My Pitch

I'm writing a pitch at the present time, because I'm submitting Dorobo to the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Competition!  I'm sooooo nervous!! And super excited!!  I wanted to share what I have thus far of my pitch... I'm going to submit it soon-time, along with the rest of my novel, and I thought I would share (:  There are some **SPOILERS** after the break because the pitch is really supposed to give a lot away (not too much, though actually).  Anywho, here it is (after lots and lots of tweaking)...

Something’s in the air… but it’s not oxygen. 

There is no sun.  The environment is toxic.  Every survivor is an empty soul willing to kill for one more breath of clean air.  There are no morals, no laws, no last names.

Nitra’s the last alive in her family.  At sixteen, she’s more miserable than most teenagers.  If it weren’t for Thane, the twenty-five year old ex-cop who forced her to survive the icy apocalypse, and his little brother Lium, she’d never find the will to live.  To supply their mismatched family with oxygen, Nitra and Thane become a recon team for an O2 thief ring: the Dorobo.  The all-but brother-sister duo is sent on a typical mission; however, they find themselves caught in the crosshairs of a rival gang.  In the pandemonium, they discover mind-shattering news… oxygen production has ceased and Earth could freeze to its core at any moment. 

Nitra and Thane volunteer for a perilous mission in unfamiliar territory to unravel the supposed solution to Earth’s problems—the rumored poison-resister plants that supply unlimited oxygen.  When circumstances turn deadlier than usual, which is saying a lot, the pair is separated.  Nitra must collaborate with a dangerous, unfortunately attractive, foe because Thane’s being held hostage to ensure her cooperation.  After waking up in mounds of garbage, Thane trudges alone through Earth’s underground slums in search of his “sister”. 

Through alternating perspectives we experience the unique journey of two tough survivors at their most vulnerable.  Is Nitra’s captor, Luton, that bad of a guy, or are her questions of his intentions the result of raging hormones and Stockholm syndrome?  Has Thane really found someone willing to help him search, or is the curiously familiar old man just another self-serving zombie ready to kill for one more breath?