H :)

Title slide: “THE LAST WORD – Upmarket Speculative Fiction” with comparison books Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro and The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa. Dark atmospheric background with glowing white title text.

Pitch text: “Emotion is outlawed. Memory is rewritten. Nova erases memories for the regime, but when a glitching implant shows her a phantom in the code, she must choose obedience—or a truth she was never meant to remember.” Themes listed include found family, soft rebellion, trauma and recovery, slow-burn romance, and hope in the darkness. Images of a woman walking in misty mountains, a glowing neural network, and a silhouette at sunset.

Quote: “I saw you under the maple tree.” Followed by atmospheric pitch lines: “A voice she can’t forget. A past they tried to erase. A choice that could break her—or set her free.” Visuals of blood on a wall, a tactical soldier, and a futuristic city skyline.

Nine-image aesthetic grid: futuristic cityscapes, a cabin in the woods, digital patterns, a forest, broken glass, and a lone figure walking into mist. Emphasis on contrast between nature and surveillance tech.

Final post for #questpit ✨

Thank you everyone!

Here’s a streamlined look at THE LAST WORD for agents and readers who want a quick glance.🧡

Emotion is outlawed. Memory is rewritten.
Soft rebellion, found family, slow-burn epic romance—and hope in the dark.

#W #A #S #SF

Clockwise from top left: the Goonies, the Losers Club, the Hellfire Club and the kids from Bob’s Burgers.

1988. Suburbia. Wannabe writer Vinny goes on an epic kids on bikes adventure w/ his friends to find a crashed UFO. Along the way they find an exact duplicate of their neighborhood, a creepy mansion and uncover a dangerous conspiracy, all in one night. #MG #SF #questpit

Collage image of a young girl running across a field toward a large blue planet hanging in front of her as the horizon disintegrates into blocky pixels. Against a TV static background with the hidden words "all that time they spent trying to recall the past could have been spent living"

#QuestPit #Q Is it better to live or remember? A young girl in a post-digital-data world realizes she is actually deep in space aboard a malfunctioning spaceship, unconsciously reliving her childhood as her oxygen and fuel run low. Can she save her future without losing touch with her past? #A #SF

A beach, a beach with meteors, a wave, and the San Francisco ferry building

#Q Update Required #NA
Dani awakens from a natural disaster unscathed & no one remembers it. The world has changed, & her crush Sam is gone. Dani begins to question her existence in a world that no longer follows the rules of reality.
#ghostpit #Spec #R #SF
THE NIGHT SHIFT x WE USED TO LIVE HERE

Collage image of a young girl running across a field toward a large blue planet hanging in front of her as the horizon disintegrates into blocky pixels.

#GhostPit #Q Is it better to live or remember? A young girl in a post-digital-data world realizes she is actually deep in space aboard a malfunctioning spaceship, unconsciously reliving her childhood as her oxygen and fuel run low. Can she save her future without losing touch with her past? #SF #A

A giant, spaceship hovers over a dusty, walled fantasy cityscape. In the foreground, two figures stand in shadow looking out over the scene. The words 'An Agent's Guide to CASCADE, by Gus Ryer' is along the top. His website, gusryer.com, is below.

A slide with metadata and story elements for CASCADE: Genre: Science Fiction w/ Fantasy Elements Wordcount: +-130,000 It also shows the book covers for the following: ASHES OF THE SUN, Django Wexler THE ARCHIVE UNDYING, Emma Mieko Candon ELDER RACE, Adrian Tchaikovsky NOTES FROM THE BURNING AGE, Claire North Ps5's Horizon Zero Dawn Below that are the following phrases: Found family Failed terraforming A vast, hidden history Nanotech magic system Epic fantasy quest in a sci-fi world Ancient mechanical gods Arachnid mammals & guard drones Sword (1) vs. Railguns (lots)

A warrior woman w/ a winged helmet, armor, cape, and spear is along the right side of the image, fractured into triangles. Part of the following pitch is along the left: 2,000 years in the future, a galactic human empire fell, severing TRAPPIST-1e from other inhabited worlds before its terraforming could be completed. Wild nanotechnology ravaged the land, and civilization fell into a dark age. Eventually, the God Keepers—engineer priests who restored ancient nanotech—rose to power. While Lendi dreams of life outside the God Keepers, Falder is desperate to keep his best friend from abandoning their order—and him. But, when an ancient machine god crash-lands in a ball of fire and gray death, it severs Keepers from nanotech, plunging the world back into chaos. Meanwhile, Sedna and Renfrik have little patience for Keeper rules or mysticism. But, when a flood of nanites in the god’s wake consumes their home, they’re left with nothing to protect but each other...

