Title: KOLGRIM
Genre: Middle-grade Modern Fantasy
Word Count: 38,500
How did you Fall for Writing: I began writing in 2nd grade after my teacher made me read an assignment aloud to the first grade class. I have been writing and telling stories in front of people ever since.
Query:
Dear Agent:
13-year-old Trevor can turn into a minotaur. Yep, a seven-foot-tall, bull-headed monster like the one from Greek myths. And until today, he thought he was the only one.
Turns out, several thousand people in the world have the ability to transmogrify—or mog, as he likes to call it—into a mythical, extinct, or just plain weird monster of some kind. His dad can turn into a freaking mammoth! But Dad totally took off on Trevor without so much as a note five years ago, leaving Trevor to wonder how—or if—he should use his colossal power. (Like, is it okay for a minotaur to play soccer for the school team?)
(Um, no.)
Trevor learns from another mog that his dad is being held prisoner by the government. They’re running terrible experiments on him, trying to discover how mogging works…or at least, that’s the story Trevor is told. Trevor lets loose the monster inside to save his father. And man, is it FUN!
But! (you knew that was coming)…one of his closest allies betrays him to the people running the experiments—the same people who know Trevor is the key to their dominion of the entire world.
Whether he’s fighting a medusa, a triceratops, or a giant purple dragon, Trevor’s got his super-hero work cut out for him. Even when he’s seven feet tall, though, Trevor is in trouble way over his head (and horns), with not just his own life at stake, but the fate of everyone on planet Earth.
And, plus? He’s got soccer practice to think about. Ugh.
KOLGRIM is a 38,500-word middle grade modern fantasy. My novel ZERO was named a Best Book of 2013 by ALA/YALSA, and I am a recent Bram Stoker Award finalist for my novel HELLWORLD.
Thank you for your time, I look forward to hearing from you.
First 250:
I turned into a minotaur for the first time when I was seven years old.
If you haven’t gotten to the Greek myths part of English class yet, just Google “minotaur.” You’ll see right away what I can transmogrify into. Transmogrify means “change,” but I usually just think of it as “mogging.”
Anyway, a minotaur is basically this giant dude with muscles like Thor, but with the head of a bull. He’s super strong and super scary. Which makes it sound like I’m a super hero, except . . . I’m not.
I mean, I want to be, but it’s tougher than you’d think.
I don’t mog very often because there aren’t a lot of minotaurs running around town and I know from movies that there are probably people who’d want to do a bunch of awful tests on me if they knew about Kolgrim. That’s what I call him: Kolgrim. It doesn’t mean anything, I just thought it sounded cooler than my own name, Trevor. I mean, how many superhero movies have a guy in uniform screaming into a red phone, “Earth is in danger! Get me TREVOR!”
Right. Not too many.
Up until seventh grade, I assumed I was some kind of mutant freak or maybe an alien or something, since I was the only mog I’d ever heard of.
Turns out I was kinda sorta wrong about that. Wrong about my dad; about my best friend; about good guys versus bad guys . . .
I was wrong about a lot.