Progress and setbacks

What would a saga be, without monsters to overcome in the hero's quest? More about those later. At the moment it is urgent to record what may be progress: a draft of a query letter to agents. The essential paragraphs are:

"[W]e are in the presence of a formidable new writer," said The New York Times Book Review about my short story collection Welcome to My Contri. Of my nonfiction Hispanic Nation, the Washington Post said,"Fox is most effective in reporting the important ways the barrios are altering the profile and coloration of our inner cities." This book, a University of Arizona Press bestseller, was also the basis for a 6-part nationwide radio series, "Hispanic Nation: Made in the U.S.A." I have also written young adult books praised by the Voice of Youth Advocates and the Children's Book Council Booklist and chosen for the New York Public Library's "Books for the Teenage" list. Now I have written a historical novel, set in and around Constantinople in 1402, that I believe has great relevance to our times.

A Gift for the Sultan is the story of the greatest city in the Christian world beset by an Islamic horde, of the Christian princess betrothed to the sultan's son to save it and the Ottoman warrior who has sworn to deliver her to the sultan's camp. On their way through the mountains of Anatolia, they learn that the sultan has been defeated and captured by Tamerlane-- as in fact happened in July 1402-- and the Islamic warrior and his Christian charges find themselves with nowhere to go in a treacherous no-man's land.