Remember, any world you create, you must also navigate your readers through it.  If your query letter isn’t able to accomplish this, what makes you think an agent/editor will trust that your manuscript will read differently?

THE LETTER:

Dear Sir or Madam:
Please consider Pentacle, my young adult urban fantasy novel, set primarily in modern-day San Francisco. The completed manuscript is just under 88,000 words.
Nicola VanDrace despises everything, first and foremost herself, and second, everyone else. She is 13 and seriously considering suicide when she receives an invitation in the mail to attend a prestigious high school, Whitwelle Academy for the Education of Young Ladies of Stature, in San Rafael, California. After laughing her head off at the school’s name, she decides on a whim to attend. Once there, she meets Jacqueline, a girl virtually her opposite, but somehow the only person she doesn’t feel the immediate need to punch.
The two girls begin an unlikely and very close friendship—perhaps too close. Soon, inexplicable things begin to happen to them. They are chased through the streets of San Francisco by a boy with a knife. Nicola has a book that won’t open, which one day begins transforming into a half-star. The Headmistress’ wiener dog is stalking them.
What they don’t know is that they’re not from this world. They are elves, exchanged at birth for human children in order to protect them from the Great Demon, who was once a man, but is now possessed by thousands of malignant spirits. The Great Demon wants the Pentacle, an inter-worldly travel device of immense power– and Nicola and Jacqueline each have half. Nicola is also the spawn of the Great Demon, endowed with the genetic trait that will match her in power to her father, so that she must either kill what he has become, or be possessed herself, spelling doom for everything with a soul. The Great Demon is aware that one of the girls is its daughter, but does not know which changeling’s life it must end. Jacqueline and Nicola enter the struggle not knowing who they are or from where they come, or even for what they fight, but find that ‘kill or be killed’ is the final verdict. They have been fortunate not yet to have learned that the only thing worse than death is to be possessed.
Pentacle is my first novel and the first installment in this trilogy.  Writing for the second in the series is well underway. I attended the 2008 (X) Writer’s Conference, to which I had sent in an early draft of the novel’s prologue and first chapter, earning a full scholarship. I am prepared to send in the completed manuscript, should you desire to read it. Please note that I am querying multiple agents. Thank you for your time in reviewing this query, and I look forward to your response.
Best regards,

Share on Facebook

This author has no problem writing. The need to define this book is her challenge. I can’t ‘see’ it on the page. I can only ‘read’ what she wants it to be about and that’s a problem.

THE LETTER

Boom and bust; boom and bust. Economists call it the business cycle and say that’s just the way things work. But what if they’re wrong? What if, as seems to be happening now, the booms in our capitalistic system are destined to get shorter and help fewer people each time around, while the busts grow progressively deeper, longer and bring more human misery with every cycle? What if the root problems of capitalism run so deep that no amount of monetary stimulus, jobs creation programs or changes in who runs the country can solve the problem? What do we do when all the ideas we know how to apply to bring balance back to our system no longer succeed?

As with every other approach that’s ever served us – be it feudalism, the horse and buggy or hunting woolly mammoths – when all the fixes have failed, it’s time for a change. None of those systems were inherently evil and they all worked well for a time. When the world changes though, we need to change with it…or die. As conscious, thinking beings we can either do so thoughtfully and voluntarily, or we can wait until life gets so awful we’re left with no choice.  Either way, though, change is coming. The only remaining question to answer is this: will we embrace our current challenges and thoughtfully redesign our future with planning and foresight, or will we allow millions – perhaps even billions – of honest, hardworking people to suffer (or even die) before we pick up the broken pieces of our shattered civilization and start again?

This book opens a dialogue around that very question. After sixteen years as a successful stockbroker with a major Wall Street firm, I quit the financial services business in late 2007 and dedicated myself to writing “Sacred Economics: Designing a World That Works for Everyone” because I realized our entire global economic system was destined to fail, and fail for good. While working as a broker I’d witnessed the stock market crashes of 1987 and 2000, and I’d been warning my clients about the pending collapse of the mortgage and housing market since 2005. Yet still our national economists, those ivory tower thinkers we tend to turn to for explanations, were assuring us things were clipping along just fine. What therefore became painfully clear to me was that it was going to take someone from deep inside the industry, someone who had experienced its strengths and weaknesses from the inside out, to find the courage to stand up and tell some hard truths about what capitalism really is and why it can’t take us any futher, as well as point out the price our planet is paying to try and sustain it.

