The Unofficial GUTGAA Small Press Query Hop

Some of us intending to enter the Small Press Pitch Contest are partaking in another blog hop for the purposes of critiquing one another's queries. So here is mine! (By the way, it's also the one I am planning on sending out to an agent if I can cut it back a bit. With my personalized "Why I chose you" paragraph it runs at 416 words!)

Edit with completely brand spanking new version that puts Zelene--who is really the hero of the story so far--in the limelight a lot more. Trying to incorporate all of the critiques I have gotten so far. You guys are more amazing than I can say (and for a writer who loves her words that is something, isn't it?) and I would be completely lost at this without you guys! Thank you and keep the critiques coming!

New Version:

Dear Small Press Goddess,

Prophecies are no different from horoscopes in the back of Cosmo, as Zelene would say. She likes to remind people that Y2K came and went without the world ending, and, yes, the world will continue to spin after the Mayan calendar ends. She does not realize she is part of an ancient prophesy of five girls born into a powerful bloodline that would bring about the end of a generations-long power struggle among worlds. She is not even aware of worlds beyond this one.

Zelene learns of the destiny the prophecy demands of her and the family she was separated from as an infant when she is ripped from the world she has known her whole life and dragged back to the one of her birth. She is reunited one by one with the other three girls but she finds that the twin sister she has never met is notably absent. Ariana has been captured by enemies intent on sacrificing her in order to gain her powers and Zelene can’t help but shudder at how easily she could have ended up in Ariana’s shoes. When she questions the lack of rescue efforts, she receives what she refers to as a verbal pat on the head from the elders. They tell her to focus on learning the ways of their world and how to tap into her own magic, but Zelene has never been the best at doing what she is told.

Zelene realizes what is at stake. She knows that without Ariana as the fifth, the foretold peace and healing of the worlds cannot come to pass, and the war will spill over into the world she has known as home. She knows she has to find a way to ignite the power locked within herself to save Ariana, or she risks leaving the fates of millions to a vague prophecy and the arcane politics that brought about the war in the first place.

HEIRS OF WAR is an adult [or new adult depending who I am querying] fantasy novel complete at 146k that has elements of political intrigue, action, and romance comparable to the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind.


Old Version:

Dear Small Press Goddess,

Prophecies are overrated. Ariana thinks that they are no different than the horoscopes in the back of Cosmo. She doesn’t realize that the pentacle-shaped birthmark on her wrist marks her as the foretold fifth daughter of the most powerful bloodline in all the worlds and the key to an ancient prophecy.

Ariana leads a normal life for a girl on the cusp of adulthood; ignorant of the sisters she has been separated from since birth. She has never even crossed paths with her twin sister Zelene. Zelene is quite the opposite of Ariana with a life that sounds like the most tragic of Lifetime movies. The twins know nothing of Estridia, the world of their birth, or the war that has been raging on for generations that they are destined to end. But they are about to find out.

Ariana is captured by enemies that intend to sacrifice her in order to gain her power and destroy the caste system the worlds follow. Zelene returns to Estridia where a loving family welcomes her and she is reunited with the three other girls of her generation. Together they make up the prophesized five but without Ariana as the fifth they are doomed to fail, leaving the worlds to be ripped apart by war. Thrown into an unfamiliar world full of magical races of people and politics they don't understand, they must find a way to ignite the powers within them and decide whether or not to rescue their missing sister on their own or leave it all to fate and vague prophecies. But when they find that the good guys are proving to be not so good and the bad guys seem to have the wrong methods but the right ideas, where does that leave them?

HEIRS OF WAR is an adult fantasy novel at 146k that has elements of political intrigue, suspense, action, and romance comparable to the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind.

Writing is Hard...Writing Queries is Harder

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.

GUTGAA Meet and Greet!

I am very excited to be participating in the 2012 Gearing Up To Get An Agent blogfest and pitch contest! Our first task is to get to know some fellow participants, which might be the most exciting part for me. I am only now foraying into the writerly community, and I completely geek out at the connections I've made with other writers. So without further blabbery, I will get on with the questions Deana posted for us!

Writerly Lessons: What I Learned This Week

As I mentioned in my other blog post, I attended WriteOnCon for the first time this past week. I have also had a really eventful non-writerly week as life is taking off in full force the week before classes begin again. So I will be brief so that I can get some time in to actually write today. Stay tuned for the end for a special little announcement!

Lessons I Learned This Week:

Writerly Query Experiment

Instead of writing anymore on book three (even though progress is lacking), I have decided to take some time to work on my query letter since I had a stroke of inspiration for it. And since it has been a whole five minutes since I blogged, I thought I would leave it to my wonderful readership to help me decide which to use. Or if I should scrap the entire thing and start fresh. All (polite!) comments are welcome. Except for spam about male enhancements. Or spam in general.

On to the query letters!

The first also happens to be the one that I so boldly (and possibly stupidly) sent out almost two weeks ago to twenty four literary agents. I might owe them apology letters. You guys tell me. I sat down and wrote this, hoping to capture some of my writerly essence in the voice, and then didn't bother to revise much at all.

Writerly Confidence

An odd title for a blog about receiving my first rejection letter, but there it is. Yup--I got my first rejection in today! Let me just start off by saying that I really hate the term "rejection letter" because it has such an obvious negative connotation. Rejections are personal. They are usually synonymous with heartbreak and can lead to some pretty overwhelming feelings of insecurity.

Rejection letters from literary agents are not necessarily personal. They might write you personally, but that's not what I mean. It doesn't mean that they think you are devoid of talent or that they think you are the lamest writer in the world with no hopes of selling your book whatsoever. It just means that they don't think they can sell your book. Maybe it didn't speak to them. Maybe they already have three dozen other YA fantasy novels they are trying to work. Whatever their reasons for rejecting your query, the bottom line is that they didn't think it would be a good fit. And you really have to ask yourself the question: Would I want someone who doesn't really believe in my novel as much as I do trying to sell it? The answer should be a firm "no" possibly with a few expletives for emphasis.

Writerly...Insanity??

Call it insanity, if you will. I call it daring. Okay, maybe daring isn't the right word for what I just did, but I'm not convinced insane is either. Not yet.

Now, friendly readers, you might be asking yourself the obvious question: What the hell did you do already?? I'm not trying to build up dramatic suspense here. It's just a little hard to say out loud (which I tend to do as I type--again with the question of insanity.). So what did I do?

...I queried.