I am seeking representation for these novels. Contact me if you’d like to discuss any of them.
Email: Contact@JonathanStephens.com
BUMMIN’ IT
pitch: PAPER TOWNS meets SAINT IGGY
status: novel completed, awaiting its moment
length: 77,000 words
Seventeen-year-old Elijah Briscoe is grateful someone adopted him, but he still doesn’t feel at home in his family. Now, with college just around the corner and his parents nagging him to find a summer job, he teams up with his two best friends in a quick money-making experiment—roadside panhandling. Their arsenal of humorous cardboard signs is working pretty slick until some shady professional beggars rip off Eli’s record haul.
Eli chases one of the beggars down and finds himself lost in a hidden city of the homeless, where he runs into Blue, the thief’s smart and tough daughter. When some thugs raid the City to kidnap her dad, Eli forces Blue to hide in safety. Even though he thinks he did the right thing, he can’t escape the guilt he feels for separating her from her father.
Before time runs out on Blue’s dad, Eli decides he must help, and together they plunge into the city’s underbelly, where they uncover secrets from their screwed-up pasts and find new beginnings in the unlikeliest places.
Complete at 77,000-words, my young adult novel BUMMIN’ IT will appeal to readers of John Green’s PAPER TOWNS and K.L. Going’s SAINT IGGY.
EYES LIKE GODS
pitch: APOCALYPTO meets Easter Island
status: novel completed, awaiting its moment
length: 85,000 words
Far across the Pacific Ocean, beyond the edge of maps, lies the mysterious Easter Island where armies of hundred-ton Moai statues guard its volcanic shores. Each time the statues thunder to life with their glowing indigo eyes, thirteen-year-old Keoni cowers and worships along with both royal and slave clans. But when his father wins the throne and becomes the island’s ruling Ariki, his fears should disappear. Instead, they get worse.
Keoni watches his once-admired father—now empowered to awaken the statues—terrorize the slave clans into submission. The cruelty backfires, sparking a vicious slave rebellion and tearing their family apart. Keoni wants free of the religion’s rituals, his life as the Ariki’s son, and his dreams of a faceless girl. If only he had somewhere to run.
When Keoni’s father forces him to represent the family in a sacred tribal competition, Keoni loses, finding himself at the mercy of the young rebel leader Akolo, who has lost his parents at hands of Keoni’s father. Akolo’s sister Lani is also overwhelmed with grief and has seen her own visions through her cave art. When Lani discovers what her brother is doing to Keoni, she tries to free him, and in her attempts, they fall into clan-crossed romance, learn the truths of each other’s visions, and glimpse a way to keep their clan tensions from escalating into all-out war.
Complete at 85,000 words and told through three POVs, my young adult fantasy novel EYES LIKE GODS will appeal to fans of APOCALYPTO and mythologies.
RUNES OF EVENIGHT
pitch: The dark side of PERCY JACKSON
status: 20% completed, shelved until the right time
length: 120,000 words
The biggest problem with fate is you can’t change it. Odin and the rest of the Norse pantheon realize their futures are sealed, but only The Great Wise One, Odin himself, dares to imagine how he can escape his fate. He remembers what it was like to be human. Sure, he’ll die one day, but at least he’ll get to choose his fate.
His hope lies in the life of an orphan boy who’s been adopted by a priest. If Odin can convince the youth to switch places with him, freedom will be Odin’s once again.
NORMAL FOR ONCE
status: novel completed, awaiting its moment
length: 65,000 words
Once a class clown, always a clown.
Even if you want out.
Because they wouldn’t know what to do without you.
And neither would she.
My 65,000 -word young adult novel, NORMAL FOR ONCE, is about the masks they wear and what happens when others see what they’re hiding behind them.
I’LL SHOW YOU EVERYTHING
status: novel completed, awaiting its moment
length: 60,000 words
Take his 8th grade brother out of the picture and 6th grader Nolan Trimble is a middle school nobody.
For a whole year, the back seat of his brother’s Colson Imperial Flyer tandem bicycle has been the best seat at school. Choice friends. Choice activities. Choice girls.
But school is almost out, and Nolan Trimble’s brother Michael is moving on to high school without him. Which will be tough for the kid who carries bookmarks of his favorite authors in his back pocket for secret advice. Who’s never locked lips with a girl, not counting his kissing game victims back in the fifth grade. And who’s never stood up to his personal bully.
From now on, if he wants anything, he’s gotta earn it for himself.