Face-Lift 1075

Guess the Plot

The Loving Man’s Home

1. Photographer Mackenzie McWallis gained unprecedented access to the home of Evil Editor and compiled this coffee table book of full-color photographs. Includes vivid macro close-ups of the most interesting stains.

2. The bank has just informed Ernie Wilson, Cookietree's most famous ladies man, he's about to lose his bachelor pad. That home equity loan he took out to pay for a lifetime supply of Viagra was probably a mistake. Could this be the end of . . . The Loving Man's Home?

3. Marie's grandmother, with whom she lives, doesn't like the fact that Marie spends her weekends in the home of an accused pedophile. But hey, sometimes children have to learn the hard way.

4. A patriarch's guide to taking over the headship of your family. Includes instructions for getting your wife to obey, homeschooling, filling your quiver, and how to talk to those pesky folks from Child Protective Services.

5. The first how-to guide for househusbands doesn't really contain any new information, but it's written in a very manly style, with lots of football references.

6. Henry's psychologist has diagnosed him with objectum sexuality. Henry thinks the man is blowing things way out of proportion. His house isn't an object, and Henry can feel that it loves him back. And a magnificent Victorian two-level? Who wouldn't love that?





Original Version

“The Loving Man’s Home”

Marie Miller is simply your typical young girl of the 1970s, an avid basketball player who is just looking for a new, fresh start with her mother and grandparents after her father’s death. After moving from West Chester, Pennsylvania to Phoenixville, Pennsylvania soon after the funeral, she finds life even more distressing than it must be for girls her age. [What is her age?] She has a boyfriend who she’d known for quite some time through participating in the Chester County Science Team, and she has befriended the man from up the street, Mr. Morgan Lieberman. An accused pedophile and obviously hostile elderly man, Marie finds grace and peace through befriending the wealthy retired doctor, with whom she finds it best at her duty to help this crippled old gentlemen in his household chores during her weekends. [There's so much wrong with that sentence I don't know where to begin. But why begin at all when it's quickly becoming clear that I'll be advising you to start the whole query over from scratch?] She knows her friends find it a little wacky and her grandmother stubbornly believes that all of the pedophile rumors are true, but she still makes it a requirement for herself to help this poor old man, that she somehow feels sorry for in her heart.

But what Marie doesn’t know is the history of Morgan Lieberman—the tragedy in his life from thirty years before that kept him isolated from the world and expunged his faith in God. Marie doesn’t know of the conversations between him and his wife that go on in his house when he is alone there at night—with a wife who is long gone, who killed herself with five sharp stabs to the waist of her body in May of 1949 [You gotta admire the persistence of anyone who's been stabbed four times and still manages to go for a fifth.] due to her depression over the fact that she could not bear her husband a child. Marie doesn’t know any of this— [Yes, you've said that already.] and while her mother and grandparents do, [How can her mother and grandparents know about conversations that go on in his house when he is alone there?] she is untold and begins having dreams. Dreams of a young handsome man living up the street from her who is married to a lovely young woman, and then the woman turns to blood before Marie’s dreaming eyes. Marie finds herself being lured into Mr. Lieberman’s backyard and she hears pounds from below the ground—she believes she hears voices calling her from beneath the frigid surface of the ground in his backyard—human voices, human fists pounding for help. [Are we still in the dream?] She is confused, and while she becomes more craven and hesitant towards taking any steps towards the house at all over time, she finds herself putting the pieces together about what is exactly going on in the Lieberman household—and on the property itself. When her friends start disappearing, she seems to be lured to Morgan Lieberman’s house right away—she knows he wasn’t guilty of anything anyone in the neighborhood accused him of being guilty of—but she knows the man is murdering her friends [She knows the guy is murdering her friends, so she goes over there right away? For what? To tell him he has to stop or she'll rat him out to the cops?] —it’s only been children that have been disappearing, anyways. Does Marie know that this man is actually guilty [You just said she knows he is murdering her friends.] and has killed multiple numbers of teenagers, or is there something strange going on behind the scenes…something…out of “love”?


Notes

This reads like a really wordy voice-over for a horror movie trailer. It's not a query letter, as it doesn't include the genre or word count. It's too long to be the plot summary in a query letter. A synopsis would take us through the story, while this basically sets up Marie's situation. Whatever it is, it won't convince the reader that she should request the book.

If the guy isn't a pedophile but is being unjustly treated like a pariah, he probably deserves our sympathy, but no way is Marie going to be allowed to go in his house unsupervised just because she doesn't think he's a danger.

Apparently Lieberman isn't a pedophile or murderer. He's just locking all the neighborhood children in the dungeon beneath his property. What a relief.

The first thing to do is work on your writing skills, as I can tell from your word choice and repetition and awkward sentences that your book isn't ready for publication. Then you need to write a query letter, of which there are more than a thousand samples on this blog. The query should include Marie's situation, but in just two or three sentences. Something like:

After moving to Phoenixville with her mother and grandparents, 14-year-old Marie Miller befriends Morgan Lieberman, an elderly neighbor who's rumored to be a pedophile. Marie is sure Lieberman is innocent, and spends weekends helping him with his chores--until she discovers the old man has been murdering her friends and locking neighborhood children in his underground torture chamber.

Now you have plenty of room to tell us what Marie plans to do about the situation, and what goes wrong with her plan and what will happen if she can't fix things. 

All without filling up more than one page.

I recommend not mentioning that Marie's mother and grandparents know she's spending her free time in Lieberman's house.





Also, don't include the dreams. Focus on Marie's situation and what she does.

Face-Lift 1074 (and post # 6000)

Guess the Plot

The Apocalypse Arcade

1. After a catastrophe, Rick Henderson, his son Jimmy, and their faithful Pit Bull Bosco load their supplies into a shopping basket and set off in search of a new Walmart.

2. When Jez decides to put his last quarter in the dusty looking game in the corner, little does he realize that not only is it his last quarter, it's everyone's last quarter...

3. Robbie and his friends find a cool new gaming arcade at the mall. It's called The Apocalypse and the games are totally awesome – the kids get to be bombers, arsonists and murderers. But when the events in the games start happening all over town, can Robbie and his big sister Raven figure out how to stop it?

4. Elvis Zimmerman is skipping school, hanging out at the mall, bored but hey, it beats being in school. He drops a few quarters into the new game machine and finds himself faced with a choice between "Natural Disasters", "Meteor Impact", "Zombie Plague" and "Global Thermonuclear War." He picks choice 3 and pushes the 'Start' button. Outside in the Food Court, the screaming starts.

5. As an alien race is making good on its threat to destroy humanity, the run-down video arcade on Main Street unexpectedly reopens. Coincidence? Halley Maxwell doesn't know, but she must find out before the aliens take over Earth and she has to go live on the moon.

6. When Jenna discovers that everyone on Earth is a character in a video game called Sim-Planet, being played by a teenaged entity light years away, she tries to warn us that we must keep doing interesting stuff or the entity will grow bored and shut us down. But most of us decide to drop everything and just worship the entity.

7. Trevor doesn't know what he'll do all day in an arcade that's so old it only has pinball machines. The graphics are wild, though, especially on the game called "The Four Horsemen," so he tries it. In retrospect, "The Whore of Babylon" might have been a better choice.



Original Version

Dear Evil Editor,

It’s the end of the world as we know it – but seventeen-year-old Halley Maxwell feels anything but fine. An alien species is making good on its decades-old threat to destroy humanity, and what’s worse, the apocalypse is scheduled to happen on Halley’s eighteenth birthday. [It's comforting to know that when aliens come to destroy humanity, they'll be benevolent enough to provide us with a schedule of events.] All Halley wants is to graduate high school, move away from her middle-of-nowhere town, and begin her real life alongside Ham, her best friend, roommate, and partner-in-cynicism. Unfortunately, the aliens failed to take Halley’s plans into account when they formulated their own itinerary for annihilating the human race. [I think the opening works better if you start with sentence 3.]

