17 Query Contest

Dear Mrs. Meadows:

SOUNDTRACK TO THE END OF THE WORLD
*A lonely titan attempts to save his only friend as society collapses around him.*


A suicidal nudist strolls into traffic. An eccentric Buddhist claims he can occupy other people’s bodies. All the while, whispers of a new form of entertainment blow through town. Prompted by these strange occurrences, Marty Raft and his best friend Corey Green investigate and discover underground clubs peddling music that induces an out-of-body experience. But these special frequencies prove to permanently alter the spectators, turning Corey, among thousands of others, into soulless wanderers. Accompanied by an aural reader, Naomi Santrel, Marty sets out to save his friend, all the time believing there must be a cure...

I chose to submit this novel for your consideration after researching your agency and discovering your interest in horror. Specifically, in a recent blog post Mrs. Rappaport mentioned looking for dark, creepy novels that are also funny. With interest in traditional monsters higher than ever--the recent success of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES, and upcoming movies such as ZOMBIELAND and WORLD WAR Z--now might be the right time for my 60,000 word horror novel, SOUNDTRACK TO THE END OF THE WORLD. This novel takes zombies and reimagines not only their creation, but their every guiding rule.

In 2007 I earned a master’s of education degree and a teaching certification for English from East Stroudsburg University in Pennsylvania. Upon graduation I won the Martha E. Martin Fiction Writing Award for my story “Camera Obscura.”

I would be happy to send the full manuscript upon request. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,



Chapter 1

The apartment building’s lobby smelled like shit. That’s not a figure of speech, and I don’t mean it smelled like garbage. I mean it smelled like shit. Two steps through the front door, after Corey buzzed me in, and I saw why. At the base of the staircase, next to the wall of bronze mailboxes, there were two thick logs, waiting for anyone going upstairs. Or downstairs. Or to check their mail.

Finding the apartment’s lobby thusly soiled was a shock. When I was younger, I lived in New York City. I had experience with urine soaked alleyways and randomly dropped bowel movements. But Corey’s apartment building wasn’t in a bad neighborhood of a large city. It was in a rural area of Northeastern Pennsylvania. I don’t mean to generalize, but in the twenty years I’d lived in Pennsylvania, that was the first time I had encountered a hallway turd.

I stepped over it, holding my breath, and hightailed it up the stairs to the fourth floor. Corey’s door stood open, and I walked in. He had a standard twenty-something’s bachelor pad. His living room was furnished with a stained foldout couch, twenty inch television, flimsy Ikea coffee table, and hand-me-down lamps from his parents. To the left was his small kitchen, complete with sticky linoleum and dirty dishes.

His place wasn’t clean and it wasn’t dirty. Corey didn’t drape clothes over furniture, and he vacuumed the carpet. But the windows were dingy, and the television screen dusty.