Origins Blogfest

Welcome to the Origins Blogfest! This is the fest where we all share the beginnings of how we became a writer. The idea comes from DL Hammons, who along with Katie, and Alex, are my co-hosts for the blogfest. For the list of all participants, just click on that first link.

So let's get to it.

I shared a bit about how I fell in love with reading on Friday at Project Mayhem. I think it's a natural progression to go from falling in love with books and reading to falling in love with writing. That's certainly how it worked for me. So after falling in love with Tolkien, and collecting everything I could that had anything to do with Middle Earth, it was easy for me to get hooked on Dungeons & Dragons.

My best friend in grade school was Irish Catholic, so he had seven older brothers, and one younger. They all played D&D together, so whenever I went over to their house, it was wizards and warriors and epic adventures. I think that's what first made me fall in love with writing. Not only was it making things up, and using your imagination, but there was such language! Gary Gygax may not have ever been a novelist, but he sure knew how to describe a monster, and he made up some very cool spells.

From there I progressed to reading all the fantasy I could get my hands on. A lot of it was tie-ins like Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms, but I also enjoyed original stuff like Pern, and Shannara, and so on. I think I tried to write my first novel when I was about 12. In sixth grade. It was on Wordperfect, on a monochrome screen, and I only made it a few chapters in.

Then my reading matured, and I got into spy thrillers by the likes of Le Carre, Ludlum, and Forysth. I started writing short stories, and even won some kind of contest for a short story I wrote that I can't even remember. From there I got into poetry, and trying to write song lyrics. All through high school I loved to write, and wrote all kinds of different things.

Then things changed, and life got in the way, and I didn't write a thing for over a decade. It wasn't until a few years ago that I decided to write a novel, but that's probably a story for another time.

DL Hammons' Current Query

Before we get to Don's query, I want to announce that along with him, Katie, and Alex, I'll be hosting the Origins blogfest on February 13th. I would put the sign up list at the bottom of this post, but I don't have the code, and you really should just go read Don's announcement post, because he does a great job explaining what it's all about. You can also sign up there, which I encourage you to do, because blogfests are the best way to meet other bloggers and build a following.

EDIT: I do have the code, I'm just a moron, and lost the email. But I found it now, so you are able to sign up below, if you like.

Okay, so let's get to Don's query letter, but first, you know the rules, you have to follow Don's blog, and then you can come back and read his query.

Back? Great, here goes:

Mr. or Ms. Agent
The Most Awesome Literary Agency Ever,

Lee Hamilton is a small town HR Manager whose pedestrian life is only buoyed by his long-standing friendship with five old college buddies, the Knights. That all changes when he receives a phone call informing him that Steven Ebe, one of the Knights, has been found beaten and left in a coma. The group’s old motto comes rushing back -- you mess with one Knight, you mess with them all! Ebe is a reformed hacker who recently went to work for a private detective agency in South Carolina. Dianne Williams, the manager of the detective agency, surprises Lee with additional info explaining how her entire workforce has been sickened by some form of poison. Rallying around their fallen companion, the Knights join forces with Dianne and discover a series of numbers found in Ebe’s possession tied to a large scale cybercrime. The mystery deepens when the numbers are also linked to a Columbine-style high school shooting in Virginia?

Dianne and Lee decide to fly to Virginia where they encounter a city still reeling from the emotional impact of the shooting and distrustful of outsiders who won’t allow them to forget. Following leads withheld from the police and FBI, they quickly learn everything is not as it’s been reported in the news. The mysterious numbers are connected to even more crimes, the school shooter was not working alone, and he left behind a suicide note that simply read…I’m not finished yet! Lee and Dianne had somehow stumbled across the wizard behind the curtain, and the Knights weren’t in Kansas anymore. Now the group had a choice to make, return home and pass up a chance to clear their friend’s name, or put their very lives in danger by going toe to toe with an unimaginable fiend.

FALLEN KNIGHT is a mystery/thriller novel complete at 105,000 words. By day I am the writer of technical journals and instruction manuals, but when the sun goes down I'm an active member of the writing community. I am also a proud member of Mystery Writers of America and International Thriller Writers. Fallen Knight is poised to be part of a larger series and I feel a perfect companion to your agencies other offerings.

Thank you for your time and consideration, and I look forward to hearing from you.

DL Hammons
Dlh.hammons@gmail.com
http://dlcruisingaltitude.blogspot.com/

That's it!

Remember, today is just for introductions (although if you don't know DL, you probably haven't been blogging long), so please save your feedback for tomorrow, when I'll be sharing my thoughts. For now just say hi, and thank him for having the courage to share this with us.