At the End of the River Styx
BY michelle kulwickipage street2024Query Letter
Since you are currently seeking [personalization], I wanted to reach out to you. During Dvpit, this book garnered interest from multiple publishers including Little Brown and Simon & Schuster imprints, so I would love to send the first chapter of STYX for your review.
The contemporary fairy-tale setting of THE INVISIBLE LIFE OF ADDIE LARUE meets the liminal and snarky romance of THE DARKNESS OUTSIDE US in STYX, a 91,000 word #ownvoices YA fantasy novel about conquering grief and learning to love again.
On Styx, the mythical river of the dead, seventeen-year-old Zan is bound in a 500-year curse to process souls for the mythical, monstrous Ferryman. He spends his time logging names and locations of death into an Excel spreadsheet, playing Freecell on his computer of the damned, and wandering the frozen memories left behind by the dead.
In Portland, Oregon, eighteen-year-old Bastian Barnes is grieving. He’s survived a tragic car accident that took the life of his mother, purchased a crumbling bookstore with the life insurance money, and is barely stumbling from day to day under the weight of his own grief. He’s also failing high school, has accidentally adopted (1) extremely feral cat, is hardcore avoiding his twin brother, and is haunted by constant nightmares of a boy in an office chair, telling him he should be dead.
Zan’s lonely, he’s tired, but he’s also only six months away from fulfilling his deal and gaining his human life back, so when death’s mark keeps dragging Bastian into Zan’s office, it shouldn’t be a problem to log his soul like thousands of others and forget he ever existed. But when Zan follows Bastian through memories of grief, of love, and of hope, Zan realizes that they have more in common than any soul he has ever met—and that he is not ready for Bastian to die.
As Zan and Bastian hide in a world full of dead memories while the vicious Ferryman hunts them, Zan must decide if he’s willing to give up his chance at life to save Bastian—and Bastian must decide if he’s willing to keep living, if it means losing Zan. I am a queer mom to 3 amazing kiddos by day, a professional musician by night, and a writer by any means possible. My short stories have been both Locus and Hugo recommended and published in Strange Horizons, Fusion Fragment, and many other anthologies and literary magazines.
Thank you so much for your consideration.
About
Age Range
Young Adult
Genre
Fantasy (Contemporary)
Word Count
90,000-100,000
Book Link
https://www.schulerbooks.com/book/9798890039606
Agent
Lauren Bittrich
Query Stats
Number of Queries Sent
97
Number of Full Requests Received
17
Number of Offers of Representation
2
Number of Months Spent Querying This Novel
5 months
Years Spent Writing Before Getting an Offer
5
Number of Manuscripts Queried Before This One
0
Publication Status of The Book Queried
Under Contract (Independent /Boutique / Indy Publisher)