Dear Query Shark,
Thirteen-year-old Stevie Blake shoots lightning at 1.21 gigawatts per bolt. He supercharges iPhones into iDuds just by touching them. He even flies. (Landing is a whole different story.)
But by the end of summer, he won’t exist.
His dad’s former sidekick, Artimus Smiles, has stolen a time machine and is using it to alter history. Suddenly, the good people of Summer Springs can’t remember a time when Smiles wasn’t the richest and most powerful Remarkable around, and they’re forgetting Stevie.
This is a weak closing line to a paragraph. Either end it on "most powerful Remarkable around" or make "they're forgetting Stevie" a separate sentence (you can add something to that sentence for punch like "what's worse"etc.)
In the name of the greater good, Stevie breaks a few of the Superhero Handbook ™ rules to find out what Smiles is up to. Unfortunately, breaking-and-entering isn’t legal, not even when spying on a super villain wanna-be. Neither is stealing a Memory Serum so that Stevie’s cousins will remember him. But soon Stevie uncovers a connection between his dad’s past and Smiles’ present. A sinister connection, straight from a comic book, that could zap Stevie’s shot at a future.
But time is against Stevie, literally. His powers are weakening, he’s fading from pictures, and he could disappear any day. He must travel in time, Marty McFly style, and stop Smiles from erasing him from existence, even if it means altering history himself.
THE REMARKABLE STEVIE BLAKE AND THE TIME TRAVELER is a 68,000 word upper middle grade novel with series potential. It will appeal to fans of Matthew Cody’s Powerless and John David Anderson’s Sidekicked. I hold a BFA in Creative Writing, but unfortunately I possess no superpowers.
(I think your superpower might be writing query letters.)
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Question: I've seen several agents say they're searching for works about people of color and/or by people of color. My MC is a person of color, and I'm a person of color. Should this be conveyed somehow during the querying process?
Clearly, the story stands on its own without mention of race or ethnicity, but you do want to convey that to the agent reading the query because you're right: we DO want those books. This is a piece of information NOT related to the story, so you'll put it at the close, the same place you'd put your writing credits.
For example: Recently I've seen several agents say they're searching for works about people
of color and/or by people of color. My MC is a person of color, and I'm a
person of color. I hold a BFA in Creative Writing, but unfortunately I possess no superpowers.
This is an absolutely splendid query and I think with a few minor tweaks it's ready to go.
Good luck on the query process (and let us know how it works out!)
