You Haven't Gotten Rid of Me Yet

I'm sorry for yet another lengthy absence.  I admit, I've been in a blogging funk.  I had the time, just not the energy or inclination to blog.  The good news is that this funk hasn't extended to anything else.  Since finishing my latest revision of Knights of Avalon in December, I've been busy with a bunch of things:

Reading:  OK, well, I've been trying to read.  I've self-diagnosed myself with literary ADD.  I'll be reading a book I love and then...SQUIRREL!  I don't have a TBR pile, I have a TBF (To Be Finished) pile.  It took me six months to get through Catching Fire.  It's bad, y'all.   

 
I'm happy to say I actually finished Watersmeet and thoroughly enjoyed it.  Next up is Falling Under and then maybe Thief's Covenant, Witch Eyes, or Born Wicked.  

Writing:  I'm still querying Knights of Avalon.  To distract myself while I query, because querying isn't stressful, nuh-uh, I've started work on my next project:  Beautiful Medusa.  It's about Medusa, as the hero.  And yes, she still turns people into stone and has snakes for hair.  That's so inconvenient for her.  I've also signed up for this class  ------> Writing and Selling the Young Adult Novel, taught by the insanely talented Mandy Hubbard.  I've done workshops and attended panels in the past, but I'm pretty much self-taught and I'm hoping a class will help me with some of my problems with characterization and connecting with readers.     

Besides that, I've embarked on an epic quest to tame the roving hordes of dust bunnies living in my house and have been juggling rescue cats like someone straight out of Cirque du Soleil.          

And while I haven't been blogging, I have been attending author events, so keep an eye out for contests in the near future.  I've been hoarding signed books and it's time to get rid of them!

Query Update: Neurotic Writer Is Neurotic

I'm not particularly thrilled with the name, but my blog is called 'Surviving Writing a Book' for a reason. There are days, many days, when I feel I haven't so much embarked on a quest to get published as I've embarked on a slow descent into madness.

Just so you know where I stand with things: I have a YA Urban Fantasy called Knights of Avalon, about the Knights of the Round Table being reincarnated as New Jersey teens. I love my story. Yeah, yeah, I know all writers love their stories, but I fully, 100%, believe in this story, in a way that I didn't know was possible until I wrote it.

Problem is, I've been querying for over a year now and have piled up enough rejections to create a very pleasant bonfire with which to roast marshmallows over. I know my query isn't the problem. I've gotten too many partial and full requests for that to be the issue. No, it's something with the manuscript itself.

Some of the agents who have rejected me, very kind and awesome agents, have told me that they just didn't fall in love with the manuscript. I get that a lot and really, that's not a bad response to get, but at some point, when you hear that over and over, you wish there was a more fixable problem. Something like, "There's a giant plot hole...right over there." Yeah, I could fix that. But how do I make someone love something? Maybe have an agent read the manuscript over a candlelight dinner? With a violin concerto softly playing in the background?



I have my suspicions...maybe my main character is too unsympathetic, maybe my words somehow lack emotional impact, maybe I just don't write well enough... but I'll keep working at it, always trying to make my story better, because while I believe 100% in Knights of Avalon, I also believe 100% that there's still room for improvement.

I'm kind of running out of agents to pester though, and at this point, I have the feeling I'm not going to find one. Not right now, at least. It's frustrating, and I would prefer to have one, because my beagle can negotiate a contract better than I can. But I'll go it alone if I have to, and I think I'm going to start querying publishers (reputable ones) who accept unagented submissions. And you better believe I saw Sourcebooks' call for YA manuscripts and sent mine in weeks ago. Wish me luck, because so far my luck's been pretty lousy, and I'll let you all know how it goes!

Status Report

Hello lovely people! (and you really are lovely, I can't tell you all how many times I've been bummed out over the last few months and someone's kind comment on the blog or on Twitter has cheered me up) I've been querying for three months now and here are my stats:

• 20 agents queried
• 4 partials requested
• 1 full requested
• All rejected :(
  

Now I know this is a subjective business, but with five rejections, that tells me something isn't working quite right with the book. I've been complimented on how strong my writing is, the agents like the premise and once I tweaked some pacing issues, they've been very positive on that too.

