I want you to represent me because you work in the YA genre and appear to love young people. Ballantine Books published a short novel I wrote and it sold 25,000 copies. My agent was Kirby McCauley, now deceased, who also represented Stephen King and George R.R. Martin. MOURNING DOVE is a Young Adult novel complete at 81,000 words. Targeted readers are young people who wonder, "Will climate change be so bad that I shouldn't even have children? What will it do to them, or maybe even me?" MOURNING DOVE answers those questions. It is about a family of post-apocalypse climate scientists, dreamers, and sharpshooters that travels from Alaska to Antarctica to join family rebuilding civilization. In following their journey, readers feel how challenging their own lives will be.
Witnessing his sister's murder triggers Ttuuee Darlton to come of age as a diamond, sparkling and hard, with fiery humor, a big agenda, clear goals, and drive. As MOURNING DOVE's hero leading the family, his experiences include hugging a Brazilian witch (anti-hero) who wears nothing but body paint as she sobs in his arms regretting being born evil. He falls asleep listening for his deathly ill father's last breath, until he's awakened by Dad laughing how his fever has broken. Ocean mist cools Ttuuee's face as he watches pirates who attacked flee in their damaged ship. He forces an evil queen (a cousin) to remove handcuffs from Dad's wrists. Ttuuee sees the apocalypse brought back witches, pirates, and evil queens, plus much death and disease, but because he is confident civilization will recover, Ttuuee places his great, great grandmother's billion-dollar engagement ring onto the finger of the Rembrandt girl, a Lakota composer of symphonies.
Like Bruce Holsinger's DISPLACEMENTS, MOURNING DOVE shows how parents and children suffer from climate change. I tried to make MOURNING DOVE present similar feelings but in a lighter manner. I learned from Paolo Bacigalupi's mastery at characterization 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 and his book STORMS OF MY GRANDCHILDREN, which tells why the climate will change and how his grandchildren and others their age can save humanity.
As a U.S. Senate ghostwriter, I wrote op-eds for major newspapers. Articles under my name are in national journals, including 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 taught myself climate science. I personally coded and built an author website and a climate-novel blog recognized by activists and scientists. A private high school's administrators, impressed with my blog, brought me in to teach what climate change will do and how to write about it. I connected with more than 66,000 potential readers on social media, some famous. I performed in six podcasts. I plan to do far more to market MOURNING DOVE. I will not self-publish.
<FirstNameOfAgent> please tell me you would like to add MOURNING DOVE to your winter reading list. This is a multiple submission. Thank you for your time and consideration.
Richard Shawn Weinstein, SFWA member
Writing as Shawn Oueinsteen
www.shawnoueinsteen.com
mourningdovenovel.blogspot.com
P.S., Disclosure: The first chapter includes deaths of immediate family of the two Point-of-View main characters. Then MOURNING DOVE's first PoV character, Jen, dies on page 97. These deaths may make readers cry, but to me the joy of reading comes from books that bring out tears, as well as smiles, laughter, and hope.
