Trick or Treat #D13 - Crazy Deep

Title: Crazy Deep
Category: YA
Genre: Speculativ​e Fiction
Word Count: 66,000

Pitch: Fifteen-year-old, Hurricane Katrina evacuee Marissa Martin must save her dad who stayed behind in New Orleans. To find him, all she has to do is trust telepathic powers that don’t work right, a guy she just met, and the mother who abandoned her long ago. Crazy as that sounds, Marissa discovers there’s something even more epic standing in her way: trusting herself.

Question 1: In your MC's voice, what costume character do you relate most to and why?

Definitely Dorothy, except I’ll need more than a pair of ruby slippers to take me home again.

Question 2: As an author, what makes your manuscript a tasty treat (aka marketable/unique)?

Crazy Deep adds a telepathic twist and a touch of romance to the real-world tragedy of Hurricane Katrina and the 2005 levee breaks.

First 200 Words:

Robert Frost was wrong. My world didn’t end in fire or in ice. It ended in water. It still covers streets, houses, the playground near my house. Even the massive oaks that line City Park are broken. Damaged, all of it. Lost in the muddy pool that taunts me on the TV screen.
“Eighty percent of New Orleans has been inundated with water since the levees broke four days ago,” the news anchor announces, safe in his Atlanta newsroom.
The image on the screen shifts from him to the city that used to be home. The camera inches closer. Closer. I catch my breath, wait. It stops just short of my street. But I no longer have to see it to make it real. That’s not why I lean in, hope for a glimpse of my house. As much as witnessing the damage hurts in that heart-squeezing kind of way, none of it compares to the most important thing I’ve lost. Dad. He stayed behind, refused to evacuate to Pennsylvania with me.
Panic clogs my chest. Because even if I could go back there and look for him, “there” is gone.