Title: BENEATH THE TREES
Genre: YA Fantasy
Rose Woodman is a half-blood living in the mortal world. Though her family loves her dearly, they’ve taught her to hate anything to do with the Fae including the father who enchanted, impregnated and abandoned her mother to the fatal birth of his unusual child. Rose has spent her life trying to ignore the voices of the wind and the trees. She has no intention of following in her mother’s footstep. The last thing Rose wants is to cause her loved ones any more pain, so when the one she loves best becomes Edan, leader of the faerie Clan of the Stars, Rose is forced to use the powers she’s kept hidden, to do the only thing she, as a halfblood can do: tear down the barriers that keep her two worlds apart.
That’s exactly what Sarcon, leader of the powerful Clan of the Snake, has been waiting for Rose to do. His clan and Edan’s have been in a state of cold war longer than Rose has been alive; all the faerie clans are concerned about human encroachment onto their ancient isle. The difference lies in what’s to be done about it. Sarcon has no intention of letting humans gain strength through faerie blood nor does he wish to see a rival clan gain numbers through human fertility. Once Rose ignites the faerie wars, our world will never be the same.
Beneath the Trees is my first novel. It’s intended as the first in The Seeker’s Charm trilogy. The second and third books are also complete at 100k each and are currently being polished. When I’m not writing, I blog at LiveJournal as elfmama and tweet as @susiebj. Thank you for you time. I look forward to hearing from you.
The first paragraph of this query drew me in right away. However, I didn't understand why Rose would tear down the barriers between her two worlds (wouldn't that make things worse for her loving family that hates the Fae?). The second paragraph is a little too much about the bad guy's evil intentions rather than Rose's actions.
ReplyDeleteI've heard that you shouldn't mention sequels in a query, but I'm not sure that's a hard and fast rule.
Don't mention that this is your first novel or what the status is of the sequels. An agent won't care if you're working on polishing the other books in the series, they're focused first and foremost on the quality of that first book. Does it pull them in? Do they love it?
ReplyDeleteAlso, the agent probably won't care about your LiveJournal and Twitter accounts until they're seriously interested in representing you, then they'll Google you.
The first half of the first paragraph was interesting, I liked it quite a bit, but then you throw in Edan and Sarcon and I got confused. So Rose falls head over heels in love with this fairy guy and when she can't be with him, she endangers her whole family? That seems impulsive and not in character, especially when you mention a couple of sentences earlier about how she doesn't want to follow in her mother's footsteps.
I think overall the query needs more clarity. Hit a few key points and don't get too mired in the details. Good luck!
You do a nice job grounding the reader in Rose's world. A small suggestion: I recommend a paragraph break after "...his unusual child."
ReplyDeleteCould BENEATH THE TREES be a stand-alone novel? If so, I'd include that in your last paragraph.
Nice job.