Cannon Fodder

So, I entered the "Be An Agent for A Day" contest over at Nathan Bransford -- Literary Agent, today. Or at least the part that lets you send in a sample query letter and have it (possibly) critiqued or your novel (not likely) selected for "publication." Since it's just a contest, I've written a query for my unfinished novel. Who knows. If the query gets a positive review, perhaps that'll spur me on. We'll see.

My letter, here: Watch on April 13 to see if it's featured. I'm not holding my breath. In this case, pessimism pays.

Dear Mr. Bransford,

I’m a long-time blurker at Nathan Bransford – Literary Agent. I enjoy how your thoughts and advice make the eerie world of publishing a little more transparent to we rabble on the outside looking in. I hope you will be interested in my novel.

Ben Smart, teenager, social slacker, proprietor of the “Too Much Information” booth at the rear entrance of a suburban shopping mall, is about to become A Somebody. A somebody whose former employment at big-box retailer Bil-Stor is going to get him in a lot of trouble. He’s discovered Bil-Stor’s secret. And despite the brainwashing, kidnapping, privateering, wholesale plundering and nametags shaped like daisies he discovers, Ben’s frightened by only one thing: The Buddy, a device that knows what shoppers want before they do and doesn’t mind butting into their brains to tell them. With the help of his girlfriend Angela, Big Big Billy Billy Bunghole – the bum who lives behind the Q.C. Bil-Stor and recites Rudyard Kipling poetry – a car called The Witch, a milquetoast gang of anti-consumerists called Pirates and Daddies, and the ghosts of Viktor Gruen, inventor of the shopping mall, and Edward Bellamy, inventor of American socialism, Ben might – or might not – reveal to the world the secrets of the beast “Slouching toward Bensonville,” hometown of Bil-Stor and the consumer doom that threatens to engulf a nation already engulfed by everything else.

My 100,000 word fantasy novel, “Slouching toward Bensonville,” explores what happens when consumers see into the heart of the financial trouble that’s roiling the nation and their own credit balances but fail to see the mirror sending back their own reflections.

I have had a handful of short stories and poems published by the Silver Valley Voice, an Idaho literary magazine. I’m also assistant editor at Uncharted.net, an up-and-coming travel and adventure website and social media agency. My personal musings may be found on the Web at www.misterfweem.blogspot.com. My full-time job is as a technical writer at a nuclear waste dump, where I have lots of time on the bus to and from work to write.

Thanks for taking the time to consider my novel for publication.

Sincerely,

Brian J. Davidson