TEAM ROLAND QUERIES AGAIN

Yes, that's right. "Team Roland." You see that's what I call all of you who have cared enough to submit input on my past queries. I took what insight you gave me and shaped another query to send to a new agent I discovered : Gordon Warnock {check my blog list to find the article leading you to his interview in GUIDE TO LITERARY AGENTS.} He talks about a new genre he has named "Monster and Disaster."

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES, starring Natalie Portman is soon to come out. ABRAHAM LINCOLN VAMPIRE KILLER is being made by Tim Burton. And JONAH HEX with Megan Fox will hit theaters this June. Thinking FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE fit his category, MONSTER & DISASTER, I submitted to him. And here is that query, polished with your generous insights :

Dear Gordon : {Look at his picture. Read his interview. He's a fellow that you address in a letter by his first name.}

Monster and disaster. I have never heard that particular phrase used before concerning genre, though it certainly fits a whole herd of novels out there -- including my own, FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE.

The narrator, Samuel McCord, is a monster himself. The Apaches whom he had fought nearly 200 years ago would call him a "gahe," a drinker of souls. Now, he is merely known as the legendary French Quarter jazz club owner of Meilori's, a place where practically anything can happen and most everything has.

It is the first evening following Katrina, and the predators, both living and undead, see their chance to prey on the helpless. Samuel McCord decides he has lost enough : his humanity, his family, his beloved wife. He will not lose his city -- not to politicians, not to predators in the shadows, nor to his life-long enemy returning for a final revenge. McCord has always lost to his enemy, who insists upon the name DayStar. But he discovers that if he loses again, the European Revenant Empire will over-run not only his city but his country. But DayStar is about to discover that McCord has saved his best for last.

I'm including the first three paragraphs of FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE to give you a feel for my writing voice :

It rained lies and death today.

I stood knee-deep in water outside my French Quarter jazz club, Meilori’s. My soul stretched tight across my chest. Everything I saw and heard in the shadows spoke to me ... in threats. The sudden, short explosion of an unseen gun. A quick, sharp scream in the distance. And the blue spurt of a lighted match at the far end of the street. My city bled slowly in the ripples of the flooded streets.

I leaned back against the door to my club as if for reassurance that something solid still remained to me. That it had survived Katrina was a mixed blessing. It was all that was left to me of my wife. Staying here was both penance and purgatory. Meilori’s was the kind of place in which almost anything was likely to happen and in which almost everything had. Inside, the fifty-one survivors of Katrina that I could house were huddled in shivering, too quiet clusters. Words have no meaning when a city dies. Nothing much does.

Somewhere distant in the hot, red darkness a shot rang out. Another called out to it like a wolf. But it came from a different direction. I smiled bitter. The predators had crawled out from their boarded shelters. They knew the restraint of law had died this day. Soon they would come for me.

You see, I had enemies in the night. And not all of them were human.


To get a better idea of my writing voice {and if you care to challenge the murky blog waters}, you may want to check out my blog, WRITING IN THE CROSSHAIRS, http://www.rolandyeomans.blogspot.com/.

If not, I understand. Some of those blogs are truly scary. I would tell you mine isn't. But I would sound too much like Richard Nixon claiming he wasn't a crook.

I am a former high school teacher, family counselor, and now a blood courier. The last a result of being evacuated from Lake Charles due to Hurricane Rita and having to support myself any way I could. I found I liked the job and the people with whom I worked.

Thank you for taking the time to read my query. I would be happy to send you sample chapters or the full manuscript. I hope that you find some gem in the flood of submissions that pour your way. May your New Year hold only happy surprises with some relief for punished eyes and swamped workloads.

Roland D. Yeomans M.A. {Wish me luck, my friends}

And here is the tune that was blaring from my speakers as my van streaked underneath the sliver of a moon at 5 A.M. as I battled fatigue and brought rare blood to a dying woman in Texas :