This is the pitch letter for Juju's Child, my debut New Adult novel, coming from Grand Central/Forever Yours.
Black mud oozes between my toes as I shift my weight and jerk on the rope, sending up a cloud of midges and the rotten-egg stench of stagnant swamp water…
Ripples undulate across the surface of the water, spreading in my direction. My breath catches, and I fumble for the knife. Those aren’t natural waves. Something’s beneath the surface. Something big. I jerk on my leg, panting. With each heave, I sink deeper, unable to break the suction holding me prisoner. If it was a gator I’d already be dead. But, I’m not. So what is it? Why hasn’t it attacked?
A flash of white from the corner of my eye—
When twenty-year-old Malaise LaCroix finds a dead girl floating in the bayou, she makes the mistake of reporting the murder to the police. She’s naive enough to think the girl’s parents will be grateful, but Mama warns her otherwise and hints at a darkness to come. Mala has always written off Mama’s interest in hoodoo as a quirk, more comical than some of her other habits. Unlike Mama, Mala thinks that believing in magic is for weak-minded fools. Until the dead girl starts haunting her.
The town believes that Mala’s great aunt was a New Orleans Hoodoo Queen, a descendent of the famous Seven Sisters. Cruel rumors have followed Mala her whole life, but now that she’s considered a suspect in the murder case, the rumors don’t seem so harmless. Even Landry, who’s had a crush on Mala for years, seems afraid to stray too close.
The girl’s desperate spirit needs Mala’s latent psychic gift, willing or not, to expose her murderer. And once the girl’s father, Reverend Prince, learns his daughter’s body has been drained of blood in what he assumes is a satanic ritual, he sets out on an old-fashioned witch-hunt. Mala knows the killer is still lurking nearby. To keep from becoming the murdered girl’s possession, or worse, Mala must accept the mysterious aspects of her family’s blood-stained hoodoo lineage. Landry proves to be an unlikely source of help. Trouble is, he seems to have his own agenda.
This is the query letter:
When seventeen-year-old Malaise LaCroix finds a dead girl floating in the bayou, she crosses her mama by reporting the murder to the police. She’s naive enough to think the girl’s parents will be grateful, but Mama warns her otherwise. Of course, once folk start dying, Mala wishes she’d listened and left the girl for gator–bait.
Mala’s innocence becomes overshadowed by the pesky rumors that her aunt is an infamous New Orleans Hoodoo Queen and her mama can shrivel a guy's, well, man-parts. Even the boy Mala’s in love with is afraid to stray too close. Thing is, Mala thinks believing in magic is for weak-minded fools, until the dead girl starts haunting her.
The desperate spirit crushes the minds of those she influences and needs Mala’s latent psychic gift, willing or not, to expose her murderer. And once the girl’s father, Reverend Prince learns his daughter’s body has been drained of blood in what he assumes is a magical ritual, he sets out on an old-fashioned witch-hunt.
To keep from becoming the soul’s possession, or worse, being burned at the stake, Mala turns to the two guy’s whose own agendas don’t include helping an outcast such as herself—the cop she’s pined after since ninth grade that is investigating the murder and the ghost’s grief-crazed brother who uses Mala’s attraction to him as a weapon for revenge.
In JUJU'S CHILD, a 79,000 word young Southern Gothic, Mala Lacroix is a teenage, African-American Sookie Stackhouse who gets caught up with the supernatural--ghosts instead of vampires--romance and murder This manuscript was inspired by my rich, Louisiana Creole cultural heritage.