Then ["Then" isn't a good word to use unless you've told us something that just happened. So far you've just provided the situation.] Halley meets Andrew Stanton, a sixty-something British scientist, who’s more accomplished at punning and inventing crazy stories than even Halley herself. Halley can’t figure out why Andrew is wasting his time in August, Texas… until he offers her a slot among twenty thousand other people selected to colonize the moon and escape the apocalypse. Why is Andrew giving Halley this opportunity, when so many other people deserve it more? Why is everyone, from Halley’s estranged father to the ditziest girl in the history of high school, trying to stop her from going? And what’s the significance of the sudden reopening of the run-down video arcade on Main Street? [Lists of questions quickly become boring. Drop the first question.] Halley must answer these questions before the shuttle leaves for the moon or the aliens take over Earth, whichever comes first. [Not clear why she must answer these questions. Or why, if she needs the answers, she doesn't just ask Andrew and her father and the ditzy girl and the arcade manager.]

THE APOCALYPSE ARCADE is a 96,000-word YA alternate history novel. It is set in a near future Space Age that branched off from our reality in 1986, when the Challenger mission, instead of ending in disaster, made contact with an alien species.

[Astronauts: What the!? Uh, greetings. Welcome to our solar system.

Aliens: Thanks. We're here to destroy humanity. But we're not barbarians; we'll give you a couple decades to get your affairs in order.]

This manuscript functions as a stand-alone novel but is planned as the first book of a trilogy. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,


Notes

I'm intrigued by the fact that the reopening of the video arcade is significant.

Getting twenty thousand people off of Earth is going to require a lot of lift-offs. For them and the food and water etc. they'll need on the moon. How much time do they have? Also, are they aware that when you're on the moon you can't breathe?

If the goal of the aliens is to destroy humanity, and they've made it to Earth, are we really safe on the moon?

Is there a reason the Challenger crew makes first contact, as opposed to the crew of a space mission in 2025?

You can do without "alongside Ham, her best friend, roommate, and partner-in-cynicism." Ham isn't mentioned in the plot (Is Ham among the everyone trying to stop Hallie from going to the moon?), and the phrase just makes me wonder why a high school student has a roommate and whether Ham is a male or female.

Face-Lift 1072

Guess the Plot

The Miranda Contract

1. Carmen has ditched the hat and the song-and-dance routine, but Fosse's not ready to let her go yet. Can she get out of her contract to marry John Jakes, the hobo of her dreams, or will she be forced to pretend to be a vivacious Latina till the day she dies?

2. When Arda Arnhem is arrested for a murder she didn't commit, she is offered the right to remain silent. But this contract has a catch-- if she chooses to waive the right to remain silent, anything she says can and will be used against her in a court of law! Fortunately, she has the right to an attorney, public defender and amateur sleuth Wilma Wilkins.

3. When the dead gigolos start piling up at the city morgue, ace detective Zack Martinez knows two things: Guns don't kill people, bullets do; and some gal named Miranda sure had a lot of boy friends.

4. Miranda the Hooker was always getting cheated, beat up, and abused. Taking control of her life, she goes back to school and earns a law degree and an MBA. Now she gets the respect she deserves, because all her johns have to sign...The Miranda Contract.
 
5. Dan Galkin's grandfather, an evil psychopath known as the Mad Russian, wants Dan to kill pop sensation Miranda. It'll be good publicity for the "family" business. But Dan feels a certain electricity between himself and Miranda, which he thinks may be true love, rather than his electricity-manipulation super power.

6. An exploration of the very different viewpoints in the two original versions of the "Miranda" rights contract, which were eventually merged into the warnings we all know and love. Includes point-counterpoint between 'You have the right to speak, but only in a polite and respectful tone' and 'You have the right -- nay, the responsibility -- to shut the fuck up.'

7. Miranda is a fairy with only 24 hours to live, and though fairies aren't supposed to live as long as mortals, she really is attached to the life she has. She makes a deal with an amateur warlock to extend her life but at the cost of transforming into an imp. After losing her beauty, Miranda realises how shallow the fairy world is and becomes hell-bent on usurping the Fairy Queen to bring in a new regime.

8. Miranda has spent too much time on the Internet, reading about the goofy things people do to make money. When she convinces a local rich family that paying her to pretend to be their cat will be quirky and entertaining to guests, she'll get free housing and food for a year. But can she get out of the contract when she finds out they've also rented her ex-boyfriend as the family dog?

9. Jet-setting businessman Howard Levant usually fathers by phone, but he can't help promising his tearful daughter Miranda he'll be home all day on her birthday. He doesn't plan on having to negotiate the biggest deal of his career while juggling two feuding mistresses and a pissed-off politico demanding Howard's hide.

10. It's 1940. “Lucky” Luciano sends Lenny “Wolf” Lupo to kill Gina Miranda – a jewel thief who burgled the wrong mansion. He watches her and falls in love. When they meet, she tries to kill him while he tries not to kill her. They wed, leave the life, and hide in a sleepy southwestern town. But after the war, change comes to Las Vegas.

11. When the body of crime author extraordinaire Jim Trisham is found dangling from the mast of his yacht "Miranda Contract", Homicide Detective Zack Martinez knows two things: One, Trisham didn't hang himself by the testicles and two, since keeping a 100 foot yacht at Marina del Rey means you have more money than God he probably shouldn't have contributed to the boat by buying Trisham's books.

12. Actress Miranda Gabriel, fresh from her Iowa community college drama department, is discovered and slated to lead in the edgiest new drama of the season. Her agent tells her she first must sign a contract -- in blood. Welcome to the West Coast, he says, it's all part of the biz.



Original Version

Dan Galkin is seventeen and desperately trying to keep his life unremarkable, but when you were a teenage super-villain for two weeks at the start of high school and your grandfather is an evil psychopath hell-bent on making you his successor at any cost, it’s not going to be easy. [No need to say "at any cost," as it was implied by "hell-bent."]

Dan is an uberhuman, born with the ability to sense and manipulate electricity, [For instance, when he gets out of the shower and wants to dry his hair, he senses that there is electricity on the other side of the bathroom electrical outlet. He manages to access this electricity through the use of the metal prongs dangling off of his hair dryer. He then manipulates the electricity into a steady rush of warm air through the use of the on-off switch. Other controls allow him to regulate the air flow and temperature from low to medium to high. He feels it's only a matter of time before he's starring in his own comic book.] [An appendix in the back of the book details how Dan is able to manipulate electricity to create a grilled cheese sandwich.] and when he accidentally rescues pop sensation Miranda Brody from a mob of fans, he is strongarmed into becoming her bodyguard. [When you're desperately trying to keep your life unremarkable, and you become Britney Spears's bodyguard, you weren't trying desperately enough.] Unfortunately, his grandfather, The Mad Russian, has orchestrated the whole thing and wants Dan to kill Miranda and use the resulting publicity to take over the family business. [The business gets taken over by the family member who kills the most famous person?] Dan has no interest in becoming a killer so he and Miranda end up running for their lives, dodging a string of Dan’s childhood team-mates and developing a love-hate relationship along the way. [He loves her; she hates him.]

