A writes: our query letter

I did a post on query letters a couple of weeks ago and as promised, here is our query letter. Hopefully, it gives you a few ideas! 

Dear [ ],

Gamenian is a complete Science Fiction novel of 78,000 words aimed at young adults and science fiction space opera lovers.  Fast paced and character driven, Gamenian explores the games we play with each other, the lies we tell, and the search for forgiveness. It follows a young woman as she seeks to reconcile the idea of a higher power with the actions of a broken humanity.

Freedom is a lie. It’s been four years since Tori escaped the desert planet of Esandira and her life as a drug-mule and assassin for a dictator named Craik, but she is as enslaved as she ever was. While she is physically free, inside her mind the past blurs with the present and she’s desperate for a cure from the faces that only she can see, and the voices that only she can hear.

The fragile life she has created for herself is simultaneously destroyed by an unorthodox bounty hunter named Ash, and Lethar, an assassin sent by Craik, forcing her on a reckless journey to escape from her demons. Her past is no longer inside her head and with her control slipping, the last thing she needs is a 17-year old Way Seeker stuck by her side, but that’s what she gets in the form of Spencer. Spencer doesn’t want anything to do with her, and while she shares the sentiment, their lives are twisted together by the death of a mutual loved one.

Both Ash and Lethar are relentlessly tracking their every move and she’s getting tired of running. Spencer believes Tori's only true freedom is from the Almighty, but she isn’t so sure. There’s only one out that she can see - Craik must die. It’s a dangerous cat and mouse game, but the closer she gets to Craik the more her dark secrets begin to surface and the more she begins to question the path she has chosen. 

Bonita and Alethia are Australian sisters who share a passion for stories, whether it’s reading them or writing them. Bonita graduated in 2009 from the University of Canberra with a BA in Journalism.  Since then she has been busy publishing on a variety of platforms on the internet. She writes and edits content on three different blogs, twitter, Instagram, and is currently building an online portfolio to showcase her works. Alethia is currently studying Medical Science at the University of Canberra and frequently blogs.

Thank you for your consideration, we look forwards to hearing from you at your earliest convenience. 

Obviously, the original wasn't in italics ;) Looking back, I'm pretty happy with the letter we created - we ended up using a lot of it on the back of the book. A lot of people with opinions on query letters - some people say to put the book info first (genre, word count etc) while others say to put it in later. Personally, we decided that putting it in before would be helpful and ran with that. 

For me, writing the story plot was easy - I knew my book and straight from the start I had a pretty good idea how to present it. After doing a lot of research into formatting the plot, I found it relatively easy to write. The rest of it, like how to write credentials when you have none, what to mention, what not to mention etc just took a LOT of research. I've posted some of the links in the earlier post on queries that I did, but they were really only some of the crucial sites I found. I found a lot more of random articles, or random paragraphs within articles, that were very helpful, but there were too many to actually write a post about!

Hopefully, this gives you all some ideas on what to do with your query! As I've said before, I'm in no way an expert on query letters but I'm happy to answer any questions you guys might have. 

Cover Reveal for Our Upcoming Novel Release - Gamenian

Who else is excited??  We sure are!!!   \ (*≧ω≦)ノ

B writes: Cover Art

So Ali & I have been looking into different artist and styles for the cover art for Gamenian. It's a bit tricky; we thought that we were allowed to choose an artist for the cover art, but we might have to go with the in-house artist instead.

This will be fine - I have no doubts about the in-house artist's skills at all; I'm sure they'd do a fabulous job. It's more that we were hoping to have the cover art and book trailer art (yes, we are planning a book trailer!  Excitement!) from the same artist for consistency's sake.

Maybe it won't make all together that much difference in the end? I don't know. We did pick our artist out for their very specific style of art, the line art and digital coloring were exactly the way we want it to look.  So we are hoping that we might be able to get our outside cover art approved, but we will have to see.

b.

A writes: Gamenian Stuff

*trumpet fanfare* my sister Boni and I are very excited to announce that Gamenian has been accepted for publishing! They are just a small publisher but we’re really looking forward to working with them. There is sooo much to think about though; book blurb, book tag line, cover, editing the manuscript to fit their guidelines… 

We decided to hire an artist ourselves to do the cover art because we’re also planning on doing a book trailer. The trailer will just have a couple of pictures to introduce Gamenians main characters and the idea we have for the cover fit into the video really well. So we figured, why not get an artist to do both? We did find an amazing artist; we haven’t sealed the deal yet but she seems pretty keen and we both love her work!

