May the Best Ghost Win
Adult horror-comedy, 94k words
On submission
When Joyce Leck, a medium, discovers a rash of hauntings are the result of a gameshow where ghosts compete for prizes, she and her retirement village pals decide to use the gameshow to take down the corporation that destroyed their lives.
Central Florida Citrus has left Joyce’s hometown in shambles. Unmitigated pumping of the aquifer caused a massive sink hole and gas explosion. Toxic chemicals left former employees riddled with cancer. Joyce's daughter, Bridgette, is now a real estate agent stuck with her young son in an unsellable house by the groves, ground-zero for exposure.
Using her mediumship to eavesdrop on the gameshow, Joyce learns the next season of House Haunters will be for rookie ghosts—with a crash course in haunting provided by the show. With so many cancer-riddled friends on death’s door, the crew has several potential contestants. If Joyce gets them on the show, her inside-ghosts can haunt the citrus executives out of their high-dollar mansions, allowing Bridgette to earn enough sales commissions to escape.
But following a clandestine land-grab, the citrus corporation moves to expand. Realizing the new groves will render the entire town toxic, Joyce and her pals—living and dead—scramble to master the art of the haunt. It’s time to juice Central Florida Citrus once and for all.
Flies in Heaven
Speculative romantic thriller, 93k words
With all living creatures imbued with souls and only so much space to go around, the afterworld is knee-deep in insects and on the brink of an ecological disaster.
Jude, a high-ranking member of the afterworld’s government, has a solution that will benefit himself and his cronies. His fix will turn the afterworld into a society of haves and have-nots that mirrors the worst of Earth’s political injustices.
Addie, a young Ph.D. candidate in urban planning, dies two days before her graduation. Upon arrival, she finds herself outfitted with standard issue mosquito netting and escorted through the Pearly Gates by strangers. Addie doesn’t know anyone on the other side, but having put off relationships to focus on school, she’s rusty when it comes to making friends.
Larkin is a self-reliant environmentalist spearheading a movement to save the afterworld’s ecosystem by shutting off the flow of insects as fast as possible, even if that means medaling on Earth from the other side. At best, he’s slowing disaster down, not fixing the problem. He can only go so far on his own.
Addie and Larkin must work together to stop Jude before he transforms Heaven into Hell, and solve the afterworld’s ecological problems once and for all, discovering a little chemistry of their own along the way.