It Starts with a Query
So, the saga is told. Edited. Proofed. Edited again. What am I waiting for? It’s time to find out if anyone else is going to love this story as much as I have for the past eight years.
I admit, I do not condense well. The idea of pitching all four books in a query letter to a literary agent is as daunting as the writing itself.
Some want only the first five pages. Five pages? Remember the fable about the elephant? Surely that isn’t going to go well. So I procrastinate.
But eventually I quit whining and write a query letter. Actually, John writes the first draft because he’s not a big fan of whining. But I hit the send button.
Here’s the pitch…
Dear [Insert Name of Person Holding My Life In Her Hands],
Okay, so maybe that’s a bit overly dramatic. So I take a deep breath and try again.
Dear Jane,
My name is Lisa Leonard. I am a wife, mother, grandmother, feminist, senior technology manager for a major corporation, and author of four as yet unpublished novels.
Rootstock is a “trilogy plus one,” completed and edited, for which I would like you to consider representing me. The novels average 110K word count each and are entitled: Seeds of Yesterday, The Rose of Aleron, The Rebel Thorn, and The Reluctant Bloom.
Tired of starting a saga the author can’t be bothered to finish? Bored with the same old tropes of a male-dominated genre? Give a woman’s take on epic fantasy a chance to change your mind about what the genre can deliver.
Rootstock tells a powerful story of who we are and why we are here. Interwoven voices tell the tale in shifting, short chapters of tight POV crafted to hold a reader’s attention in an age shortening attention spans. Plentiful dialog, edgy themes, and a diversity and depth in characters lift Rootstock above the norm.
This is a thought-provoking series, not intended for the YA audience, but not laden with gratuitous sex and gore merely in order to distance itself from being labeled as such.
Rootstock chronicles a future beyond our forgotten past. The Watchers, ancient civilizations grown weary of war but stagnated in their state of perpetual ease, have been seeding Earth for eons, competing for evolutionary preeminence in never-ending cycles. Set amidst the rich backdrop of clans, kingdoms, and empires in a roughly eighteenth-century society, Rootstock follows a compelling ensemble of POV characters in their struggle for survival.
Drawn from diverse cultures and ideologies, their paths entwine in love, duty, and the quest for freedom. Swordplay occurs far more often than gunfights, and remnants of technological wizardry such as teleportation are still accessible for a select few. Special “mindgifts” begin to awaken as bloodlines inspired by the Scots, Native Americans, Berbers, and even Middle-Earth Firstborn converge. These fledgling gifts combine with disturbing memories of prior lives to drive those determined to put an end to the cycles.
As per query instructions, the first five pages of book one are appended to this query.