What no one has said one good thing about is the main character herself and one agent told me that she couldn't connect with Justine (my MC). I love my MC, I think she's 32 flavors and then some, but that awesome person living in my head isn't translating to the page, so I've got to find a way to fix that.

Based on feedback, I also suspect that the latter half of my book is stronger than the beginning part. I think this is the case because the further along an agent has read, the more complimentary they've been, and one of my beta readers (OK, my Mom..who btw, HATES Knights of Avalon) told me that the first fifteen pages after the prologue were much weaker than the rest of the book. Weaker beginning + inability to connect with MC = Rejection.

The thing is, this isn't an easy problem to fix. It's not like bad punctuation or a plot hole, it's something that's almost intangible. One of those things that you either have or you don't.

But I have a plan. The plan does not involve ferrets. No, it involves the following: Over the next day or so, I'm going to post the first few chapters of the manuscript up on the blog. If you'd like, please give me your thoughts, good and bad, on the writing and specifically, on the main character. Do you connect with her? If not, why?

Next, it's been suggested to me that I switch the novel over to first person, that this might allow readers to identify more with the MC. I think I'll test this out on a few chapters and once I've done that (it'll probably take me a few days, at least), post those chapters up on the blog too to get everyone's feedback. Again, thanks for all your help. You guys have helped keep me sane, or if nothing else, from going any crazier than I already am. :)

Mock Query: The Nanerpuss Code

**Warning** Fake Query Ahead. Keep out of reach of agents, LOLcats, and small children. Do not attempt at home. No cyborgs with Austrian accents were harmed in the making of this query.

Dear Colleen… I feel like I can call you Colleen since I met you once at an IHOP five months ago. You might remember me, I waved to you and bounced up and down and ran to my car to show you my 300,000 word religious-themed memoir. But when I came back, you were hiding in the bathroom and you wouldn’t come out no matter how much I tried to entice you with my clever and witty reading of my manuscript. Then the security guards came and rudely dragged me away, so unfortunately I didn’t get to chapter five of my memoir, which is when it got really good.

Anyways, I’ve written a new book now and I know you’re closed to submissions, but this query actually comes from the future, when you’ll be open to submissions again. For you see, in the year 2012, on August 29 at approximately 2:14am, the Skynet Global Digital Defense Network gains sentience and launches a war of extinction against the human race. I know, what a bummer. Can you imagine what that does to the publishing industry?

Now I’m sending this query from the future, at the behest of the leader of the human resistance, Jessica Faust, to ask you to please agent my manuscript, The Nanerpuss Code. I know what you’re thinking: What does The Nanerpuss Code have to do with the salvation of the human race? Everything, my dear Ms. Lindsay, everything.

For at Book Expo America 2011, on a sunny, pleasant day, the architect of Skynet shall wander by and in a freak accident, be crushed to death by a pile of Nanerpuss Code galleys, preventing the completion of Skynet and saving not only the human race, but the publishing world as we know it. No, really, it's a good thing, trust me.

So, to sum up: Represent The Nanerpuss Code, save the world. The fate of the future lies in your hands!

Up to No Good

Hello! Good afternoon! I'm still hanging in there! Here's the latest: I did get a very kind rejection from the agent I mentioned in the earlier posts, but it was the most complimentary rejection I've ever received, so maybe I'm making some progress. I do have other people looking at the manuscript that I'm very excited about, so we'll see, hopefully I can one day find that agent who loves my work and is a good match.

In the mean time, I think I'm going to busy myself by writing another mock query letter. And I'll probably start work soon on the sequel to Knights of Avalon. The book's main character, Justine, is very pushy and has been bugging me to get started. Yeah, my characters have minds of their own, and they talk to me.

Your Moment of Zen

I'm in the process of querying now and as always, it's a stressful time for me. So here's a little something to take my mind off it and that I hope you'll enjoy too. I present to you, a shot of Hualalai taken from Waikoloa on the Big Island, from when I last visited in '07.

Revised Query Letter

OK, here is the revised query based on your suggestions. Thank you very much! By the way, my process with queries is that I usually solicit feedback from a couple of different places (in this case I posted it on VerlaKay.com as well), then I take the feedback and just think on it for a little while. Walk the dog, go food shopping, something like that. Then usually while I'm in Aisle Seven, staring at cans of tuna fish, I'll have an A-ha! moment and realize how I can fix the query. Finally, I cut and paste the feedback into my query document and as I go along making changes, I check off what I've fixed. I don't always make every change that is suggested, but in this case, I pretty much did.

