Elizabeth Bourne has recently signed with agent Barbara Bova of Barbara Bova Literary Agency. Thank you Elizabeth for agreeing to this interview, and we all wish you the best of luck with this and future books. 


QueryTracker: How long have you been writing?

Elizabeth Bourne: I started writing in February of 2007. I can pinpoint the date because a friend and I were doing "First Thursday" art walk on a rainy Seattle night discussing mystery books. We're both avid readers and were talking about what books we like to read. I was lamenting that no one wrote about the specific period and events that I was interested in. It is an era and place I've always been fascinated by, and have studied as a personal interest for years. She smacked me on the back and said, "Well, why don't you write about it?" I realized she was right. I know everything I need to know about Ptolemaic Egypt to write the story I wanted to read, and it would be fun to do.



QT: Was there ever a time you felt like giving up, and what helped you to stay on course?

EB: I never felt like giving up, although there times of great confusion. At one point, I realized I had no idea of who was doing what to whom, and what dates were which, and I had to sit down and take about a week and create a timeline of events so that I knew where all my characters were and what they were doing. I resented having to take the time for this, because I wanted to be moving on with the story. At the same time, I knew I couldn't write another word because I honestly had no idea who was alive or dead. Who had killed whom. Or even the physical location in Alexandria of some of my characters. However, I always wanted to know what was going to happen next. That was a powerful driving force in keeping me going to the end.



QT: Is this your first book?

EB: Yes.



QT: How long have you been working on this book?

EB: The real writing work began in February of 2007. The first rough draft was done in about six months. I did a fairly significant rewrite, which took another six months, so I'd say a year from start to the most complete draft.



QT: Do you have any formal writing training?

EB: No. I need to apply a caveat to that because I am singularly fortunate in that my husband, Mark, is a professional writer, and took years off the process for me. He was my first reader, and was pitiless about "newbie" errors of sentence and grammar. He bought me a copy of Strunk & White, and insisted I read it cover to cover. I believe every writer, no matter how experienced, should read it. It's the best. I didn't read any "how to" writer books until after the first draft was written. I'm glad that I didn't because I think they would have paralyzed me in my tracks with all the things that you're "supposed" to do. After the first draft was done, I could go back and make things better and see with a clearer eye where structure and character needed improvement. Beforehand, I think I would have been too terrified to write another word with the massive lists of "do's and don'ts' that they provide.



QT: Do you follow a writing "routine" or schedule?

EB: Every night, when I got home from work, I wrote until I went to bed. Every weekend, I wrote for four to six hours, without fail. It was my second job. Without that kind of structure I couldn't have gotten the book finished in such a timeframe.



QT: How many times did you re-write/edit your book?

EB: Endlessly! I'm making edits now at my agent's suggestion (and they're good ones!). It's a never-ending process. Every time I read it I see a sentence that can be made better, a paragraph that can be made stronger. The challenge is to improve without removing the "freshness" of the prose, to draw the line between improving and overworking.



QT: Did you have beta readers for your book?

EB: There were about four beta readers, and I workshopped the book at a novel workshop. I learned different things from each experience, the most valuable of which was learning what to pay attention to and what to ignore. It was initially difficult, as a new writer, to learn to trust my instinct. I think that is something that, when you're first starting out, can be very hard to do. The truth is that no one knows what you're trying to accomplish except you, and you need to have faith in your vision. The challenge is in finding the right people who can see to that kernel and help you make it more clear. Those readers are priceless. No matter how painful their advice may be, it's golden. Oftentimes more experienced people will see a book through their own lenses and it can be difficult separate out what is valuable in their advice and what is not going to work so well for you. So I would say that all writers need to learn to understand when to trust their own vision.



QT: Did you outline your book, or do you write from the hip?

EB: A little of both. I knew that there were specific events that needed to happen, which I thought of as "tent posts," and then somehow I had to write to them. The tent posts were things that historically occurred and therefore couldn't move for my convenience, so the exciting part was learning what my characters were going to do in response to the historical events around them, and sometimes to get to the events that they helped play a part in.



