Friday Crits: The Zmora (YA Horror)

Carol Knee-Omant would like your opinion on the first 250 words of her new YA Horror, THE ZMORA.  (Cool title, huh!)

This Aussie author has already loaded up the story to Amazon and it is downloadable for free this weekend.  She hopes that our feedback will give her some direction on this still-evolving story. 

Here’s the first 250:  (The synopsis is below.  I always find it helpful.)

The poster fluttered in the howling wind. Its corner tugged free with a snap and it flapped/flew down the street to plaster itself against the wet pavement.

Levi stared at it, trying to focus on the words but they were blurring. Even as he tried to read them, the black ink splaying across the page, mingling, until it became unreadable.

He shrunk further into his coat. He didn’t need to see the words to know what it said. He didn’t need to read the poster to know the effect it had on those who read it.

From the moment the poster had been nailed to poles all over Larsenville, people had changed.
No; it hadn’t been the poster, it had been before that, but the stark white sheets with their huge black letters calling for a town meeting was a culmination of all the guessing. It was an acknowledgement that something was wrong, something they could not fix.

Levi rode his black, ten speed bike through the darkening streets, scrutinizing each house carefully. The town was shrouded in a gloom that seemed to swallow the ground as it advanced. It was winter and the arch of trees overhead were skeletal hands that reached out bony fingers to snatch at his hair as he rode past. He skidded to a halt, the squeal of tyres barely audible over the wind that rushed onwards, rattling rubbish bins. The brightly coloured awnings of houses snapped taut before billowing out at the next onslaught.

And the synopsis:

Levi Puskaric is an ordinary sixteen year old. He has a best friend, James; parents, a sister and a weird Polish grandmother who dresses in black, making signs to ward off evil. Together, Levi and James are ‘The Team’ and one day; they are going to Make It Big. They just haven’t figured out how yet. For ‘The Team’, it doesn’t come bigger than killing a monster and saving the town.

Thanks for your participation!  Carol and I both appreciate it!

23 Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

css.php