Skyla Arndt (YA Fantasy)
Author: Skyla Arndt (@ArndtSkyla)
Age Range: Young Adult
Genre: Contemporary Fantasy
Agent: Claire Freidman, Inkwell Management
The Query Letter:
Blending the haunting, icy backdrop of Winterwood, the small-town supernatural mystery of The Devouring Gray, and the cultish roots of Hereditary, TOGETHER WE ROT is a dual-POV YA contemporary fantasy with horror elements complete at 85,000 words. It is featured in the Pitch Wars 2020 showcase.
If SAT scores were based on Reddit fights and cafeteria brawls, seventeen-year-old Wil Greene would score a 1600. But she can barely keep her family motel afloat, much less focus on school, when she’s still reeling from her mother’s unsolved, ritualistic murder. In their frigid, suffocatingly small Michigan town, Wil has few friends and even fewer prospects--only the hope of one day bringing her mother’s killer to justice. So when she finds out that the sheriff is closing her mother’s case, Wil is ready to do anything to discover the truth, even if it means turning to her estranged ex-best friend: Elwood Clarke.
Raised inside the bell jar of his family’s cruel, reclusive cult, Elwood is the shy golden boy of Hartsgrove and the son of Wil’s top suspect. He’s the last person Wil wants to ask for help--and the least likely to expose his family’s secrets. But when Elwood learns of a dark ritual his family plans to conduct on the Cold Moon, he flees through the snow to the Greene Motel, hypothermic and fearing for his life.
Pursued by vicious cult followers and plagued by their own demons, Wil and Elwood reluctantly team up to investigate Elwood’s family and their connection to her mother’s death. But as Wil’s feelings for Elwood rekindle, Elwood begins a terrifying metamorphosis that makes him question his own humanity. Unless they stop the ritual before the Cold Moon and uncover the sinister truth at the rotted core of Hartsgrove, Wil will lose Elwood--and her chance at justice--forever.
I live in the same frozen Great Lakes region as Wil and Elwood. I am a novice at bug pinning (like Elwood) and a sucker for a good ghost story.