Query Event: Post your Query for Agent Moe Ferrara! (all YA + sci-fi/fantasy)

Dear Ms. Ferrara;

Going through middle school and adolescence is difficult, and it doesn't help that much if you're doing it for the second time. It's even more difficult when you have aliens trying find you and the CIA wondering what you are. Joe regains consciousness in the forest in northern California paralyzed, with a skull fracture and no memory of who he is. Nothing seems right: not the place he was found, not the face in the mirror, not even his age. His only clue is a voice in his head that seems to know everything and won't tell him anything except vague warnings that he must retain his anonymity. Later, he remembers that aliens left him on Earth with a mission, a mission he has not accomplished, a mission that other aliens would kill him to keep him from accomplishing. Whether he accomplishes his mission may also depend on how much he can trust a CIA agent. Reimagining Joe is a young adult novel of just over 50,000 words. The novel is set in northern California and is both a Science-Fiction adventure story and a coming of age story that follows Joe from the ages of 10 to 16. It is complete and is the first of a series of which the second and third parts are complete and the fourth is nearly 60,000 words into its first draft. The novel has been critiqued by two writing groups. In 2013 my novelette "Planetary Scouts" won a Writers of the Future award and is published in the anthology Writers of the Future, Vol. XXIX. I look forward to hearing from you.

First 250 words:

Cold. Shivering. Eyes open reluctantly. Dirt, trampled bark, scent of pine, sea, musty wet earth. A spider, large, gray, orange striped, inches from my face. Panicked, I stared, frozen. It stopped, gazed with many eyes, tasted the air with its front legs, walked on. My body relaxed. I was on the ground, face down, naked, back and legs covered by something soft that didn't keep out the cold, arms free by my sides but when I tried to move them nothing happened. Mouth, legs, nothing responded. Panic rose. And I needed to piss, needed to so badly I couldn't have controlled it even if I wasn't paralyzed. I ordered my body to roll over, strained but all I felt was the growing warm, wet spot beneath my body. I wanted to cry, couldn't cry, too old to cry. I cried anyway.

Awake again, still shivering. Crunching in the distance -- boots on gravel. Tried to scream -- useless, but sound grew closer. A shriek, a woman's voice. "Oh my god!" A hand moved hair from my face. A man's voice. "It's a little girl." I am not a girl! I wanted to scream, lash out. "She's freezing cold." Couldn't see his face but watched as he quickly removed his jacket and lifted me. I saw him, probably in his thirties, days growth of beard. His eyebrows rose. "A boy." He wrapped the jacket around my body. So warm, like fire against my skin. The woman was at his side. Same age, long brown hair, pretty. She wrapped her jacket around my legs. Sensation returned, tingling, painful. I smelled like dirt and piss, felt embarrassed.

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