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Monday, September 23, 2013

QueryCon 2013—#1 The Last Orphans

Title: The Last Orphans
Genre: Young Adult Thriller/Action Adventure
Name: N.W. Harris

Dear Awesome Judges,

The Last Orphans is a YA thriller/action adventure novel complete at 58,000 words.

Small-town sixteen-year-old Shane watches his family’s slaughter when a modern-day government mishap wipes out all the adults on the planet, leaving everyone under the age of eighteen to fend for themselves. An out-of-his-league girl pleads for his help, and
Shane reluctantly finds himself leading his high school friends on a desperate search for answers.

After a run-in with a gang of violent juvenile delinquents, Shane learns a top-secret military weapon’s malfunction caused the massacre. What’s worse, the still-active weapon could, at any moment, turn on the survivors.

While attempting to keep their little brothers and sisters safe, Shane and his friends fight their way through gangs who have taken over Atlanta. They must make it to the heart of the city and deactivate the weapon, which, left unchecked, will target younger and younger people until it kills them all.

I am the author of Joshua’s Tree (MuseItUp Publishing, June 2013), a YA novel that was a quarterfinalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contest (2012) and is currently #1 out of 882 books on the GoodReads 2013 Summer Reads List.

I’d be happy to provide a copy of my manuscript for your consideration. Thank you for your time, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

4 comments:

Unknown said...

This is a pretty interesting query. I'm always intrigued by stories of government/diseases/Mother Nature run amuck. It brings to mind Stephen King's The Stand, which is actually one of my favorite novels. I know that brevity is the general rule of queries, and I do agree with that. However, I would have liked just a sentence or two that explained why on earth someone would create a device that would kill everyone over the age of 18. Surely the designers of the device were over the age of 18, so what was its purpose? If it was an unexpected malfunction of the machine, then perhaps you could include a line or two telling us the device's original purpose and how the malfunction occurred. This could just be my personal preference coming forth, of course!

Either way, I think this is a pretty interesting query, and if I represented YA, I would likely ask for a full on this. Good Job!

Victoria Cappello said...

I agree with Angela that the only hole here is background information about why the weapon was used. But I'm actually okay with it being left out as the query provides enough information to make me inclined to read the rest and find out!

I think this is an intriguing premise and perhaps distinct enough to stand out in the YA market. I'd love to read on so if you'd like, you can send the full MS to me (along with this original query, please) at victoria@thebentagency.com

Good job!

abuckley23 said...

A fairly unique premise! I'm okay with the info holes and see them as more of a hook in this sort of query. To a certain extent I think you gave a bit too much away :) We'd like to see more.

abuckley23 said...

Query us at http://curiosityquills.com/submission-guidelines/author-submissions/ and make sure to include that you referred through Unicorn Bell.