YA Urban Fantasy (first rejection panic :) )

[kelpster]

That helps--gives me a direction. For Maya, the goal really is to find out who murdered her mother and make them pay, and also try to find out what the heck is going on with her and why. Once she knows what is at stake, which isn't until the end, then the goals change.

But I like the idea of hinting at the price she might have to pay. I will have to think on that a bit.

THANK YOU everyone and if you have other suggestions, keep em' coming! 

[Kim_S]

It’s late, so I’d like to consider your post further before commenting on it.  However, I do want to comment on something else you mentioned.

Rejection letters are a writer’s battle scars.  They should not be looked upon as insurmountable mountains, but speed bumps…just something to get your attention and keep you from settling.  If I may, I would like to use the parable of the Pee Wee Herman Christmas Special.

Every friend who stopped by gave him a fruitcake for a Christmas present. PWH hated fruitcake. He loathed it. He despised it. It made him physically ill.  However, at the end of the episode, he had enough fruitcake to build himself an entirely new room…and he did.


My point is that no matter what anyone tells you, getting an agent/getting published seems to be as much Luck, Timing, and sheer Bull-headedness (on your part) as anything else.  Do you know that most of us (newbies and old pros alike) devote more time and effort into pondering the deeper meanings of rejection letters than the agents/publishers actually put into writing each generic form letter?  When (and _IF_ ) you strip that thought of all the accompanying angst, it seems kind of goofy to let yourself get bogged down by a rejection.
You can do wondrous and amazing things, if you’re willing to keep moving forward. Just because some faceless agent didn’t pounce on your work doesn’t mean it lacks potential. If you didn’t think you could write, and you didn’t think you had a story to tell, you wouldn’t have tried in the first place.  The trick is to keep trying.

If you want it badly enough, you will find a way to get your book out there.  And in the meantime, I wish you the best of luck, and I look forward to reading your finished piece!  ~  Sincerely, KS

[kelpster]

Thanks, Kim.

I know it's early yet, it's just tough. Got an A-list rejection, too, so BOO. 

Okay--enough of that!

I raised the stakes a bit more. *ducks in case it isn't enough* 

Any moment the folks from Guinness World Records will knock on Maya Stephens’ door and crown her “Biggest Freak Show” for still not having her first period yet—and she’s almost sixteen. Of course they would have to get past her father who guards their apartment with a broadsword. But on the eve of the 10th anniversary of her mother’s murder, a scrap of normalcy seems imminent when her monthly visitor finally arrives.

That is, until she starts to breathe fire.

As Maya begins a transformation that terrifies and excites her, she starts to remember details about the day of her mother’s death that don’t match the official story of a wrong time wrong place killing. She sets off on a journey with Michael, her best friend since they were embryos, to discover the real story behind her mother’s murder and what Maya is becoming.

Surrounded on all sides by secrets and lies, her search for the truth leads her from the tombs of one of New York City’s oldest cemeteries to the Bloody Angle, Chinatown’s deadliest corner. Maya must confront her family’s surprising heritage, cryptic fortune cookie missions, mythological creatures who want her for their next victim, and perhaps scariest of all—choosing between her birthright and her ever-changing feelings for Michael.

Nobody said becoming a woman was easy.