The Writer's Voice -- SAVING SNOW (YA Lite Sci-Fi FTR)

I am so unbelievably excited to have been chosen by the Rafflecopter gods to enter The Writer's Voice!!! Fingers crossed I'll make it into the next round :) Here goes:

SAVING SNOW

YA Lite Sci-Fi Fairytale Retelling

66,000 Words

QUERY:

In a futuristic society where soul-imaging suits are required attire and the color of a person’s image determines status, privilege, and share of precious few resources, seventeen-year-old Violet White’s gray suit constantly reminds her – and everyone else – of the taint on her soul.

In the aftermath of an electromagnetic car crash, Violet’s perfectly pure sister, Snow, goes missing. Hoping to clear her taint with an altruistic deed, Violet chases a lead into a soul extremist camp, but is confronted with evidence implicating her mother. Mrs. White kidnapped Snow, put her into an artificial coma, and skimmed her daughter’s pure soul image to display it as her own.

As much as it hurts, Violet must expose her mother, but how can a girl in a gray suit compete with the purest of them all? With the government convinced of her guilt, and her father blinded by the system, only Violet can save her sister, but she has to do it before she’s caught and convicted of a crime she didn’t commit.

SAVING SNOW is a YA light sci-fi Snow White retelling and is complete at 66,000 words. The fast pace and thriller element of this story will appeal to fans of Debra Driza’s MILA 2.0 while fans of Jodi Meadows’ INCARNATE will enjoy the main character’s relationship with and exploration of the human soul.

FIRST 250:

Fear of the impure battled the thrill of walking among them until a man brushed my arm. Fear won. I sucked in a breath and jerked away from the deep blue glow of his suit as if impurity were contagious. Maybe it was.

My palms stuck to the silky material hugging my hips as I ran my hands down my sides. The familiar motion usually calmed my nerves, but with my soul suit disconnected, my heart raced and I couldn’t manage a deep breath.

“We should go,” I said. My gaze wandered over charred buildings, cracked electronic billboards, and angry furrows where light rail tracks had been dug out and used to support the crude shacks lining the square’s perimeter. The impure had destroyed the old city.

At home, soul suits were mandatory, but here I wasn’t the only one without my soul image on display. Most people wore loose, scratchy-looking shirts and pants that revealed nothing about who they were, or what they were capable of. They could be anything: pure or impure, harmless or deadly. I ran my upper lip through my teeth and tasted salt. The unknown twisted my imagination and filled my mind with sick possibilities.

Ryan caught my elbow and I forced my attention onto his worried face. “You go ahead,” he said. “I’ll meet you back at the bikes.”

My attention slid toward the flicker of a soul suit in the crowded square where a man offered dried meat in exchange for purified water. I’d never seen a wild animal in my life, and I considered the possibility that the flesh was human.