Manuscript Status: Finished

Mentor: Rachel Lynn Solomon & Kit Frick
Mentee: Carlyn Greenwald
Title: CON ARTISTS
Category: Young Adult
Genre: Contemporary (LGBT)
Word Count: 76,000

Pitch:

Seventeen-year-old Chloe arrives at Comic-Con with two goals: meet an obscure artist and turn her online BFF into her real-life girlfriend.

When she pisses off a dangerous group of merchandise forgers on Preview Night, Comic-Con takes a dark turn. Now Chloe must organize her friends into a criminal entity and find an exclusive figurine by the end of the weekend—or die. The Hangover meets Ocean’s 11 with a dash of nerd culture.

Excerpt:

It was one of those afternoons where I was narrating my day-to-day actions with movie quotes.

“Never tell me the odds” seemed particularly relevant, especially right then. The local Target was just as disorganized as ever, a boss fight level obstacle course of housewives in their all-day workout clothing and their unsupervised children. But, dammit, I’d been to this stupid store four times in the past five days, and I was determined that this would be my last.

I didn’t necessarily run to the aisle, but my speed was questionable. Fast enough that I narrowly avoided a few concussions to get there. Once the life-sized BB-8 came into view, sitting proudly on the edge of an aisle, I skidded to a stop and rounded the corner. I almost didn’t want to look, especially since half the aisle was already empty.

I pivoted, and scanned the shelves.

There it was.

Four-inch talking Kylo Ren plushie, complete with at least five movie-accurate phrases and a clip-on ring.

And there were six of them in stock, all hanging one after another like a conga line. Right below them were the Darth Vaders, Chewbaccas, BB-8s, and Yodas I’d glimpsed during my previous four trips. I immediately grabbed one off the shelf and pressed the “I Talk!” button. It spat out one of its movie-accurate phrases, and I was in love.