As the villains close in, Dan’s powers are acting wildly, but he manages to turn the tables on the Russian and he and Miranda escape the city in a stolen car. They end up at Dan's deranged mother's house where he realises he has gone as far as he can. He stops running - from his grandfather and from his past. Using clues from the previous attacks, [There've been attacks?] his grandfather's contacts, and his ability to tap into the mobile phone network, he tracks the Mad Russian's location to a shopping centre. [Überhumans don't go to shopping centers. They have minions, flunkies and underlings for that.]

It’s here at the endgame that Dan is pushed to his limits keeping the people safe and taking down his grandfather, eventually scrambling the electrical impulses of the Mad Russian's brain, although it nearly kills them both. In the aftermath Dan is labelled a hero. But it’s bittersweet for Dan, as Miranda walks away from their growing attraction, leaving him to find a way to live his own life instead of in the shadow of his past crimes and family. [What?! He saves the world but doesn't get the girl? What was the point?]

The Miranda Contract is a 70,000 word Young Adult superhuman [Überhuman] fiction novel, exploring issues of family pressure, overcoming negative reputation and labels, as well as a healthy dose of redemption, adventure and heroism. [If "fiction" is describing "novel," it's redundant. Or is "superhuman fiction" a single term, like "science fiction"? If so, is "superhuman fiction" a genre, or your opinion of your book?] [I'd go with "superhero novel."]

I have had several short stories published in print and online publications, as well as editing the superhuman fiction ‘zine This Mutant Life for two years. One of my stories, The Scoundrel’s Wife, was short listed for the Chronos Awards in 2011 (Australian science fiction awards).

The Miranda Contract was long-listed for the 2012 Hachette Manuscript Program. [A shrewd but transparent way of saying The Miranda Contract couldn't even get short-listed for the 2012 Hachette Manuscript Program.]

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Best wishes,


Notes

I would drop the paragraph with the deranged mother, as it sounds too synopsisish and move directly to: In the endgame...

It's better to let the issues explored in your book be obvious from the plot description, rather than to point them out.

Pop sensation Miranda Brody would just go by Miranda.

Not sure the term "Miranda rights" is familiar in Australia, but in the US that title will probably give readers expectations of a police procedural.

Usually in a family business the heir to the throne is the most powerful or the most qualified or the first-born, and whether you've killed a pop star doesn't figure into the equation. What kind of business is the psychopathic Mad Russian's family in?

"Überhuman should have an umlaut, shouldn't it? Wait, should "umlaut" have an umlaut? Even if it shouldn't, it should. And we should spell apostrophe apostr'phe. And hyphen hy-phen. Etc.

From Wikipedia: Über (German pronunciation: [ˈyːbɐ])  Thanks, that's helpful.
  

Face-Lift 1060

Guess the Plot

Mark of the Phoenix

1. In the year 2013, illegal immigrant Jose Calderon's pregnant wife is captured by the Arizona border patrol and branded with the mark of the phoenix, a one way ticket to the SS-style concentration camps in Phoenix, AZ. Can Jose save the day using his world-class parkour skills?

2. As a publicity gimmick for his tropical resort, "The Phoenix," Jacob Watah gives arriving guests a wash-off tattoo of an image he bought from a hag in the old marketplace. Soon, everyone discovers the tattoos won’t wash off and they’ve become minions to the evil god Ramon!

3. Jimmy’s buddies get him drunk on his twenty-first birthday then take him to an all-night tattoo parlor. He wakes up with a fire bird on his chest. Two dwarves and an elf point at his tattoo and tell him he is chosen to save Mystic Earth from the space dragons. If he won’t serve, they’ll kill him so another may take his place.

4. Sam Weber was nicknamed "The Phoenix" because he was constantly re-inventing himself. He was also the most successful grifter on the circuit. He meets his match in rich, beautiful Melinda Crowder, aka "The Ball-Crusher", who's none too pleased to discover she's become his next mark.

5. Merit, one of Ramses II's many daughters, carries a secret: a strange birthmark on her side. Priests, magicians, and even Pharaoh himself debate: is she simply a little girl, or the Phoenix reborn?

6. When she was five Bree was marked by a phoenix, so she's supposedly destined for greatness. But now she's seventeen and still hasn't done dick. When her sister is abducted, the kidnappers demand the long lost Celestial Crown. Can Bree find the Crown and ransom her sister, thus fulfilling her destiny?

Original Version

Dear Evil Editor,

Seventeen-year-old Bree is special, in all the wrong ways. She's the daughter of the king of the fae, but because she's half human she can't survive living in the fae realm. When she was five she was marked by a phoenix, [In the human world?] showing [Portending? Heralding?] that she's meant [destined?] for something great [Greatness.] [That's as specific as the mark of the phoenix gets? Sometime before you die you will do something that someone somewhere will consider great?], which she doesn't believe for a second.

The only problem is, the fae do believe it. When a group of exiled fae kidnap her sister, Chloe, they tell Bree that Chloe will die unless she finds them the long lost Celestial Crown, the original sign [Emblem? Validation?] of royalty in the fae realm that was [Better to leave out those words so we don't think it was the realm that was forged by the phoenix.] forged by the very phoenix that marked her.

In order to save her sister's life, Bree has to dethrone her own father. [If the kidnappers are exiled fae, how does dethroning the fae king save Chloe?] [Also, is Chloe the king's daughter?] And Bree will do anything to save Chloe.

THE MARK OF THE PHOENIX is my YA fantasy novel, complete at 75,000 words.

Thank you for your time and consideration,

Sincerely,


Notes

I would just start with the fact that she was marked by a phoenix, destining her for a totally vague form of greatness. The fact that she can't live in the fae realm just leads to questions. For instance...

I don't see how a teenaged girl who can't live in the fae realm can dethrone the king who is in the fae realm. Does she have an army she can send to do the job? Wouldn't it be easier to send an assassin to kill the king?

Being marked by a phoenix may mean you'll do something significant someday, but does it mean you can find the Celestial Crown? Is everyone that particular phoenix has marked capable of finding the Celestial Crown? Because if the Celestial Crown happens to be in the fae realm, you would want the person you blackmail into finding it to be someone who can survive in the fae realm.

Why do these exiled fae want the Crown? If they want to dethrone the king, it seems they'd be thrilled to have Bree do the job for them, even if she doesn't find the Crown.

If I'm one of these exiled fae and my buddy says, Maybe the great something Bree is destined to do is find the Celestial Crown and give it to us so we can take over the fae realm, I might reply, Yes, and maybe the great something she's destined to do is give us the Crown, take back Chloe, kill us all, and take back the Crown.

Face-Lift 1058

Guess the Plot

A Braver Thing

1. At an all-boys boarding school, Tristan and Malcolm fall in love. Problem: Malcolm is the Prince of Wales, and his father dies, making Malcolm king of England. Malcolm thinks he should keep their relationship secret, but Tristan thinks it would be braver to become the first openly gay monarch. How long till Tristan mysteriously disappears?

2. When Mark Mandover's agent tells him he needs to do something 'risky' and 'brave' to "toughen his image", he takes action. Five states, a dozen crashed cars, and three broken bones later, he's still trying to figure it out. Also, a 50-something female hostage--with a gun.

3. Jenny Braver’s fourteen-year-old sister Becky got into drugs. She dropped out of school and started turning tricks. One morning, police find Becky’s body in an alley; her pimp strangled her. Jenny gets into the life. She doesn’t do drugs; she murders pimps. It’s Jenny’s Braver thing.

4. Forsithia must decide whether to bow before the alien invasion, or do 'a braver thing' and sacrifice herself so that the ultimate weapon can be forged from her DNA.

