Our Winners

 CONGRATULATIONS to the following entries:

#1 THE BENEFICIARY 

#21 DESTROYING ENEMIES WITH LOVE 

#25 THE GOOD FIGHT

THE PRIZE: Ms. Wessbecher would like to see the first 50 pages of your manuscript.

Winners--please email me at facelesswords@gmail.com for specific submission instructions.

To everyone who entered: THANK YOU and WELL DONE! I hope you have found the feedback helpful and the experience positive.

Yay to all!

Secret Agent Unveiled!

Huge thanks to Katherine Wessbecher of Bradford Literary Agency for her excellent secret-agenting!

Katherine's bio:

Katherine Wessbecher joined the Bradford Literary Agency in 2020. Katherine began her publishing career at Penguin, where she edited children’s and YA books at Putnam Books for Young Readers. She then served as the science and technology editor of an academic book review journal before joining the agency world. Katherine holds a B.A. in English from the College of William & Mary and lives with her husband in San Diego.

What Katherine is currently looking for:

Katherine is currently looking for children's, MG, YA, and upmarket adult fiction. She's drawn to grounded stories that transport her somewhere new (the past, an imagined world, or a different perspective on her own). A few things she'd love to see more of in her submissions inbox include stories the history books left out, unexpected narrative techniques (bring on the epistolary novels!), and more bone-dry humor.

Winners forthcoming!

Secret Agent Critique Guidelines

For those of you who are new to the blog (hi!!), you are warmly welcomed to offer your critique on as many of the entries as you would like.

Here's the way it works:

• All readers may leave critique in the comment box of each entry.  
• While the critiquing is going on, our Secret Agent will appear and also leave feedback--for ALL ENTRIES!  This is great not only for the folks who entered, but for everyone who takes the time to read through to see how a literary agent responds to various opening pages.
• Next Monday, I will post the identity of our Secret Agent AND the winning entries

Guidelines for Critique on MSFV:

• Please leave your critique for each entry in the comment box for that entry.
• Please choose a screen name to sign your comments. The screen name DOES NOT have to be your real name; however, it needs to be an identifiable name.  ("Anonymous" is not a name.)
• Critiques should be honest but kind, helpful but sensitive.
• Critiques that attack the writer or are couched in unkind words will be deleted.*
• Cheerleading IS NOT THE SAME as critiquing.  Please don't cheerlead.
• Having said that, it is perfectly acceptable to say positive things about an entry that you feel is strong.  To make these positive comments more helpful, say why it's a strong entry.
• ENTRANTS: As your way of "giving back", please critique a minimum of 5 other entries.

*I can't possibly read every comment.  If you ever see a comment that is truly snarky, please email me.  I count on your help.

Secret Agent #27

Title: The Blue Jay
Genre: MG Fantasy

The bus rolled across the pavement like a living thing, its bright yellow sides warning of danger. I stood on the sidewalk, watching the beastly vehicle inch closer, ready to swallow me whole. There was no avoiding my fate. I was doomed.

Images whirled through my mind, escaping through the cracks of my willpower as I tried to get a grip on them, predicting a disastrous chain of events. The bus crashing into a truck, rolling down a hill, landing on its back, underbelly exposed, until an explosion engulfs it in flames. The sensible part of my brain knew the chances of that happening were almost zero, but the part that insisted on imagining the worst wouldn’t see reason.

In the real world, a squeal of brakes signaled the bus’s arrival. The doors hissed open. The long line of kids in front of me began filing up the steps, laughing and joking as if our very lives weren’t hanging in the balance.

My heart rate accelerated from race car to jet plane.

Mom would say I was being dramatic.

Kyle would call me a wimp.

Anna would offer to let me borrow her stuffed lion to give me courage. Like I was a baby.

There were only two kids in front of me now. One.

I stopped just shy of the door, staring at the black rubber stripes lining the steps. My mind went through its usual routine of trying to find a way out.

Secret Agent #26

Title: BLACKBEARD’S ACADEMY OF PIRACY AND CULINARY ARTS
Genre: MG Fantasy

Monsters under the bed never scared Jake, but the ones doctors claimed lurked inside his head did. He scratched a phantom itch on his artificial foot, waiting for Miss Hardgrade’s verdict.

