Kristen Wixted's Current Query

Good morning friends. I'm not really here, I'm revising. Shh, don't tell my book. I just wanted to drop in quick and share a query with you guys. It's not really blogging, because all I have to do is paste it, like Zuzu's petals, and then I can get back to work. The hard part is tomorrow, with the red ink.

So anyway, before I get to the query, please go follow Kristen at her blog: Don't Forget the Samovar. Go on.

Back? All right. I'm sure you remember the rules. Today is just for introductions, please save your feedback for tomorrow.

The query:

Dear Mr./Ms. Agent:

I’ve read your profiles and interviews on xxx blogs/web-sites, and I am impressed with your sincerity and your passion for good quality children’s writing. I hope you will consider my middle grade novel, SILVER POOL OF LIGHT, for your list.

Eleven-year-old Eve Tilton, a self-proclaimed “blossoming” celebrity, has been afraid of the ocean since living through a horrible sailing accident at the age of five. When she spends the month of July on Martha’s Vineyard with her step-siblings and great aunt, she hopes for privacy. Lately Eve’s been forced to share so many personal details on celebrity blogs and the ever-growing iGirl website…it’s becoming tedious.

Plus, Eve has a secret friend—she doesn’t want her step-sibs snooping around in Aunt Tibby’s attic when she’s writing to eleven year old Jane Mayhew. Because Jane lives in 1874. Eve doesn’t know how it works—maybe the diary they write in time-travels, or maybe the sea chest the diary is kept in. But if she writes in the diary and places it in the chest, and waits…Jane writes back. From 1874.

It’s pre-occupying, writing back and forth with a girl from more than a hundred years ago. They write about what they have in common: funny aunts, clueless fathers, acquaintances with more interesting lives than their own. But just as Eve is invited to hob-nob with film stars, she discovers that Jane is going to board a doomed whaling ship. Eve enlists Liam, her twelve-year-old, slightly smelly step-brother, to help her keep Jane off the ship. As they plot and plan, she tries to focus on Jane, but it’s so hard to concentrate on tempests, malaria, and whale blubber when you’re invited to a movie star’s private beach…. Eve faces difficult choices, knowing that if Jane boards that ship, she will die in an accident eerily similar to the one Eve survived the day her mother died.

SILVER POOL OF LIGHT is complete at 48,000 words. Last summer I completed the advanced novel workshop at the University of Iowa, and have attended numerous SCBWI writing workshops. I hold a certificate in Children’s Writing from Emerson College and am a member of SCBWI. Please visit my writer’s blog: Don’t Forget the Samovar, at blogspot.com.

Per your submission guidelines I have pasted in the first 5/10 pages below. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Kristen Wixted

That's it.

So please tell Kristen hello in the comments, thank her for sharing her query, and then bite your tongue until tomorrow. Thanks!