Desolation Ghosts is a 65,000-word adult literary fiction novel in the vein of The Human Stain. It is set in North Cascades National Park and is about a missing traumatized female veteran with alcohol and relationship addictions who changes her mind about killing herself, but then falls off a mountain and must survive in the wilderness while park rangers battle over how much effort should be spent to locate her. The story takes place during the Covid-19 pandemic and the beginning of law enforcement reforms following the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. This book will appeal to readers who are interested in national parks, outdoor recreation, the Pacific Northwest, and the controversial issue of how emergency services treat people with mental health challenges. It includes exciting stories, based on real-life events, about using rock climbing and short-haul helicopter techniques to rescue a pack string mule who fell off a trail and a mountain climber who fell off a crag, a shoot-out and its impact on park rangers, a couple drownings, an aquatic body recovery and other sad outdoor tragedies, and funny and scary encounters with bears and other wildlife. If you like Jack Kerouac, Nevada Barr, Bree Loewen, Jon Krakauer, Michael Connelly, James Dickey's Deliverance, Matthew Quick's The Silver Linings Playbook or Scott Heim's Mysterious Skin, you may enjoy Desolation Ghosts.

Thursday, September 29, 2022

Query #45

I found an agent I was excited about because of her mission statement (books that matter) and because she's done a lot with Philip Roth's work (whose novel The Human Stain is the most like mine in terms of whistleblower fiction). It wasn't clear until I'd already invested some time in the query that she only accepts non-fiction. I guess I was tired, but I got aggressive and sent her a query anyhow. Haven't heard back. :D I've queried 45 agents now and need to keep going. It feels like I'm running out of agencies I feel confident are solid. I know I need to submit some short stories to magazines, too. That would help my credibility to agents.

Part of my query letter to Wendy Strothman:

I’m writing to you because this book, which reflects dire current affairs, matters. It will change how people think about those struggling with mental health issues by revealing yet another little-known form of discrimination they either endure or succumb to. It will educate people about the toll of being a park ranger and about dangers in nature, and it will make them curious to follow, in the next book, a memorable character out of the frying pan of surviving suicidality into the fire of our failing mental health system, which often leads to jail for people in crisis.

I’m writing to you because you’re singing my song and I’m singing yours but in different, complementary keys. Philip Roth, Upton Sinclair, George Orwell, and many others wrote significant and provocative works of non-fiction as fiction because it was more effective to make their points. Would you say no to them without peeking at their work? What use is a memoir aborted by libel laws unless you dress it in fictional skin?


at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)