The novel pitch is out there

Exciting (to me) news this week: I’m officially pitching to agents. I know this is like asking you to get excited that I bought some lottery tickets, but it’s definitely progress.

As part of the process of getting the book ready to pitch, I’ve needed to think about how it fits into the market, and how it’s a potentially saleable thing.

Any of you who have heard me talk about the book are familiar with how desperately I needed to clarify my thinking on this subject, and how I’ve sometimes been unable to articulate what the book is and why people might be interested in it. I’ve made at least a few steps in that direction, and I want to throw this open to feedback as well. Comments are open below. Hopefully I’ll be able to report actual representation agreements and publisher traction before too long. And, if that’s the case, look back at how it all started.

One sentence pitch:

In a world built on the ruins of first creation, a quiet builder and a defiant child challenge the authority of the first father and risk breaking the world for a second time.

Query letter as sent:

Dear _____,

I am seeking representation for Unfallen, a literary novel of myth and survival complete at 89,500 words. It may appeal to readers of The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro, Circe by Madeline Miller, Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel or, casting further back, Many Waters by Madeline L’Engle, as it combines myth-inflected literary fiction with themes of creation, authority, community, and care.

In the ancient city of Ur, a blacksmith named Nathaniel recovers from a loss and raises an orphaned girl, Sitara, as his daughter. Unknown to them both, Sitara is the daughter of Adam, who let Eve fall alone and still lives on the unchanged, inaccessible Mount of Paradise. Adam has contempt for everything outside his Mountain and supreme confidence in his own place.

Ur is part of a hobbled society descended from Eve, neither perfect nor redeemed. Nathaniel and Sitara build a life there, helped and hindered by the scattering of people in the strangely empty city, including both ordinary residents and members of cults devoted to Adam. But when Adam discovers Sitara’s lineage, he abducts her and takes her up the Mountain, believing she is his by right.

Sitara and Nathaniel must resist this claim in their own ways, using guile and strength to oppose their oppressor. Through her own example, Sitara shows Adam that his perfection is, and always has been, incomplete. Nathaniel makes a bold attempt at rescue and demonstrates that family entails more than ownership. Their struggles drive Adam from his longtime home and change the world around them for the first time since its creation.

I’m a father of two living in San Diego. I hold a PhD and have published on John Milton, the devil, The Rolling Stones and Renaissance sects. This is my debut novel after fifteen years of writing for corporate clients.

Thank you for your consideration and I look forward to your reply.

Evan LaBuzetta