Dear Agent,
The Residents of Sulham Close have a terrible secret. Trapped by a curse they’re unable to revoke, they receive prosperity, good fortune, and immortality in return for providing a yearly sacrifice to demonic deity who resides on the other side of a portal.
Mark lives on the streets of Reading, earning enough by busking to keep himself in Strongbow. Pete saunters into his life with an offer he can’t refuse – a warm bed, free food, and a chance to ditch the booze. Tricked into staying the night at Pete’s secluded cottage and oblivious of the chithons, the diety’s minions, soon coming to take him over to the Otherside, Mark smuggles in Louisa, his pregnant girlfriend. A race against time ensues with midnight, the time of the chithons’ arrival, fast approaching. The neighbours attempt a rescue and drag Louisa from the cottage. Now in labour, they take her inside another house as Mark’s screams fill the night. Louisa was in the house as midnight struck, and the chithons emerging from the Otherside want their other sacrifice. But Pete is sabotaging his neighbours’ efforts to save the girl.
A hasty caesarean is performed on Louisa, and the baby hidden as the chithons storm the house and seize the dying girl. Amelia cuddles Hope, the baby, as the creatures disappear for another year.
Sulham Close is a 30,000 word horror novella and middle instalment of a five book series. The other books chronicle the origins of the curse, the murder of one of the residents, and Pete’s evolution into a serial killer. The dramatic conclusion features Hope, the baby born in Sulham Close, on the cusp of turning twenty as she passes through to the Otherside and battles the deity.
I have been writing seriously for several years. My novel, Coombe’s Wood, was runner-up in YouWriteOn’s 2008 Book of the Year Award, and was a semi-finalist in the 2009 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. My published short stories and poems include work in Twisted Tongue magazine and UKAuthors Anthologies, and a series of children’s stories in La Fenetre. The manuscript of my novel The Crocodile was short-listed in the Undiscovered Authors 2006 competition.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
