First Chapters: Broken String Theory
A series on the novel pitches that don't get picked up.
I saw someone lament that there wasn’t enough fiction on substack, not enough short stories and poetry. I think some of that is the fear of long reach of AI and general piracy that is rife on the internet. I also think there is the hope that what you have can still be published somewhere at some point and you have to keep it hidden so no one steals your idea. I don’t think too much about that these days because I’ve been writing long enough to know that I’ve seen the same idea a thousand times done a thousand different ways. Living Single is Golden Girls is Girlfriends. It’s all the same idea, four single friends living together trying to find love, hijinks ensue.
No one can execute the idea the way you can. Given that, I want this newsletter to share good books, but also be a vehicle to share MY good books and not every good book you write and pitch gets picked up by publishers. It’s great to see the hits, but sometimes it can be helpful to see the misses.
I’ve written ten novels, but only three have seen the shelves at Barnes and Noble. I’m gonna share the pitches and the first chapters of those books that are still cooling on the shelf. Broken String Theory was an is a sci-fi romance set in a near future American dystopia. Given the Blue Origin debacle it seems as good a time as any to bring it back out.
Let me know what you think.
Broken String Theory (YA)
Query:
Disease and destruction have ravaged the planet, but one thing still has value...pretty young girls. Eve wants nothing else in the universe more than to be a Hopeful, one of those bright and shining young scientists chosen among millions to be colonists on Mars, and today is her last chance to make that happen. Even one more day at Miss Lorene’s School for Exceptional Girls will be too many.
Damian wants nothing else in the universe more than to finally find his mother and be free from his billionaire father’s reach. As head of his father’s security team he has access to surveillance all over the world, but if the man ever finds out what he’s doing, and who he’s been doing it for, a shared bloodline might not be enough to save him.
Damian and Eve are two very different people on two very different paths, but when the colony decides that couples are best for the future they’ll have to decide if the thing they want most in the universe is worth giving up the world for...together.
At over 90,000 words, BROKEN STRING THEORY, is an interracial science fiction romance told in dual perspectives. Fans of “These Broken Stars” by Amie Kaufman and “Matched” by Allie Condie will love its mix of near future dystopia and star-crossed romance.
First Chapter
“I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.”
Isaac Newton
Chapter 1 - The Old Life- Eve
Earlier That Morning
“I don’t care for old men.”
I don’t mean to start us on that old conversation. It’d only ruin our last morning together and turn the powdered sugar on the beignets to salt in our mouths. To her credit, Switch doesn’t take the half-hearted bait, she just shrugs and lets the statement whither in the morning breeze. It ruffles her red curls and cools the coffee in our cups. A jamaican blend one of the older girls left behind in a secret stash when she got matched and married. We aren’t allowed caffeine, sugar either, for the most part.
“You look old,” she teases.
“Glitch!” I quip back. She laughs into her cup and it disappears in grateful slurps.
I got three hours of dreamless sleep last night, slightly less than usual, but it was worth it to get my chores done early enough to avoid any objection to our morning fete.
We’re pretending to celebrate my birthday. We’re also faking a celebration of Switch’s appointment.
BP’s phony laughter tinkles as she chats at the end of our cobblestone walkway with Judge Parsons, the source of my ire for the moment. The wrought iron partition is the only protection we have against Lookie Lou’s like him. That and the electrified fence that flanks the back of the house and the six foot brick wall that it hinges on, but the front still harkens back to a gentler time when such measures weren’t needed. Our century old Victorian sits on two full acres here so we can afford to be a little lax with the security. It’s not like the private neighborhood security let anything get by them anyway. The Fruit of Islam have had the contract on this neighborhood for almost ten years, almost as long as I’ve been here. They’re okay, respectful, they don’t leer. The judge laughs at whatever BP’s going on about, and chances a step closer, crossing his arms over his sweaty Georgia Tech t-shirt, probably to make sure he keeps his hands to himself.
The judge always makes it a point to stop. I’ve spoken once or twice, but BP seems to be his favorite. His salt and pepper hair bounces as he begins to jog in place on the sidewalk. His eye catches mine and he waves. I smile brightly and reflexively wave back. Be pleasant. Respond to greetings in kind. Always have a ready smile.