5. Things, as everyone in Stuffland knows, are wimpy. They're not like Elements, strong and unpredictable. They're not like Matters, adaptable and changeable. All Things are cowards... except for Bruce Thing. After decades of puny scaredy behaviour, a brain operation turns Bruce into some other thing. A Braver Thing.

6. Skyler is not a girl. Not a boy either. Fact is, Skyler is just some... thing. Join it as it fights bullying in grade, middle and high school, learning that any thing can be brave.



Original Version

Dear Most Evilest of Editors,

Seventeen-year-old Tristan Tennant didn’t expect to fall in love at all-boys boarding school -- especially not with the Prince of Wales. A lifelong royal history geek, Tristan knows that no matter how badly he wants to shout his love for Prince Malcolm from the library rooftop, the relationship must remain a secret. [There are no secrets at an all-boys boarding school.] It’s hard, sure, but the romantic weekends at Buckingham Palace are totally worth it. 

But after the sudden death of his father, Malcolm is no longer just the heir to the throne. He’s king. [And everyone at his boarding school mysteriously disappears.]

The only option Malcolm can see for their future is a top-secret affair while he takes a queen. [Actually, he's already taken a queen. Ba dum ching.] Tristan has a crazier idea -- Malcolm should become the first openly gay monarch. It sounds gorgeous to Malcolm, but it means turning his back on centuries of tradition [Does that mean that being straight is a tradition, or that it's traditional for the king to hide his gayness?] [In any case, the term "openly gay" is fairly recent. There've been monarchs who were known during their reigns to be homosexual. Not that there's anything wrong with that.] and risking anything from tabloid scandal to assassination. [The king is gay! Long live the-- BANG!] Tristan knows Malcolm has the power to smash the status quo. He just has to show him that rules are only rules until they’re broken. [In my experience, when you break rules you get punished, and the rules are still rules. For instance, try submitting your query in 

font and see how that goes.]

 A BRAVER THING is a 60,000-word contemporary YA novel.

Notes

This is well-written. It's mostly setup, however. Here's the situation my main characters find themselves in, read my book to find out how they handle it. If you condense a bit you'll have room to tell us what they decide, who the villain is who tries to butt in, what they plan to do about it. The story.

It feels weird to call it contemporary when we all know the secretly gay Prince of Wales isn't a teenager named Malcolm. That's probably just me, but if it feels weird to others, maybe it should be set in the future (or in the recent past and labeled alternate history).

Face-Lift 1038

Guess the Plot

Princess of Swans

1. One word, people: were-swans. YOU'RE WELCOME.

2. Gina has always felt like the ugliest of ducklings. Now 27, she still hasn’t become a “swan.” With only 6 months until her best friend’s wedding she vows to be a princess of swans . . . if it’s the last thing she does.

3. Little Amberly is thrilled when a flock of swans settle into the pond at the neighborhood park. But that's before they start crapping all over the play equipment and chasing tiny children away from their territory. Turns out wild swans don't really want a princess.

4. When a witch turns Michael into a swan - a girl swan - the last thing he wants is anyone turning him back. But to hide, he's going to have to fly off the beaten migration path.

5. Taunted as a child, Cygnet never fit in. When she finally discovers the truth of her parentage, Cygnet rises to claim her birthright. Not only can ugly ducklings grow up to be swans – they can grow up to be princesses too.

6. The king of Amgovar keeps his disfigured daughter imprisoned in a tiny castle. Who wants to look at that face every day? But when her marriage to the prince of a neighboring kingdom is foretold, the princess escapes and goes to win her husband. Of course, he hasn't actually seen her yet... Plus, prophesies don't always come true, right?



Original Version

Dear Agent,

Princess Feyana Belmaron may be heir to the throne of Amgovar, but she’s no man’s idea of a prize.  For ten years, the king has confined his dark-skinned, disfigured daughter to a tiny, outland castle to shield her from the perils of court. [Readers are going to wonder what dark skin has to do with anything. My research reveals that the ugly duckling in Andersen's The Ugly Duckling was merely ugly, not dark-feathered. In fact, in cartoon versions, the ugly duckling is white, while the other ducklings are yellow.] The high stone walls protect Feyana from every danger but the one she fears most -- loneliness. [Doesn't she have a lady-in-waiting? Or at least one of those talking mirrors that tells her how fair she is?]

But when an injured volkarei foretells Feyana‘s marriage to the crown prince of Amgovar’s bitterest enemy, she upends the princess’s quiet life for good. [No wonder she's lonely if her only companion is an injured volkarei.] [Also, what's a volkarei? The closest Google can find is a Volkswagen beetle.] Such a marriage would not only free her from her isolation, but permanently end the war. [War? There's a war?] There’s only one catch: the prince likely has no idea Feyana exists, and prophecies aren’t always what they seem… [That's two catches.]

Unwilling to leave her people’s fate to chance, Feyana escapes her castle prison and ventures out to win the prince.  It won’t be easy. Pirates, soldiers, and thugs fill her path, all eager to get their hands on (or blades in) a renegade princess.  One of her newfound allies is a traitor; the other hides a dangerous secret. [Nice job of choosing allies, Princess. Reminds me of when Italy hooked up with Nazi Germany.] Even her prince may prove a threat. [Especially when he gets a look at her.] To save her country, the sheltered Feyana must first save herself -- and Dal help the monster who stands in her way. [Monster? There's a monster? ]

PRINCESS OF SWANS is a 105,000 word YA fantasy.  Thank you for your consideration.


Notes

Usually we say Dal help anyone who stands in her way. Is there a monster? If there's a monster, Feyana may yet have a shot at true love. Also, monsters belong in the first sentence, not the last. Something like: Princess of Swans is the story of a woman only a monster could love; conveniently, there happens to be a monster in the book.

Is this a take on The Ugly Duckling? It sounds more like a take on Beauty and the Beast. Where do the swans come in? In any case, it does sound like a fairy tale, and if it's really for a YA audience, you may need to make it sound more grown-up.

Face-Lift 1036

Guess the Plot

Anomaly

1. Her parents wanted her to be extraordinary, but five-year-old Anomaly Clark somehow manages to be exactly average at everything. Until the day she discovers matches...

2. Maya is an Anomaly. She can teleport, like people in the Star Trek transporter. Now a corporation of Anomalies seeking world domination is after Maya so they can clone her, steal her DNA and storm the government.

3. It was supposed to be a quick cash grab - spend a week in a medical trial taking a new ADD drug, collect $2000. But then Diego has a very unusual reaction - and now a high powered drug company exec will do anything to scrub out the trial's one anomaly...

4. When Bifff Hardcastle and his unemployed college chums land serious job offers from Fortune 500 companies, is it the end of the jobs crisis? Or a cruel and heartless... Anomaly?

5. Dyslexic Amelie is unable to spell her own name correctly. In a strange twist of fate, spelling it "Anomaly" leads her name to mirror what she really is - an anomaly in modern French society. In the end, Anomaly becomes the wife of the richest man in France, a collector of odd things.

6. Physics prodigy Max Boers is experimenting with transmitting particles through other dimensions when an earthquake shakes the Cal Tech campus. He finds himself in the body of Jack the Ripper with a dismembered whore. Can he catch the real Jack before the police capture and kill the fake Jack?



Original Version

Dear Agent,

I hope you will consider my young adult fantasy novel, Anomaly.

