Jumping The Gun

I jumped the gun to my deadline and submitted my first query letter today to Vickie Motter of Andrea Hurst Literary Management. I'm terrified and shaking (which could be because I'm starving...). On Tuesday the next round of query letters will go out.

All agents are interested in paranormal romance or magical realism (and mine is kind of a cross breed, oh, and throw some revenge romance in there!). I feel like all of them would like The Dying Process (which has been re-named from The Immortal, as well as Memories of an Immortal Heart).

I would love to tell them (or anyone else) how much this story has saved me...it helped me through Kellie's death, the incredible feelings of loss and confusion that to this day resurface...through Alex's betrayal...While it is completely fiction (clearly, I'm human) there are pieces of me that were poured into this work.

With no further monologuing (not sure if I spelled that right, and I currently don't have spell check...) here is my query letter:

Dear Agent (Don't worry, I actually used their names for this),

He’s dead, and really that’s the only thing that matters to her. In the young adult novel, The Dying Process, which is just over 67,000 words, the unnamed narrator falls in love with an also unnamed young man who is murdered much too soon. No one else believes his death was deliberate, not even his family. Through their minimal time together, he tried teaching her to let her explosive anger pass, but it refuses to leave her. He was the only thing that pacified her. Now he’s gone and she becomes overwhelmed with raw emotions of loss, helplessness, and vengeance.

The lack of names plays into the ending of the mixed paranormal-revenge romance and magical realism based novel. Set in a dystopic world where all ice caps have melted and the Earth is in ruin, the immortal narrator is not a vampire, werewolf, angel, or zombie; she simply has not died. Unlike the typical "male is immortal and female is in danger" love story, the girl is the one with the quirk and the male love interest is breakable. She is a strong, angry protagonist who responds via emotion. The story also dances around the question, is she actually immortal, or is it the loss she's encountered that makes her feel so ancient? Is she actually capable of dying?
 
My publication history includes an essay in Authors of Tomorrow, and several short stories and poems published sequentially in the 2007-2010 editions of Zephyr, the University of New England’s literary magazine. I am also a regular attendee of the AWP Conferences. This is my first young adult novel and this is a simultaneous submission.

Thank you very much for your time and consideration,




Lynne Schmidtsschmidt1026@gmail.com