I am so blessed to have the best family and friends in the world. I can literally feel all of your words buoy me up. Jaclyn hates when people use the word literally and the action mentioned can't actually happen, but in this case I hope she forgives me because I really can feel a difference in my life :)
So the next step would seem to be to share my query letter with you all. If any of you have any suggestions that would be wonderful. This is what I give to agents to judge me.
It is the strangest feeling to ask to be rejected. Well I'm not exactly asking to be rejected, I'm asking to be accepted. But I know that sending these out to agents, will most likely result in rejection. Rejection is probably the one thing I have steered clear of most my whole life. It seemed dumb to put myself out there enough to allow someone else to tell me if I was any good or not. And I know faith in my work, faith in myself, needs to come from within but at the same time I can't help but shrink a tiny bit with each rejection. All of your kind words have helped me to grow again.
Dear Ms. (redacted),
Mia
Tanaka made the decision to attend Vega Preparatory Academy so that she could
write her own future; little did she know Vega specialized in rewriting the
past.
Mia Tanaka was forgettable.
You could have sat next to her in class, done
a project with her, or been in the same club, yet when you saw her in the
hallways, her name was just out of grasp.
Although she was a smart and talented girl, she had never risked enough
to fail.
Consequently, she’d never
really experienced success, either.
A
hapa (half-Japanese, half-Caucasian) girl living in Idaho, Mia secretly dreamed
of being significant and memorable, a feat that seemed impossible to accomplish
unless something changed drastically.
The
opportunity to make that change was presented to Mia when she attended her high
school’s annual college fair and was introduced to Vega Preparatory Academy by
two incredibly good-looking boys, Rhys and Jesse.
Mia’s first reaction was to forget about
it.
She was already following in her
mom’s footsteps to the local state college, the safe and predictable path.
But when Rhys approached Mia again to let her
know that she was precisely what
Vega
was looking for, Mia received the
confidence boost she needed to remember that she wanted more out of life than just
safe and predictable.
Vega Prep was a school that was shrouded
in mystery and potential adventure, and deep down, that was exactly what Mia
craved.
When she reached Vega, she found
out that it was not just a school for the best and the brightest; it was the
training ground for Vega Corporation, a company that was dedicated to time
travel.
The moment Mia heard about the
opportunity to travel through time, she realized this was what she was meant to
do.
She finally felt like her life had purpose.
Mia wanted nothing more than to be the school’s
sole female time traveler, but was thwarted in her attempts by the “mean girl”,
Angelica, who seemed to have a vendetta against her, by Sophia, the beautiful
but evil woman who felt that she was robbed of the job in the past, and most of
all, by herself.
Being a hapa kid myself, growing
up on the sunny shores of Kailua, Hawaii, I read voraciously, and I dreamed of traveling
to long lost times and being a part of different worlds.
As I grew up, I realized that dream was
impossible. VEGA is, in a way, my rebellion.
After gaining my bachelor’s degree in history from Utah Valley
University and learning even more about the times I yearned to be a part of, I
decided that if I wanted a world in which I could time travel to exist, I
needed to create it.
VEGA is a YA fantasy novel
complete at 100,000 words.
Thank you for your time and I
look forward to hearing from you.
Julia K
One last thing I need to add. I have been so blessed to have the most wonderful editors during this process. Jaclyn has worked tirelessly and believed in me even when I didn't. My mom, even with her crazy busy schedule, always made time if I needed any help.