This isn’t a book that will tell you how to survive the apocolypse, or how to do better than your friends and neighbors in the next economic crash. It’s bigger than that. Nor is its intention to instill fear, or to shame and blame those who’ve promoted capitalism in the past. This book’s intention is to warn everyone of the rising economic tsunami – the rumbles of which we are already sensing as the wave begins to build – that can only be avoided if we stand together and help those standing beside us. I promise you, it will challenge some of your deepest – perhaps even most cherished – beliefs about life and humankind. It has to, because before we can change our world we must first change our minds…one mind at a time.

Video Critique # 9

Share on Facebook

As promised, we have added author interviews to our MarketingtheMuse content. Published authors now have an opportunity to build/expand their platforms as MtheM builds/expand through MtheM Skype interviews, also complementary to subscribers.

So without  apology, here’s the first in MtheM Skype Author Interview Series (we promise, editing will improve!)  The intention: focus interviews on one aspect of writing in an 8-10 minute video that authors on the road will find useful.

Colin Broderick’s memoir, Orangutan begins with his arrival in NYC from Northern Ireland when he was 21 years old. The troubled times in this young man’s life mixes sadness and desperation with lots of funny scenes. After all, Colin is Irish. Random House published Orangutan in early 2010 and in 2011 will publish the follow up, That’s That, the chronicles of his early years in Northern Ireland. MtheM Skype Author Interview Series hopes to have him back on to discuss more about this writing life.

Share on Facebook

I need your votes so I’m begging on my own website…where else would I beg?  Click the video to hear more about OWN AGING, my audition for Oprah’s OWN TV. I need votes & comments & remember, OWN AGING could provide a platform for over-40 authors  on the road. How that’s for a pitch? Voting closes 7/3/10

(Please cut/paste URL to VOTE)

http://myown.oprah.com/audition/index.html?request=video_details&response_id=3157&promo_id=1

Thanks Everyone!

Share on Facebook

THE LETTER

Dear Agent,
I invite you to read my 128,000 word archaeology-mystery and fictional novel entitled The Ancient Prophecy.
Kirkus Review calls it “a head spinning adventure,” also adding that “The plot pulls the reader smoothly through the action and the scenes from Ancient Egypt have the feel of an authentic fable,” and raves that it is “an Egypt tale well worth reading.”
Four thousand years ago, the Ancient Egyptian god of the underworld is slaughtered… by his own brother. Attempting to take over the world, he is stopped by the rest of gods who entomb him in the layers of time and with him, his very sinister purpose, but not for long.
The story then shifts to modern days where a family of three Egyptologists, father, mother and daughter, are stranded in an ancient Egyptian tomb. The parents meet their demise by means of a curse, while the girl, Maya Montgomery, encounters a near-death experience when she falls into a dark pit during her escape.
At eight years of age, she is left to die inside the tomb until she is rescued by a family friend.  After being transported to the hospital, she is found carrying a single object in her hand that is believed to be an Ancient Egyptian artifact. Maya realizes that she has no recollection whatsoever of the recent mishaps that included the death of her parents or of the origin of the object she carries. She is diagnosed with amnesia and the secrets she once possessed are shrouded within her brain, forever.
Twelve years after the tragedy, she returns to Egypt along with an expedition in hopes to unearth her lost past, but she returns carrying the single object that the god of chaos and evil pursues. How will she stop him from acquiring her only inheritance when it is his key to world dominance?
I believe The Ancient Prophecy will appeal to fans of Dan Brown and J.K. Rowling. Initially, because the subject of Ancient Egypt is one that stands unambiguous to mystery and adventure and almost everyone in the world is interested in this civilization.
I am currently a college student and an active member of the honor society Phi Theta Kappa. I have joined The Writer’s Garret Workshop over the past years while working, at the same time, on my second novel of a series of six. I’m also a fluent speaker of English and Arabic thus I can easily reach a greater audience. Over the past ten years of my life, the Ancient Egyptians have fascinated me to the extent that I learnt how to read and write ancient hieroglyphs. I believe that my novel is a facilitated way to gain knowledge of this great civilization and a great source of entertainment for both young adults and adults.
A complete manuscript is currently available for submission upon your request.
I’m truly looking forward to hearing from you.
signature
POST-critique last word:

IN MY HUMBLE, this author has a shot  at getting attention. He writes well, presents a compelling tale and clearly has the credentials to deliver it.

Share on Facebook