“Jake,” Hardgrade said, “you’ve been excused from the ‘How I spent my summer vacation’ assignment.”

“I need to tell what happened.”

She twirled a pencil between her fingers. “All you have is a title page.”

“It’s an oral presentation.”

“But this never really—”

“I know . . . doctors think my brain created an imaginary world to deal with the trauma of almost drowning. But I know I spent my summer with pirates.”

She glanced at his paper again. “Blackbeard’s Academy of Piracy and Culinary Arts.”

“What do they teach—food fighting?” Tommy Fathead shouted.

The class laughed. Fathead usually sucked at quick one-liners. His talent since grade school had been scraping the feet of chairs to mimic the toot of a butt tuba.

Hardgrade’s pencil snapped. “That’s enough.” The class transformed into statues minus the pigeon icing. “Jake, maybe you should wait until you can present something real?”

He stood and lifted his shirt. “Like this giant tattoo of Blackbeard’s flag on my chest?”

Everyone gasped at the white horned skeleton on a black background covering Jake's entire upper body. The dead devil held an hourglass in one hand while pointing a spear at a red heart dripping blood with the other.

“Doctors know I hate needles,” Jake said, “but they can’t explain how I have a tattoo, which required a million needles, when tourists found me washed up on a north end beach.”

Secret Agent #25

Title: The Good Fight
Genre: YA Historical Fiction

Not a soul surrounding the pallet-made fighter’s ring would ever believe Ofelia was starving. There was enough meat on her to make her dangerously ‘thick’, and strong enough to inflict damage with weary fists. Spectators leaning over the crude ring splashed the concrete floor with the contents of their brown-bagged bottles. They cheered and taunted. Her feet were bare, and she felt every puddle of spilled beer. Everything felt wet. Her skin was drenched in sweat and crimson tendrils streamed down one side of her face. It all added to the seeping damp.

She looked more boy than girl before entering the ring. Short black hair, T-shirt nearly down to her knees and large enough to fit two of her in it. Her baggy, black jeans hung from her waist, and she had cuffed them around her ankles. Ofelia pulled her shirt over her head and flung it into a corner of the ring. The air thundered with a commentary of lewd suggestions and propositions. They called for Eights. She was Eights. They loved and hated her all at once.

“Damn, Eights. Why you hidin’ all that?!”

“You want a banging, nena?! I got one for you.”

“Break my heart, Eights. Dykes can look like that?”

“Kill ‘em, Eights. I got my rent money on you.”

The jeers continued, two fights in. Eights was sure of it. But their words were no longer decipherable, stretching and blending into one pounding mass of sound.

Secret Agent #24

Title: Big Bright Thing
Genre: Women's Fiction

The children were crying again. I shoved the pizza bagels in the toaster and rushed to the living room, afraid of what I’d find-a limb tangled in a chair leg, a head bleeding from an impact with the corner of a table.

But Judith and Pomona were just tugging on either side of a tablet, crying over who got to choose which app to play.

I took the tablet away. The crying intensified.

“When we fight, we lose screen privileges,” I said.

“That’s not fair!” said Pomona. “I was playing with it, and she took it from me!”

As wrong as it was to punish Pomona for something her sister allegedly did, I couldn’t reward her for having a tug-of-war with a two-year-old. “She’s only two,” I said. “She doesn’t know better.”

“She knows better! She’s smiling!”

I turned around to see Judith’s face switch from an amused smile to raging tears. “Judith, I see you’re upset, but you can’t take things from your sister.” Her crying increased in volume, drowned out only by the fire alarm that started blaring in the kitchen.

I pushed past the girls and ran to the kitchen expecting to find a wall combusting from some sort of internal electrical fire, but it was only the toaster oven, emitting black smoke from where the cheese had melted off the bagels and hit the heating coils.

I pulled out the bagels. They had a grey tinge on top.