And if that process seems relatively straightforward, understand that there was much gnashing of teeth and yelling at the computer along the way.

So, here it is:

Sixteen-year-old Justine Kwiatkowski never planned on becoming a modern day King Arthur, she’s always preferred a good brawl to a sword fight and she’s got finals to worry about at the end of the month. But when her best friend Gwen is kidnapped outside the town of Avalon, she’ll do whatever it takes to get her back, even if it means questioning suspects, believing in magic, and pulling a sword out of a stone, even if it means risking her life by picking a fight with Morgan le Fay.

Because her best friend happens to be the reincarnation of Guinevere, and fifteen hundred years after the fall of Camelot, the Knights of the Round Table have returned, reborn as New Jersey teens. Now Morgan le Fay, with a little assist from Mordred, is killing the knights before they can remember who they were, kidnapping Gwen to draw out the last few survivors.

Not that Justine believes any of this is real. Reincarnation? Magic? She’s not a knight, she just wants her friend back. Making the connection between Gwen’s kidnapping and the murders of bright and promising area teens, she investigates the teens’ deaths, discovering the secret of who they once were and racing to track down the rest before they become the next victims.

She’s helped along the way by Gwen’s boyfriend, a loner from the wrong side of the tracks searching for redemption. Justine doesn’t know if she can trust him, especially when he claims to be Lancelot du Lac, but after she’s attacked by the Green Knight and pulls Excalibur from a stone, she’s starting to think he might be on to something.

To save her best friend, Justine will have to bring together Lancelot and the other knights and defeat Mordred. For Justine, that’s not a problem, and she just might save the world in the process.

Knights of Avalon, a YA Urban Fantasy, is complete at 65,000 words. While intended to be a three-part series, the first book is stand alone. If interested, the manuscript is available upon request. Thank you for your consideration!

The Query Letter Returns

When last we left my query letter for Knights of Avalon, it looked like this. Not bad. Decent. But I felt it could use a little more personality. A little more pizazz. So I covered it in hearts and sparkles left the query alone for a couple of weeks, thought about the tone and feeling I wanted to convey, and did some revisions.

Here's my latest draft, what do you all think?

Sixteen-year-old Justine Kwiatkowski never planned on becoming a latter day King Arthur, she’s always preferred a good brawl to a sword fight, but when her best friend Gwen is kidnapped in the town of Avalon, she’s determined to do whatever it takes to get her back. Canvas neighborhoods. Question suspects. Believe in magic. Pull a sword out of a stone. Maybe even pick a fight with Morgan le Fay.

Because her best friend happens to be the reincarnation of Guinevere, and fifteen hundred years after the fall of Camelot, the Knights of the Round Table have returned, reborn as New Jersey teens.

There’s Gwen’s boyfriend, the loner from the wrong side of the tracks who blames himself for bloodshed that happened over a thousand years before he was born, the self-professed drama nerd whose only fighting experience is in West Side Story but finds herself able to take down a champion black belt with ease, the troubled artist who obsessively paints images of the Holy Grail, and the star football tackle who only wants two things in life, a giant battle axe and to keep his brothers and sisters safe.
Problem is: Someone’s killing the knights before they can remember who they once were. If Justine can’t help them discover their pasts and join together, there’ll be no future, not for Gwen, not for them, not for anyone.

Knights of Avalon, a YA Urban Fantasy, is complete at 65,000 words. If interested, the manuscript is available upon request. Thank you for your consideration!

It's #Querypalooza!

In honor of #Queryfail, #QueryDay, #Querypalooza, I was seriously tempted to write up some appallingly atrocious queries and send them to agents for a good giggle. Then I realized that I'd really like to be working with these people one day, and that perhaps it might not be a good idea to find creative ways to annoy them, so instead, I shall post my appallingly atrocious queries on my blog!

**Warning**
Fake Query Ahead. Keep out of reach of agents, LOLcats, and small children. Do not attempt at home. No literary classics were harmed in the making of this query. OK, maybe one, but Jane Austen's ghost must be used to it by now.

Dear Nathan,

I'm your biggest fan. But not like that Kathy Bates chick from Misery. No, if you ever crashed on an isolated country road in the middle of winter and broke your leg, I totally would not kidnap you and force you to read my submissions. I'd be a much more considerate client than that.

