Theme Reveal 2024 #AtoZChallenge and #WEP check in update

I missed the window for the theme reveal hop. Honestly, I wasn't sure I'd try to participate this year.

At the last moment (today is the end of March), I decided I'd try. I didn't really know what I'd be willing to spend a month blogging about. Well, what goal in my life would my soul most regret if I'd "stroke out" 🧠🚫💀⚰👻 in April?

Back in 2016, I started writing a story. A friend of the family, actually the child of the friend, endured some... 🐮💩...unfair and harsh realities due to her stepmother. As part of the legal deal and decision, the case cannot be discussed. There's no newspaper article. (Which is like, to me, 😩😵🤯, unacceptable. How can they sweep all of this under the rug! And force a gag order on a child??)

I can't do anything about the law. I, being an outsider, am not under the legal gag order. I obtained my knowledge prior to that deal and ruling. And I am not connected. So, Freedom of Speech for my American butt says that I can whip up a fictional story. I can create a character and give her a similar situation. (The mother in my story is nothing like the real stepmother, who I feel should be in prison for multiple reasons. But I can't fix that.) 

The thing is, the girl was made to feel very alone. And that, in my opinion, wasn't right. The way communities shut out the child for something she didn't do and had no control over, it enrages me. I can use that to write a fictional story. 




There is a cropped screenshot Google result showing how I know my story has a target audience. I do not know how many of those children are teens or YA. But I know there are readers who could use a protagonist with a similar situation. 

My main character is also dealing with racism. Not only have I based that antagonist character off of a real educator I know, but the current political climate of my country shows just how much racism is on the rise. 

This story has been getting rejected since 2017.  

A big obstacle is that my main character is a Latina, and is eager to celebrate her quinceañera. As a lot of agents rejected the query because they didn't know that word (SERIOUSLY??? "Most Latino New Yorkers live in New York City, where they number more than 2.4 million strong and account for one quarter of the city's population." How can agents in NYC not know that word with a population that size living where they work? Get your heads out of the sand, people!!!), so I changed the query wording to include "15th birthday." 🤦 Then they asked if I'd make my main character a different age, at least already 15. You know why? Because non-Latinx Americans would celebrate a sweet 16, not a quinceañera! Apparently, I haven't found an agent who knows a publisher who can market to the Latina ya market. 

I didn't start writing this story so I could just have another little white girl character. I started it because of an injustice done to a real child. She is not allowed to discuss it. But I can tell her story, disguised under the protection of fiction and by adding enough secondary attributes to give plausible deniability in case someone should ever figure things out. (And yet I'm writing a blog post. Go figure.) But I really don't want to change the age.

Yet, because of the events in the story, I know it cannot be MG. Even YA might be pushing my luck.

Honestly, this could all be for nothing. The election in November could land America with political leaders who will burn every book at every school. (Seriously, see the horrors of the school libraries in Florida. They drained them. Fiction, non-fiction, doesn't matter.) 

A big reason I want to traditional publish this book is to increase its chances of landing in libraries. My target audience is more likely to need to borrow from a library, and not everyone has book money. 

ANYWAY

So I am going to try to use April to beg for help to improve this book and create a new query letter. 

Here's the latest (without a personal info paragraph, obviously). I'll be revising this story. Please help!

 

I am trying. I suffered a stroke in January. My right side has been slowly recovering since. My right hand, the dominant hand for me, is still not fully recovered. I haven't typed this slow since I was a child first learning. I had spent weeks focused on just moving my fingers. "J K L ;" the letter L and the semicolon took the longest. My typing teachers would be appalled right now, because my current finger placement is not correct. 

I don't know if I'll make it through the challenge this year. I'm trying, though.