Bottling Whine

According to author Amelinda Berube, there is a likely reason 50+ agents have given the big thumbs down to Exit The Skin Palace:

I suspect the trouble you’re encountering in pitching to agents is that you’re kind of falling into a weird place between middle grade and YA. With a 12-year-old main character in the query and opening chapter, most agents are likely dismissing it as miscategorized. 

And according to query feedback courtesy literary agent Peter Knapp of Park Literary:

I found both the narrative and the dialogue in this manuscript to sound older than the MG voice you want to aim for. I’d say the characters talking about losing weight and bottling “whine” to sell are more likely to be heard from YA characters.


Dead, Monty is 12 and will be 12 forever and ever until he moves on to whatever is beyond the Game Room (the rust-colored wasteland occupied by ghosts with too strong a tie to the land of the living).  



Having written a second title using the character, I've realized I take the approach to Monty that Sam Raimi uses on actors from Bruce Campbell to Tobey Maguire, which is to just really smack the poor SOBs around and make them suffer for the good of the art.  

Besides being dead and fighting malevolent forces, Monty gets to watch friends and family move on without him. 

Right out of the box (or out of the grave -- so-to-speak), he discovers a good four years have inexplicably ticked away.

His parents have chosen to have another kid.  His two best friends - Trista and Denny - are no longer 11 and 12.  They're teens.  Monty...He's a pre-teen.  For good.  If ever there's a 4th book (let alone a 3rd) Trista and Denny will be graduating high school and leaving Monty all but behind.  

I didn't know that on top of trying to surf the deluge of self-published writers out there I'd also be adding an extra chain to my ankle by blissful ignorance of category (middle grade vs. young adult vs. teen, etc). 

There's something to be said for tempting a protagonist with monumental despair when the author -- given the steep climb to having adoring readers and any sort of 'literary career' -- considers 'despair' the default setting for the whole writing enterprise. 

I expect Monty's stubborn nature to make up for my mourn-ridden slack. I can feign doing my part, and a shared lockstep - though off a beat here and there - is not a bad rhythm.