May 22, 2012

Query: KEY OF EDEN

Dear Agent,

We are pleased to submit for consideration our young adult paranormal romance KEY OF EDEN. In this 70,000 word tale of violence, miracles, and romance, seventeen-year-old Ava Monroe must defeat the fallen angels before the world is destroyed and the forces of the apocalypse are unleashed.

When she is attacked by a group of blood thirsty angels called the fallen she is rescued by Barak and his three heavenly sidekicks, the guardians. They ambush the ungodly creatures and send them tucking tail and licking their wounds. Ava learns that she is the key to Eden and the catalyst for defeating the fallen and their attempt to regain power over mankind—what does that even mean?

Dodging the steroid driven jock that is stocking her, evading her guidance councilor’s suspicious questions, obeying the rules of the guardian dictatorship (she doesn’t mind if the rules involves exile with the Sexy Barak), and passing the SAT’s—leaves Ava little time to for much else. But, when Ava’s BFF (more like sister from another mother) Erica is captured by the fallen she has two choices: to join the fallen angels and save her friend or join the guardians and save all of mankind.

KEY OF EDEN was the joint effort of Stacey Hays and Jennifer Nichols. We are cousins-turned-writing-partners. We are both from the Bowling Green area, members of SCBWI and contributing authors to the blog Our Pages Aren’t Numbered.

We would be happy to send you the manuscript upon request. Thank you for your time.

4 comments:

Anonymous Author said...

This is not bad. You do a good job of summarizing your story without excess. A couple of things to work on:

1. I see you ran spellcheck, but you need to proofread after that. Correct "blood thirsty" and "stocking". Also "councilor". (And check your manuscript for such errors.)

2. I'd change "-what does that even mean?" to (separate sentence) "But what does that even mean?" Otherwise it sounds like you're critiquing your own query.

3. Remove the parenthetical comment after "BFF". It only confuses.

4. You use the rather dated "mankind" twice. Replace it with "humanity". It's more widely accepted nowadays.

5. Don't mention that there are two authors in the first paragraph. Gives 'em a reason to reject (two authors are twice as much trouble). The blog is a non-credit, since I see it's basically your own blog. Actually a bio is completely unnecessary, unless to list your published books. Where you live doesn't matter. That you're cousins is interesting but not pertinent.

(Actually, the blog could hurt you. If an agent goes there and sees a posting that's complaining about your (first class!) seatmate, she might wonder if you might be hard to work with.)

All in all, I think you're fairly close here-- these are all dings to fix rather than a major overhaul.

Stacy McKitrick said...

You call this a paranormal romance, but I don't see any romance in your query, so you might want to re-think the genre of your book. If your story doesn't have an HEA or HFN (happily ever after or happy for now), but has romantic elements, maybe what you have is an urban fantasy. If you do have an HEA/HFN, you need to show some romance in the query.

Good luck!

Anonymous said...

How timely. Your opening paragraph reminds me of this post I read today: http://kidlit.com/2012/05/23/sounds-great-no-substance/
What about your book is different or special. To me this sounds like any other paranormal. Why do I care about your MC other than her being "the one"? Because aren't all MC "the one"? Give me something cool about her.

Unknown said...

Personalize your query when sending to and agent, anything addressed 'Dear Agent' will most likely be deleted off the bat.