So, I entered The Writer’s Voice contest this year this year, and boy am I glad I did!  I’d entered a couple of other pitch contests before this (Pitch Madness and Pitch Slam, both of which were lots of fun and great opportunities), but The Writer’s Voice was by far my favorite.  Why you ask?  Because this one had a twist the other two didn’t.  This one asked you to submit your query, and the lucky few that were chosen for a slot got their query critiqued by published writers and fellow contestants.

Wow.  Awesome.   Really.  Just awesome.

Like most writers, I’ve struggled mightily and for many a long hour trying to wrestle my queries into shape.  But even when they’re done, they always need work.   Always need another set of eyes looking at them.  Another mind – one that doesn’t know your story - asking questions.  So I entered the contest and got in through the random chance of Rafflecopter selection.  Me and one hundred and fifty other anxious writers.  Four coaches and their assistants (published authors all) pored over the entries and made their selections: four teams, each with just eight slots, just thirty-two of the original one hundred and fifty advancing to the agent round.  You can imagine how surprised, pleased and completely ecstatic I was to have the entry for my sci-fi novel SimSim chosen by Brenda Drake and Heather Webb for Team Brenda.

Over the next few days, Heather and Brenda helped me and my other seven teammates polish our entries, making them shiny and amazing before the agents were allowed to see them.  Amazingly, my query mostly passed muster…mostly thanks to my Inkbot friends who had already hacked it up once.   And with a few nips here and a tuck or two there, the 250 was as well.  Now the real waiting began.

For the next day and half days, agents snuck through the entries, leaving comments for the ones they liked and wanted to read more about.  The coaches did their best to keep up with them, sending tweets marked #TheWVoice to provide updates to everyone hovering in cyberspace.  That was nice, but most of us were too impatient for that.  Most of us were furiously refreshing our coach’s blog site, hoping to see the number of comments for our entry change to something other than zero.  I got lucky – I got a request relatively early on.  Phew!  Happy dance!  Turns out it was the only request I got, but what a good one.  What a big one.  Sara Megibow.  Holy freaking cow.  Happy dance times ten. 

So after nearly three weeks it’s all over.   Those of us who got requests are basking in the short-lived glory of being chosen, feeling badly for our teammates who weren’t, but mostly just hoping the request for a partial or full manuscript turns into something more.  Turns into the offer of agent representation we all work so hard for, and which can open so many doors in the publishing industry.  I know I am.  But even if it doesn’t, I’m walking away with a kickass query and a tiny bit of swagger.  Not too much, mind you.  And it probably won’t last – we writers tend to be an overly self-critical bunch - but for today…swagger.  Oh yeah.

This is Oliver.  He showed up back in February, just out of the blue, an infrequent visitor that would skitter by the door, wary of humans in the way of most cats.  Stray or feral, we really weren’t sure, not for a long time.

February was a cold snowy month, as always.  Only February 2014 was a bit colder and snowier than usual.  My husband (George) was away for a few weeks when we got our really big snow.  Almost three feet that fell over the course of a day and a night.  I thought about our furry visitor and started to worry.  Domesticated cats stand less than a foot from the ground.  How would he hunt?  How would he find his way around in this deep, drifting ocean of snow?  I put food out – just in case, just to get him through to the melt – and magically it disappeared.  I didn’t see him at first, not for a couple of days, and half wondered if it was a raccoon or an opossum I was feeding and not the little grey tabby cat at all.  And then I saw him, sneaking by the sliding glass door.

Food in the morning, food at night, a furry shadow creeping by the door, glancing in and then moving on.  That was the routine for the next few weeks.  I confessed to George about the feeding before he came home.  He pretended to be disapproving (“We don’t need more cats, Jennie) and he was right to be.  We already had two cats – both female, both spayed, both incredibly spoiled – and we’d had so many others show up over the years.  Some we found homes for, others stayed for a while and then disappeared – dead, moved on, I never knew which.  I like to think they were lost for a while and finally found their way home.  It makes me feel better to think they found a happy ending I couldn’t offer.  Here’s the thing: George pretended to be disapproving, but he wasn’t. I could tell by the way he asked after the cat every night: Had I seen him?  Was he eating?  How cold was it getting at night.  Him, not it, though at that point we didn’t know. We couldn’t get close enough to know if the cat was male or female, so we guessed.  In the end, we got it right.

George came home and the feedings continued.  Our visitor learned our patterns and started waiting for us outside, sitting patiently on the deck, staring inward.  He was wary of us and would watch as we filled the bowl, would stand his ground as we crept close and then scurry a few feet away.  He was wary of us but he was fascinated by our cats. He would sit on the deck for an hour and more watching them through the sliding glass door.  That was another reason we thought he was male: All the boys like the ladies.  Even the fixed ones.

Winter faded and spring approached.  The weather grew warmer and we spent more and more time outside.  Little by little we worked away at him, slowly winning his trust.  We were able to get close enough now to almost touch him.  Almost, but not quite. At this point we knew he wasn’t feral.  You’d never get that close to a feral cat.  Not in a few weeks.  Likely not ever.  But he was stray and shy so we had to be patient.

Our community has a feral cat problem.  It’s common out here in the country.  The homeowner’s association put out a letter, warning residents not to feed the feral cats.  Not to encourage them in any way.  “He’s not feral,” George told me.  “He’s our cat.” 

