Remember Me Gone
BY stacy stokesviking books2022Query Letter
You mentioned on #MSWL that you enjoyed The Bone Gap, and I thought you might have interest in REMEMBER ME GONE, a 75,000 word YA mystery with speculative elements I like to describe as Bone Gap meets Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind set in a dusty Texas border town filled with secrets. REMEMBER ME GONE was selected as a finalist at the 2019 San Francisco Writers Conference Contest in the Best YA/Children’s category.
The small town of Tumble Tree, Texas is known for two things: the blistering desert heat and the Memory House, where folks come from all over to have Lucy’s family erase their heartaches and tragic memories.
Lucy’s been begging Dad to let her unburden folks since the day she learned why there were strangers lined up on their front porch. So the afternoon Lucy finally tries her hand at memory-taking she’s overjoyed. Except something isn’t right—the memory won’t come loose. And Lucy sees a flash of Mama on the day she died, the memory tinged red with guilt. But why is Dad guilty over Mama’s accident?
Then Lucy wakes up with a bruised knee, a pocketful of desert sand and no memory of how it happened. So when Marco Warman—a local boy she’s always wondered about— comes to her with a crazy story, she listens. He claims Lucy’s dad stole memories from folks working at the mines, breaking the cardinal rule of memory-taking: take only what you’re given. Worse yet, when her dad caught Lucy spying he did the one thing he promised Lucy he’d never do—he made her forget.
As Marco and Lucy team up to fill in the missing pieces of their memories, two things become clear: whatever’s happening down at the mines has nothing to do with mining, and Mama’s death was no accident.
Turns out there are some secrets in Tumble Tree people are willing to kill to keep.
Per your submission guidelines, please find the first 2,500 words of REMEMBER ME GONE below.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
About
Age Range
Young Adult
Genre
Speculative Fiction
Word Count
75,000
Book Link
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/668129/remember-me-gone-by-stacy-stokes/
Agent
Joanna MacKenzie
Query Stats
Number of Queries Sent
20
Number of Full Requests Received
12
Number of Offers of Representation
1
Number of Months Spent Querying This Novel
1 month
Years Spent Writing Before Getting an Offer
9
Number of Manuscripts Queried Before This One
2
Publication Status of The Book Queried
Published (Big 5)
Years Spent Writing Before This Book was Published
11