As your biggest fan (but not like Kathy Bates!), I am submitting to you my Historical Romantic Thriller Epic Pride and Prejudice and Ninjas. It's about Pride and Prejudice, and ninjas. As it combines two subjects extremely popular in the market at this time, Jane Austen, and ninjas, I feel assured that it will be a Number One New York Times Bestseller within a week of you taking me on as your client. In addition, if you take me on as a client, my book will be so amazingly awesome that all the other agents will be jealous of you and Michael Chabon AND Cormac McCarthy will want you to be their agent. It's true.
As mentioned before, my book is about Pride and Prejudice, and ninjas. As sisters Elizabeth and Jane Bennet prepare with eager anticipation for their wedding day, Jane is kidnapped by strange, shadowy figures dressed most scandalously in black pyjamas. Darcy and Elizabeth, with the help of Sherlock Holmes, must investigate her disappearance, but to their surprise, find Bingley strangely reticent to aid them in their search.

The black pyjamaed-figures then return, attempting to assassinate Mr. Bingley with poisoned shuriken, but Elizabeth Bennet's flying fists of fury save the day and Bingley's most shocking secret is finally revealed: He is indeed a businessman, but he doesn't exactly get his 4,000 pounds of yearly income from selling tea and crumpets. As a member of a shadowy organization devoted to world domination run by Napoleon himself, Bingley partners with the Dutch to smuggle black market weapons to the Nagasaki yakuza. When a giant squid sinks one of the smuggling ships, the partnership goes sour and the Ninja are sent to eliminate Bingley once and for all.

It's as this point that Darcy reveals himself to be a member of the League of Extraordinarily Hot Gentlemen, an even secreter, more super organization devoted to battling Napoleon's evil designs. Darcy's assignment all along has been to watch Mr. Bingley and infiltrate the organization. Putting aside their differences to rescue Jane, Bingley and Darcy, along with Elizabeth, storm the ninjas' secret lair in the heart of Cheapside, only to find that the ninjas have put Jane on a ship bound for Japan.

It's Adventure on the High Seas as Darcy borrows a navy vessel from Admiral Horatio Nelson and takes off in hot pursuit. But just as he and Bingley and Elizabeth draw near, they're attacked by a pirate ship captained by none other than the villainous Mr. Wickham, who has already been bankrupted by Lydia despite his officer's commission in the North.

Having recently participated in your Agent for a Day contest, I feel that I am now well-qualified to declare that my novel is the best ever and will be more popular than Twilight, Harry Potter, and Jesus combined. I'll be waiting by the phone for your offer of representation.

Sincerely,

Your Biggest Fan (but not like Kathy Bates!)

PS-I've interspersed my query with photos of bacon and kittens, because bacon makes everything better and kittens make my query memorable.

LOLcat can haz agent?

In honor of the impending Queryfail 2: Bigger, Better, Angstier, I've put together a LOLcat query letter. I think if cats could type, this is what they'd say. That and 'feed me.'

Save Guinevere, Save the World

So I was working on the first draft of my query letter, which I'll post below, and I realized that it sure sounds like Heroes - Season 1's "Save the cheerleader, save the world," which caused me to giggle for a good couple of minutes.

Anyways, I decided not to submit the query to Nathan Bransford's Agent for a Day contest, as I'm still working on it and it looks like he already received plenty of submissions, but I will continue to post the query as it evolves.

Here's my first attempt at it, pulling together all the 'ingredients' I listed in the post below.

Fifteen hundred years ago, Camelot fell, torn apart by adultery, bloodshed, and the treachery of Mordred. Now the Knights of the Round Table have returned, reincarnated as New Jersey teens, and if they don’t discover their pasts and join together, there’ll be no future, not for them, not for anyone.

Someone is kidnapping and murdering the best and the brightest teens from across New Jersey: Star athletes, honor students, local heroes. When Justine Kwiatkowski’s best friend Gwen goes missing in the town of Avalon, she fears the worst, that her friend and partner in crime, a straight ‘A’ student who dreams of being a cardiac surgeon one day, has become the latest victim.