Secret Agent #23

Title: Shadow of the Stars
Genre: YA Fantasy

Levi exited the wooded path leading toward Oliver’s home and a ribbon of golden light drew a band across his eyes. As he breached the final fallen tree, the carcass of which succumbed to the curse of time, he was forced to cover his face with his sleeve. He paid the price of doing so by stepping through a rotted piece of the trunk. Levi staggered, quickly recovered, and shook free the nasty critters that lived inside the decrepit tree husk whose only crime was growing in a climate that received little to no rainfall.

As he spun around to face the Williams’s house again, the sky blossomed in a vibrant swatch of pinks and oranges as the clouds spread here and there. The last of the dying rays tried to blind Levi a second time, but he found his friend. Just like the sky, Levi’s face went pink. Not so pink where it was noticeable at his distance from Oliver, but pink enough that he could feel the very tingle in his toes that forced him to wiggle the sensation out. But it was so common a feeling, the nerves and aches of being close to Oliver grew wise to Levi’s efforts, and instead they worked up and around his legs, to the small of his back, and ended right at his heart which always began to beat faster.

Levi tugged his ball cap lower to shield his eyes. Oliver came back into view.

Secret Agent #22

Title: Halo and the Boomerang Effect
Genre: MG Fantasy

A small starburst appeared near the top of a decorated Christmas tree and began to spin, picking up speed on each rotation. Then it fizzled, like someone had opened a soda can. The starburst brightened, and a girl the size of a snowflake jumped out of the light, onto a pine needle.

“Great, golly, goodness!” Halo yelled. “It’s good to be back!”

She glanced through the white pine, hoping to see or hear someone. When no one called out, she ignored the fear growing in her chest. This was her twelfth appearance, so Halo knew she might be the first arrival. No need to worry.

But she might be alone. Stranded in a foreign tree.

Her heart beat sped up. That couldn’t be true. Surely, she was back inside the house at 1414 Winslow Drive with the rest of the miniature tree people, the Treeples. She crossed her fingers and raced along the branch, ducking under a tin soldier ornament. At the end of the limb, she stopped to catch her breath beside a ceramic gingerbread boy with blue icing buttons.

Outside the tree, tall windows framed the front wall of a familiar living room. Halo grinned as she studied the brick fireplace. Right smack in the middle of the mantel stood a photo of Charles and Eloise Johnson, the magical humans who created the Treeples. One, or both, had decorated the tree, unknowingly launching the appearances of Halo and the little people.

“Yes!” Halo punched the air.

Secret Agent #21

Title: Destroying Enemies with Love
Genre: YA Fantasy

The heroes had left a dreadful mess. Blood, scorch marks, and goo stained the black stone walls. Villain King Loady’s head rested on his throne of bones while the rest of him spread in bits all the way to the door. In death like in life, Snot’s master had left her with a huge mess to clean up. And she didn’t mean his bloodstains seeping into the carpet.

Snot poked her head out of a crate. Her finned ears rang from all the explosions. The sight of Loady roused nothing but contempt. On the bright side, she wouldn’t have to explain to a corpse why she’d hidden while the heroes had slaughtered his skeletons, disemboweled him, and run off. On the other claw, she now had until sunset to live.

A blue wyvern as long as her forearm fluttered over to Snot. He resembled a miniature dragon save for having two legs instead of four. Giant, tearful eyes, one horn broken off, and flaky scales further reminded her this was no member of the proud and noble draconic race. “We’re all going to die!” he wailed.

“We’ll find a new master, Annoyance,” Snot said, glaring at the wyvern named for his piercing, high-pitched voice. Villain King Loady, may he rest in pieces, had cursed his experimental creations such that if he died, they died with him. It had enforced her loyalty and been typical of the spiteful old bastard.

Annoyance waved at the window. “The sun is setting right now.”

Secret Agent #20

Title: Space Shapes
Genre: YA Urban Fantasy

Lucy hesitated, her heart thumping. She took a deep breath and continued into the classroom, her eyes glued to the floor. All these people she didn’t know. That blond-haired boy in front of her was nudging his friend, the two of them laughing in her direction. Lucy cringed. If only she could disappear. Unbidden, a flash of darkness filled her mind; for a split second, only nothingness existed. What was that? She shook her head to get rid of it.

The rows of individual desks in the classroom were almost full. Chatter crescendoed in the room; some students were catching up with friends, others silently organised their papers and books. Where could she sit? Near the back would be best, where she wouldn't stick out.

