Exercise #63

Dear Agent Wonderful,

I’m looking for representation of my dark Urban Fantasy The Trouble With Trees, complete at 82,000 words.

Seventeen-year-old Joshua had a perfectly normal adolescent life–two parents, still married and happy, a dog, a nice girlfriend. Until his both his parents die in a car accident and he’s sent to live in Duffy a little community in the back end of nowhere in Northern BC with his only surviving relative, a spinster aunt.

Lonely and ostracized by his new school friends, he tries to maintain a relationship with his girlfriend via IM, Facebook status reports and and text messages. The kids at school shun him because they ‘know’ about his aunt, believing she’s a witch, and his girlfriend threatens to dump when she find out about his strange family.

Deciding to find out the truth, he starts to spy on his aunt and  discovers her tendency to wander through the graveyard at night. And he catches her sleeping in a tree more than once.

All Joshua wants is to return to a normal life, but when he confronts his aunt with her nocturnal wanderings and strange compulsion for trees, he discovers that not only is his aunt a dryad, his mother was as well. And that his parents were murdered.

With his father’s death, Joshua discovers he is now the god expected to protect the dryads. Unfortunately, it sounds like it might already be too late. In Joshua’s absence, ghouls have descended on Victoria, killing trees and their dryad keepers and kidnapping his girlfriend. As their protector, he has to return to Victoria to try and prevent the death of the rest of the dryads. And save his ex-girlfriend’s life.

Thank you for your consideration. Please find enclosed the first five pages as per your submission guidelines.

Sincerely,
Aspiring Author