Luckily for Gwen and unfortunately for the killer, Justine’s determined to rescue her before it’s too late. Stubborn, pushy, and fearless, Justine finds herself surrounded by would-be allies in her quest to find her friend. There’s Gwen’s boyfriend, the loner from the wrong side of the tracks who blames himself for bloodshed that happened over a thousand years before he was born, the self-professed drama nerd whose only fighting experience is in West Side Story but finds herself able to take down a champion blackbelt with ease, the troubled artist who obsessively paints images of a golden cup, and the star football tackle who only wants two things in life, a giant battle axe and to protect his family from his abusive father.

If Justine can find a way to bring these kids together and settle some very old scores, she’ll not just rescue Gwen, she just might save the world.

Knights of Avalon, a YA Urban Fantasy, is complete at _______ (still writing it, so I don't know yet!). If interested, the partial or full manuscript is available upon request. Thank you for your consideration!

I'll let the query sit for a while and then come back to look at it with fresh eyes. I think there's definitely more to be done to let the main character's personality shine through and some tightening of language I can do as well.

Starting a Query from Scratch

Lookee! Over there! It's yet another blog contest, this time to "Be an Agent for a Day," and as everyone probably knows by now, blog contests are my crack. Oh yes they are.

There are two components to this contest. The one that interests me the most is the part where people send in queries to be judged by Nathan Bransford's readers, as if they were actual agents. I know not all queries will be selected, but what the heck, let's give it a shot, so I'm going to send in a query for my unfinished YA Urban Fantasy, "Knights of Avalon."

Except here's the catch: I'm going to have to write the query first. From the ground up. My Surviving Matewan query I posted a while back? I had worked on and revised that for months before anyone ever got to see it. But I think it'll be an interesting exercise to show you my thought process as I put a new query together.

Before I start writing a query, the first question I ask myself is: What should I put in it? I love to bake and to me, this is like putting together a list of ingredients. And yes, it's very easy to forget ingredients, because as writers we're so close to our own work that we sometimes assume readers know something that they don't.

For Knights of Avalon , here's the basic premise: Knights of the Round Table reincarnated as New Jersey teens. To find out who is killing them one by one and save the future, they'll have to join together and discover their pasts.

Here are my basic ingredients for the query. I'll update this list if I think of anything else:

• Story inspired by the legends of King Arthur and Camelot
• The title (you think it's obvious but people apparently have forgotten)
• Wordcount
• Genre
• No credentials will be included, because I really don't have any. Except that I love to write, my beagle thinks I'm brilliant and that I make the best pralines ever! But I don't think any of that's relevant here, so I'll leave it out. But seriously, my pralines are really yummy
• Set in Avalon, New Jersey
• In the plot summary, mention that Guinevere/Gwen has been kidnapped and it's this event that spurs her best friend Arthur/Justine to action and ultimately draws the knights together
• Mention the murder of New Jersey teens, all of them brilliant and heroic in some way
• Should I include quick one sentence descriptions of some of the individual knights? Will have to think on it. For example, for Dinadan, "a self-professed drama nerd whose only fighting experience is in West Side Story but finds herself able to take down a champion blackbelt with ease."
  

I'm clearly brainstorming here, but this is how I start a query. Just start tossing out ideas. I'll start a rough rough draft tomorrow and post it.

It's Like a Query Haiku

Blog contests are my crack. I cannot deny this. And wouldn't you know it, Colleen Lindsay over at The Swivet is having just such a contest, the object being to write a query in 140 characters or less. That's 140 characters, not 140 words. It's kind of like writing a query haiku.

Since I just pestered queried Colleen about Surviving Matewan, I think I'll try this with another story that's been percolating in my head since the ninth grade (you can submit anything for this contest, the story doesn't have to be finished or even an actual story). It's a sci-fi comedy called Reality in Exile that I'd like to one day turn into a graphic novel. Fun fact: It started out as a fanfic parody of Twin Peaks, and slowly, bit by bit, it's evolved into something completely different and excessively silly.

Let me work on it and I'll post the results!

Here's what I came up with:

Genius Bubba Einstein invents superweapon, drawing Earth into galactic war. Bubba, a biker chick and a pizza delivery girl must save world.

Told you it was silly.

Query Writing: The Query Letter Strikes Back

I was going to post my re-revised query letter last night, but my general rule is that it's better to sleep on it and give a query letter (or anything for that matter) another look in the morning before making final edits. Sleepiness does not lend itself to effective editing.