The chair screeched as Lucy pulled it out. She squeezed her legs under the desk, her knees thumping against it as she positioned herself. The pixie-like girl next to her stared. Grrr, Lucy, enough! Focus on something else.

At the front, “Advanced Level Biology” was scrawled on the whiteboard; at least she’d found the right place.

The room was kind of cosy. No windows, but that made it homely. A tattered old poster of the human anatomy on the left suggested a history of debates, hinting at years of students passing through these walls.

“Good morning, everyone!” Mr Thompson’s voice from the raised wooden platform at the front cut through the noise. Everybody hushed.

Secret Agent #19

Title: Shadows of The City
Genre: NA Paranormal Suspense “Lexi’s gone.”

“Hello to you too,” I greet my younger sister, Stormie, without looking up from my client’s notes I am almost finished editing. “How was school?”

“I said,” Stormie’s voice edges in annoyance. “Lexi is gone.”

Puzzled, I look up to meet my sister’s turbulent hazel eyes. “Lexi?”

“My friend, Lexi. Gone.”

“Can you give me a few more details? At least some context?” I sigh, closing my laptop with a snap. “Where’d she go? Why? Should I be worried?”

Stormie shrugs her slender shoulders noncommittally. “I haven’t deciphered her last message.”

“Because?” I ask, rapidly losing my patience. Breathe through the nose. Inhaling slowly.

“I just got home!” Stormie yells impatiently, throwing down her backpack. “Did you expect me to decode in front of everybody on God’s green earth - in school?” she rolls angry eyes to the ceiling. “You must think I’m stupid! Geez!”

“I thought you might decipher it in the bathroom stall,” I suggest, ignoring the desperate desire to smack my thirteen-year-old sister upside the head. “How long will it take?”

“Will what take?”

“To decipher-”

“That depends on the length of the message!”

“Could you tell me why you interrupted me?” I demand, swallowing the anger boiling up my stomach. “I was working.”

Stormie rolls her eyes at the word working. “I thought you might want to know that there’s a real-life mystery at Lakeview High School.”

I slip my computer to the floor, my attention fully on my sister. “No way!”

“Way!” Johnny says...

Secret Agent #18

Title: Treachery on the High Seas
Genre: MG Narrative Nonfiction

On December 10, 1844, the U.S. Navy sloop Yorktown encountered heavy squalls. Thunder roared. Waves crashed against the warship cruising east towards West Africa. For brief moments, lightning flashed through the sky illuminating the Atlantic Ocean.

Captain Charles Heyer Bell gazed across the horizon—no land in sight. During his command a few years before, the sick list included half his crew suffering from a mysterious illness now known as malaria. The disease killed more Navy sailors than storms or pirates.

At 10:30 p.m., Captain Bell spotted a large vessel astern. Too far away to see a flag flying from her mast, he took no chances. “Beat to quarters and cast loose the guns!”

In response, William Kidwell grabbed two wooden sticks and beat the drum. John Smith played the fife loud enough to wake the crew and call them to action.

Startled awake, men jumped from canvas hammocks and pulled on their uniforms of blue cloth trousers and jackets. One hundred sailors and sixteen marines, including several musicians, had crossed the Atlantic Ocean from New York only a few weeks before. Many were inexperienced “Boys” as young as thirteen.

Throughout each deck and cabin of the USS Yorktown, officers and sailors fumbled in the dark for weapons and ammunition.

Captain Bell had warned them about the ruthless captains and sailors who flagrantly broke international laws and treaties.

Pirates, they were.

But these pirates were involved in the transatlantic slave trade from Africa to Brazil, Cuba, and the Americas.

Secret Agent #17

Title: Soul of the Sea
Genre: YA Fantasy

A wingtip brushed my hair as the gull soared past my head and swooped down over the cove. My eyes tracked his movements, every tilt of his head, each flap of his black-tipped wings as he searched the shallow waters. The bird flexed his feathers, caught the wind and turned sharply. My body twitched in response, eager to fly with him. To leave the island behind, if only for a moment.

I set to work.