16-year-old Maya is an Anomaly—superhuman. Her ability to teleport, called “shifting,” is a rare and extraordinary one. While adjusting to her new home in London and learning how to control her ability, Maya has to juggle two Anomaly boys: a hunky albeit nerdy Italian who can become transparent [and keeps turning up in Maya's shower], and a sexy British rocker who can nullify electricity but always seems to have a motive other than love. [Actually, I can't think of any ways nullifying electricity would be motivated by love . . . unless you're making love and rap music comes on the stereo.] Maya is also targeted [Why "also"? Are her Anomaly boys "targeting" her?] by Aristar Industries, a corporation of Anomalies hell-bent on stealing DNA, cloning abilities, and storming the British government. Aristar wants shifters in their ranks—which means they want Maya … or rather, her DNA. A cat-and-mouse chase for her genetic material thrusts Maya into a world of deception, kidnapping, murder, and world domination, [If you seek world domination, isn't there a better government to storm than the Brits'?] where the stakes are high and the consequences of failure deadly.

Being an optometrist and a former National Science Foundation Fellow have groomed my brain for the scientific ins and outs of this novel. I’m a member of SCBWI and when I'm not writing, I'm figure skating or blogging at ____________. [That part where you spin around really fast--is that happening or is it an optical illusion?] I hope the sample pages will interest you in the full 80,000-word manuscript, which I believe has series potential. It is a simultaneous submission. Thank you for your time.

Best,


Notes

I like the idea of shifters and using thier DNA better than the usual portal or magic spell. I can see this appealing to the YA crowd. And their parents.

Seems like it would be hard to keep a shifter in your ranks unless she wants to be there. I mean, a cat-and-mouse chase in which the mouse is a shifter would leave the cat sitting there thinking WTF? On the other hand I can see how an army of shifters would quickly lead to world domination. Thus...

I would make it clear what Aristar wants, which may be to steal Maya's DNA and use it to make all of their soldiers shifters. That's better than the vague "cloning abilities." Once we know the specific stakes and consequences of failure, instead of "the stakes are high and the consequences of failure deadly," we'll be desperate to read the book.

I don't see how being an optometrist or a figure skater helps you explain the science behind teleporting and becoming transparent.

Is the Italian kid really transparent, or is Maya wearing X-ray specs?

Face-Lift 1032

Guess the Plot

Shifted

1. Moto the car can't seem to get his speed over ten miles per hour. If his owner notices, he'll be sent to the junkyard for sure. But wait! No wonder! The idiot's been so busy yacking on his cell phone he hasn't . . . Shifted.

2. When an accident at Oak Ridge nuclear plant threatens a meltdown, Dr. Jack Johnson bravely volunteers to pitch in, receiving what should have been a fatal dose of Gamma radiation. Instead, a shift has occurred. On NASCAR race days, the mild mannered doc becomes the champion avenger of all things rural, the superhero known as . . . the HICK!

3. Stephenie Meyer addict Zoe Dewson always thought it would be cool to be a shape-shifter -- to become an animal that is large and crafty. When she awakens one day to find she shares the fate of Gregor Samsa instead of Jacob Black, her life and her views change.

4. Drake Langdon hates his job mining coal but he loves the chief's daughter Lily. Chief Randal puts Drake on a swing shift in order to keep the lovers apart. When an earthquake traps him a mile below the hills of West Virginia, the only way out is through a condemned mine shaft. But has the trembling earth shifted the shaft?

5. As soon as teenager Kaia arrives in Paris she's arrested as a terrorist. Fortunately, a team of superheroes who have the ability to shift elements want Kaia for her ability to shatter glass. They kidnap her from the police and she joins the team. But will she use her power to shatter the Louvre's glass pyramid?.

6. When a team of shapeshifters all change to look like the president during a White House tour, it's up to tour guide and amateur sleuth Prissy Figbottom to prove which woman is the real president and which ones are imposters. Luckily, Prissy is the one person who knows about the president's new tattoo.



Original Version

Dear Evil Editor,

Kaia Davis: Painfully shy high school student. Suspected terrorist. And unknowing wielder of an elemental power that could turn the White House into an outhouse. [That outhouse would be big enough for Godzilla. Although I question whether Godzilla would use an outhouse rather than just take a dump in the street.] [On the other hand, maybe the fact that you never see Godzilla dropping logs indicates that he does like a little privacy.] [Then again, whether you like privacy or not, when you discover you're under attack by King Ghidorah and the entire Japanese army, who wouldn't shit their pants? Plus, dropping logs the size of actual logs would be an effective weapon]

Kaia's Monday starts out pretty good. [That sentence would be okay, if a bit blah, if this were the opening of the query, but once you've introduced terrorism and super powers, there's no turning back.] Leaving Pennsylvania for Paris on a foreign exchange program? Terrifying, but exciting, especially when it means getting away from an unloving foster family. Being arrested as a terrorist upon arrival, though, will bring anyone down. Getting rescued by a cute (but cocky) British boy who can control the wind itself? Weird, yes, but an improvement. However, Kaia's day is finally, completely ruined when he drugs and kidnaps her.

Kaia wakes up to find she's been dragged into a covert group made up of teenagers from around the world, all of whom possess the ability to manipulate the elements themselves [Adding "herself," "yourself," etc after a word rarely does anything useful, or at least I, myself, don't think so.] – "shifting" them from gas to liquid [Condensation Boy], altering their structure [Alchem-Miss], or just moving them around really fast and whacking people with them [The Nunchuks Kid].

At first, Kaia feels (for some odd reason) a little out of place. Until, that is, she discovers a silicon-based power of her own which lets her do little things like shatter glass with her mind. [Every team of superheroes needs a member who can shatter glass. Otherwise criminals would be safe hiding in buildings with windows.] [Wait, shattering glass can turn the White House into an outhouse?] [Presumably she has a more useful power than shattering glass. Doing it with your mind may be amazing, but doing it with a brick is equally effective.]

While it sounds kind of cool to join them and become a real-life superhero, Kaia hasn't yet realized there's more to this world than having fun and saving the day. Powerful people have their hands [ladles] in the pot and are cooking up a dangerous soup of [spicy] intrigue, [fishy] conspiracies, and [cheesy] action, laced with a dash of death and a pinch of betrayal to taste. Kaia will have to break out of her [clam] shell – and maybe break some windows [eggs] too – if she's going to [avoid this recipe for disaster.] make it out alive. [An abundance of cooking cliches might be cute if you were trying to sell Murder at Le Cordon Bleu, but here it seems misplaced.] [Also, this is a vague way to tell us about the villains and the danger Kaia faces. It's like opening a menu and reading: 

Entree 1: Ingredients are combined lovingly and cooked to perfection, then spooned onto a plate and served.

Entree 2: A medley of items from our kitchen prepared stovetop by our chef and brought to your table.

Entree 3: Stuff, cooked.

Some specifics about these powerful people: who they are, what they want, what happens if they get it, how the superheroes plan to stop them, would be helpful.]  

Fortunately, she has some powerful new friends on her side, including her original rescuer, Connor – that cocky, irritating, sarcastic [windbag] Brit… who also happens to be annoyingly attractive when he risks life and limb to protect those he cares about. [For instance, the time he protected his best friend from being mugged outside the Louvre by causing a tornado, he looked annoyingly like Brad Pitt.] [On the bright side, the tornado destroyed the glass pyramid.]

SHIFTED is a YA sci-fi novel with a multicultural cast, complete at 115,000 words. It stands alone but is the first of a planned series of three books.

I am a legal assistant/graphic designer/resident IT… Jill-of-all-trades at a small law firm in Atlanta, Georgia, but I have finally decided not to let my Literature degree and all those Creative Writing courses go to waste. This is my first novel.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,


Notes

I don't see the need for Kaia being arrested as a terrorist in the query. The kidnapping gets her to the superhero team quickly without raising questions that you don't answer.

