As Gearing Up to Get an Agent Blogfest and Pitch Contest starts (see cool looking icon to the right of your screen), I am once again asking myself the same question...
How do you write a clear and concise query letter about a MS that is YA (potentially New Adult) epic fantasy with five main characters? Oh, and it also happens to only be the first of a five book series. Not a potential series. A definite series. As in, there's really no way the reader would finish this book and say "Ah, this story is over."
The answer so far? *headdesk*
I've stripped my query down as far as I think it can go. Problem with that? The assumption is that since it is YA, there's one main character (Ariana) and that the stuff in the query about Zelene (her twin and one of the co-main characters) is just filler. It's not. Ariana and Zelene take center stage of this book, so I gave them the focus of the query and didn't name the other three girls that are ALSO main characters. I can't strip the query of Zelene because Ariana's story literally depends on Zelene. The same goes for the reverse. Also, my word count is too high. Which I know and am working on, but still. I doubt there's any way I'll be able to cut it from 146k down to 70k.
I'm thinking maybe I need to rework the query as New Adult for the Pitch Contest. Then maybe I can throw in some more about the political intrigue, which I left out when tailoring it to be YA. I know a lot of people say agents don't accept New Adult yet, but it might be worth it to try. It's certainly better than banging my head against the desk.
I think that's a good idea, Mara. I had a YA epic fantasy that I tried to query at 140K too. Not fun. I got it down to 90K, but don't like the stripped down version. I've trunked it for now until I figure out what to do. You could always market it straight up fantasy without the YA and see what happens. Good luck with it :)
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