QT: How long have you been querying for this book? Other books?

EB: I began querying this book in June. I heard back from my agent in November, on election day to be exact. They'd been trying to reach me earlier, but we had a problem with our phone line and they hadn't been able to contact me. What a disaster that would have been!



QT: On what criteria did you select the agents you queried?

EB: I first looked for agents who were interested in historicals, and then refined it to historical mysteries.



QT: Did you tailor each query to the specific agent, and if so, how?

EB: I did research on every agent's site and read through their blog (if they had one). Where possible, I looked up the authors they represented to get a feel for what they currently had in their stable to get a sense of how I would or wouldn't fit into their line. From there I determined whether or not I thought that agent and I would be a good fit for each other, regardless of whether they claimed to be interested in my particular category. I have a generic query, and would try and tailor that somewhat to the agent without crossing the line of a business correspondence.



QT: What advice would you give other writers seeking agents?

EB: Remember it's a business letter, and agents are looking at hundreds of queries. They don't want it to be cute or clever. You need to look like a professional writer with a salable book and like you share the same goals they do (let's sell a book together!). I got a lot of positive responses and requests for 50 pages and I think that really, it was just because I looked like a professional.



QT: Would you be willing to share your query with us?

EB: Most people wouldn't need to write quite such a long query letter, and generally I wouldn't do it either. Because the historical period I'm writing in is unfamiliar to many people, I thought I should introduce it up front. You'll note that I shamelessly included suggestions of how the agent could possibly market the book.

I am seeking representation for my historical mystery, The Seventy, which is complete at 123,000 words. While this novel is written as a standalone, I envision it as the first of a series and have begun work on the second, which is tentatively titled The Book of Cain and Abel.

My book is set during the Hellenistic Age, the span of 300 years after Alexander the Great and before the rise of the Roman Empire.  During that time massive empires battled for primacy, people of different races and countries mingled for the first time in truly urban cities, and scientists invented weapons of terror we still wonder at.  It was an era much like our own, and has been my passion for decades.

Sometimes the truth becomes a story, stories become legends, and legends disappear in the footnotes of history. In the third century BCE, in Alexandria, a group of men overcame the barriers of tribe and country to forge an identity for a dispersed nation during a time of mistrust and threat. The truth lives in the great translation they created, transcribing the Hebrew holy books into Greek. The old Testament translation is still called by its ancient name, the Seventy.

This story belongs to Aristeas , the scribe who originated the legend, and Tamris, a young Egyptian woman who became royal physician to a great queen.  

War is imminent between the kingdoms of Egypt and Syria.  Eleazar, the High Priest of Jerusalem, sends Aristeas, a scribe of uncertain birth, to Egypt on a secret mission to save his people. The Seventy tells how Aristeas meets Tamris, a Sekhmet priestess and physician in Alexandria. Tamris is investigating a series of murders on the Pharos island. Aristeas comes to believe the killings are tied with his mission, and the two learn they must trust each other in order to survive. The stakes are high. They face enemies who mean to destroy them and their separate nations. To unravel the mystery and accomplish Aristeas' goal of negotiating a treaty between their countries,  the two must overcome prejudice and join together with the Jewish translators to save a great city threatened with destruction.  

This is Alexandria during the building of the Pharos lighthouse, the creation of the Library, the construction of what was for thousands of years the greatest city in the world. There was no more splendid place to be, and it is all but forgotten; lost to earthquakes, beneath the sea, under 21st century traffic. 

I believe the market for this book includes readers of historical mysteries such as Steven Saylors' Roma Sub Rosa series as well as those interested in Egyptian histories such as those written by Wilbur Smith and Chrisitan Jacq. The period is set at the intersection of Egypt, Greece, and Rome, and is fascinating in its historical possibilities as well as being uncharted ground.

I have available a complete synopsis and, of course, the book itself.   

Thank you for your time and consideration.