My soul lay tucked deep inside my ribs beside my heart, a ball of gauzy, shimmering white in my mind’s eyes. I gathered a piece of it in my grasp then pushed that piece out, casting it into the gull on an invisible line, hooking us together.

The gull continued his search, unaware of my sudden presence in his consciousness, but now I saw what he saw, felt what he felt. With a piece of my soul inside him, I, too, was flying.

From the gull’s eyes, I saw myself standing on the beach, barefoot, the summer breeze whipping the tangled waves of my brown hair around my face. I was still aware of the strands tickling my cheeks, the limpet shells woven throughout gently tapping my collarbone, but my mind was far above me now.

The bird caught another updraft. The movement tugged on the link between us—a flare of bright pain in my chest—but I held tight.

Our island always felt too small. Viewing it from the bird’s vantage only emphasized the feeling.

Secret Agent #16

Title: Fix Your Life!
Genre: MG Contemporary Fantasy

April 17

Tonight was the W O R S T. I was sure we were going to win first prize with our Earth Day project but Taylor had a meltdown while Mom was holding her and kicked apart the windmill and Mom yelled at ME for being mad. “She didn’t do it on purpose. Blah, blah, blah.”

It’s so unfair. We worked super hard and now Grace and Zeke probably hate me because there’s no way we’ll win. If we did, our picture would be on the school website and it could go on the refrigerator instead of Matthew’s, which has been there for 1,000,000 years.

Dad didn’t even see what happened because he was busy admiring the competition. How come other people’s kids get more attention than me?

Honestly, they are the W O R S T family ever. I wish they would all disappear.

Chapter 1

,April vacation starts the second the bell rings. The whole sixth grade streams out the door whooping and laughing and high-fiving. Groups of kids peel off in different directions. At my corner, I wave goodbye to my friends and head down my street alone. I stop to tie a flapping shoelace and when I straighten up, there’s a strange little man right in front of my face.

Yikes! I jump back. Where did he come from? I look up. Did he fall out of a tree?

“Greetings!” he says. “I’m Dexter, the host of Fix Your Life!, the reality TV show.”

Secret Agent #15

Title: Edge of Never Been Before
Genre: Women's Fiction The mere possibility that the cougar was in Amelie’s vicinity gave her a shiver of exhilaration; it wasn’t clear who was stalking whom. Everyone is someone’s son or daughter, and the spirit-cat had inherited its otherworldly ways from its mother, just as Amelie was born with the earth medicine secrets of her mother and grandmothers.

Following the trail through the Slender Forest, she breathed deeply, savoring the aroma of pine needles blanketing the ground. The trees formed a canopy that all but blocked the breaking light of day. Only hardy mosses and earthy mushrooms survived in the darkness. But this place of serenity was not her destination.

On the porch the previous evening, she’d had a long-overdue conversation with her mother.

“Why don’t you go for me tomorrow morning?” her mother said, as if she invited her daughter to participate in a secret practice every day. Celia Waters walked the path each morning before the sun crested. On the outcrop in the middle of nowhere, she met her spirit-cat and the unseen energies that guided her.

“What? Why?” asked Amelie, remaining still but wanting to pace. “That’s what you do.”

“I thought you might want to.” Celia shrugged in a way that was not as nonchalant as she tried to seem.

Since Amelie had turned eighteen the previous spring, the invitation had been offered a few times. She always found an excuse to put it off, afraid meeting the spirit-cat would tie her to the life of a healer.

Secret Agent #14

Title: Dragon Scales
Genre: MG Contemporary Fantasy

The first time I saw my violin, she winked at me from the top shelf of Sorić's Violin Shop. Opened her bright yellow eye, flashed a smile full of needle-sharp teeth and squinched shut her eyelid.

Violins don't wink, you say. It's impossible. They're made of wood and varnish. They have four metal strings, stretched over a wood bridge and wound around pegs in a box by the scroll.

The scroll doesn't morph into a dragon's snout when adults aren't looking. Their mouths aren't full of tiny, razor sharp teeth and they don't nip at you when you miss a note playing scales to warm up.

Enormous bat-ears don't pop up and swivel to listen to you play.