You could combine the first two paragraphs into:

Painfully shy high school student Kaia Davis is thrilled to leave behind her unloving foster family for a foreign exchange program in Paris--until she's kidnapped outside Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport by a cocky (but cute) British boy named Connor.

This has the added advantage of telling us Connor's name so that when you mention his name in paragraph 6 you don't have to explain who he is.

Apparently the team know about Kaia's power even though she doesn't?

Just make the part about what happens after the kidnapping as specific as the setup and this'll be 100% better.

Face-Lift 1029

Guess the Plot

Don't Date a Bro

1. In the grim darkness of the future, an attempt to carbon-date the last member of the Sigma Epsilon Chi fraternity goes horribly awry, loosing a horde of dread demons upon the world.

2. Number seven in Leon "Ladies' Man" Phelps's advice series: Dating Rules for Straight Bros.

3. Gayree Gayun goes gargantuan when looking for love by way of the newly developed Random Reality Transcendentalizer. That's when he learns, the hard way, that bro isn't a condensed form of the word brother ... in Brontosaurus Land.

4. When Leila realizes after three months of dating Jackson that he's an alcoholic, sexist, belligerant, narcissistic asshole (aka a bro), she decides to dump him. But is her new boyfriend a step up or a step down?

5. This rhyming picture book explains the hazards of incest with cheerful, upbeat color illustrations.

6. When the body of Z-list actor/singer/dancer/model Chad Hunkley (real name:Ralph Snodgrass) turns up in the dumpster outside a gay bar in Northridge, detective Zack Martinez knows two things. One, this kid is a looong way from Oskaloosa, and two, the frat boys at CSUN are getting a little too randy.


Original Version

Dear _________,

Thank you for taking the time to consider my work. Don't Date a Bro; is a 47,000 word young adult novel that follows the sarcastic and slightly awkward Leila Jayne, an acclaimed soccer player and GPA whiz, who realizes after dating her popular baseball player boyfriend for three months that she is dating a Bro. [To aid those unfamiliar with the term "bro," I've spent a few hours on Urban Dictionary and Google compiling traits of a bro: An alpha male idiot. White, 16-25, inarticulate, belligerent, talks about nothing but chicks and beer, drives a jacked up truck that’s plastered with stickers, lives off his rich parents, constantly uses the word "chill" (as a noun, verb or adjective), wears wife beaters or no shirt, constantly smokes weed and drinks and parties with his fellow bros, so sexist you'd think he's exaggerating normal sexist guys to be satirical except he's not being satirical, he's that sexist, thinks women are good for nothing except making sandwiches for bros and providing bros with "dome," which is oral sex; for instance, a bro might brag, "Today I was getting road dome from a chick and her parents gave me a dirty look from the back seat but I told them it was chill."] [Also, dating a guy for three months and then realizing he's a bro is like taking three months to realize you're dating a warthog.] The problem is that she's not exactly the Bro type - she hates parties, likes to read, and enjoys "me" time - but has been faking it to fit in. To add insult to injury, her best friend has abandoned her for spending too much time with her boyfriend Jackson.

When Jackson's not be as interested in her as when they first started dating, [Suddenly you're talking like a bro.] Leila thinks it's because of her Catholic guilt and her desire to not want to have sex with him anymore. [That would do it. Also, I'm guessing she's refusing to make him sandwiches. Or to chill.] It isn't until [a] new senior boy arrives at her Catholic prep school who actually interests her – an atheist, an intellectual, [If this atheist is so intellectual, why can't he find a school that's not affiliated with a religion?] and a self-proclaimed loner – [A self-proclaimed loner is several steps up from a bro, but can't she find a boy who actually wants her around?] that Leila embraces what makes her unique and accepts that she must  break up with her boyfriend. And when they kiss one night, even though she's still dating her Jackson, [Actually, she's dating his Johnson. That's the way it works with bros.] she has to make things right, come clean, [chill,] and ditch the Bro for the guy nobody seems to notice.

Thanks again for considering my novel, and please feel free to contact me if you would like to see more from me.

Sincerely,


Notes

The whole plot is: girl realizes she's dating a bro, and decides she'd be better off with the new kid in town? Where's the conflict? Dumping a bro is an obvious choice if you have any self-respect. Most women would dump a bro faster than they'd dump a serial killer. In fact, consider making the new kid a known serial killer, so that when Jackson gets dumped for him, it's a bigger blow.

This is all setup. We know Leila Jayne's situation. Now we want to know what she does about it and what goes wrong, and what she does about that. Does Jackson do anything when Leila breaks it off? Besides chill? Give us a reason to care about Leila. If you have an interesting story, show us.

Face-Lift 1025

Guess the Plot

Threads of Control

1. Saylor dreams of being a fashion designer, but to break in she must untangle the cords of cronyism, unzip the bags of investor cash, and cut through the layers of bullshit. Is Saylor's dream sewn up, or will she be trimmed?

2. When the Puppetmaster threatens to wipe out the human trees on the planet Ulfitron, Earth teenager Jimmy Ranfaz is chosen as their savior.

3. When the body of fashion mogul Jonny Street is found under a mountain of bolts at his Downtown LA sweatshop, detective Zack Martinez knows two things: One, this year's fashions are damned ugly, and two, Jonny wasn't simply killed by a bolt from the blue.

4. Needlework expert Alice Bobbin only wanted to see if that new craft store in town had embroidery floss in Dusky Rose. Little did she know that the sign meant a different kind of "craft." Now her cross stitches of houses and flowers have the power to harvest souls.

5. Jane is a seamstress who tailors clothes for her husband Dan. But when she notices Dan ogling her best friend, she secretly cinches the crotch of Dan's pants tighter and tighter.

6. All Janet wanted was to open a nice little quilting store. But monolithic sewing chain SewItUp! will not tolerate any competition. Sabotage, arson, and murder ensue.

7. Mayhem breaks out at Mary's Merry Marionette Show when her wooden puppets rebel, massacring three puppeteers and half the attendees of the Kanoma County Fair.





Original Version

Dear [Literary Agent],

AVERAGE – the word burned him. Superpowers had not changed the one thing he hated; Jimmy Ranfaz [, alias Aquaman,] was still average.

Jimmy, a daydreaming teenager from Earth, thinks he has been given a new lease of [on] life when the tree-descendant humans from Ulfitron [Hang on. They're humans whose ancestors were trees? Just because they have limbs doesn't make them humans.] pick him to be their new saviour from a returning nemesis [, the supervillain known as . . . Lumberjack]. But his training in cranial abilities [He's being trained by trees? When you're choosing a champion to lead you against your arch nemesis, it's a good idea to choose someone who's already smarter than a tree.] is rudely interrupted by an attack which also wipes out everyone he knows on the planet, [How many people did he know on the planet? He just got there.] all except Juvall Spelding – a powerful native whose determination to save his race is only outstripped by his disdain of Jimmy’s powers. [So . . . Jimmy is Aqualad?] [It's bad enough when you're a kid who wants to be a superhero and you get your wish, except you get stuck with the same powers as Aquaman. But to make it even more humiliating, instead of Shark or Barracuda, they call you Aqualad.] [I suppose Robin was always a little pissed that Batman didn't give him a cool name like Condor or Raven.]

Outmatched by the might of their foe, their only hope of saving Ulfitron lies in tracking down a legendary source of knowledge. [Unfortunately, this source of knowledge is a book and its owner refuses to give it up, believing it's his grandfather.]  But within the journey lies a deception so deep, it rocks the very beliefs of the Ulfitronians about the previous battle and also questions Jimmy’s own true origins. With limitless power within his grasp, Jimmy must decide where his priorities lie; the heroism in saving countless people or finally emerging from the shadows of mediocrity he has always been consigned to. [I don't see how that's an either/or decision. Saving countless people leaves him in the shadow of mediocrity?]

