Pitch Madness SJ-2: DEFIANCE

Genre: Fantasy Romance 

Word Count: 112,000

Pitch: Brainy, sex-powered witches enchant a brothel, liberate prostitutes, and defy a powerful kingpin/industrialist incarnation of Hades in 1906 San Francisco. 

Excerpt:

The ferry cut through the silvery surface of water.  Above, gray clouds loomed, shrouding the city that would be Miri’s new home. 

Nearly there. Yards, feet, inches left for her to decide.

Close to the shore, the salty scent of the San Francisco Bay turned outright fishy, so different from the loamy scent of the Mississippi where it mixed with gutter odors and brine at its last lengths through terra firma in New Orleans, the home she’d only just fled.

The ferry moored in its slip, the India rubber bumper grating against the wooden pier and jostling her against Serena.  Her friend hugged her close, steadying her with a hand at the waist, and offered the tender smile she saved only for Miri, who smiled back reflexively, though she was anything but happy. 

Serena tipped her head at an angle, nodding toward Miri’s sister, Eve. “You promised to tell her before we arrived.”  

The damp cold had seeped into Miri’s bones. She hugged her arms across her chest and through clenched teeth muttered something Serena already knew well.  “I despise this plan.” 

By rights the leader of their small sororité, Eve alleged the Goddess had appeared to her in a vision and promised sanctuary for them after centuries of persecution. Their part was simple—settle in San Francisco and hide in plain sight by opening an enchanted brothel. Eve called the plan subtle and brilliantly ironic but Miri, in the privacy of her own thoughts, employed the word absurd. Her sister’s claims were all too conveniently designed to force Miri into changing her ways. 

CLUE: Mr. Boddy is found in the dining room, seated at the head of the table. His head is tilted back, blood trickling from a small hole in his temple. In his lap is a torn bit of printer paper, the words Africa, My Heart, by—are printed on it, but the second half is ripped away.