Chapter 1 THE RUSH IS ON! This Tuesday, Planetfall, Inc. announced it would join the rash of megacorps racing to deploy terraforming infrastructure through the newly stabilized Taurine Strait. Previously dominated by New World Corporation, the franchised development of pseudoterra worlds is slated to be the hot market sector of the twenty-fifth century. -Excerpt from InvestSyder: Stellar Ed., June 15, 2398 The streets of Mahyan never fully slept. Night’s darkness, not yet broken by either the sun’s rise or the blinding, baleful Eye of Toros, wrapped Lendi more completely than her robes. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that eyes were on her. She wanted nothing more than to run. An eager vendor barred her way with his stringy arm. “A fine morning calls for a fine meal, miss.” He smiled and fanned out a selection of skewered mutton and whalemeat wrapped in sea grass. Pungent, spiced oil dripped onto the dusty street.

ASHES OF THE SUN ➕ NOTES FROM THE BURNING AGE

When a machine god severs the world from ancient nanotech, two engineer priests, a blademaster & her warrior-poet twin must hunt it for a cure—and revenge.

Failure will doom the world to divine wrath. Success may be deadly

#GhostPit #Q #A #SF #F

The Forest

Sheffield City Centre

Trans flag

Young man with the knife

A queer autistic journalist hides his secret life as a serial killer, while a trans autistic detective hunts the Ritualist, unaware their lives are fatally entwined by a cult that hates them both. On Halloween night, secrets will be revealed… 👻
#GhostPit
#A #C #Q
#MM #T #LGBT

GOING BACK TO WHEN WE BEGAN

Beautyland x Five First Chances

Life takes a turn for Kat when she (and the world) finds out two extraterrestrial species—one good, one evil—are responsible for our existence. And the evil one wants this life to be Kat’s last.

👻👽🛸🏳️‍🌈

#ghostpit #A #UP #Spec #LGBT #C #Q

FIRST LIGHT

Rihannsu X The Positronic Man X a dash of Rama

The year is 2568. Humanity has spread itself thin across the stars.

An introverted scientist stumbles into the recruitment ledger of a spacefaring organization—and realizes it might be her only shot at finding home.

#Q #SF #NA #GhostPit

A television displaying an image of a blue planet, backdropped by various fragmented newspaper clippings with headlines and text variously reading the following: "this summer is the hundredth annivers- -nd we said, if we could do it back then- -ow. You just have to wake up. We- -up. There's something out-" "NASA DISSOLVED IN- 'Good riddance,' activist Gina Snow- She, and many other protestors, were-" "NEW YEAR, OLD WAYS" "There are so many things I can't remember anymore" "traveled the cosmos- even existing" "LAUNCH DISASTER THROWS NEW SPACE RACE INTO QUESTION" "Everything. I need you- -stand that. Scientists are calling- -significant global disaster" "life without digita data- -disease, something" "scrambling to adapt- were talking about it as if- could be quarantined and conta-" "world's digital data disappeared overnight in a mysterious anomaly" "-OF PROTESTS -Congress Saturday m- -the government's-"

#GhostPit #Q #SF #A
📺 TV in the woods
💭 girl who dreams of being an astronaut
💞 young queer crush
🪞 perilous glimpse into the future
🚐 roadtrip across USA

🚀 a collision in space, an unconscious astronaut
👻 something lurking in the shadows at every turn
🌌🌊 extraterrestrial sea with cosmic mysteries

An astronaut, or possibly a character from Singin' in the Rain

My main character probably wouldn't (unless she has some substantial plot armor), as she has a habit of following strange noises and other anomalies that she should probably be running away from, and she otherwise has a penchant for being passive when it comes to getting out of bad situations.

