Slay
BY brittney morris simon & schuster2019Query Letter
Thank you for favoriting my #PitMad tweet!
“Black teen girl creates virtual reality Afropunk-esque card battle game, making her the target of discrimination lawsuit that challenges existence of black-only spaces. WAKANDA-INSPIRED VR + YU-GI-OH #PitMad #YA #SF.”
By day, seventeen-year-old Kiera Johnson is an honors student, a math tutor, and the only Black girl at Jefferson Academy. But when she comes home, she joins hundreds of thousands of Black gamers who duel worldwide head-to-head as Nubian personas in the massively multiplayer online role playing card game ‘SLAY’. No one knows Kiera is the game developer, not even her boyfriend Malcolm, who believes video games are partially responsible for ‘the downfall of the Black man’.
However, when Kansas City teen Jamal Rice is murdered over a dispute over SLAY coins, the news of the game reaches the mainstream, and SLAY is labeled a racist, violent hub for “thugs and criminals”. When an anti-white discrimination lawsuit arises, Kiera learns her rich classmate Wyatt is the plaintiff, represented by his family’s lawyer. To keep her secret identity safe, Kiera proposes a high stakes duel to resolve the dispute: if she wins, he drops the litigation. If Wyatt wins, he gets complete control of the game.
Driven to save the only world in which she can be herself, Kiera must preserve her secret identity and harness what it means to be unapologetically Black in a world intimidated by Blackness. But will her relationship with Malcolm, her white friends, and her family, withstand this journey of self discovery?
SLAY is complete at 53,089 words. The first 2 chapters are pasted below (please let me know if you’d rather have them as an attachment), and the full manuscript is available upon request.
My Credentials: I have been represented before, but my former agent retired from publishing due to failing health. I am the founder and former president of the Boston University Creative Writing Club, and my work has been published in The Boston University Chimaerid Literary Magazine. I was chosen as a Novel-In-A-Day participant 2016, and I am a four-time NaNoWriMo winner. As the first black woman to graduate from my high school, I appreciate your dedication to representing marginalized voices. I'm excited to kick off my writing career at a time when so many people of color are gaining a platform in mainstream publishing.
Thanks for your time and consideration!
About
Age Range
Young Adult
Genre
Romance (Contemporary)
Word Count
85,000
Book Link
Agent
Quressa Robinson
Query Stats
Number of Queries Sent
More than 200
Number of Full Requests Received
8
Number of Offers of Representation
8
Number of Months Spent Querying This Novel
1 week
Years Spent Writing Before Getting an Offer
17
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
18