Poking a Stick in the Dark

Sending out my query letters each month feels like poking a stick in the dark sometimes.  I carefully read each web site, each bio of every agent and then close my eyes and jump through the hoops, hoping that I'll attract someone's attention.  *sigh*  My heart just wasn't in it today.  But here's hoping.

Thought I'd post my query today. Does it sound terribly boring?  Any thoughts welcome.

Dear …,

Jamie Tate doesn’t believe in dragons.  At least she didn’t until she sees one hiding at the public library.  No one believes her and Jamie can’t blame them.  Since her father’s accident she’s been living in her creepy uncle’s attic and that’s enough to make any girl start seeing things.

To prove that she’s not hallucinating, fifteen year old Jamie sneaks into the library at night, intending to befriend the creature.  There, she meets the ever optimistic Poppy Pink, a dragon with a mission and the irrepressible Spiff, whose mission is to “bite”.  Jamie learns that young dragons are being kidnapped from another realm and used in bizarre experiments.  Always a champion for the underdog, Jamie is determined to help rescue them.  At the same time, she hopes to discover how this connects to the explosion in her father’s lab.  She teams up with Poppy and Spiff and together they unravel a mystery that soon has them in over their heads.  They must save the dragons without alerting Jamie’s suspicious uncle and do it without getting flamed by the frightened creatures.

Join Jamie and her two friends in a rollicking adventure that takes them from the peaceful halls of the public library to a bubbling, bat filled laboratory.  PINK’S DRAGON RESCUE is complete at 67,500 words and is suitable for early young adults.

I am a graduate of the Institute for Children’s Literature and a former facilitator for the writing group at Lafayette Public Library in Colorado.  I am an avid reader, cheerfully devouring two or three novels a week.  I have been writing stories since childhood and will continue to do so until I am old and senile, at which point, they will no doubt be even more colorful. 

Thanks for your time and consideration.  I have included …

Sincerely,

All my contact info blah, blah, blah

Weird Dreams Are Normal

Totally weird dreams have been a part of my life since I was a kid, but last night was a corker.

Weird Dream #1 – I bought a mummy at a pawn shop in Egypt.  But it was no ordinary mummy because it was alive (sort of) and could talk (it also bit me when I bought it, but we later became friends).

Unfortunately when I tried to return to the U.S. with my mummy, I had some trouble at customs (no kidding).  Somewhere in the midst of the ordeal at the airport, the mummy fell apart and I had to carry the body parts in a suitcase.  I ran a string through the head and hung it around my neck.

The mummy was quite pleased with this situation, since he was able to talk to people while dangling on my chest like a really morbid pendant.  Oddly enough no one on the plane seemed the least bit startled by my talking mummy head/necklace.  o.O

Weird Dream #2 – I went toy shopping with David Bowie. O.O  I wanted to pick out a toy for my nephew’s upcoming 1^st birthday and he was quite helpful.  We finally decided on a little blue dragon that made squeaky noises.  (At least I didn’t buy a talking mummy this time.)

 Why I needed an aging rock star, whose music I’ve never paid much attention to, to help me shop for toys, is beyond me.  I could certainly picture David Bowie shopping in an adult toy store, but a children’s toy store just sort of boggles the mind.

I wonder what I’ll dream about tonight?

FanFiction to the Rescue

I’ve been suffering through some really bad novels lately – just one after the other that is really poorly written.  All of them have ended up in the return-to-the-used-book-store bag and I can’t help wondering how these authors got published in the first place.  One book in particular was so asinine that I’m still ticked off that I wasted so many hours on it.

Thankfully, I have been saved by fanfiction.  It never fails really.  There are fan fic writers out there in the world who have more talent in their little fingers than some of the trash sitting on bookstore shelves or out there in the digital world of cyber space.

I hadn’t watched the movie Labyrinth for a while and after I did, chuckling all the time, I decided to hunt up some fan fic.  I was not disappointed and therefore am recommending a site:  http://labyrinth.retrogression.org/browse.php?type=characters&charid=5  I don’t have any particular fic to recommend, I’ve dabbled through several of them and thoroughly enjoyed them.  I may write one of my own if I can keep my head about me and write two wildly different stories at once.  I’ll have to give it a try.