Friday, December 29, 2006

My new query

I fixed my query letter! I also picked three agents to send partials to (these three automatically desire partials with queries) and prepared separate queries for them.

Now to ship them out tomorrow.


For those of you who might be interested, here is my new, improved query letter. I renamed the file to become this one. Never destroy an original! You never know when you might need it again!

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Attn. XXXX:
Annabelle loves life. Her brother, Roland, loves adventure. What happens when you take two happy, optimistic children, and turn them into vampires? An evil vampire destroys their family and leaves the children to die. His estranged, gentle wife rescues the children the only way she knows how, by making them into what she is and teaching them how to become children of the night instead of night monsters. The children discover how to turn into bats and learn to control their cravings while facing a ruthless vampire hunter, witches, werewolves and finally the evil master vampire that killed their parents.

ANNABELLE & ROLAND, THE NIGHT CHILDREN is an 89,000-word young adult fantasy novel. It begins the ongoing adventures of these two children as they are thrust into the strange, hidden world of vampires, werewolves and other mysteries in the last years of the 1600’s. This book covers their first seven years of discovery as they learn to be vampires. It is a self-contained story that has the potential for more adventures afterward.

For eight years, I have honed my skills by writing various short stories for some of my friends and close associates. While this is my first try at professional writing, I feel extremely confident about this novel.

Thank you for this opportunity. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Sleepy

Man I'm tired. I dragged myself out of bed this morn, did all my pre-work stuff (shower, walk dogs, etc) and drove to the van stop. It was all I could do to stay awake.
At work it was hard to get through without nodding off.

Maybe it was those stupid cats, fighting all night? We so need to fix energetic, crazy Monster so he wont pic fights with tired, lazy Rascal.

Christmas '06 Pic is UPDATED!

Christmas '06 Pic from my Caption the Pic site has been updated with captions.

Page 28 of my Caption site


WATCH THIS SPACE! Tonight I'll be putting up a new caption on the regular sites.

Thursday, December 28, 2006

Updated Query

Well, I've taken the wonderful advice to heart and altered the query. I've also fixed the hook and removed the mention of 13 books in the series.

I've got it up on Absolute Write for review. I'm going to send three queries out this weekend with the new query/hook. Wish me luck!

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

I'm on the crapometer!

Well, it’s on there and it made it ok. I mean, she didn’t say "It sucks!" or anything.

Here it is…



HH Com 490


Vampire children, excited to learn what they can do, while at the same time scared at the new world of danger all around them.
Annabelle loves life. Her brother, Roland, loves adventure. What happens when you take two happy, optimistic children, and turn them into vampires? This question is answered in this 89,000-word young adult fantasy novel when an evil vampire destroys their family and his gentle wife rescues the children the only way she knows how, by making them into what she is and teaching them how to become children of the night instead of night monsters.

ANNABELLE & ROLAND, THE NIGHT CHILDREN, begins the ongoing adventures of these two children as they are thrust into the strange, hidden world of vampires, werewolves and other mysteries in the last years of the 1600’s. This first book covers their first seven years of discovery as they learn to be vampires.
The children discover how to turn into bats and learn to control their cravings while facing a ruthless vampire hunter, witches, werewolves and finally the evil master vampire that killed their parents. This is book one of a thirteen book series. The following twelve books will chronicle their many adventures, covering three hundred years of world history from the perspective of these vampire children.

And her comments…



Ditch everything in red (green for my blog).
Focus on ONE book. You'll make my blood run cold to hear it's a 12 book series this early in the game.

Tell us this story. Use the Hook Me Up starting point for your mis en place.



Hmm. Not bad. I was afraid of far worse. I could easily ditch the stuff in red, but then there would be no word count, no title, how would potential agents know that info? I heard you have to include it in the query.

Also, I heard that you should let the agent know up front that it’s a series. Should I keep mum about that until later? I could. That’s no big deal.



What did she mean by "Use the Hook Me Up starting point for your mis en place"?



Thoughts guys?

Post Christmas

I had a good Christmas. The kids got us up around 6 am. Everyone was happy about their presents. There were a few things that didn't fit but it all worked itself out.
All in all we rested a lot and had a good time.

I'm sick today. My stomach has been threatening me all day. I'll just keep plugging along. Work can't stop for sickness. I wish it could, but it cant.

Sunday, December 24, 2006

Christmas Eve night

It's so peaceful. A part of me wants to stand out in the cold, feeling the spirit of the season as the snow sparkles, the stars twinkle and a quiet feeling of love and peace fills the air.

My sweeties are in bed. Some truly are asleep, others are trying hard. ;)
Neen and I are roughly half way done with preparations for tomorrow's Christmas dinner and stuff.

I love this part of life. I love this whole thing. I hope when the kids are moved away, before the grandchildren are born, that this spirit will continue to fill me.
I'm pretty sure I will. ;)

Mysterious lurkers, friends and whomever else, may you have the best in holidays.