MOTEL RITUALS - A Novel by Jay Wilcox (QUERY LETTER)

Dear [AGENT],

I’m thrilled to offer you MOTEL RITUALS, an 80,000-word literary novel about a family on the run. I’m querying you because you’ve expressed an interest in stories that explore unique and memorable landscapes. MOTEL RITUALS would be at home on shelves with books like Kate Reed Petty’s True Story, Hayley Scrivenor’s Dirt Creek, and other stories where a bending of the truth has real and dangerous repercussions.

Eight-year-old Ruth has never questioned her mother’s stories. A witch is chasing them. That’s what her mother says, as the family flees across the American Southwest. However, between each motel and rest stop, her mother’s behavior becomes stranger and stranger. They drive past police cars, and her mother tells them to duck out of view. They check every room for listening devices and perform increasingly intricate rituals to make sure the place is “safe.”

The problem is, maybe nowhere is safe. As Ruth begins questioning her mother, she wonders whether the witch is actually real–only to realize, with time, that all the old stories couldn’t be true. Her mother must have a reason for lying, for running from their father, who is now hot on their trail. She must be hiding something. Alone with her brother and her increasingly unpredictable mother, Ruth must protect him the only way she knows how, by continuing the old stories, building a world of myth around him. As the police close in, Ruth can’t insulate her little brother forever–from the pain of learning to see your parents as flawed human beings, from noticing that soon the authorities might take their mother away. She must protect his childhood, his innocence, even if it means telling him those old scary stories about the witch. Because whether or not the stories are real, their power is.

The manuscript for MOTEL RITUALS was longlisted for the Dzanc Books' Prize for Fiction. My short fiction has appeared in the literary journals Bartleby and The End of the World. I've twice won the Malcolm C. Braly Fiction Award and teach creative writing at the University of Maryland.

Thank you for your time. I hope you’ve been well.

Sincerely,

Jay Wilcox

MFA, Bennington College - ‘16