EVOLUTION: THREADS OF CONTROL is a 90,000 word YA high fantasy novel with a scientific flavour.

The complete manuscript is available on request. [I have attached the first five pages for your perusal.]

Thank you for your time and consideration, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Kind Regards,


Author's note: The title is chosen because of the nature of the MC's journey and the hidden puppetmaster.


Notes

If Jimmy fails the willows will never stop weeping. If he succeeds he'll be the most poplar person on Ulfitron.

There's too much vagueness. Who is the nemesis? Why is Jimmy chosen as the savior? What are Jimmy's powers? What is this deep deception? What is this legendary source of knowledge? What is Jimmy's superhero name? (I suggest Treehugger.)

Who is this hidden puppetmaster? Is he the nemesis? "Puppetmaster" is a cooler-sounding name for the villain than "returning nemesis."

It's not clear why Jimmy is still considered average after he has superpowers. Or why using his superpowers to save countless people still leaves him average. What does he have to do to be above average?

What's with the title? Is Evolution part of the book's title, or is that the series name? I don't like anything about the title.

Face-Lift 1023

Guess the Plot

Seven

1. When Bob disrobes on his wedding night, Hallie's face takes on a look of delighted astonishment. "Now you know," Bob says, "why they call me The Magnificent Seven."

2. Pregnant with septuplets, Stacey is set to become a household name, a reality TV star. Then she gets pipped by the Octomom and faces a life of fatigue, unrelenting stress and poverty.

3. Seven has the ability to enter other people's dreams. Asked to enter the dreams of a comatose girl, she does, and finds the girl locked in a prison guarded by men in suits and fedoras. Can Seven orchestrate a prison break?

4. Detective Ten senses that something doesn't add up. Did the remains found in Seven's backyard really belong to the missing Nine, or was it just the head of a homeless Zero? Was Six telling the truth, or were he and Nine closer than he let on? Or was this all part of a conspiracy by a secret society, the Irrationals, to turn the Integers against each other ?

5. All of the Bates children are perfect little angels--polite, cheerful, active without being rowdy--until they turn seven. That's when they develop claws, fangs, and attitudes.

6. Henry Miller's life falls apart spectacularly every seven years. He doesn't know why, but he needs to find out before his thirty-fifth birthday. His shrink thinks something happened to Henry when he was seven years old. With the help of hypnotism, Henry's going back to the second grade.



Original Version

Dear Evil Editor,

Seven Bristow spends each night trapped in someone else’s dream. She spends each school day [She? I'm pretty sure Seven is a boy's name.] attempting to avoid the notice of her fellow high school students. If someone notices her too much, chances are she’ll play a starring role in their nighttime fantasy. [She's trapped in someone's dream every night. Why does she want to avoid starring in her fellow students' dreams?]

When she runs into Carter Maxwell four times in a single afternoon, she’s sure she’ll be visiting his dreams. When it doesn’t happen, she wonders what made the difference. [Allow me to explain. Running into someone four times could mean he notices you for a total of a couple minutes. Whereas sitting in one of your classrooms you can be noticed for an hour by the nerdy kid who has a crush on you.] She gets the chance to find out when Carter invites her to participate in his science experiment - a sleep pattern study.

During the study, Seven learns Carter can’t reach REM sleep and that she has the ability to match REM sleep patterns with another sleeper. She soon learns how to manipulate the dreamscape and her role in it.

Carter asks Seven to visit the dreams of his twin sister Caroline and help bring her out of a three-year coma before his parents pull the plug. [So now she can enter the dream of someone who has never noticed her? I'm not clear on why we spent the whole first paragraph on this "noticing" aspect.] When Seven finds the girl locked in a prison guarded by shadowy men in suits and fedoras, [She's being guarded by the cast of Mad Men.] she rallies a few friends to join the dreamscape. [Is she still asleep when she rallies them?] Using her dream skills, Seven orchestrates a prison break and returns to the conscious world with Caroline.

Seven is an 80,000 word young adult science fiction novel with series potential. Thank you for your time.


Notes

What are her dream skills? Can she dream up the key to a cell door? Can she dream up an army with futuristic weapons? Can she dream up some Kryptonite if the person whose dream she enters dreams of Superman? In other words, is she all-powerful in the dreamscape or does she need to use her wits to defeat Caroline's captors?

The name "Seven" will remind everyone of the Seinfeld episode in which George decided he would name his first child Seven. Can't you come up with a more original number? Not 13, that's been used on House. And 5 was used in Peanuts. 6 was The Prisoner... Have you considered going with an actual name?

Face-Lift 1018

Guess the Plot

Amber Friction

1. Just as the substance amber has the ability to hold a charge, so can Amber Aurora manipulate the electrical energy within her body. Will this power help her become queen of an Alaskan village? It must, or no more females will ever be born. Which could cause friction among the males.

2. Luvsalot is trying to market a new type of organic sex toy. Will the all-natural Amber Friction meet the needs of the increasingly desperate divorced/pagan/hippie/vegan/ dildo demographic? Also, revived ancient bugs rampaging through San Francisco.

3. When a serial killer starts leaving his victims' body parts encased in amber all over the city, Detective Zach Martinez knows two things: the police's geological consultants are also his suspect pool, and he's definitely getting his wife a different semi-precious stone for their anniversary.

4. Amber is desperate (or ‘dispirit’, as she writes it) to be the next publishing billionaire. Her typing is terrible and her ‘spilling’ is ‘worst’. She writes stories about ‘cereal’ killers. ‘Butt’ her ‘friction navels’ are rejected by every agent. “It didn’t grab me.” They write. So Amber grabs them and adds ‘cereal’ killer realism to her next ‘naval’.

5. When Kate Goode dons the mask of Amber Friction, superheroine, she finds herself battling not just criminals but paparazzi, would-be corporate sponsors, and an overbearing mother bent on getting herself some grandkids, even if it means pushing Kate into marrying a mild mannered accountant who may or may not be a supervillain.

6. A bestselling author, attempting to prove that titles don't matter and that her fans will buy her next novel no matter what the title, uses a random word generator to name the book. Her career tanks and she's never heard from again.

7. A hard-hitting look at bias in law enforcement, based on the true story of when my beloved Georgie disappeared and the authorities not only refused to issue an Amber Alert, but actually said to my face, "We don't do that for cats, ma'am."



[Author's note, not part of query: Reason for the title Amber Friction: The modern term "electron" is derived from the Greek word for Amber. Amber was given this name for its ability to aquire [acquire] a charge (like friction from rubbing wool against amber). Aurora has the ability to manipulate the electrical energy within her own body, an ability she slowly learns to control. In a sense, she can aquire [acquire!] a charge, but she doesn't have to drag her socked feet against the carpet to do it.] [If she doesn't have to drag her feet on the carpet, where does the friction in the title come in?] [Is Amber her adoptive family's last name?] For those who aren't familiar with the feet-on-carpet electricity idea, this scene from Family Guy illustrates it.


Original Version

Teenagers don’t usually discover new races. Of course, Aurora Amber doesn’t exactly discover the Terraneans. They find her. [Thus I apologize for using an opening sentence that has nothing to do with anything.]

They rescue her during an attack on her adoptive family's vacation home. Their impenetrable armor and acute sensory perception pique her curiosity. By genetic default, she is the last female capable of becoming the Queen of their Alaskan colony. [Are you implying that there's a male capable of becoming queen?] [Lemme see if I've got this straight. Someone attacks Amber's adoptive family, and she is rescued by members of a new race who discover that she has the genetic makeup to become the new race's queen? Does it go like this:

Terranean 1: Holy crap! Walruses are attacking that Alaskan village vacation home! There might be people inside.

