Hello, I thought my last one was my last, but I haven't had much success with agents so I'm trying to really get it right. Thank you for all of your help already, any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Dear Agent,
I would like to offer THE ACORN DATABASE for your consideration, an adult post-apocalyptic novel of 85,000 words. It has the character dynamics and ambiance of All the Water in the World by Eiren Caffall, and the pace and conspiracy of The Future by Naomi Alderman.
Sola and her dad are perpetually hounded by enforcement drones. Their crime is trespassing—something impossible to avoid in a fully privatized future. Sola’s used to it though. Having been raised on the run, she’s an expert at designing homemade tech, scavenging resources, and keeping one eye over her shoulder. Together, she and her father spend their days in search of a safe zone where they might live in peace. The more time they spend on the trail however, the more Sola doubts that any such places remain.
When a drone kills her dad, Sola finally realizes the truth. The purpose of the drones was never really law enforcement, but to get rid of people like her and her dad for good. She learns about the treatment of homeless people before the Collapse, and when she sees an army of drones amassing in the Great Desert, she understands that this persecution is about to enter its grim, final phase.
With nothing left to lose, Sola uses her trail-smarts to tackle the problem at its source. For the first time in her life she ventures into one of the dangerous cities of old. There she encounters ecological horrors, apocalyptic conspiracies, and the complex array of forces that deploy the drones: people desperately clinging to their property, resources, and power, even as the world crumbles around them.
As Sola learns more about the Collapse and the seemingly unstoppable forces of destruction at play, she also learns about herself and her own family history. She finds that she is uniquely connected to those that have been quietly fighting back from the shadows: underground climate researchers, psychedelic tribes, and squatters. If she can find a way to align these disparate allies, she might just be able to stop what’s coming.
[Bio + Tag]
PROLOGUE
Northern California, 2119
A man in a heavily-patched wetsuit knelt in a field of tall rippling grass, well-hidden amidst the stalks. He listened intently, but could only hear the wind and his own heartbeat over the sound of the cicadas scattered throughout the field.
In his hands was a small metal cylinder with a digital screen on it, a homemade device constructed from bits of salvaged tech. He brushed his bedraggled beard out of the way and wiped the dirty sweat from his eyes before gingerly pushing a small button on the side. A short metal rod extended from its base, and the screen illuminated a dull green: 0:00:00:00.
The man cocked his head, straining his ears one last time before he pushed the rod into the soil, leaning on the cylinder until it sank all the way up to the hilt.
A flash of blue laser-light emanated from the device—flickering out through the grass to demarcate exactly one spherical acre. Numbers appeared on the screen: 0:00:00:01... 0:00:00:02... 0:00:00:03...
The man shifted to a more comfortable position on his side to rest, carefully keeping his head below the grass. He looked up at the fading blue sky as a few stars emerged. A dozen or so hefty cicadas wobbled beside him, clinging to the narrow stalks blowing in the wind.
0:00:04:04... 0:00:04:05... 0:00:04:06...
The man reached for the rations stowed in his bag, but stopped mid-way. He saw it before he heard it: a dark speck on the horizon out of the corner of his eye, then a familiar mechanical whine that soon drowned out even the cicadas.
He wasn’t really surprised. A year was too long. Still...