Mourning Dove: Agent Query for MOURNING DOVE, a Family-Saga Genre, Eco-Fiction Novel

Dear <FirstNameOfAgent>,

I am an established writer. Ballantine Books published a short novel I wrote and it sold 25,000 copies. George R. R. Martin eulogized our departed mutual agent, Kirby McCauley, as "the best in the business." I loved working with Kirby. My new novel, MOURNING DOVE, an eco-fiction family saga complete at 81,000 words, is about a post-apocalypse family of climate scientists, engineers, dreamers, and sharpshooters that travels from their extinction-prevention station in Alaska to Antarctica to join distant family rebuilding civilization. In the journey, the family sees (and shows readers) how mournful and scary the climate apocalypse can be. Expected readers are those who wonder, “What will climate change do to me?” MOURNING DOVE answers that question.

Seeing the murder of his sister, Jen, triggers Ttuuee Darlton’s coming of age as a diamond, sparkling and hard, with fiery humor. Leading the family, his experiences include drawing into his arms the painted body of his adopted witch, as she sobs regretting being evil. Sleeping at the bedside of his deathly ill father, he awakens with joy hearing his Dad tell a joke to announce his fever is gone. Ttuuee breathes warm ocean mist as he watches the pirates who attacked flee in their damaged ship. He forces an evil queen (a cousin) to remove handcuffs from his father's wrists. He forces an evil queen (a cousin) to remove handcuffs from his father's wrists. Will civilization recover? With hope that it will, Ttuuee places a billion-dollar engagement ring onto the finger of his Rembrandt girl, Snana, a Lakota composer of symphonies.

Bruce Holsinger's DISPLACEMENTS is comparable to MOURNING DOVE, though less uplifting, as the saga of a family upended by climate change, showing how parents and children suffer because of it. Paolo Bacigalupi is a master at characterization, and I learned from him by reading WATER KNIFE, a novel of heroes and anti-heroes who struggle through climate-caused drought. I was inspired to write MOURNING DOVE by climate scientist Dr. James E. Hansen's Congressional testimony and his book STORMS OF MY GRANDCHILDREN, which tells why the climate will change and how it will affect the lives or deaths of his grandchildren.

As a ghostwriter, I wrote op-eds that appeared in major newspapers. Articles under my name are in national journals, including The Nature Conservancy Magazine and the American Psychological Association Monitor. My published novella, "Oceans Away" was nearly fifty percent of STELLAR SHORT NOVELS, edited by Judy-Lynn del Rey. I studied writing with my master's thesis professor, novelist J.R. Salamanca. I participated for years in the "Vicious Circle" workshop led by Amazing and Fantastic editor Ted White, for whom I also read slush. I am dedicated to marketing MOURNING DOVE. I taught myself climate science. I personally coded and built an author website and a climate-novel blog recognized by activists and scientists. I connected with more than 66,000 potential readers on social media, some famous. I performed in six podcasts and spoke to a high school. I plan to do far more. I will not self-publish.

I like your work as an agent because you represent climate-change writers Jane Doe and John Smith and your MSWL asks for…. Please tell me that I might fit your list. This is a multiple submission. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Richard Shawn Weinstein, SFWA member