INSECURE WRITER SUPPORT_CASTING DREAMS INTO THE DARKNESS

Casting dreams into the darkness.

That's what you do when you send out queries to agents or to publishers. Writing a short note in a bottle and tossing it out onto the horizon-to-horizon waves.

Will it succeed it getting you off the deserted island of unpublished status?

The million dollar question.

Like any intelligent person, I read what each individual agent writes she would prefer --

Only to read in another article how she just had to sign this debut author.

One who broke all the query rules and wrote such a refreshingly different query, breaking away from the crowd who slavishly submitted the same old, same old.

{in other words : followed her submission guidelines.}

Sometimes I can feel a nosebleed coming on.

I have been following the conventional wisdom lately and feeling a lot like Snoopy riddled by the Red Baron. Once I emailed a query early in the morning to get the rejection in the late afternoon of the same day.

All right. Obviously, it was course correction time. I looked back at the four queries that got 4 agents to ask to see more.

They had what I call the 4 C's :

interesting Character,

primal Crisis,

enough of the plot to make the agent Curious,

and most important, they were all Concise ...

ie. short as to be kind to a weary agent's eyes and frayed patience.
I decided to go with what had won me the attention of four agents and write a query that used the 4 C's, trying to improve upon the theme. And this is what I wrote and promptly sent off to another agent {who did not reject me the same day or the day after.}

Dear Ms. _________ :

Hurricane Katrina has mortally wounded New Orleans. There is no help in sight. Federal agencies are grid-locked. State officials are befuddled and ineffectual. The police are under-staffed with little amunition and no sure means of communication.

And along every dark, flooded street ... the dead have started to rise.

Samuel McCord, legendary French Quarter jazz club owner, decides he has lost enough :

his family, his wife, and his humanity.

He will not lose his adopted city -- not to inept, corrupt politicians, not to the rising dead in the shadows, nor to a life-long enemy whose power is causing the dead to return and the creatures of the night to close in around a helpless New Orleans.

And so begins the urban fantasy, FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE. I'm including the first page of my novel to give you a feel for my writing voice :

It rained lies and death today.

My mind felt broken. 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, fifty-one survivors of Katrina 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 were crawling out of 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.
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To get a better idea of my writing voice, you may want to check out my blog, WRITING IN THE CROSSHAIRS, www.rolandyeomans.blogspot.com

I am a former high school teacher, family counselor, and now a rare blood courier.

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 Autumn hold only happy surprises with some relief for punished eyes and swamped workloads.

Roland D. Yeomans M.A.
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I included the first page as that was part of her submission guidelines. If no pages had been requested, I would have sent the first three paragraphs anyway. That is usually all weary agents read of our submissions before deciding to reject or not.

Just thought my query might help you write your own -- either incorporating some of its facets or steering away from them. Good luck with your queries everyone. And success to us all.

Jennifer Lane

http://jenniferlanebooks.blogspot.com/2012/09/insecure-writers-support-group_5.html

tagged me on THE NEXT BIG THING blog challenge with the question: What is the current title to your WIP?

THREE SPIRIT KNIGHT (Look down a few posts for the cover image) Thanks for tagging me, Jennifer.
And here is a tune that was the favorite of Samuel McCord's one great love, Meilori Shinseen.