Dear Mystery Agent,
Because of your interest in YA, I am querying you with my 81,000 word contemporary YA novel BACKGROUND VOCALS.
For seventeen years, aspiring rockstar Meridian Ashton has traveled through Europe with her mother, breaking ties as easily as she changes strings on her guitar. When her fourteen-year-old cousin Natalie Owens loses her leg in a freak gymnastics accident Meridian surprises everyone by staying in suburban-Massachusetts hell to help Natalie redefine herself.
While she watches Meridian perform in Harvard Square, Natalie forgets the terror of crashing onto the gymnastics mats. She plans to make the titanium limb her least interesting attribute by dyeing her hair purple, making friends with drag queens, and sneaking into the neighbors’ swimming pool. With Meridian there to catch her if she stumbles, she even overcomes her fear of falling.
Unfortunately, Meridian is the one poised for a fall this time. Letting Natalie in has reopened wounds from her past, and her nomadic instincts are kicking in hardcore. She has a chance to escape her nightmares and realize her dreams, but the reverberations from her betrayal could cause her to crash with no one there to help her up--not even Natalie.
Dually narrated by Meridian and Natalie, BACKGROUND VOCALS mixes themes of identity, friendship and acceptance with a hint of quirkiness. It will appeal to fans of John Green, Sarah Dessen and Kody Keplinger.
I am an MA/MFA candidate at Simmons College, and a member of SCBWI.
Thank you for your time and consideration,
C.K.
BACKGROUND VOCALS
Chapter One: Meridian
Outside of Boston’s South Station I became the anonymous girl-with-the-guitar again, the person I’d been when the European city streets were mine to fill with music. The chords I strummed reaffirmed my choice to flee my suburban Massachusetts exile, and my ticket to New York would be my ticket to a record deal. Manhattan would never be Paris, but at least no one there would want to take my music away.
“Sweetheart, do you have a permit?” My tiny audience parted for the cop pushing his way toward me.
I misfingered a chord, and my E-string let out a low moan, like it knew we were in trouble. Shit, merde. I dropped to the ground and laid my guitar in its open case. The concrete bit into my knees through the holes in my jeans. The right clasp on my guitar case had bent when I broke the lock Uncle Rob put on it, and now refused to snap. I pressed it until the metal almost broke the skin on my hand. It shut, but it wouldn’t hold for long.
“Can I see some ID? Lots of runaways lately,” the cop said with an I’m sure you’re not one of them smirk.
Reluctantly, I slung my guitar case over my back and slipped my hand into my pocket. My D.C. license didn’t match my Boston location, or my New York destination, one of the perks of having a mother who couldn’t tolerate living in the same place for more than six months at a time.
4 comments:
By splitting your paragraphs between your characters, you're jarring my sense of who is who and what is what. After being introduced to Meridian, I wanted to know more about her. Why does she get to travel around Europe? What motivates her to help a cousin we have no idea if she's even met before? And what makes her think she can help someone "redefine themselves"?
You're giving us too much information, but at the same time, too little information. Scrap this query and start again (I also recommend reading Rivals, a dual story narrative circling around music).
Sample Page: Again, I'm confused at what exactly is going on. Your entire first paragraph is too confusing, so I skipped over it, hoping it wouldn't matter. Also, do you really need a permit to play on the street? I would keep reading, but with all these questions in my mind (and if there are two on this page, there might be two questions for each following page).
I think the query is a little confusing. I did not know where Natalie's POV was coming from until I got to the point where you mentioned it was dual POVs. BUT I do love stories that revolve around music so I would want to read your novel.
The first 250 words were interesting. I wanna know why the she's been traveling so much so I would read on.
Hi there. Looks like you've got some good advice on query-working. My suggestion is that you focus on seeing Natalie through Meridian's eyes. I'm getting the impression that Natalie undergoes change in the middle of the story, while Meridian is left with the ultimate conflict. It should have better continuity if you choose one point of view, making sure to establish the other girl's problems and conflicts through your narrator's perspective. Then, when your closer says 'dual-perspective', it'll be like, oh, cool, I see how that works, but you won't need to clutter up a query with it.
As for your first 250 words? Loved them, save this part of this paragraph:
"I dropped to the ground and laid my guitar in its open case. The concrete bit into my knees through the holes in my jeans. The right clasp on my guitar case had bent when I broke the lock Uncle Rob put on it, and now refused to snap. I pressed it until the metal almost broke the skin on my hand. It shut, but it wouldn’t hold for long."
In my opinion, it halts the flow. It's just too much to bite off (er... is that a saying? maybe not. oh well; you know what I mean). You give her a policeman to deal with - we want immediacy. Some simple streamlining, imo, could do wonders for the flow of this passage. "I shoved my guitar into its case. The broken clasp refused to snap - I pressed it until the metal almost broke my skin. It shut, but it wouldn't last for long." The rest, I'm sure you can mention later when she's not like shit, there's a policeman, I gotta go.
Just my opinion, of course. Sounds like a great story - best of luck!
From query, I'm not exactly sure what happens in the story b/c it's vague. Is her mom a musician, too? And, like other commenters said, it's jarring to switch back and forth between characters. I wanted to know more about Meridian.
Sample page is a bit vague, too, but I do want to read more b/c I wonder why she's there and why she has a bunch of different licenses. Also, it affirms her age as late teen, without having to explicitly say it.
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