The Writer's Voice 2015: Query and First 250 of... The Friday Night Fright Club

Holy Moly!  Alerted this morning by a tweet from the great Krista Van Dolzer, I entered The Writer's Voice, and the bot picked me. Now, if it would just pick me some winning lottery numbers, I could retire from this malarkey and make my home in the Canary Islands. (The Don, by the way, is all over this. He thinks I've won The Eurovision Song Contest. I'm not disabusing him--as long as I don't have to wear sequins.)

Here we go:

Query

Dear Ms. Awesome-Agent,

Twelve-year-old Nita Adams desperately wants to see a ghost. After all, she’s president of the Friday Night Fright Club and an expert in all things paranormal—and she needs her friends to focus more on phantoms than on sports and boys. (As if boys could ever compete with banshees or bhoots—Indian ghosts with backward facing feet!)

To make matters worse, there’s trouble with the new girl in school. Destiny claims to be a REAL summoner, and she appears to be taking over Nita’s friends’ minds. Nita rises to Destiny’s challenge, and the race to see who can summon a spirit is on. Ouija boards, spell books, magical lockets, and sneaking into “haunted” houses are all part of the duel.

However, as Nita discovers, some spirits should definitely remain unsummoned. That's because the spirit she unleashes has mayhem and murder on his mind. And if Nita can’t stop him, someone close to her may very well end up dead.

THE FRIDAY NIGHT FRIGHT CLUB is a middle grade ghost story, complete at 45,000 words. I like to think of it as being a bit like Heather Vogel Frederick's Mother-Daughter Book Club series--if the only books the girls ever wanted to read were Goosebumps. I'm querying you specifically because (xyz etc.)

I belong to the SCBWI, and am active in children's literature circles, managing the group blog Project Mayhem: The Manic Minds of Middle Grade Writers. For the past three years, I have also judged middle grade fiction for the Cybils’ awards. Originally from England, I now live in Portland, Oregon.

Thank you for your time and consideration,

Michael Gettel-Gilmartin

First 250:

The skull gleamed in the dim light of the battery-powered votive candles. Wisps of fog snaked through its empty eye sockets, and its yellowing teeth grinned as it faced one bedroom wall and then another. For a moment, it trembled in Nita’s Adams’ hand. Then it swooped down and smacked the seventh-grade social studies textbook lying beneath it.

Nita shook the skull a couple more times, for good measure. “I, the Mistress of Graves, call this meeting of the Friday Night Fright Club to order,” she said, in her spookiest voice.

As if on cue, the wind roared through the fir trees in the ravine behind Nita’s neighborhood. Rain tap-tap-tapped against her bedroom window. Wouldn’t it be awesome if the tapping was the sound of a ghost, desperate to return to a previous life? Nita would race to the window and let the lost spirit in.

She had to admit it: October in Oregon was totally her favorite month. Tonight, in honor of Halloween—only a couple of weeks away—she was doing everything in her power to amp up the fear factor. It seemed to be working—at least with one of her best friends. Brenny, wide-eyed, looked completely spooked. Now, to complete the mission and terrify Maddie…

Nita positioned the plastic skull in front of her and flung her arms wide. Vapor from the fog machine on her dresser swirled around all three of them. They looked like wraiths.

“I have two words for you,” Nita said. “Bloody Mary.”