Close quarter proximity with intense eye contact builds anticipation for meaningful conversation. Your pulse quickens with every syllable uttered. Her scent is driving your hormones into overload and it's becoming harder, much too hard to focus. You attempt to play it cool, though your nerves are rattled, concerned that you don't make a fool of yourself. While listening intently to her words, the bestial mind tends to drift into thoughts of lust, barring the use of reason.

     Her smile is as enchanting as her eyes are alluring, calling out to every fiber of your being. You want her intensely with a caveman swing of a club type of mentality. Her hair curls dangle the high cheek bones curving her face, as the deep ridges of her dimples flash with each smirk. Your eyes drank in every moment knowing that it is formulating a permanent memory to be burned into your conscious. You will have total recall of each detail for years to come. Her dark skin, free of blemishes is smooth as velvet inviting you to imagine its touch, it's taste. You desperately want to gauge its warmth with an intimate embrace. Every passing second is an agony as your imagination weaves a spell of tantalizing fantasy, one in which you will never recover from. She sits there, across from you, but at a neighboring table. Her date's back is to you and he commands all of her attention as you peer over his shoulder obsessing. If only you could will her to return your eye contact, surely she'd feel an attraction that captures her imagination as much as she has stolen yours.  You grip the fork in your hand tighter clasping the steel with envious intent. This Nigerian accent of hers has unknowingly serenaded the disturbed demented spirit that lies within you. Deep down, you realize that you are about to stalk the object of your affection who is totally oblivious to your existence.

A while back we set you the challenge of writing a 500-750 word synopsis of your work-in-progress or completed novel manuscript, and to pitch it to us. A selection of judges would then decide upon the top entry for publication on Kindle, Nook, and Kobo. Exciting stuff!

We told you that the lucky winner would also be provided a fully customized package of editing, design, and marketing services and we cannot wait to get started.

We’ve made the decision. Admittedly, we’re a little late announcing the winners, but that’s purely because the standard was so high. We’ve had all genres from people from all walks of life from all around the world. We laughed, we gasped and we shed a tear or two.

We wanted to publish them all, but we can’t. You guys are good. So good, in fact, that we had to take the basis upon which we shortlisted down to how the entries worked as a pitch in its purest format.

How did it grab us in the first few lines? Were we intrigued? Did we need to know more? If we were sat in a boardroom and had to take the pitch on its immediacy; who would we choose?

This is who. Congratulations to @AyeMich with her pitch for her book ‘Redemption’. We will begin working with her in the new year on ‘Redemption’, and look forward to reading the entire story.

Keep your eyes peeled for the next challenge, and keep writing. We want to read you all!

Here is the Prose Pitch from @AyeMich in its entirety:

Redemption

“Jessica Wright has wanted nothing more than to be a writer. For years, she worked extremely hard, doing grunt jobs at small tv stations and local newspapers. She’d been working on the same novel for almost four years, sending it out to publisher after publisher. It was only when she began to give up on herself, that someone took a chance on her and her skill.

Three years later and she’s one of the bestselling authors of her time. Life is good. She works with people she’s come to call friends, she’s in a stable and loving relationship and she’s on the verge of releasing her newest novel. But then, weird things start to happen.

Bodies of women begin turning up all throughout the city of Brentwood. She pays it no mind, though she’s been having really weird dreams about her girlfriend being killed in all sorts of ways. Frank Albane, the Chief of Police and current father figure to Jessica, takes his job seriously and vows to put an end to the murders, along with Daniella Santiago, who just happens to be the lead prosecutor and the girlfriend of Jessica Wright.

While working the case, the Chief starts to notice little things, minuscule things that no one else could ever catch on to. He works endlessly alongside Daniella to bring this case to a close and catch their unsub.

When the last victim gets away, she immediately calls the Brentwood PD and the message is relayed to Chief Albane. He takes it upon himself to question her and that’s when he realizes why things seem so familiar...he’s seen this before. Back in the station, he mulls over the evidence, spending countless house piecing things together until a light bulb clicks: he knows this because he’s read it. And he read it in Jessica’s first draft of her very first novel.

