QUERY LETTER BLOGFEST_THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH

Here is a link to the post by Jordan Tohline, derived from answers from 50 agents on his email asking for the common and fatal mistake made in our queries :

http://www.jmtohline.com/2010/12/biggest-mistakes-writers-make-when.html

{Scroll down for Ellie's CHRISTMAS TALE BLOGFEST ENTRY}

Victor Standish seems to be getting into trouble everywhere lately.

So it's no surprise that he boldly walks in where novice authors fear to tread :

the dreaded query letter :

http://jodilhenry.blogspot.com/2010/12/query-letter-blogfest-entry-w-mr-linky.html

Dear Ms. Boggs :

There are strange tales told by the panhandlers and vagrants of the French Quarter when the midnight hour tolls. The hours fade one into another as the shadows creep ever closer. They are hungry these shadows. And the tales are told, not for amusement, but to keep weary eyes from closing lest they never open again.

One such tale is the legend of one like them ... thirteen year old Victor Standish.

Did he ever truly exist? Did he find danger and love in the surreal week prior to the madness that was Hurricane Katrina? Is there really such a thing as the supernatural Crossroads of Worlds, the infamous jazz club, Meilori's?

Many swear they saw him taken under the wing of the club's owner, Samuel McCord, the Texas Ranger with the blood of Death in his veins.

Still others vow that even that very night, they have seen Victor stroll under moonlit skies with his ghoul friend, Alice Wentworth. She who half-died when Victoria was still a princess. All agree that New Orleans would be a barren graveyard if not for Victor and his ghoul love.

The two lovers, by the very existence of their romance, managed to defuse the war between the American revenant empire governed by Abigail Adams and the Unholy Roman Empire ruled by Theodora. A war that the chaos of Hurricane Katrina would have easily masked.

What are revenants exactly? They are the truth behind the Hollywood myth of vampires. Think Vlad the Impaler but without as many morals.

Defusing that conflict almost killed Victor. The vagrants shiver and look over their shoulders for his Victorian ghoul friend, Alice. To keep from succumbing to her hunger for Victor's flesh, despite her lonely heart's attraction to him, the ghoul may choose theirs instead.

For sometimes Alice walks the night alone.

My YA urban fantasy is much like Patricia Brigg's Mercy Thompson series in that it is the world of the Brothers Grimm brought to life in modern New Orleans when civilization died in the days after Katrina.

Thank you for reading my query. I would be happy to send you sample chapters or the full manuscript of my 64,000 word YA urban fantasy, THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH.

Roland D. Yeomans M.A.
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