Here's the latest iteration, Query Letter Version 6.3. Or something like that. I long ago lost count.

1920. Matewan, West Virginia. It’s not easy being the woman of the house when you’re only twelve years old. It’s even harder when you’re living in a coal camp, caught up in one of the bloodiest strikes in American history.

After her mother’s death, Molly Anne McCoy has a choice: Step up and run the household or let her brothers and sister go into foster care. There’s just no way her father can raise a family on his own. Molly knows her mother would have wanted the family to stay together, so she sets her childhood aside, quits school, and takes over the day to day running of the house.

Not that that’s easy to do when her little brother Frankie keeps coming up with new and innovative ways to almost get himself killed and her little sister Gracie is throwing toys and tantrums. At least her brother Bobby is too busy reading and obsessing over creepy crawlies to cause her much trouble. Then there’s that awkward Billy Donohue boy Molly keeps running into. Molly’s starting to think he just might like her.

To make things worse, and there’s always something to make things worse, when the local miners, Molly’s father included, threaten to go on strike for better pay, life doesn’t just get harder, it gets more dangerous: Union rallies, gunfights in the street, banishment to a tent colony and eventually, guerrilla warfare in the mountains. Courageous, headstrong, and absolutely afraid, Molly will have to use every ounce of her resourcefulness and strength, from her skill with healing to her knowledge of herbs to her ability to keep calm in a crisis, if she and her family are going to survive.

A mix of Coal Miner’s Daughter and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Surviving Matewan is complete at 89,000 words and to my knowledge is the only Middle Grade or Young Adult novel to be set specifically in the 1920-1921 miners’ strike.

I did my best to be faithful to actual events. In the course of my research I visited Matewan, went down into a mine, spoke to experts and retired miners, waded through countless archives, and listened to oral histories from the people who lived and breathed the events themselves.

The partial or full manuscript is available upon request. Thank you for your consideration!

The query is 386 words, a bit on the long side, but I really like it as is, so I'm not cutting anymore. For now. I feel like a teenager who just got a brand new shiny red sportscar, so I'm going to give this new query a spin and see how it goes.

My Query Letter, Let Me Show You My Revision

All right, here's my revised query letter. As promised, I tried to move the focus away from the history and more to the characters and plot. I also paid special attention to showing Molly as an active participant in events, rather than as a bystander.

I think there's still a bit more work to do before the letter's ready to be sent out. I'm especially worried about "A mix of Coal Miner’s Daughter and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral." Does that work as a hook or is it patently ridiculous? And is it even accurate?

Dear [Agent Name Here],

1920. Matewan, West Virginia. It’s not easy being the woman of the house when you’re only twelve years old. It’s even harder when you’re living in a coal camp, caught up in one of the bloodiest strikes in American history. In the 89,000 word Young Adult novel, Surviving Matewan, courageous, headstrong, and absolutely afraid, Molly Anne McCoy is determined to keep her family together through it all.

When Molly’s mother dies in the Great Flu Pandemic of 1918, Molly has a choice: Step up and run the household or let her brothers and sister go into foster care. There’s just no way her father can raise a family on his own. That’d be women’s work. To Molly, it’s an easy decision. More than anything, her mother would have wanted the family to stay together. Molly’s certain of that. So she sets her childhood aside, quits school, and takes over the day to day running of the house.

Not that that’s an easy thing to do when her little brother Frankie keeps coming up with new and innovative ways to almost get himself killed and her little sister Gracie is throwing toys and tantrums. At least her brother Bobby is too busy reading and obsessing over creepy crawlies to cause her much trouble. Then there’s that awkward Billy Donohue boy Molly keeps running into. Molly’s starting to think he just might like her.

To make things worse, and there’s always something to make things worse, when the local miners, Molly’s father included, threaten to go on strike for better pay, life doesn’t just get harder, it gets more dangerous. Union rallies, gunfights in the street, banishment to a tent colony, and eventually, guerrilla warfare in the mountains. If Molly and her family are going to survive, she’ll have to use every ounce of her resourcefulness and strength to help see them through.

A mix of Coal Miner’s Daughter and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, to my knowledge, no Middle Grade or Young Adult novel has ever been set specifically in the 1920-1921 strike.

