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My Epic Quest for a published book: My "winning" query letter, or what he read to open the

I am offering this letter to the web to help aspiring writers to write a more effective query letter:

Dear (insert agent's name here),

In a primeval forest,

a boy with a gift of power

will encounter a creature of legend.

Taught to kill, he will choose to love.

She will show him The Way of The Dreaming,

and they will travel through space and time,

to reclaim all that was lost,

and to heal their broken world.

I am seeking representation for my fantasy, The Way of The Dreamer, Book One of Dreams of The Kindred.

Saladin Ahmed, Hugo Award finalist for Throne of the Crescent Moon, read my book and wrote: “You've got a splendidly original world here, anchored by familiar archetypes, and conveyed in beautiful prose.”

C.W. Huntington, Jr., author of Maya: A Novel, called it “…a mesmerizing concoction of fantasy, philosophy and radical ecology, a modern Taoist adventure that unfolded step by step until I found myself entirely lost in a world at once both comfortingly familiar and utterly foreign.”

It is complete at 58,500 words and has spiritual and ethical themes and a nontraditional fantasy setting that will appeal to fans of Ursula K. LeGuin, N.K. Jemisin, Tamora Pierce, and Nnedi Okorafor. The full 179,000 word story is completed in two finished sequels.

KEHYO is an idealistic dreamer in a brutal world. He has strange dreams that sometimes foreshadow his future.

RYELA is a young Qeegog, a shy forest creature with surprising psychic gifts. The Elders have bid her to make contact with the human enemy to discover why they have abandoned their past and now kill her kindred.

One day, deep in The Grove, Kehyo meets Ryela, He becomes drawn into the Qeegog way of seeing, and joins in The Dreaming, a collective “trance” where they commune without language.

As Kehyo gains insight, he begins to understand how the slave-taking Kingdom of the Sanang threatens the very freedom of his people, and he comes to know, intimately, the terrible price that the Qeegog pay to simply survive.

When Kehyo learns that his long-dead mother may actually be alive, he hatches a dangerous plan to find her. His bold act of rebellion against the laws of his people will force both Kehyo and Ryela to flee their homes and go into exile. They will undertake a daring journey across a forbidding desert, into mystical places deep in the heart of enemy lands, on a quest to reclaim the hidden past and to save their future.

The manuscript of The Way of The Dreamer is available upon request. Thank you for your time and I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

William R. Cares


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