch is hard; I’m leaving so much out! Well, here’s crossing my fingers. I’m not sure it will help; everybody is making such great pitches already :)
Thanks for the festivities, James. This is fun.
This is my sci-fi novel:
ReplyDeleteGenetically programmed to kill, Suda fights her biology and follows her grandmother's gentler ways until she faces the ultimate choice: to exact revenge upon her grandmother's killer--her faster, stronger, younger brother--or to keep the promise she made at her grandmother's deathbed and somehow try to save him.
I am having the best day! Lost three pounds, got a fabulously sweet email from an old friend, my kids haven't fought once yet (and it's already 11am!), and I won! I really won!
ReplyDeleteI am not a person who wins things! Ha! Take that "Kim's a loser" ideology!
Okay, enough exclamation marks. I'm going to submit my idea just for fun:
A society dominated by the mystic powers of rocks and the people able to control them is torn apart when new explorations unearth rocks that prove to be sentient.
- Rock Singer
When three kids are transported back in time they have to stop the bad guys and claim the magical object that will send them home.
ReplyDeleteI need to work on this pitch, but here's what I have for my novel.
ReplyDeleteA princess discovers running away won't solve all the problems her abusive uncle placed on her, especially when one problem is a salt allergy that transfigures her into a random animal.
Wow, there are some good idea's in this comment section.
ReplyDeleteI would write a book about:
A man, who can see into the future, sees two different futures for America. One, the History we know and the other a completely different reality, where the English didn't lose to America's Army.
there is a lot more that I would like to say, but the I've already got two sentences.
Aaron Brower.
I'm in a rush, but how's this:
ReplyDeleteUnbeknownst to Verla Mae, a coven of Irish vampires slowly penetrates the Hoboken Pinochle Society, transforming not only the climate of the game, but Verla’s Mae’s heart as well.
You like? :)
A family moves into an old house, where the kids find a treasure map leading them through the ruins inhabiting an overgrown area behind their house.
ReplyDeleteOkay, here's mine:
ReplyDelete"Dedicated to protecting a family secret, an elderly woman must decide who to trust and how much to reveal before someone with too much to hide silences her for good."
Moments: A dialogue about Living, Life and Lesson’s Learned: Extraordinay moments in an ordinary woman's life.
ReplyDeletewow, there are alot of people here...i was hoping not many would show...
ReplyDeleteHere you go:
ReplyDeleteA girl meets a wandering bard from medieval times who was accidentally transported to the current days and must help him find a way home.
A young boy’s dream comes true when he finds out his teacher’s been transported to another planet--until he goes to school the next day.
ReplyDeleteHmmm, how about this one?
ReplyDeleteNot one student shows up for school except for Kim, and as she wanders the empty hallways she notices something even stranger; the teachers don't notice that the students are all gone.
James--one of my students today said that he wanted to take your book home--the last one in the Jimmy Fincher series. This might not seem too crazy to you, but previous to this the same student said he hated books and they were completely boring and he hated reading and couldn't even read very well. Yet, after 20 minutes of reading your last book (other students were reading the other books in the series) he wanted to take it home.
The students are really intrigued by your comments to them and at least one student in each class is reading your series AND liking them. Cool, eh?
A 30-something woman sends 3 of her 4 kids to school, has the patience to entertain her now-only-child-3-year-old, get the housework done, the laundry done, and feel rested before the 3 kids, and all their chaos, come home at 3:00.
ReplyDeleteHmm, a one-line pitch for my novel...
ReplyDeleteA young boy, Gifted in one of six Aspects of Power, joins five other Gifted youths as he searches for assistance in mastering both his Gift and his destiny.
I'd love to read Maze Runner...
My pitch?
ReplyDelete"A guy tries to come up with a one line pitch for a book, but can only think about heading to FL tomorrow for vacation."
Lame, but true!
Congrats on the anniversary, James! Looking forward to the upcoming books.
An operative from a super-secret underground organization poses as a famous author, and writes books containing fantastically difficult mind-bending puzzles in order to keep youth too busy to realize that the alternate worlds they are reading about are real. Sometimes he maintains a blog to complete the illusion.
ReplyDelete(Please pick me?)
ReplyDeleteA page must help his foreign princess/ambassador through political turmoil, grief, and betrayal.
Does it count if I've already told you the idea? Oh well, here goes:
ReplyDeleteWhen mysterious deaths start happening in her neighborhood, a seriel killer's daughter fears she may be taking after her father.
A girl finds a leather journal buried in her grandmother's old flower garden, and discovers that her grandmother lived a life of high adventure in africa before she married her grandfather.
ReplyDeleteObservers witness a girl riding a tandem bicycle all alone -- they muse on how this could have happened.
ReplyDeleteHere's my go:
ReplyDeleteA young princess, who prefers to dress as a commoner, takes matters into her own hands when her pet dragon mysteriously disappears.
Wow, so many great entries, and they all sound much better than the story I'm currently working on. But here goes!
ReplyDeleteAn operative of the British secret service goes undercover in the household of a female engineer to find out who's blackmailing her into stealing a top-secret government drone.
Congratulations Kimberly!
ReplyDeleteA young woman from London suddenly finds herself in Boston on the eve of the Revolutionary War. She has no memory of how she got there and she has to try to find her way home. However, in the meantime, she becomes simpathetic to the American cause.
Sorry, I'm a historical fiction sorta gal...
Adopted at birth, a desperate young women searches for her birth family in hope of normalcy only to find she was adopted within family and she must create her own path to a better life.
ReplyDeleteYou guys are brilliant. Brilliant!
ReplyDeletenobody supects the butterfly
ReplyDelete