When he brings Jessica and Daniella up to speed, Jessica shuts down. Her entire world begins to fall apart. With Daniella having worked day in and day out on the case, Jessica turns her attention elsewhere and accepts a dinner invite from Christina James, her assistant. As they are enjoying the night, Christina begins to say the right things at the right times and one thing leads to another until they are interrupted and Jessica realizes the mistake she’s just made. Now, she has to fight to bring herself back, fight for her relationship and fight for her innocence because how could one person know something that you’ve only shown to a handful of people? There are murders happening that mimic her very own writing. She’s become the number one suspect.

Fighting for all that she’s lost, Jessica has to step out of her very comfortable life and step into the world of a killer; a person who has become hellbent on ruining everything she’s built for herself. And soon, those dreams become a reality when she’s told that the latest of the unsub’s victims is Daniella. Scared out of her mind, she runs to Chief Albane, who tries to reason with her and when that fails, he agrees to let her go through with the plan. With all the bravery she has in her, she steps out of her cookie-cutter life and into the unknown and vows to make it out alive.”

i stopped praying the day i fell through the water. after forty days of nothing, i felt like it was time to shake the dust off my knees and stand up. i was flesh and bone and all my sins, which were greater than the sum of their parts.

when i was little, i felt god in my rib cage once or twice. i endured panic attacks before i knew what they were. my heart would start pounding fast but before it could shock me, a hand would slip between my bones and rock my heart back and forth to its beat.

you're safe now,

you're safe now.

i think it was faith.

the third time i felt god was different. the tent was set up in the front yard for the night, and the cats were keeping us awake. scratches and shadows on the fabric fought us, so we retreated inside.

i was the first to walk in through the front door, but i sensed a presence in front of me once i entered the living room.

do not be afraid,

for i am with you,

he said.

i wasn't truly scared,

but i nodded.

i was in sixth grade when i discovered the books named after a series of colors. each story was different, but they were all the same. a simple girl would make the wrong decision and choose to drink/have sex/puke/etc. until she was a wreck, but then she would repent and god would grant her a happy ending.

when i started coming undone in eighth grade, i remembered the stories, so i turned my bedroom into a chapel. i fell to my knees and lowered my head as i rested my shaking hands on my dresser. i sobbed and i prayed, just like they did in the books.

i'm sorry.

i regret all that i've done.

lord,

please grant me redemption.

forgive me.

i will change.

i will follow you forever.

i will never take your name in vain,

i promise.

i'll go to church every sunday,

and i'll pay attention,

and i'll do whatever you say,

just help me,

please, help me.

i don't want to be this way.

nothing. so i tried again two weeks later, and again when another two weeks went by. maybe it didn't work because i didn't believe what i was saying, but i sure as hell tried. but oceans didn't split and bushes didn't burn; there was no sign to show me where to turn after i had failed to become a believer. it got to the point where i begged to be a martyr, but god and my own demons kept me in the middle. i couldn't really live, and i couldn't die, so i gave up on both.

now i am the salt of the earth; i let life and death walk all over me. i have nothing left to say, nothing left to pray. i am finished scribbling psalms on my ceiling in the hopes that god will notice.

i am older,

wiser, now,

less susceptible to his holy ink.

sometimes i feel it a fourth time.

lord,

grant me the wisdom

to think.

waiting for news. Blood work.

sitting here, a bar north of Mexico

save the fucking comments

we all must die.

God or no god.

Personally, I will leave here without

faith, without belief.

I will leave behind bio mass.

a body that feeds the soil

but tonight, in this blink of life

in the moment

I see drunken mutants dancing

with fat, brown women

awful music

on the juke

the words of mine over the years

carry my corpse in a glass coffin

above the freaks

above the damned and the

falsely saved

we're all born for dirt

all of us are here for a flash

and I know this flash

it follows me like a hungered thing

it follows you

your money is jack shit

your home your wife

your adoring faces

all of it is fleeting

but it counts

the love I feel for you

the love I feel for the words

the way I hide behind

phrases and cowardly

poems so prominent

but the truth is

I love you all

I love your hearts

from a young age I

was taught to obey the

rules of old men

the lies

and I rejected this

because the words fed me truth

they burned sunsets with fires

beyond the grasp of Satan

and Christ

and Buddha

and all fiction.