“Good morning, Ash!” he yells. “Switch! Congratulations! What branch?” he yells.
Switch explains her placement in the half corporate half military branch of the GSS Security Corps she’s been forced into, a far cry from the Mission Corps we’ve all been killing ourselves to get into for the last five years. He pretends to listen all while smiling stupidly and counts himself lucky that he’s on a first name basis with Miss Lorene’s girls. Rumors about us and Miss Lorene’s School for Quality Girls are as vast and varied as raindrops in a hurricane.
As if on cue a delivery truck glides by. Judge Parson’s head turns and the roaming infrared eye picks up his ID and our running ad pops on its side. It’s my face this time, six feet tall and mysterious, as we all are in our white uniform hoods. It shrouds my eyes in faux piety, but you can tell it’s me – the mole on my left cheek, the deep red lips and thick braid that snakes out of the hood and rests on my breasts. I slowly smile as the tagline blooms just under the name:
Miss Lorene’s School for Quality Girls: A boarding school of the highest caliber. The finest students. The finest wives.
“Lookin’ good.” Switch offers.
“Ugh! I hate those ads,” I say.
“I don’t know why she insisted we wear the hoods,” Switch offers. I’d think seeing the merchandise would raise interest more.”
“It’s the mystery of it all. Every man can imagine that the girl of his dreams is under that hood.”
“Nah. I think she was just being cheap. You can run that ad until we’re both rocking our grandchildren.”
The ads and our Picstream feed just add fodder to the rumor mill. Miss Lorene hired one of the city girls, too homely to be real competition, and too poor to turn down the cash, to take pictures of us going through our day to post on our feed. Our faces are always obscured, but there’s always a mouth, smile, or casually placed finger on a chin to add intrigue. Some of the other schools have full time cameras installed, but you don’t have control about what people see with those, and she’s all about control.
Current rumors are as follows:
our feet are so delicate we have to wear custom shoes when we walk outside
the Good Lady (aka Miss Lorene) had our ribs removed to maintain our figures
we only have two day periods, and
our shits smell like chocolate pudding
Outrageous lies. Some of them are true. Some of them we started ourselves in whispers through those very wrought iron gates on days like today. Belief is what matters. It’s what the Good Lady counts on. It’s what she profits in. But back to the judge...
“Impressive!” Judge Parsons offers with seemingly genuine admiration, that or something less civil as he blinks dramatically. I know he thinks an iris camera makes him look monied and hip, but the blinking from the dry eye it causes makes him look like a drug addict.
Douche.
“Well, good luck then,” he offers before he picks his knees up to his chest and pads off down the street. We’ll find the video of the conversation on his PicStream feed later today and request a deletion, but everyone he wants to impress will have seen it by then.
“You’re too hard on them you know,” BP barks at me as she strides up the wooden steps to make her way back to the porch.
“I didn’t say anything,” I say.
Not that she could hear anyway.
“So, what? I can see it on your face. Richard can tell you hate him,” BP says.
“So we’re on a first name basis now? Do you call him ‘Dick’ during your little morning chats,” I reply.
“I would. He looks like a Dick,” Switch teases.
We both giggle.
BP rolls her eyes. “You never know when you might need a friend after the trials, and Judge Richard Parsons is a good friend indeed.”
“I can’t believe the Good Lady lets you talk to him,” I add.
“She’s grateful I do. The skeletons in her closet could start a football team.”
Her voice drops to a whisper at the end of the sentence and we all turn our heads toward the door, then the porch windows. We sit in silence for a second or two letting the creak of the porch fans snatch our voices. She’s listening. Even if she isn’t listening, she hears.
“I dislike him and all the men like him for good reason. There is no market if there is no buyer,” I counter.
“And you would know,” Switch mumbles.
The insult stings. I’ve never had to go on a date. Scratch that. I’ve never been allowed to. Switch has been on too many to count, and she’d be going on more if her physical exam had come back clean. No, if the test had come back like we all expected it to she wouldn’t be here at all. She’d be on the Lunar base in the final phase of her training for the colony, but girls with ovarian failure aren’t fit to be colonists. Girls who can’t have babies aren’t fit to be wives. They don’t get dreams, they get work. She bites her lip and reaches out for my hand in apology. I know she doesn’t mean to be a pain.
