Agent Empathy

As the query letters starting arriving in my in-box following my post Tuesday, a familiar feeling started to come over me. Actually it was a wave of three different feelings and the last time I felt them was a year ago when I previously undertook this challenge. The first feeling was excitement from the fact that people were actually taking me up on my offer to read their query letters while the real agents were off on holiday break. That feeling was quickly replaced by dread, a paralyzing fear from knowing that I had to choose one or two of them to post here as representatives of books I would be interested in reading. And the last and final emotion was relief. I was relieved by the realization that my decision, as enormous as it seemed in my own mind, bore no real impact on the future of each of these writers.

Were I an actual agent, I could not say that last statement. With each rejection I couldn’t help but see myself wetting the tips of my fingers and extinguishing one of many flickering candles that author had lit. In order to survive as an agent I’m sure you can’t worry about that mountainous pile of wax with charred, but cold wicks. Their focus must be on the flames that burn just a little more brightly, turning them into torches with dreams of becoming a full-blown blaze. But just as sure as I am that the literary landscape is littered with cold, unfeeling agents who could care less about the hopes and desires of the rejected, I am just as certain there are agents who live with heaviness in their heart for them. Those are the ones that write personalized rejection letters with advice on how to improve your manuscript. That is the agent I hope to find.

Anyway, all that being said I have my first selection to show you. As I stated in my previous post, I’m not holding this up to you as an example of a good query letter, just a book I personally would be interested in reading, or in this case recommend to my son to read. Enjoy. Oh….and keep those query letters coming!

A monster rages inside seventeen-year-old Ella, yearning for release.

She is the Destructor, a foretold warrior capable of bending air, wind, and fire to her will. And with these elements at her control, Ella must fight and destroy a fallen angel with a god-complex and his army of worshipers before he has a chance to plunge the galaxy into eternal war. Problem is, if she can’t get her power under control, it won’t be the fallen angel the galaxy has to worry about.

It is only the newfound love for a man who cares for her as a father and her hunger for the sexy winged boy straight out of a myth—fairy dust not included—that keeps the monster contained.

That is until one of them dies.

ELEMENTAL is a 67,000 word Darth Vader meets Tinkerbell Young Adult novel.