Do I love you, regardless?

I do

I do because the mutants dance in front of the

bar and a fucking freak asks me for an

autograph

and I tell him I am nothing

but shit

but there's no convincing

a mountain of lies

of images

I remember the ghost of my mother

the ghosts of dead writers

the feeling of them

the way the rabbits run

beneath a Sun so orange

so flawless

you and I, we have a deal, we always have.

But let me break though skin and define

the fear:

I write, and hope it's not shit

I write and send it off with crossed fingers

no matter what it means to me

personally.

Do I love you all?

I do.

Can I admit it soberly?

I can't.

But the rooster flounces

before the hens

and I am nothing more

I am a pile of begging words

and to say anything

otherwise

would be a sick attempt

at something

I can't abide soberly,

in the light

of you.

Everything we are is what

I earn

and from Schopenhauer

through celluloid,

I'll take the heat, climbing the dirt trail

while I wait for what I already know

the diagnosis

I am dying

and I make it to the top of the

cross on the mountain

my breaths short

my failing heart

and mind

and body remembering the

lyrics of Buckley

we share the first name

but he died before me

the lines of his carved in my skin

on top of the mountain I've reached with

one last labor:

As she weeps on my arm walking through the bright lights

and sorrow. Oh, drink a bit of wine we both might go

tomorrow. oh, my love.

I think about the eyes of my dog, and I remember what I said to the doc when he remarked that I was taking the news so calmly:

I'm just thinking of the words I haven't written, the places I won't see. I just want to outlive my dog.

And his confused, stupid face, the doctor, the trained fool. He had no idea what I meant, the intensity.

I stared at the paperwork of the EKG

Anterior infarct -age undetermined

-Negative T-waves -Possible Anterolateral ischemia

Basically, I've had a heart attack in my past that didn't

take me out, but I'm on the edge

my doctor is an unfeeling piece of shit

further tests are needed

I am 44

I am not real anymore

I am side to side with the ghosts of my mother

my father

I am a shell of life

I conceived this space

and a team of young, healthy blood built it

I am successful and close to death

the epitome of irony

but I left this mark

all you writers

from any distance from the

grave:

write and edify

offend

inspire

be free

stop at nothing

know that

there is something counted beyond

the servile hours

and

the mountain from which I write this

Jeff Buckley's Grace blasting through my headphones

while I watch the mountains of Mexico:

As she weeps on my arm

Walking through the bright lights and sorrow

Oh drink a bit of wine we both might go tomorrow

Oh, my love, and the rain is falling

I believe my time has come

it reminds me of the pain

I might leave behind.

I reach the top of the mountain, and I stare over Mexico

I remember the whiskey

the women so perfect of eye

the mercy of the hours

and the song returns in

a morbid reminder

and I remember the words

the tours

the people so astute

that never ceased to amaze me

not to sound incredulous, but the

words grip me at the summit:

And I feel them drown my name

So easy to know

And forget with this kiss

I'm not afraid to go

But it goes so slow.

and I watch the earth from where

I sit, and my heart gets heavier

and if death takes me now

it takes me with a debit

it takes me with words unwritten

and I think back to the fucking fat doctor

with the facial pussy

hitting me with the news

and my eyes welled up for a second

All the words I haven't written. They will have nowhere to go now.

And the fuck looked at me, confused, and I left there to go back to the hotel to be with my dog, to feel his eyes upon me

through me.

To feel again the thought that

I wouldn't die soon:

Regardless.

