Oct 22, 2009

Query Revision #1 - NO DARKER FATE

Click here to read the original query.

Dear Agent,

For Lucas Fowler, superhuman abilities seem like the answer to his extreme fear of death until he becomes what he fears most—a killer.

When Lucas opens a picture sent to his cell phone by a stranger he thinks it's misdirected since he doesn't know the man in the image.

That night he feels changed. Suddenly fearless, able to outrun cars, punch holes in concrete, and shift into a blighted alternate reality, Lucas tracks down the man in the picture. Instead of playing savior, Lucas kills him. Another picture comes, another murder. Lucas can't control his new abilities or stop his homicidal instinct. Each time he learns a little more about what's happening to him. But to discover it all—the secret society of Scions, the rogue Scion controlling him, the super-powered undead he's creating with each murder—he'll have to keep on killing. And he'll need to be fearless all on his own.

NO DARKER FATE, an urban fantasy, is 95,000 words. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Query Revision #2: HIDDEN IN TALL GRASS

Click here to read the original query.
Click here to read the first revision.


Dear [Agent]:

Susanna’s always been the caretaker of the family, and Mama the free spirit. But when Susanna’s sister has a dangerous encounter with Mama’s drunken brother at a party, Mama’s self-absorption turns dangerous. And when Susanna demands a retribution that never comes, Susanna has had enough and looks to Calvin, her childhood friend, for comfort.

By the time Calvin leaves for Vietnam, she’s secretly fallen for him. As she tries to be the friend he needs, he writes about impossible choices with no right answers and how good people can be changed by terrible circumstances. The wisdom in his words is not lost on her, even as he captures her heart more completely, whether he intends to or not.

When Susanna discovers a horrifying secret about her own brother, she needs all the wisdom she can gather as her previous judgments come back to haunt her. Now she must choose between denial and accountability, condemnation and forgiveness, and she’s determined not to repeat her mother’s mistakes even as she begins to understand how she may have made them.

HIDDEN IN TALL GRASS is a work of women’s fiction taking place in Louisville, Kentucky in the late 1960s, and is complete at approximately 118,000 words. I have [credits/credentials redacted].

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,
Angie H.