This is from the body of the query letter I’m currently sending to literary agents regarding my novel, Everything’s Fearful Dead. If you’re an agent or a publisher and you’d like to see more, feel free to email me at briantedjones@gmail.com:
Everything’s Fearful Dead begins in spring 2005 with Rayber McQwon, a teenager living with his parents on a cult compound called Forkpitch in rural Bokilakawphyn County, Oklahoma. Forkpitch is ruled by a charismatic leader named Etron (think Mitt Romney mashed up with Anton Chigurh), who’s marshalled his following into a heavily-armed militia funded by an organized crime network he calls “the Outfit.” Rayber’s a devoted son, but he hates his life on Forkpitch, and when Etron offers him the chance to join the Outfit, the kid’s eager to leave his old life behind.
The Outfit’s a major force: the group includes Etron’s shrewd Native American second-in-command, Meashantubby; another Native, Joe Jolley, who spies on the upper classes of Bokilakawphyn County for Etron; a trained commando squad of former high school athletes; their unpopular lieutenant, an insecure, acne-plagued Iraq war vet; the Trillby Brothers, good-old-boy truckers who specialize in human trafficking; and a pair of gigolos who work the suburbs and Native American casinos of Oklahoma. With their help, the Outfit’s acquired a growing foothold in the market for drugs and prostitution in the southeast corner of the state.
Etron’s also the silent partner in a wildly successful catfish restaurant near a highway intersection close to the Texas border, where businessmen, political leaders, and longhaul truckers are provided with sex workers and the wide variety of pills produced by Frank, Rayber’s estranged grandfather.
The pills have astounding effects, ranging from simple recreational highs to performance enhancers so extreme, the “patient” gains superpowers. Frank produces these pills with help from Etron’s mentor, Myltton Prynn, an enigmatic and theatrical figure, who’s clearly some kind of extradimensional immortal, and who hovers on the edge of the action, influencing events in subtle ways (like if Iago were a member of Star Trek’s Q Continuum).
Etron’s not satisfied with the small, secret empire he’s built in Bokilakawphyn County. As he trains Rayber to be the Outfit’s newest elite killer, he stages several attacks against the area’s reigning drug kingpin, Sonny Tawwater: first in the coordinated kidnapping of Sonny’s children, then in a final assault on Sonny’s mountain mansion.
Etron doesn’t stop there, though…
(Let me know if you’d like to see the rest.)