Silence falls over us for a moment. Her stockings, white, which is traditional, pool around her ankles like a garter snake that hasn’t shed his skin, while with each slow breath she closes her eyes. Her customary engagement suit, also snow white, swells and deflates like a cocoon. Needle didn’t really have time to tailor the jacket like she would have liked. There was no time. No one would have thought she’d wash out of the running on a technicality and it doesn’t matter if you move by marriage or military, the suit is the same. My funny friend taps her feet in heels she’s not used to wearing and the French veiled pancake hat pinned to her head looks a little too small for her frizzy red french braid. Still, she’s pretty, as pretty as she’ll ever be again. I try to memorize her face. I’m making every effort to record every hollow and curved bone.
The screen door swings open and Honey dances onto the porch, setting a silver tray steaming with fresh beignets in front of us. She’s already talking. Honey is on her sixth crush of the week and like always she’s tempting fate with her declarations of love.
“Mrs. Honey M. Chang. No, no. The Young Mrs. Damian S. Chang.” she muses. A slight breeze rustles the hem of her linen drawstring pants against her bare feet.
“…was married in a late June celebration held at Piedmont Park. In absence of her father, who was killed in a tragic panda attack at the Atlanta Zoo.”
Our tiny engagement party bursts into laughter.
“You aren’t going to tell him your real name?” Switch asks as she reaches for the one of the piping hot confections.
“No. I like Honey better than my real name.”
We collectively roll our eyes.
“So about this freakish panda attack? I thought your father was killed in a submarine malfunction when you married Jack Baldwin?” I tease, remembering her last wedding announcement to one of the President’s many sons.
“He recovered. I guess the mouth of hell proved harder to find than he thought,” Honey sings.
“They do say you can never go home again,” I tease again.
“Who says?”
We roll our eyes again. Honey’s my favorite of the little sisters, but she’s hopelessly naive.
“Aren’t you getting a little too old to be mooning over completely unattainable guys. The boy crazy thing is getting a little old,” BP chastises. She’s tall and her long athletic legs are crossed leisurely at the knee as if she’s superwoman taking a coffee break. We wear silk soled toe slippers for clinic hours. Supposedly, they make it easier to walk silently, but I think the Good Lady just likes the Asian aesthetic. The shoes look silly on BP’s large feet though.They aren’t ugly, just big and somewhat inelegant. They’re feet meant for combat boots or platform heels. Either that or nothing at all.
“Damian Chang is not unattainable. His birthday is January 17th. He’s nineteen years old, the youngest of three boys and his favorite sport is Soccer. His father is the richest man on the planet and he’s a devout Christian, just like me. ”
“Yeah, and none of that is remotely verifiable. The Teen Bop feeds are notorious for lying and you don’t even know what he really looks like. He runs his Dad’s security team doesn’t he? They wear those weird face masks,” I offer as I bite into one of the pillowy doughnuts, floating momentarily into culinary heaven. I’ve often had nightmares starring nameless men in those feature obscuring plastic masks.
“I’m too boy crazy?” Honey asks.
Switch, BP and I all answer in unison. “Yes.”
“Fine. You want me to drop the boys? I can do that. Has that delicious looking Mr. Lancaster jogged by yet?”
“Just missed Parsons,” Switch offers.
“Ewww. He’s like fifty if he’s a day,” I joke.
“So what! He’s on the down swing. I’m sure he’s easy to please at his age. I can finally be the woman of leisure I’ve been trained to become.”
“Girl, get off of our porch,” I chuckle, shooing her back into the house.
“Yes, I don’t want to hear anything about old men looking for young wives. I want to enjoy my time with my friends,” Switch teases.
BP clears her throat and raises her cup. “To the loveliest girl Georgia ever bore. This is your season. This is your time.”
I raise mine to Switch and follow BP’s lead. “To Miss Lorene’s School for Quality Girls, where selection, service and sweetness are the only rules of the day.”