He was.  He already was.  And we hadn’t even been able to pet him yet.  George named him Oliver, and Oliver it was.

Oliver started sleeping on the deck a lot since it was sunny during the day, so George put a towel out so he wouldn’t have to lie on the hard boards.  Oliver loved it.  We got our first meow out of him not long after.  Even some rolling around, like he wanted to be petted but just didn’t know how to let us.  That’s how we got our first confirmed sighting: male, no doubt about it.  Male and un-neutered.  Intact, as they say.  Had to do something about that.

A breakthrough: Oliver finally let us pet him!  And after that first touch, he couldn’t get enough.  He was twitchy and demanding and made it clear that there were certain ways and certain places he most definitely did not want to be touched, but now it wasn’t just food he wanted from us.

 It was love.  Attention.  Scratches behind the ear. He also wanted our cats.  Badly. In the Biblical sense.  But they wanted nothing to do with him.
We talked to our friends in the rescue business about using live traps, the best ways to get him without stressing the poor cat out.  But I had an idea.  We got a crate – a large one, big enough to be a cat-sized apartment – and set it on the deck, with Oliver’s beloved towel inside.  In he strolled like it was the most obvious thing in the world.  So George called the vet and got Oliver a ‘tutoring’ appointment, and two days later, we lured him into the carrier with a bowl of food, closing it behind him pretty as you please.  No muss, no fuss, just one confused looking Oliver.

Oliver went off to the vet and the worry started.  How would he react when we got him home?  Would he take off and disappear forever or would he forgive us, if only because we were the providers of food?  We hatched a plan to release him on the screen porch, thinking he’d have some room to move around but wouldn't be able to escape.  Bringing him inside was not an option, unfortunately.  The other two wouldn’t have it. 

Oliver was surprisingly calm on the ride home from the vet.  Drugs maybe, who knows.  He freaked out a bit when we released him from the carrier, scurrying to one side, knocking head first into the screening, backing up with a confused look on his face.  George and I tried to be patient, offering soothing words and fingers for scratching.  Two minutes later, all was forgiven.   Oliver was our cat.  We’d claimed him.  Now he claimed us.

It’s been three weeks now since Oliver first let us touch him.  Things are better, but far from perfect.  He’s still a bit twitchy and he’s young and sometimes unpredictable (he looked up at George the other day and knocked his glasses clean off his face for no apparent reason), but he’s a lovable bugger. He still wants our cats.  Badly.  He’s a boy cat with boy urges, but we’re hoping they’ll fade as the hormones flush from his system.  Until then, he’s staying outside.  Not that that’s all that bad. He gets food and lots of scratches, the sun and clean air and the wind in his fur.  Oh and a house upgrade.  We got him this pretty swank, insulated, M*A*S*H style cat house that he thinks is the bee knees. So, yeah.  Oliver’s got it rough.

Name:  Jennifer Rockwell Ganoung (writing as J.B. Rockwell)

Genre: Adult Sci-Fi

Title: SimSim

Word Count: 75,000

SimSim Query:
Trader, pirate, crook - take your pick, they all describe Ali Baba Khan, and he doesn’t really care what you call him.  There’s only one thing on his mind, and that’s making the Reformation pay.  They took everything from him – his home, his livelihood, his beloved wife – and now he’s going to destroy them.

Twelve long years of careful planning have led him to this point.  Twelve years of moving from plant to planet, planting seeds throughout the Fringes of space that will spark a revolution.  Twelve years of struggling with the demons inside, haunted by dark secrets he can’t even share with his crew.  And that’s because Ali Baba Khan’s cloned crew is one of the greatest secrets of all.  They just don’t know it.

Twelve years, and it all went so smoothly.  But when a man from his past steps back into his life, threatening to expose his true identity, Ali Baba Khan must make a choice: Abandon his plans on the cusp of completion, or kill and run, taking his ship and crew into hostile territory where everybody will be looking for him.

SimSim (75,000 words) is a completed work of adult science fiction that is loosely based on Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.

SimSim First 250 Words
The house was in ruins - roof blown out, walls collapsed, fire and smoke everywhere.  There wasn’t actually much left to identify it as his home, but he knew it was, despite his heart’s denial.  Knew the square mile of wasteland around it was his neighborhood, even though the buildings were gone.  He scanned his eyes across the wreckage, taking it all in, one thought repeating in his mind.

This was no accident. 

It couldn’t be.  The targeting was too precise.  His home was the epicenter, the focus of the destruction.  The rest was just collateral damage. 

No emergency crews around.  No fire brigade, no first responders looking for survivors.  That told him the Government had done this.  Only the Reformation could be so bold, so callous they could murder dozens of people and completely ignore it.

“God.  Oh god.”  His legs buckled, sending him crashing to his knees. 

He was supposed to be in that house.  Should have been killed with the others, buried in all that rubble. 

“It’s all my fault,” he whispered, staring at a child’s doll lying half buried beneath a shattered toilet.  “What I have done?” he asked it, leaning forward, reaching for the doll, only half aware of what he was doing.

It had button eyes, yellow yarn hair, red thread for lips.  He fished it out, and immediately wished he hadn’t.  The doll had been cut in half, legs torn away, stuffed innards dangling grotesquely.  That’s how he felt.  Gutted.  Torn in two.