They don't have long, thin tails that whip out of the tailpiece button and curl around your neck when they tuck into your chin. And they don't help you keep time in the music by thumping their tails against your back.

You can't count on their back paws gripping your shoulder and pushing to the perfect height on your chest.

They don't speak in Italian musical terms.

They most certainly don't have paper-thin wings that fold into their C-bouts, the C-shaped curves on both sides.

And they never, ever fly.

You're 100-percent right.

That's what I thought a violin was, too.

Until I met Zora.

Secret Agent #13

Title: THE PERFUMER'S APPRENTICE
Genre: YA Fantasy

I should’ve been used to it by now, but as the needle pricked my skin for the millionth time, sharp like a bee sting, it still took me by surprise. Cursing under my breath, I sucked the small spot on my finger where a drop of blood welled to the surface before it could stain the fabric in my lap. Mother and some of the other women in the seamstress shop paused their gossiping and looked over with distaste at my language, which only deepened my scowl.

Sweat trickled down my armpits as irritation clawed at me. The workshop was oppressively stuffy in the late summer heat. The chipping gray paint on the walls and the worn tables and workbenches certainly didn’t help matters. The only color was the sumptuous fabric between my fingers, the dusty pink silk a welcome distraction from my drab surroundings. Until my thoughts had wandered, as usual, and the needle met my finger with an unforgiving jab. A reminder that I hated this work. I had no patience for sewing or the monotony. And a reminder I would not be receiving a letter today. I sighed loudly.

“Is something disturbing you, Saphira?” Mother’s brown eyes narrowed on me as she pursed her lips.

My sister, Brynlee, gave a sympathetic look from the table to my left as she continued to patiently sew thread through the fabric in front of her with luxurious, swift strokes.

Secret Agent #12

Title: Becca's War
Genre: YA Historical

Another train sped into Kensington Station, spewing smoke and soot everywhere. Horses shrieked as the huge iron engine squealed to a stop. Papa said these trains could go as fast as thirty miles an hour. My head spun at the thought of going that fast. A cold wind propelled soot our direction as we moved out onto the platform. Shivering, I brushed soot off my cloak then stuck my hands into the fur muff Mama and Papa had given me for my thirteenth birthday last month. I glanced around at dozens of people dashing to or from the train that had just stopped. They all seemed to be in as much of a hurry as the train. Where were they all going in such a rush? For a moment, I was jealous that I wasn’t going someplace with them. Even if it meant going that fast on one of the trains nearby.

The mass of rushing people jostled me as they hastened past and I realized I wasn’t paying as much attention as I should. I almost lost my balance, but I felt a hand on my elbow to steady me.

“Sorry, Miss.” I looked up at a tall young man, several years older than I was, who grinned and doffed his hat.

I frowned at him, but stopped myself. I nodded and straightened my own hat, which he had knocked askew by his carelessness. At least he’d apologized, I thought as he joined the crowd whirling around the station.

Secret Agent #11

Title: Mattie and the Machine
Genre: YA Historical The Bag Division's six bag-making machines are, as Old Jake used to say, pernickety as a moody racehorse. When everything is perfect, they run like a dream, whisking out paper bags by the thousands. But one thing goes off kilter, and they chew the paper feed to bits. And with these machines, a hundred things can go wrong.

Fortunately, I've gotten quick at figuring what's wrong.

Ida's gray-streaked head shakes with amazement as I wriggle out from beneath Machine 3 with a cracked bevel gear in hand. "Mattie," she says, raising her voice over the factory clatter. "I swear you got a sixth sense with mechanical things."

"It's just practice. If you took them apart as much as I do, you'd get good, too," I say, easing my legs out. While my height comes in handy working with the factory's overhead line shaft, it makes crawling under things difficult.

"No, you have a gift," Ida insists. "Old Jake never fixed things this quickly."

That's because Old Jake liked beer for breakfast and rum in his noon coffee.

I don't say that out loud, of course. It's disrespectful to speak ill of the dead. Not to mention, Jake's the reason I'm no longer an ordinary hand like the other women at Columbia Paper. Most mechanics would laugh at the thought of training a young girl, but Jake taught me his trade and taught me well.

For that, I'm grateful.