Perfection Query

Here is something I am doing for fun. I put my rough draft of my query for Perfection.

Yes, it needs some work, but I thought it would be a great experience for everyone to see what is good about it (if anything) and what is not (which is probably a lot). And leave me comments.

I did this for my blog readers and whoever visits just to see the process of how I write my query, as I hone and tweak and delete and rewrite.

As I do the above, I will post those and we can all see it take shape.

So I hope to see you again and again as the query takes shape.


To the dearest of the dear Agent X, (
Right here, right in this exact spot, I will put a greeting to my wish list agents after I study their blogs and webpages and tweets and whatnot.

Normal does not describe Ellyssa. She is superior, a picture of perfection. Genetically engineered to be faster, stronger, more intelligent, emotionless, and lethal. Not to mention, she’s a telepath. The soldier of tomorrow.

But when she crosses paths with a dark-haired man, the world she’s always known, the only world she’s been exposed to, crumbles. He speaks to her, not with vocal words, but in her mind. Kansas City.

Now Ellyssa finds herself experiencing emotions and running from her life to a city she’s never been to, and she doesn’t even know why.

PERFECTION is a young-adult, dystopian fantasy complete at 100,000 words. And then some more stuff depending on agent's likes and dislikes.

Then right here, right in this spot, I'll put my personal contact info.

Rules-----Bleck!

I was on one of my writing sites--yalitchat, a great site by the way---and someone had a topic about Authors that break the rules. A topic I responded too and what I said I think is true, so I decided to paste it to my blog.

It's below!!



Below this!


Okay, below this!

Of course there are certain rules you do need to follow. Grammar, sentence structure and such. But those are the type of rules in everyday life. I am not talking about those type of rules.

On my first mss...I edited the heck (wanted to use another word here) trying to follow all the rules. You want to know what I ended up with. A dry novel. And I'm talking dry...like the Sahara Desert dry. I took out the spice...the interesting parts of scenery, characters, whatnot...all the parts that make a story. I edited out my voice.

So, I started to read books--adult and ya--(Well, I always read, but I mean really, really read) and studied them. How words were used, how sentences were structure, how many adverbs and adjectives were used, how they started, how they end, what the characters were doing (facial, movements, and such).

Every single book I read (everyone of them) broke these so called rules. I'm not sure where these rules stemmed from or who has the say in creating them, but I know for a fact --best selling authors and whatnot don't follow them.

Now here is the response where someone says---"Well, you're not J.K. Rowling or Stephenie Meyer or Stephen King or whoever." And that is true, I'm not, nor will I ever experience the success they were lucky and/or talented enough to achieve. But here is my response--"At one time neither were they."

They all started somewhere...and my guess is that somewhere was as a nobody.

So, what did they have. I'll tell you what they have. They have--in most cases--a great story to tell with a great voice. One that piqued the readers interest and kept them turning the pages. And ultimately, that is what we should all want to achieve.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, write what you want ( a great story), how you want (your voice). And I can almost promise you the finished product will be a wonderful book.

Now as to whether or not it will be published....That is another story.

The importance of Beta readers.

Since I only wrote one blog post last month--departing from my usual two to three--I decided to start early this month. I know, luck smiles upon the people who read this.

*Big Smile*

Anyway, I wanted to share some of my thoughts about Beta readers. How important are they?

Very important.

There. I put it out there for you. Simple and to the point. What more could you possibly ask for?

If you don’t have one, should you seek one?

Yes!

Should you Beta read?

A big huge YES!

Now why?

I might not be able to answer this for everyone. Maybe you have different reasons. I know why I do though.

First, when I try to find someone to Beta read my stories, I would love to have a person who just loves books (which of course if you are a writer, author, whatnot, you should already have a love of this), I love to have someone that is on the ball with English (to find misspelled words and punctuation), someone who is great as sentence structure (to formulate better sentences), and someone who is creative that might provide a different aspect to a scene.

I can almost guarantee you if you have this type of team, it will really help your story shine.

Second and probably the most obvious to have Beta readers is the fact that as the writer you will not catch all your mistakes. No way!! Impossible to do.

People’s brains are programmed to skim--one of the reasons why as long as you have the first correct letter of a word and the last correct letter you can read the word. Don’t believe me? Let’s put it to practice.

You can atllacuy raed tihs psot. The huamn mnid is so pufowerl

See. As I said, the human mind is programmed to skim. And if you already know what you want to say, your brain just skips over the fact that there might be an extra word or that the word is misspelled or wrong word used or other possibilities.
Beta readers won’t have this problem. They can find problems with the sentence, punctuation, and grammar issues. Not only that but they can let you know what they think of your story, give you alternatives for scenes.

You know what they say---two heads are better than one, but when it comes to telling a story, even more heads are better.

After you made the corrections. It is a good idea to send your story out again and possibly again, as you find the weaknesses and fix it.

It’s a time consuming process, and kind of a pain, but the finished product will be well worth it.

Even more important is for you to Beta read. Why?

It gets your creative juices an opportunity to percolate. You might get ideas that you want to suggest for dialogue or scenes or whatever. It also helps to sharpen your knowledge of grammar and punctuation.

It helps you to learn from observing other’s mistakes.

Overall writing is writing whether you’re writing your own story or helping someone else.

And always remember to continue reading stories from your favorite authors and genres.