“Here, here” Switch adds with a mocking smile and then she laughs, but some of the humor is gone. I giggle, but the water in my eyes belies my true feelings. Switch can only nod and take one last sip of coffee before Miss Lorene appears in the shadows of the open front door. Switch’s transport car has arrived.
Despite the heat Miss Lorene’s dressed in knee high black leather boots and a vintage black a-line dress with crinoline. Black lace kid gloves cover her thin fingers. Teardrop pearls dangle from her ears and her hair is pulled severely into her ubiquitous ballerina’s bun. Of course, her lips are covered in the deepest of reds. She’s striking. Beautiful and terrifying in her perfection, as if she’s the example of what we should be.
A square jawed officer exits the blue and green vehicle and pushes the call box outside of the wrought iron gate. The bell rings throughout the house and out onto the porch, but Miss Lorene will make him wait. She doesn’t ever move until she’s good and ready.
Like trained dogs, we line up, elbow-to-elbow, ready for inspection, instruction or insult. Lunar barks at the tension in the air before Switch walks over and activates the sleep mode under his chin. Built to look like a Beagle/Collie mix, Switch built her from scratch and coded her to filth, weaving solar fibers into her fur so that she recharges on walks. It doesn’t occur to me until his glass eyes flash blue and then dim that he won’t be going with her.
Cool air rushes from the open door and dries the sweat on my neck. BP is tallest so she stands in front and curtsies first. Switch bends as if to follow her lead but stops mid-movement. I can’t see her face, but I know that something is wrong. She’s taking too long to bend, too long to defer. She straightens her back and tilts her chin to yell over her shoulder.
“Officer whatever your name is, you got a uniform for me in that transport?”
“I do,” he calls back in a bold tenor. Miss Lorene still hasn’t moved to let him in.
“That’ll work.”
Knowing that something is off Miss Lorene shoos Honey back into the house with an almost imperceptible tilt of her head. She’d been spying from inside the door. Though my head is bowed I can see Switch pull the pin from her hat and toss it on the ground through my eyelashes. At first she’s mumbling while she pulls out the braid in her hair, but by the time she kicks off her heels and begins pulling down her stockings everyone can hear her clearly.
“To my venerated teacher, Miss Lorene Deveaux, I leave my stockings. Gently worn, they may be, they still have a wiff of my ass which I implore her to kiss.”
My eyes go wide and I bite my tongue to keep from laughing. Though I am screaming inside, I don’t move even the smallest muscle. I don’t dare.
Switch throws off her jacket, as she backs down the stairs into the sunlight, out of the reach of the Good Lady and shimmies out of her skirt.
“To BP, I leave my collection of Horror stream codes. You know where to find them.”
BP doesn’t flinch. I’m sure she’s staring out of the corner of her eyes as I am, straining to see what Switch will do next.
The blouse is tossed to the yard.
“To Eve, my sweet, shy friend, I leave you the love of my life.”
In bare feet she rushes back onto the porch and pulls me down the stairs and into the sun with her. It takes all of my courage to follow her and not let my body go limp against the porch.
She grips both of my hands and stares into my eyes. Her hair is wild with a single tear streaking down her cheek, a face filled with more joy than I have ever seen.
“I am sorry for her. I don’t know what she’ll do to you for this, but you can still win,” Switch whispers. From some inconspicuous place she slips a folded piece of paper into my hands and closes my fist around it.
The officer coughs, shattering the moment.
“That’s my time folks! Ya’ll take care now!”
If you were looking from across the street I guess it would like she was waving, but up close the middle finger is unmistakeable. A minute later she is gone.
Inside I’m laughing, screaming, crying. I’m rolling around in the grass at the hilarity of it all. I’m leaping in the air with my fist pumping to the rhythm of a Soca song. I’m singing “Did you see that?” In my best imitation of Marion Anderson at the Lincoln Memorial...on the inside. But on the outside I’m as still as if I’d been planted. I don’t move until I hear the swish of Miss Lorene’s dress as she moves inside. The door is left open. I know what to do.
I pitched this one to my agent and it’s about five years old. At the time dystopian novels were on the way out in regards to popularity and he felt it needed more tightening. It’s been cooling ever since.
What do you think?
I was getting into this💕 engaging! I wish I was an acquisition editor!
I know I’d keep reading!