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Vatar is a boy on the edge of manhood. His best friend is killed in a flash flood during an adventure inspired partly by Vatar’s curiosity and partly by the boys’ defiance of adult authority. The dead boy’s father, the tribe’s shaman, blames Vatar and vows to take revenge.

Vatar’s parents fear that the shaman will use the upcoming manhood test to strike at Vatar, so they send him away. Vatar becomes an adult all but alone in a strange city, where he must face some surprising and uncomfortable truths about himself and his own emerging magical talents. Vatar tries to stay true to his tribal beliefs, even rejecting his own magical abilities.

Vatar returns home to his people after two years, feeling that he doesn’t truly belong either in the city or on the plains. He struggles to avoid confrontation with the shaman and establish a normal life, with mixed success. But, as every attempt to avenge his son’s death fails, the shaman becomes more and more desperate.

When the shaman publicly accuses Vatar of being possessed by an evil Spirit, the threat becomes too great to ignore. Vatar knows that the shaman wants to use the exorcism as an excuse to torture him to death. And even his death will not be the end of it, because the taint of possession will also haunt his infant children.

Vatar refuses to escape to the city again. Instead he challenges the shaman to an ordeal to prove which of them is in the right. Vatar risks his own life and his place in the tribe in order to secure a future for himself and his children. But the shaman is not content to let an impartial ordeal decide the issue. In the end, Vatar will have to use the magic he has tried to deny in order to put an end to the vendetta.

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Version 2:

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Vatar is devastated when his best friend is accidentally killed during a silly adventure inspired partly by Vatar’s curiosity. And he is horrified when the boy’s father, the tribe’s shaman, blames Vatar and vows to take revenge. Little does he know how the shaman’s anger will affect his life.

Vatar avoids the shaman’s initial anger by going to the city where he apprentices to a blacksmith. Knowledge of working iron is invaluable to his bronze-age tribe. The shaman next targets Vatar’s brother, also a part of the ill-fated adventure, by summoning tigers from the forest and insisting that the young men must kill them as their manhood test. Vatar makes the weapons that can kill the tigers and develops the strategy that allows the young men to prevail. He becomes a hero of the tribe in the process. Not only does Vatar repeatedly escape vengeance, he comes out stronger for it, which enrages the shaman, who sinks further into a demented, mono-maniacal obsession.

Trying to build a normal life in the face of the shaman’s continuing hatred is difficult, though. And in order to maintain his position in the tribe against the shaman’s repeated attacks, Vatar must suppress and attempt to reject his own emerging magical talents, which could provide fodder for the shaman’s vendetta.

The threat finally becomes too great when the shaman accuses Vatar of being possessed by an evil Spirit. If the shaman succeeds in persuading the tribe, Vatar will be forced to undergo an exorcism, an excuse for the shaman to torture him to death. Vatar realizes that it’s time to fight back and put an end to this. He turns the accusation back on the shaman and challenges him to an ordeal to prove which of them is possessed.

Ordeals are serious business and Vatar risks his life in order to prove himself. The ordeal forces Vatar to confront his own heritage and accept his own magic. But the shaman isn’t content to let an impartial ordeal decide the issue. He cheats on his own ordeal rather than risk death. When he’s caught, he tries to strike at Vatar’s children while their father is away. Vatar will have to use the magic he has tried to deny in order to defend his family and defeat the shaman and the half-uttered curse which is his last attempt to destroy Vatar.

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Not to pick hairs, but is this what you were planning on putting in a query? From my understanding, most agents only like a small one paragraph pitch, otherwise you quickly run out of space in your letter...

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If you look at some of the successful queries on sites like Query Shark, it's usually three or four paragraphs. I've most often heard about 250 words. But paragraphing is good. White space is important in a business letter, too. Definitely, keep the letter to one page, though.

Also, especially in the first version, your sentences are all very similar. In the second version, I noticed you started the second sentence with "And", which with this being a more formal type of writing might be a problem for some publishers.

The last that I've read, on an agent's blog here http://dglm.blogspot.com/2009/11/queries-its-not-about-details.html, was that he wants to see a unique story idea and good writing and wants to get a sense of the author's voice. In 250 words.

On another blog, an agent said to show don't tell. In 250 words. And a story that covers eight years. I confess, I haven't a clue how to do that. But that's probably why the excess details crept into version two.

This is hard!

When I get that far, I'm going to let somebody much better at this than I am write that darned blurb.

http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2009/11/get-big-stuff-right.html

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Meredith, I actually thought of you when I read this post the other day:
http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2009/11/get-big-stuff-right.html

He's got lots of good resources on his links page. What do you think?

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