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I have committed query!
Sep. 21st, 2007 08:51 amYes, the first query letter on the now semi-officially titled Dark Vision was sent out yesterday afternoon, to, well, we'll just call her "Agent #1". I have about five I'm sending the initial query to, and from there I'll research more and keep sending things out.
Agent #1 is basically my dream agent - her client list contains authors I love and adore passionately enough to memorize the street dates of their upcoming releases. (It also contains people I read and enjoy without quite that level of fanaticism, and a number of people I've never heard of, but now wonder if I shouldn't be checking out their stuff.) She obviously likes many of the same books I do, so with that in mind, I'm hoping that means she might enjoy something I've written, as well.
Of course, it's the first query. I almost didn't send it to her, on the strength that the first query letter you send almost always gets rejected. I mean, it's the first one! What are the chances of that? "Oh, I wrote this book, and it got accepted by the very first agent I queried!"
I can still hope, though. I have faith in the writing. I think it's strong, and the first five 'sample pages' I sent showcase things like dialogue, characterization, etc. I'm not so sure about the query itself. This is what I ended up sending, if anyone was curious after my last anatomy of a query post:
Dark Vision is the story of Elysia, unwilling shuv'hani, or Seer, of her gypsy clan. She makes little time for training her gift, being well occupied with her position as clan dhampir – a demon-killer sworn to protect her people from the strigoi predators who hunt them – and distracted by the ongoing Romani clan war.
Yet, ignoring that training proves disastrous, when her Seer’s gift unexpectedly catapults her thousands of years into the future, to a time where the Romani are on the brink of extinction. The vampiric strigoi and moroii rule humanity, and mindless demons roam the landscape. None but a few struggling gypsies and their allies, none of whom possess Elysia's dhampir abilities, dare challenge these pervasive evils.
Elysia can prevent her people's annihilation. But to succeed, she must ally with two of her greatest enemies among the strigoi: the vampire who murdered her brother, and the legendary traitor who destroyed his entire clan. Only by combining their unique abilities can they save the Romani, and overthrow those bent on destroying them all.
Since it's already in the mail, it's too late to make any changes if you point out things, for Agent #1 at least. And I'm planning on getting 2-4 more query letters written, printed, and sent today. But it fits the "less than 200 words" guideline, and tells the bare bones the story is built on. I hope it doesn't sound too cliched, but what can you do? As a good friend pointed out to me yesterday, imagine what the query for Harry Potter must have sounded like! It seems as though any book boiled down to its most essential pieces must suffer for the brevity of explanation. How could the next epic fantasy possibly be queried without sounding like yet another Belgariad or Wheel of Time?
Agent #1 is basically my dream agent - her client list contains authors I love and adore passionately enough to memorize the street dates of their upcoming releases. (It also contains people I read and enjoy without quite that level of fanaticism, and a number of people I've never heard of, but now wonder if I shouldn't be checking out their stuff.) She obviously likes many of the same books I do, so with that in mind, I'm hoping that means she might enjoy something I've written, as well.
Of course, it's the first query. I almost didn't send it to her, on the strength that the first query letter you send almost always gets rejected. I mean, it's the first one! What are the chances of that? "Oh, I wrote this book, and it got accepted by the very first agent I queried!"
I can still hope, though. I have faith in the writing. I think it's strong, and the first five 'sample pages' I sent showcase things like dialogue, characterization, etc. I'm not so sure about the query itself. This is what I ended up sending, if anyone was curious after my last anatomy of a query post:
Dark Vision is the story of Elysia, unwilling shuv'hani, or Seer, of her gypsy clan. She makes little time for training her gift, being well occupied with her position as clan dhampir – a demon-killer sworn to protect her people from the strigoi predators who hunt them – and distracted by the ongoing Romani clan war.
Yet, ignoring that training proves disastrous, when her Seer’s gift unexpectedly catapults her thousands of years into the future, to a time where the Romani are on the brink of extinction. The vampiric strigoi and moroii rule humanity, and mindless demons roam the landscape. None but a few struggling gypsies and their allies, none of whom possess Elysia's dhampir abilities, dare challenge these pervasive evils.
Elysia can prevent her people's annihilation. But to succeed, she must ally with two of her greatest enemies among the strigoi: the vampire who murdered her brother, and the legendary traitor who destroyed his entire clan. Only by combining their unique abilities can they save the Romani, and overthrow those bent on destroying them all.
Since it's already in the mail, it's too late to make any changes if you point out things, for Agent #1 at least. And I'm planning on getting 2-4 more query letters written, printed, and sent today. But it fits the "less than 200 words" guideline, and tells the bare bones the story is built on. I hope it doesn't sound too cliched, but what can you do? As a good friend pointed out to me yesterday, imagine what the query for Harry Potter must have sounded like! It seems as though any book boiled down to its most essential pieces must suffer for the brevity of explanation. How could the next epic fantasy possibly be queried without sounding like yet another Belgariad or Wheel of Time?
