Courtney Parker

The Runaway House by Courtney Parker

Kade looks and acts like a runaway. And with his parents breathing down his neck about college applications and baseball scholarships, he almost wishes he were one. So when Agent Boone approaches him with the opportunity to go undercover and disappear, Kade signs up.

In the small, old-timey towns of Jessup, Martin, and Clydesville, sightings of high-profile missing kids from all over the country have poured in through the years. The tips turn up nothing, but the townsfolk tell tales of an old, possibly haunted, house set deep in the woods that separate the towns. Kade is given one mission: to find the house and, if the kids are there, to convince them he’s one of them.

In the three-story, Victorian-style house surrounded by nothing but miles of woods, Kade enjoys his stress-free days and finds himself wanting to abort the mission and just live this new life with new people who expect nothing of him. Yeah, Ian—the guy in charge—has it out for him for some reason and says he’s not allowed to leave the house, but why would he want to anyway? Still, he can’t help but wonder where Ian goes every day when he wanders off into the woods. Quickly, Kade realizes that he is not the only one with a secret, and he must take it upon himself to crack a case much bigger than the one he signed up for. Especially if he wants to ever get himself and the kids out alive.

The Runaway House (66,000 words) is a YA novel. I have written one other book that is a companion novel to this and has not yet been solicited to any agents or publishers. My plan is to write another companion novel to The Runaway House and make it a trilogy. Professionally, I have freelance edited e-books and worked in education and libraries since earning a BA in creative writing in 2009.

 

The Book Doctors: We like the idea of this book very much.  You capture all the obstacles that a teenage kid faces, the overwhelming feeling that makes someone a runaway.  We think lots of kids will be able to relate to this.  And the missing children from all over the country who have ended up in these small old time he towns, it’s very spooky and cool.  We can really see the three-story, Victorian-style house surrounded by nothing but miles of woods.  It’s very good showing, a wonderful word picture that our minds can really wrap around.  But we don’t get the sense from the very beginning what this kid desperately wants, apart from escaping the pressure.  What does he really desire at the beginning of the story?  We do like the suspense and the difficulty that Ian brings to the story.  But we’d like to get more of a sense of what life is like in this house, why these kids have all been brought there.  We’d like a little bit more of a sense of what’s going to happen if he fails in his mission.  Show us the pictures of what’s going to happen to those kids if everything goes wrong.  Lastly, don’t tell us that you’ve written another book that hasn’t been published.  That doesn’t serve you.  And just pitch this book, not the companion novel as well.