Tricia Sutton's Current Query

I've still got several queries waiting in the queue, so today we have to get back to work. But don't worry, I haven't made it through all the blogs that took part in the Origins Blogfest yet, so if you didn't see me yesterday, expect me today.

Now, today's post is to introduce you to Tricia Sutton. She keeps an interesting blog, here, but it's a wordpress blog, so you'll have to sign up via RSS if you want to "follow." Please keep in mind, today is just an intro, and so that you can see Tricia's query without my red pixels all over it.

Here we go:

Dear Agent:

They are naïve. They are uncivilized. They are an Oklahoma family adjusting to 1970s California culture shock (shocking the culture, is more like it). Meet the Austens.

Actually, Patty, the elementary-age youngest member, would prefer that you didn't. Not if she plans on fitting in. Her family, whose outrageous antics often leaves her hiding in embarrassment (even their cat is a regular in the police blotter), is only half the problem.

Patty’s the other half. She practices every religion, for good measure, has inanimate objects for friends, i.e., Aunt Jemima syrup bottle and a pet rock, and believes in luck, charms, and signs. Clearly, her family’s not the only one a straw short of a haystack. But she craves a normal life. Normal isn’t for the hearing impaired. She’s too deaf for the hearing world and not deaf enough to ignore what folks are saying about her family, about her. Normal isn’t being the only white girl in an all black school. And when they move—and they move a lot—it isn’t being the only poor hillbilly among old-money privilege.

When her dad purchases a psychedelic hippie-band tour bus as their new residence and then parks it in their upscale neighborhood, she realizes that maybe she is meant for something different, that ordinary life is not for her. Being a society reject breeds an isolation that can lead one to amazing and unexpected things. Or life in the loony bin.

In alternating timelines, adult Patty (our unreliable narrator) is in the hospital recovering from back surgery. Either from side-effects of morphine or perhaps from too many episodes of Jerry Springer, she believes she may actually be in the psych ward, contrary to what the staff tells her.

PSYCH WARD, a spotlight of my achievements, is a 99,000-word family saga told in a nonlinear frame-like narrative with one protagonist, two storylines, and two plots. My story of the bullied misfit is softened with humor like that of THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN and of FORREST GUMP.

This novel reflects my own experiences growing up hearing impaired, which has enabled me to write with authenticity about my protagonist. I've had publications in Slow Trains, Turtle Quarterly, Halfway Down the Stairs, and various print and web magazines, including excerpts of my novel. For a list of publications, please visit http://dfmil09.wordpress.com/publications/

That's it.

Please thank Tricia for her courage, and for sharing her query letter so that we all can learn, and save your feedback for tomorrow, when I will give her mine.