I did my best to be faithful to actual events. In the course of my research I visited Matewan, went down into a mine, where I promptly discovered I was claustrophobic, spoke to experts and retired miners, waded through countless archives, and listened to oral histories from the people who lived and breathed the events themselves.

If interested in reviewing a partial or full manuscript, my e-mail address is xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. Thank you for your consideration!

Sincerely,

Melissa Barlow

My Query Letter, Let Me Show You It

It's almost open season for querying again and before I bombard various unsuspecting agents with my query letter, I thought I'd use the break to polish it up. Now, this query letter has been worked and re-worked about a dozen times, but I'm firmly of the opinion that it doesn't hurt to go back every once in a while and see if it can be improved upon further.

Especially in light of this very helpful post from literary agent Sara Crowe on query letters that worked on her. If you haven't visited Ms. Crowe's blog yet, I highly recommend it. Really, go check it out, I'll still be here when you come back.

See? I'm still here. Now on to my query letter...

Dear [Agent name here],

1920. Matewan, West Virginia. It’s not easy being the woman of the house when you’re only twelve years old. It’s even harder when you’re living in a coal camp, caught up in one of the bloodiest strikes in American history. Daring, headstrong, and absolutely afraid, Molly Anne McCoy is determined to keep her family alive through it all.

They called it the “Matewan Massacre.” Coal miners in Mingo County, West Virginia, Molly’s father included, were determined to join the United Mine Workers of America. The coal operators were just as determined not to let it happen. On a rainy afternoon in the town of Matewan, union sympathizers and Baldwin-Felts agents in the employ of the coal companies faced off. Someone fired a shot. Two minutes and hundreds of bullets later, seven of the agents, two miners, and the mayor lay dead. For the next year, out of work miners waged a guerilla war against the coal companies while their families struggled to survive in tents.

In the 89,000 word Young Adult historical fiction novel, Surviving Matewan, Molly Anne tells her story of the massacre, the miners’ eviction from their homes, and the year she spends struggling to care for her family while living in a tent colony. Caught up in a bitter fight for a better life, Molly has to deal with more day-to-day worries too, from her brothers avoiding chores to dealing with the possibility that one of the boys in the coal camp just might like her.

Despite a handful of adult non-fiction books and an independent film loosely based on events, to my knowledge, no Middle Grade or Young Adult novel has ever been written specifically about the massacre and the strike. (This is also where I put further information on why the agent might be interested in this particular manuscript. For example, if the agent expressed an interest in YA historical fiction.)

I did my best to be faithful to actual events. In the course of my research I visited Matewan, went down into a mine, where I promptly discovered I was claustrophobic, spoke to experts and retired miners, waded through countless archives, and listened to oral histories from the people who lived and breathed the events themselves.

If interested, my phone number is xxx-xxx-xxxx and my e-mail address is xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. Thank you for your consideration!

Sincerely,

Melissa Barlow

I like my query letter. I think it's pretty decent. It's gotten me one request for a full (which was rejected, but I got great feedback), so it's been somewhat effective. Still, after reading Sara Crowe's super helpful blog post that you really should read, I think I can make it better. Let me get to work and I'll show everyone what I come up with.

Update: I haven't read my query letter in a few weeks and really, looking it over again, I like it a lot. But I think I have to try and make it better because my manuscript has a few things going against it. It's on the long side at 89,000 words, it's in a strange no man's land between young adult and middle grade fiction, and it's a historical, which I'm starting to learn isn't always an easy sell.

My strategy is to focus less on the history and more on the characters, to try and bring them to life in the query letter.

'Tis the Season Not to Query

I was preparing for another round of querying when I realized that, oh yeah, it's almost Christmas! And it's Festivus! And Hannukah! And Yule was only a couple of days ago. And Kwanzaa and Muharram are just around the corner!

Seeing how most agents come back to work on January 5, and I want to give them a few days to catch up, the plan is to start querying again on Thursday, January 8. That way they have a chance to wade through all the queries that piled up like Midwest snow over the holidays, and get through the queries from those writers who were thoughtful enough to wait until the agents got back to work.

I've also noticed I tend to get rejections on Fridays (and Wednesdays, for some reason), so I'll query that Thursday evening and have the shiny, sparkly, so amazing-they-can't-say-no query waiting for them when they get into work on Friday.

That's the plan, at least. Agents, you've been warned.