In the future I’ll be releasing more details – in the future we’ll probably be doing a cover reveal plus a sneak peek at the book trailer. And of course I also wanted to do a quick post of our query letter to help you guys out!  

Announcement: Gamenian

They say it's not in the bag until you hold your book in your hands, but...

We've signed with a publisher to get Gamenian published!!  It's a small, independent American publishing company, and it's going to be a huge learning curve, but we are excited to see how we get on from here.

One step closer....

B writes: Well, we've somehow made it this far...

...and what a journey it has been!

Neither of us planned on publishing Gamenian at the beginning, but at some point along the way we realized that we weren't the only ones that liked the story we were telling. Mind you, our long suffering family had to put up with lots of interesting discussions where Ali and I were the only ones that actually knew what we were talking about, and often we would start talking about the next plot issue only to have one or the other of our two sisters beg us to "Please stop talking about stories."

For the most part I think the biggest obstacle for Alethia and I has been The Dreaded Writer's Block. A disease that most creative people are familiar with, and therefore worthy of a caps title. There are times when the well just dries up, life gets in the way - all that and more.  Sometimes I'm waiting on Ali, and sometimes she's waiting on me.  I think though, as a whole, working with a partner is a fun and interesting way to write - provided that, for the most part, you can agree. 

I personally feel in this case, two heads are better than one, and I'm excited to see how far we can get with this manuscript. I guess I don't have much more to say on the process at the moment; in a way I think I'm a little more removed from the story as it tend to live in Ali's head and I just see the parts that she puts on paper. But it shall be exciting to share where we go from here, we'll try to keep the blog updated but I think that, just like writing the story, publishing our novel is going to be quite an exercise in patience.  

A writes: End of an Era

After more than ten years, Bonita and I feel like we’re finally ready to look at publishing our novel, ‘Gamenian – ’till death do we play’. It’s a scary idea; we have slaved over this thing. We’ve written it, scrapped it, written it again, changed themes, changed titles, changed characters.

To be fair, I come up with the original idea when I was roughly ten; the main character, Tori was a badass anti-hero… with super powers. Which she got via toxic sludge. Needless to say when I told my amazing fifteen-year old sister about my cool idea I was quickly shot down with a very blunt opinion on how lame that was. But, I was told, Tori sounded like an interesting character and I should think of something else for her story. We completed the first novel a few years later and a few years later I was old enough to realize it wasn’t what I wanted for her at all (She giggled. To this day, that is the ultimate horror I have ever inflected on a beloved character).

So began the first rewrite. Tori and the villain, Craik, were the only characters to survive the slaughter; everyone else was put firmly to pasture and a whole new story was born. The plot still changed quite a bit over the next few years; I would say the defining moment was when we decided we wanted to put some of our faith into the book. Well, I should say Bonita decided. At the time, I just couldn’t see how someone like Tori could ever want God. Again, that took a bit of time before I was old enough to realize that someone like Tori didn’t have to want God at first; she needed Him and the want would come later.

We finished the book and sent it to a friend of ours, Tim. He has turned out to be an incredibly valuable editor; Gamenian honestly would be no where near the book it is today without him. He was able to point out the problems with the book whilst still celebrating the things that he liked and I’m amazed he was willing to put up with the number of times we made him read the book to check our edits. Not to mention the number of times I had an author tantrum, insisting the plot point/motivation/random item was perfectly clear to everyone, aka me.

But eventually we had to reach a point where we took a step back and went, ‘I think this is as good as we’re going to make it.’

While I would be perfectly happy writing for just myself for the rest of my life, the dream is that other people will have the opportunity to love these characters as much as I do. And I do love them and their stories, far too much not to try to get them published. So my sister and I are about to start our querying process. As I said at the beginning, it’s a scary thought. At the moment, there is potential for the book. It might possibly be able to get published. But once this process has started, it will either be yes or no. I’m sure all authors believe, or at least hope, that other people will see the book and the characters the way we do but the number of rejections would prove us wrong in that regard. Things like marketability are words that terrify me; even if a publisher does love my book they have to think it will sell.

Still. I love these characters too much not to try. I feel privileged to have been able to write their stories and all I want is for them to be heard.