Terranean 2: Fortunately we have impenetrable armor. We must prevent a bloodbath.

Terranean 1: Hello, young lady. I see your family has been slaughtered, but at least we got here in time to rescue you and . . . You know, you look kind of like a Terranean. Mind if we swab your cheek for a DNA test?] Without a Queen, the remaining Terranean women cannot have female progeny. She has six months to declare a warrior who will consummate her reign and rise as King. Otherwise, the colony will hold a blood battle to choose for her.

Aurora is certain she can find a way to escape before then, [Is she a prisoner?] but there may be one Terranean worth staying for. Except Aeron isn’t Alaskan-born, and there are few who would kneel before an outsider. [I love you, but I could never marry you. My new people would never kneel before a Canadian.] Possessing an allure as lethal as Terranean venom, he provides a distraction Aurora can’t afford. Because she wasn’t the only one to walk away from the incinerated remains of her family’s vacation home. [The Human Torch and Electro also survived.]

Being the last female capable of restoring the Alaskan colony may give her the right to be Queen. But it’s also the reason someone wants her dead. [And while killing Aurora Amber might be easy, it won't be easy killing the superhero known as . . . Static Electricity Girl!] Killing the only chance for more women to be born makes no sense unless you're trying to wipe out the race.

Complete at 105,000 words, AMBER FRICTION is a young adult thriller with series potential. A biology and chemistry background has allowed me to utilize science and nature as inspiration for this series. I appreciate your time in considering my query.


Notes

Is this set in Alaska on Earth? The idea of a vacation home seems pretty modern unless you're royalty, but these days when a new race is discovered they're usually primitives living on a secluded jungle island, not Alaskans with impenetrable armor and acute sensory perception.

Maybe Amber Aurora would be a better title. It sounds cooler, at least until readers discover that it's just a character's name.

Where does the power to manipulate electricity come in?

This might work better if it began: Amber Aurora is the last hope of the Terranean race. Unless she becomes queen of her Alaskan village, no Terranean women will ever be born again.

This leaves lots of space to get specific about who doesn't want her to become queen, and why, and what she plans to do about it, like touch them and give them shocks.

Face-Lift 1015

Guess the Plot

Black and White

1. A history of the newspaper industry and its fall from black and white and read all over to black and white and red all over.

2. After numerous demonstrations and complaints from the NAACP and White Anglo-Saxon activists about his divisive song titles, presidential front-runner Michael Jackson decides to re-record his hit single "Black or White."

3. After crushing his witchy opponent, chess genius Filbert Daggleson indulges in wild celebration. In the morning he's black and white all over. Not checkered, more like plaid. Now he must find the witch and get her to lift this curse, or else look like an idiot forever.

4. Pakistani Sayeed Kamila, a frustrated cab driver, quits his job with Yellow Taxi and starts his own company, Black and White Taxi. Starting with one cab, he builds a taxi empire but ultimately goes bankrupt and ends up driving a Checker cab.

5. On a world with two races (Flyons, who are white, and Dhellions, who are black), a race war has lasted for centuries. Then a God shows up and decrees that everyone must play nice together or die. The killing stops as the Flyons and Dhellions unite in an effort to get rid of the God.

6. It's the biggest long shot in history when a zebra is entered in the Kentucky Derby--until jockey Louie Falcone replaces all the thoroughbreds' water with vodka.


Original Version

[Note: the author couldn't decide which character's POV to focus the query on, so there are two versions here.]

1.
Dear Evil Editor,

Fallen, an eighteen-year-old Dhellion, wishes his father would leave him alone. The ghost has been following him for ten years, saying he needs a Flyon named Zata dead before he can rest in peace.

Just when Fallen finds her, a celestial being named Auris appears. Claiming to be a God, Auris bans killing, ending the centuries-long war between Flyon and Dhellion. Fallen isn't sure what a God is, but disobedience means death by lightening, [Interesting. I take it Dhellions are black, and they die if they get lightened? And Flyons are white and they die when darkened?] so killing Zata will have to wait.

Not wanting to lose track of her, Fallen sticks to Zata like a shadow. She's bound by the God's rules, too, so all she can do is grit her teeth and try to ignore him – something Fallen delights in making as difficult as possible. [Do these people ever sleep? She ought to be able to lose him at some point.] But the longer he's with her, the more she seems, well, normal, and a lot more likeable than any Flyon should be. [And the more he seems, well, annoying, and a lot less likeable than any Dhallion should be.]

Auris continues making Decrees, [No calling each other the R word or the Q word, or it's death by dyeing.] forcing Dhellions and Flyons to play nice, live interspersed and talk to each other – or die. Fallen obeys, until he learns the God plans to marry off Flyons and Dhellions, then re-distribute all the children to “save the next generation” from their parents' racism. The entire planet wants the God gone and their freedom back. Mortals can't hurt Auris, but Fallen's father says he might be able to drag the God to the farthest corner of the universe and hold it there. Maybe.

But before he tries, he wants Zata dead. [Why?]

BLACK AND WHITE is a 69,000-word standalone YA fantasy novel with series potential. It is told from the perspectives of Auris, Fallen and Zata.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to hearing from you!



2.

Dear Evil Editor,

The rules in Zata's world have always been simple: Flyons kill Dhellions on sight, and vice versa. She's spent years training for the day she's old enough to fight on the front lines. But when she catches a Dhellion named Fallen sneaking around, Zata can't bring herself to kill him.

Then a god named Auris appears and bans killing. Zata isn't sure what a god is, but anyone to disobey Auris's rules is fried by lightning. To complicate matters more, Fallen decides to hang around.

No matter what Zata does, she just can't get rid of him. The more time Zata spends with Fallen, the more he seems, well, normal. Maybe even likeable – no, that's going too far. After all, everyone knows Dhellions are monsters.

Auris's rules grow increasingly restrictive, controlling everyone's actions, speech and lifestyles. Zata grits her teeth and obeys – until she learns the God plans to marry off Flyons and Dhellions, and re-distribute children to “save the next generation” from their parents' racism.

The God has to go, but Zata's training didn't cover killing immortals. Besides, if Auris leaves, Flyons and Dhellions will start fighting again. [If that's true, it seems the experiment is over. The races won't get along unless the alternative is death, and the marriage/redistribution plan is the way to go.] That means no more Fallen - which, Zata keeps reminding herself, is what she wants. Isn't it?

BLACK AND WHITE is a 69,000 word standalone YA fantasy with series potential. It is told from Fallen, Zata, and Auris's perspectives.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to hearing from you!


[Authors note to EE: the novel is called Black and White because Dhellions are black and Flyons are white. And the main characters start out seeing things in black and white - both literally and figuratively.]


Notes

If I had to choose I'd go with the second version. It's clearer.

Maybe the races should be purple and green. It might seem slightly less heavy-handed. Probably not. Either way, teens aren't going to go for something this obvious. In fact, if it were a childrens' picture book with kittens and puppies the kids would say, Just tell a story and quit with the moralistic symbolism.

This is the same plot we did last year in Face-Lift 934.

This would be better if it were an alternate history set on Earth in which black Africa developed advanced transportation and weaponry first and conquered Europe, and the races have been at war ever since.

Have you tried a query from Auris's POV?

What you have is a Romeo and Juliet story. The query, like the book, needs to focus on Romeo and Juliet, not the Montagues and Capulets.