I always love a good cup of tea with writing, but really my writing habits are fraught and gremlinesque, so I'm not sure how much I can call it cozy

#GhostPit #Q
decades-spanning #SF
past: world's digital data disappears
present: girl dreams of space and navigates young queerness
future: unconscious astronaut relives childhood memories as her damaged ship burns fuel/oxygen

comp Meet Me in Another Life x Light From Other Stars
#A #Spec #LGBT

🚩: She has a habit of distancing herself from the people she loves, both figuratively and in the sense that she keeps leaving them to go to planets lightyears away.
🟩: She has a lot of compassion, even if she doesn't always show it outwardly. (She's trying her best, okay??)

Unstructured and inconsistent

(in seriousness I found that as long as I write *something* every day, w/o giving myself constraints in terms of word count or time spent, I ended up writing a lot more than I expected. so usually this doesn't involve any particular ritual, just finding a bit of time)

#DVPit On a near-future Earth, the world's digital data disappears in an abrupt catastrophe.

40 years later, a spaceship bound for a distant ocean planet collides with an unknown object, critically injuring its sole occupant and leading her to unconsciously relive the decades between. #A #LGBT #SF

#DVPit Is it better to live or remember? Deep in space aboard a damaged ship, an unconscious astronaut relives childhood memories of her first love. Meanwhile, her ship is dying, and her family waits for her on Earth. How can she preserve her future without losing sight of her past? #A #LGBT #SF

#UnhingedPit #A #SF #Q #LGBT

Collage image of a young girl running across a field toward a large blue planet hanging in front of her as the horizon disintegrates into blocky pixels. Against a TV static background with the hidden words "all that time they spent trying to recall the past could have been spent living"

#QueerPit Is it better to live or remember? Deep in space aboard a damaged ship, an unconscious astronaut relives childhood memories of her first love. Meanwhile, her ship is dying, and her family waits for her on Earth. How can she preserve her future without losing sight of her past? #A #SF #SPF

Collage image of a young girl running across a field toward a large blue planet hanging in front of her as the horizon disintegrates into blocky pixels. Against a TV static background with the hidden words "all that time they spent trying to recall the past could have been spent living"

#QueerPit Is it better to live or remember? A young girl in a post-digital-data world realizes she is actually deep in space aboard a malfunctioning spaceship, unconsciously reliving her childhood as her oxygen and fuel run low. Can she save her future without losing touch with her past? #A #SF #SPF

SPACE BETWEEN WORLDS x LIGHT FRM UNCOMMON STARS

What if your found family was lightyears away and one questionable choice from total disaster? Solo-traveler Audrey Tully came for the R&R, but got a crash course in friendship, self-love, and the messy magic of belonging.

#QueerPit #A #SF #SPF

#QueerPit #SF #A
📺 TV in the woods
💭 girl who dreams of being an astronaut
💞 young queer crush
🪞 perilous glimpse into the future
🚐 roadtrip across USA
🚀 a collision in space, an unconscious woman
🌌🌊 extraterrestrial sea with cosmic mysteries

comp Light From Other Stars x Our Wives Under the Sea

SAPPHICS GONE GIRL IN SPACE

When grieving widow Amani wakes up half way through a century long space mission, she must uncover the mystery of why she was awoken in the first place, haunted by an android with her dead wife's eyes.
#queerpit #SF #A #D

an overgrown train car in a field. the words "we expected more" in bold front and center, the words "optimistic dystopia at its queerest" at the bottom

Forty years after the fall of the internet, four women (and one genderless alien) embark on a journey that's one part saving the world, ninety-nine parts teaching each other how to survive when every reason they would've named to live is gone.

#queerpit #A #SF #SPF #CLI #D

#QueerPit
decades-spanning #SF
past: world's digital data disappears
present: girl dreams of space and navigates young queerness
future: unconscious astronaut relives childhood memories as her damaged ship burns fuel/oxygen

comp Meet Me in Another Life x Light From Other Stars
#A #UP #SPF #COA #MR