Vahini Naidoo (inkspatters on QT) has signed with agent Ammi-Joan Paquette of Erin Murphy Literary Agency.
The book I queried before this I queried over a period of around a year, but there were huge gaps in between. I queried in March, gave up. Then queried again in October and November, then gave up again.
Dear Awesome Agent,
Sixteen-year-old Skylar Jones hasn’t seen her jailbird mother in ten years. So when mommy dearest arrives on the doorstep armed with apologies, Skylar has no idea what to do.
Skylar would prefer meeting up with the Wicked Witch to seeing her mom again. But fragmented childhood memories– her mom’s shallow dimples when she smiled, their hands twined together– convince Sky to chase after a reason to let her mom back in. To figure out whether she can trust her mom Skylar puts the motto her mother taught her to live by, “Find Heaven on Earth,” to the test. If it was more of her mother's drugged up bullshit, Sky plans to dump her childhood memories in the nearest ditch and move on.
Artistic Skylar’s version of heaven is nothing more than a stunning colour palette, so she sets about getting blissed out on colour combinations. She lights illegal fireworks at the local park, letting pink and green spark above her. But heaven’s yet to appear and Skylar just discovered why her mom finally came back: she’s dying of cancer. Skylar's attempts to find heaven become desperate. When she jogs headfirst into a field of speeding cars – yellow headlights, red taillights, rusty bumpers and the bruise-coloured evening – and her heart rate doesn’t even spike, Skylar realises she's no longer just looking for a reason to trust her mom. She’s searching for a reason to live, and a way to make peace with her past, but heaven's still slipping through her fingers.
SKYLAR’S STORY is a 50,000 contemporary YA novel that I hope will appeal to fans of John Green’s Paper Towns and Jay Asher’s Thirteen Reasons Why. Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,