Greenleaf Literary Services

Note: This is an actual book proposal (query letter, synopsis, author’s bio, and chapter-by-chapter outline) prepared for a client. The author’s name and book title have been changed.

Click here to download the full proposal (Word document, 12 pages).

Excerpt . . .

Query Letter – Fiction

Date

Agent’s Name
Agency Name
Address
City, State ZIP

Dear Agent’s Name:

When convicted killer and rapist Colin Cyrus escapes during a prisoner transfer in the remote backcountry of Louisiana, he goes on another rampage, this time unleashing a dark and mysterious power in the heart of the bayou. His death at the hands of Detective Raleigh Spencer marks only the beginning of the ascension of the underworld, a combustible nightmare of phantoms, prophesy, and unmitigated evil.

Detective Spencer must protect Cora Lee and her unborn baby from the clutches of the no-longer-corporeal Colin Cyrus, whose deadly reach extends beyond the grave. New Orleans’ Fifth District is soon plagued by a host of supernatural calamities, and only Cora Lee’s faith in God and the courage of her guardian can save the day.

Bloody Dawn has been completed at 104,000 words. I have enclosed a brief synopsis and would be pleased to send you sample chapters or the entire manuscript.

An SASE is enclosed for your reply. Thank you for your consideration.

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Synopsis – Fiction

Brent Phillips
811 Elm Street
Fairview, IL 60642

Phone: (555) 555-9911
Email: bp@cable4.com

BLOODY DAWN
Synopsis
by Brent Phillips

A Cajun melody can be heard in the distance, slicing through the muggy night air, the melancholy clarion call of Louisiana’s remote marshland. This is bayou country, where isolated clans intone an inscrutable dialect; where warm rain provides a constant I.V. drip; where drum, fiddle, and accordion rise from the swampland like lost souls in the misty twilight.

The Cajuns slip in and out of waterways, skimming the water’s surface in their carved-out cypress boats, filling wooden buckets with crawfish, and going ashore to trap for nutria and muskrat. They are as much a part of the landscape as the milkweed, the pelican, the green water snake. But something has come to disturb this evergreen paradise, something as old as the prehistoric gators prowling its bottomless bogs, something as black as the water’s murky depths.

When detectives Raleigh Spencer and Floyd Ketchum crash their patrol car during a secretive prison transfer, they unleash a monster of a man, Colin Cyrus, a convicted murderer and rapist with a gruesome rap sheet and a sadistic sense of destiny. He is a prophet gone mad, a foot soldier of evil, and he speaks of the inevitable reckoning he will leave in his bloody wake.

His rough-edged partner dies in the crash, but Detective Spencer survives, limping from the wreckage to track Colin through a downpour in remote bayou backcountry. Colin leads him to a small cabin in the woods, but the detective arrives too late. Colin has already shot Leon Baptiste to death, ruthlessly raped and beat his wife Cora Lee, and decapitated their two dogs with a machete. Detective Spencer empties his gun into the killer, but Colin’s death is only the beginning.

Cora Lee, catatonic and brutalized, will have more than the savage memories running wild in her subconscious to overcome, more than the loss of her soul mate and best friend to mourn. Though she doesn’t know it, she is pregnant. And her attacker has pledged his soul – and her unborn child – to Satan.

To survive, Cora Lee will have to rely on her faith, both in herself and in her God, to hold onto everything good left in her life: her child, her relationship with her sister, and her memory of Leon. She will have to learn to trust her own instincts and believe in her own dreams.

She will get help from Detective Spencer, whose devotion to her, whether borne of guilt or a sense of duty, is steadfast throughout; from her sister Mae Ella and brother-in-law Thomas, the latter of whom will bear his own scars when their ordeal is finished; and from Dr. Phyllis Ford, a young ob-gyn whose medical and scientific background does not rule out an understanding of the supernatural.

Their quest to undo the evil of Colin Cyrus is not an easy one. The cast of supporting characters has its own agenda: a ruthless police commissioner willing to compromise his fidelity and professionalism; an overeager reporter hoping for the scoop of a lifetime; and a superintendent of police who has a compromising file on everyone in New Orleans but himself, a closet transvestite. Mr. Cyrus, though physically dead, proves plenty formidable as he reaches from beyond the grave to sow mayhem wherever his spirit goes.

In the end, Cora Lee never loses faith, and Detective Raleigh Spencer shows his own mettle, jumping through fire to protect Cora Lee and her baby. As for the bayou, its Cajun inhabitants go on as they always have, skimming the murky waterways in their cypress boats and filling the night air with their haunting melodies, somehow oblivious to the nightmare unfolding in the marshland around them.

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Chapter Outline – Fiction

Brent Phillips
811 Elm Street
Fairview, IL 60642

Phone: (555) 555-9911
Email: bp@cable4.com

BLOODY DAWN
Chapter Outline
by Brent Phillips

Chapter 1

Cora Lee Baptiste, a strikingly beautiful Creole woman who lives with her husband Leon in bayou country, wakes up early one morning from a terrible nightmare. Her husband soothes her, and later that morning the two make love, hoping this time she will conceive.

Meanwhile, Detective Raleigh Spencer and his partner Floyd Ketchum are transporting deranged killer and rapist Colin Cyrus to a nearby prison. Floyd and Colin soon go at it, and their bickering distracts Raleigh, who should be keeping his eyes on the slippery road. Raleigh ends up losing control after a mysterious gust of wind conspires with the pouring rain to roll the patrol car.

Floyd is killed instantly and Raleigh seriously injured. Colin, once again, is free. Before leaving the wreck, he nearly dispatches Raleigh but inexplicably walks away. He will never show mercy again.

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