2014 ABNA...Ready, Set, PITCH!

The 2014 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA) competition is just around the corner.  I'll admit, I'm a moth, and the ABNA is a flame!  I first entered the contest in 2011 with my first novel, THE COMING--it made it to the Quarterfinals round (top 250 of 5,000 entries).  In 2012, I submitted my second novel, THE MENGELE EFFECT...didn't make the first cut.  Tried again in 2013...same result.

So...why try again, you ask?  Why not!  The ABNA judges make their initial cut based on a 300-word "pitch"--basically what you'd read on the back of a dust jacket or on the inside flap.  Later, they look at a 5,000 word excerpt, and finally at the entire manuscript.

Below is my edited, edited, re-edited, tri-edited, and edited again 2014-version pitch for THE MENGELE EFFECT.  Let me know what you think!  I'll be sending this off Sunday (16 Feb), so any comments are welcome!

THE MENGELE EFFECT

Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror Category

The survivors would tell stories of this night...a quiet, peaceful evening in America's Heartland that marked the beginning of humanity's war for survival.   The Reaper, patient and devious, comes with the rain.  A single drop finds purchase.

The mutations, sudden and furious, begin in a Kansas City salvage yard; hours later, the light of day reveals a dead city, stripped of life by creatures torn from a madman's dreams.  On this night, the gates of Hell swing wide, releasing the spawn of mankind's hate to pour across the Midwest in an unstoppable, ravenous wave, slowed only by the sun's killing light.

Biowarfare specialist Carolyn Ridenour fights a daily battle to keep America safe from the world's tiniest, most fearsome weapons.  Ordered to Kansas City to investigate the unfolding horror, she barely escapes the creatures' nocturnal onslaught, saved at the last instant by Colonel Garrett Hoffmann, a man who'd witnessed the slaughter of hundreds of his troops—and innocent civilians—under the creatures' horrific advance.  President Andrew Smith, former Navy Admiral and battle-scarred hero, helplessly watches as city after city is eaten alive, the military’s conventional might useless against a swarming foe that inexplicably—and exponentially—replenishes its numbers every twenty-four hours.  Frantic for answers, the President is pushed towards the unthinkable by members of his own government, trusted advisors who have long prayed for this day...secret followers of an ancient order sworn to destroy civilization in order to save their own souls.

      Carolyn and her team race to find a way to stop the creatures—products of perverse, decades-old genetic research performed in Auschwitz’s filthy labs, refined by Cold War enemies and perfected by nature—before a desperate President unleashes the fury of America's nuclear arsenal on his own soil...and his own citizens.

Wish me luck!