Walking off the plane, respectably drunk from first class, my hair pulled back and pinned high, my skirt hugging my legs, nothing underneath, my heels flexing my calves, old perverts fucking leering at me. My mind was on one thing, what he'd think of me, would he kiss me outside on the sidewalk: would he kiss me, would his tongue taste like coffee hiding whiskey, would he finger me in his car while we drove to his place? I wondered if I was insane being here like this. My time with him flashed through me in less than a second: I went ahead and contacted him through his website. I'd read all of his books, but I'd read a lot of books, I read for a living. But there was something about him, not just the way his words stared a hole through me, but something about him as a person. I wasn't sure what it was exactly, the photos of him online or the fact that when I contacted him under the pretense (how I hate that word) of who I was in the city, who I worked for, what I did in publishing, he replied like I wanted him to, humble yet arrogant, and respectfully declining my literary interest in him. He had his own money, had conceived a writing application last year, and it had blown up hugely, and there were enough savvy investors to erase his need for a publishing deal, which was too bad. But there was something vulnerable to the message, and when I called the number below his signature he was soft spoken, polite, and humorous. A month went on. A month. Constant texting, calling, photos. First the faces, then a shot of my tits, my ass, my fingers blocking an otherwise graphic shot of my sex. He sent me shots back, all of it: his chest, shoulders, cock, him out of the shower. It was the first time I'd sent a man anything like that, but I trusted him. In bed at night, I'd listen to him, ask him to read me something, and he finally did, and I'd masturbate to his voice, his words. For a man who wrote like him, he lived alone, confused by it, but something told me he needed distance. But it didn't stop me from flying out west and seeing him.

First flesh impression: He was a little heavier in person, especially in profile. He was taller than I'd imagined him, 6'1, big shoulders, tattoos down his arms, which I'd seen in the photos, but in person they were more prominent. I have one, on my shoulder blade, a black rabbit, a ghost rabbit from fiction that stirred me as a little girl, and when he first saw it in an early photo I'd sent him he immediately texted back, "Watership Down, that image haunted me throughout my childhood in the saddest and best ways. Good piece."

--From that point on, the first impression didn't matter, I was mad for him. And outside on the sidewalk, there at SeaTac, he pulled me into him and kissed me, ran a big hand over my ass, got me hotter than a teenager.

Back at his place, a smaller place than I'd imagined, we had two hours of the bar up the street in us, I met his famous dog, and then he and I were in bed fucking like prisoners. It was Friday, then it was Saturday night: pizza boxes everywhere, empty bottles of wine. Walking out of the shower, I passed his desk and chair and it just then occurred to me that it was where everything happened for him, and something gripped me. I had to leave the next morning. I had to leave and I panicked. Back in bed I asked him what he thought of me, where he saw us going in the future. His dog jumped on the bed and curled up and slept behind the back of my legs. I instantly fell in love with both of them. But he basically told me that I lived in the city and he lived two thousand miles west. He also said we'd just met, which was fair, but it hurt. It hurt because of the last four weeks of constant contact, of wanting, almost hurting for him, and it also occurred to me there that he probably had a few more like me waiting in the shadows. Looking into his eyes I could see that I was nothing special. I was another reader, a hot piece of ass that might grace a poem in some obscure, chickenshit way. The moment changed for me, it changed his writing, and it changed him. But feeling him next to me, his cock against my leg, his freakishly big and weird body sleeping, his dog snoring right in rhythm with him, it was clear that I had to be the last piece for him, the last "booty call" he'd need to have. I rolled off the bed and quietly kissed the air until his dog awoke and walked out. I gave him a little bone from the box on top the fridge, and grabbed the longest knife from the rack, closed the bedroom door and watched his silhouette sleeping, bathed in moonlight, a drunk and fat attempt at what was once my future in my heart. I held the knife and felt the whiskey move me closer quietly. I'd had enough men like him. He wasn't special, he played with words for a living, and I'd fallen for it. He'd live after I left, but he'd never be able to fuck another woman.

Check the mirrors for heat

and take the whole road

for yourself

-more than often to forget than

remember

though every mile made is

a look forward and back through

your time

the time of your dead

the time of your mistakes

and the time in front of you

-more than often let it out

push the engine

wide open

fuck your demons

burn yourself

clean.