Critique My Query!

Okay, so I'm actually putting two query letters up, and I'm hoping it won't bite me in the butt. I'm still dithering between my contemporary YA and the dystopian for Daisy's contest, although the contemp is in the lead with the most votes, so I'm leaning toward it. Anyway, here are my query letters for both manuscripts.

Gone Missing Girl:

Dear Ms. Lawrence,

Ansel Whitetree isn’t the sort of guy to go looking for excitement. Being albino causes him plenty of turmoil as it is. But when he discovers a raggedy runaway hiding in his family’s book shed, he daringly offers to help her. And promptly finds himself tangled in a maelstrom of aftereffects.

Faced with a girl who won’t tell him anything about herself, Ansel gives her the unorthodox, if fitting, nickname of Catskin. Prone to panic attacks and acts of defensive violence, Catskin turns out to be as dangerous as she is fragile but Ansel knows instinctively that he can help her regain her sense of self. And since Catskin is terrified of hospitals, Ansel is her only chance for recovery. Although she remains secretive about her past, Catskin’s outlook begins to brighten and the bond she and Ansel already share blossoms into an attraction neither of them can deny.

Then an accident leaves Catskin hovering between life and death. Ansel is forced to make a hard choice: risk Catskin dying in anonymity or notify the family she’s been running from. Pressured by doctors, Ansel contacts Catskin’s estranged parents. But by doing so, he provokes a violent collision between the world Catskin was born to, and the one she now shares with him. And Catskin is the only one who can save both Ansel and herself from the fallout.

A lyrical Contemporary YA inspired by the fairy tale Catskin, GONE MISSING GIRL is complete at 97,000 words.

I have had five poems published in the anthology Poetry Pact 2011 (Volume 1) and several short stories published in the online magazine Underneath the Juniper Tree. In addition, I have had two non-fiction short stories published in the magazine ‘laJoie.

Thank you for your time and attention. I look forward to hearing from you.



Evernow:

Dear Ms. Lawrence,

Evernow is a girl with more balls than sense, grimly determined to live life on her own terms. For however long she can live in what’s left of the world. In a place where Fey creatures walk the land and humans hide in ramshackle settlements, things like survival are a gamble at best.

But lying low and having babies to repopulate isn’t on Evernow’s to do list. Neither is warring with the mysterious Fey folk. So she treads a deadly line between who she is, and who other survivors think she should be. Until the day she finds the one thing she didn’t know she was missing: a real friend. Clara changes everything for Evernow.

Then tragedy sends Evernow fleeing into the Wild where she would perish if not for the kindness of strangers. Fey strangers, who offer her refuge. A home. Although she misses Clara, Evernow can’t deny the happiness she finds among the Fey, nor the bonds of friendship and love that soon entangle her.

Trouble is, Evernow has never been very good at loving people. When she finds herself in a romantic quandary, she falls on old habits, again fleeing the confines of friendship and family. Her choice to run results in a confrontation between humans and Fey that Evernow could never have imagined. But sometimes within destruction, lies renewal. The chance for a new beginning. That’s if Evernow survives the mess she’s gotten her friends and herself into.

A dystopian YA, EVERNOW is complete at 87,000 words. It is the first book in a trilogy.

I have had five poems published in the anthology Poetry Pact 2011 (Volume 1) and several short stories published in the online magazine Underneath the Juniper Tree. In addition, I have had two non-fiction short stories published in the magazine ‘laJoie.

Thank you very much for your time and attention. I look forward to hearing from you.