Rule 25: Don't Fall For The Target
BY charleigh frederickwinding road stories2023Query Letter
RULE 25: DON’T FALL FOR THE TARGET is a YA romance spy fiction novel complete at 67,000 words. It is perfect for fans of Ally Carter, Robin Benway, and Kiera Cass.
When Autumn Alderidge was a child, she wasn’t yelled at for stealing cookies, she was yelled at for getting caught stealing cookies. Rule number one is don’t get caught. There are 24 rules in total - the family manifesto - that control her life. She knew them before she knew how to spell her own name. Born into the head of one of the world's four largest crime families, which deal with everything from theft to assassination, Autumn received birthday gifts like trained snipers chasing her for forty-eight hours and lessons on how to use a bear gun. At age eight, she knew she was to marry a boy from the head of another large crime family who rules over Russia, Dimitri Daxterov. But at seventeen, the 24 rules start to feel confining, instead of guiding, as she meets Kato, the boy she’s supposed to be targeting for her first solo mission.
It started as a normal evening for Autumn — she and her brother broke into a top secret facility to steal a folder — but ended with them returning to the family estate in full evacuation. Despite wanting to go with her family to figure out the unprecedented threat that could make her well-trained and level-headed parents worried, Autumn is sent on a solo mission, her first solo mission. She is sent to Gangster Island in northern Wisconsin to stay with her uncle and befriend local teen Kato in order to get access to his house and gain intel on the security. Kato is her target, and extremely irritating, but the more time she spends with him, the more she feels like he is the only one who truly gets her. This may be a problem as she quickly learns he’s more closely tied to the threat to her family than she first thought. Suddenly, she realizes she might need to add a rule to the family manifesto or fail her mission and her family: Don’t fall for the target.
RULE 25: DON’T FALL FOR THE TARGET has a similar theme of impossible love as I’D TELL YOU I LOVE YOU BUT THEN I’D HAVE TO KILL YOU by Ally Carter, with a similar character development-driven, coming-of-age narrative to THE SELECTION by Kiera Cass. RULE 25: DON’T FALL FOR THE TARGET has similar conflicts of family struggle found in GOING ROGUE by Robin Benway. Like POWERLESS by Tera Lynn Childs and Tracy Deebs, it offers a call to the question of hierarchy and an examination of a woman’s struggle in a patriarchal social construct, while calling to question who we previously would call a villain.
RULE 25: DON’T FALL FOR THE TARGET is written as the first of a trilogy. I have a rough draft of book two and have outlined book three. It also holds the capacity to be expanded into a four-book series if desired.
My series of sci-fi horror novels, DESCENDANT OF EVIL has been signed to a six-book contract with Scarsdale Publishing in New York. My stand alone quirky MG novel DEMON SCOUT has been signed with Bow's Bookshelf for publication in early 2023. Two of the plays I have written have been staged in theaters in Minnesota. I was a Vocal+ Fiction Awards 2022 Challenge finalist for my short story B283DGF1 and two of my poems were signed with Behind the Vision LLC. I am currently an undergraduate writing student at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.
Thank you for your consideration.
About
Age Range
Young Adult
Genre
Thriller
Word Count
67,000
Book Link
https://www.amazon.com/Rule-25-Dont-Fall-Target/
Agent
Leslie Varney
Query Stats
Year Queried
2022
Number of Queries Sent
Roughly 500 between all 4 books
Number of Full Requests Received
6
Number of Offers of Representation
1
Number of Months Spent Querying This Novel
6 months
Years Spent Writing Before Getting an Offer
3
Number of Manuscripts Queried Before This One
2
Publication Status of The Book Queried
Published (Independent /Boutique / Indy Publisher)
Years Spent Writing Before This Book was Published
3