Evil Editor's Blog, page 152

Face-Lift 1089

Guess the Plot  Bright Star 1. The heartrending tale of how a starred review in Publishers' Weekly fails to lead to literary fame and fortune.

2. When the body of Mark Sigmond, executive producer of the star-search reality show "Bright Star", is found in a dumpster off Sunset, homicide detective Zack Martinez knows two things: One, Sigmond didn't cram that machete through his own back, and two, that stupid girl with the fedora better get eliminated from the show this week or he's done with it.
3. Janice’s singing career is soaring; she’s booking gigs in nightclubs across the city. When a past lover returns from afar, will she give it all up for a dream she thought was lost forever? 4. Sam and Belle Starr’s great granddaughter Midge is smart. She changes the spelling of the family name to “Star”. After Stanford Business School, she works on Wall Street. Finally, she starts an investment bank and thieves her way onto the Forbes 400 list. It’s much better than stealing horses or running a whore house.

5. When her father dies in the crash of the airship Bright Star, 15-year-old Sadira Pascal knows two things: One, she's not going to get the birthday present he was planning to give her, and two, she's now free to hook up with hunky Baruj Haddad, the army private her father insisted was too old for her.
6. Margot makes a wish upon the first bright star she sees, little knowing that's it's actually the planet Arbuthnot. Now the Arbuthnotians have arrived and want her to go back to their planet and be their hero in the forthcoming war with Gorgonia. Why, oh why, didn't she specify the planet Earth when she asked for some excitement in her life?


Original VersionDear Evil Editor,

I'd like to submit my synopsis of 'Bright Star' for close, humiliating scrutiny. I've chosen to self-publish this book, so my 'query' is more of blurb to hook potential buyers. I'd love some feedback to help me polish the blurb to make it as interesting and exciting as possible.

****
Sadira Pascal is upset when her father doesn't make it home to celebrate her fifteenth birthday. He might be a busy hovership engineer pulling overtime on a new design, but he's always been home for the important things. Then she discovers her father decided to ride on the maiden voyage of his newest ship, the CAS Bright Star, without even telling her. [Who did tell her?] During Sadira's field trip with her class to observe the hovership launch, things really fall apart. Instead of a successful flight, she watches the Bright Star fall out of the sky. [Is the launch on her birthday? If not, how long has it been since she's seen her father? Do they live in the same home? Is her mother alive?]

The government confirms her father's death, leaving Sadira to pick up the pieces of her former life. [Her former life? Was she reincarnated?] While she struggles with her loss, Private Baruj Haddad tries to convince her that her father and the rest of the Bright Star crew are still alive. [Where did he get that idea?] At first, Sadira doesn't believe there's any hope. But then she stumbles across a message that makes her think her father might be alive. [Sadira Stop Crash was staged. Stop. Don't tell anyone, but I'm alive. Stop. Happy belated birthday. Stop. Love, Dad] As she and Baruj dig deeper into the Bright Star's crash, Sadira uncovers secrets about her father's work, secrets that put her and everyone she loves in danger. [Is this hovercraft a military project? If so, it seems likely that Haddad would take his suspicions to his superiors rather than to Sadira. Privates don't have enough spare time to investigate military aircraft crashes.] [Also, even if Haddad doesn't trust his superiors, if he thinks the entire crew is still alive, why is he approaching a 15-year-old with this theory, rather than a sibling or parent of one of the crew members, someone old enough to do something useful?]
'Bright Star' is a young adult sci-fi/dystopian novel complete at 62,000 words.
Thanks!

Notes
You don't need to answer my questions in the blurb. But a blurb that doesn't inspire a lot of questions about the story's logic would be more effective. 
If you could hint at what these secrets are that put everyone in danger, we might be more interested. "Secrets about her father's work" is pretty vague.
A slightly expanded version of the following might be what you're looking for:
On a field trip with her 10th-grade class to observe the launch of the CAS Bright  Star, a military hovercraft her father helped design--and is aboard--Sadira Pascal watches in horror as the ship falls out of the sky.
Struggling with her loss in the weeks that follow, Sadira stumbles across evidence that her father and the rest of the Bright Star's crew might be alive. As she digs into her father's notes, she begins to suspect that the crash was orchestrated by the government, a secret they'll kill to keep from the press and the public.

Is Sadira a proactive character? We see her discover and stumble across and dig and uncover, but now that she suspects the truth and is in danger, does she have a plan? What's her first move? Is her goal to solve the mystery? To rescue her father? To bring down the government?
Of course if you truly want the blurb to be as interesting and exciting as possible, you need to introduce the one foolproof element it currently lacks: sharks.
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Face-Lift 1088

Guess the Plot

The Non-Profit

1. The first in-depth guide for aspiring writers that tells it like it really is. Also, soup recipes and a pull-out page of food stamps.

2. Sister Mary Agony experiences a series of doomsday visions involving Jesus, JFK, and a dachshund. But it seems no one will listen to the dire prognostications of... the Nun-Prophet.

3. Mark was supost to be his nashun's spirichal savyur, but he can't even spel--much less profesai. When a nayboring kingdum invads, Mark's peepul ask him to leed ther armees. Will this non-profit manadge to save his peepul from anialashun?

4. In rural Haiti, a group of earnest if surprisingly pale volunteers is eager to start a village school. But why must the classes be held at night? And why are the corpses of local residents starting to turn up in out-of-the-way locales, completely drained of blood?

5. Keisha Holloway loves her new job entering data about children for a nonprofit organization that runs after-school programs--until she discovers that every child she enters into the data system gets kidnapped. Before she can blow the whistle, Keisha is targeted for elimination. Now hundreds of social service workers are after her, willing to kill for the price on her head. Maybe she shoulda taken that job as a law firm receptionist.

6. Jeb Stone likes money. Unfortunately, he's just graduated from college with enormous student loan debt. All his attempts to get a job have failed, so he's forced to take a job at the new local "Non-Profit" food bank. Strangely enough, he's soon making more money than he could ever have imagined. Could there be some magic in those home-made snickerdoodles? And why are all the homeless people wearing designer watches?

7. Jill graduates from Harvard Business School and starts work as a financial analyst at the Peabody Fund – a nonprofit organization. She accidentally finds two sets of books and confides in Jack, another new hire. They snoop and discover the fund launders money for Mafia drug smugglers. But Jack is a made-man. Now there’s no profit in being Jill.



Original Version

Query Letter:

Children’s Holistic Services operates afterschool programs and food closets, but when an evil computer system hijacks their funding, children disappear and Keisha Holloway, secretary to a murdered boss, must flee for her life. [On the one hand, we don't need this paragraph, as it merely summarizes the five paragraphs that follow. On the other hand, this paragraph has way more clarity than the expanded version.]


Keisha Holloway lands the perfect job, secretary for a program that gives back to the community.  Children’s Holistic uses GovernmentGrants.gov, a government website that provides funding for non-profits and collects data generated by programs nationwide. [That sentence is dullsville. Nothing to do with the writing; any sentence containing the words "government," "data," "programs," and "generated" is a one-way ticket to the rejection pile.]

Keisha enters the student-level data for her program, and in response, the system kidnaps all the children. [Say what? Did we leave out a step or two? What is "the system"? The computer system? She types a kid's name into a database, and the computer system kidnaps the kid? Does the computer system have henchmen who do the dirty work? And whattaya mean, "all" the children? If every child who enrolls in an after-school program gets kidnapped, wouldn't someone notice? What's being done by the authorities?] The computer hacker who seized control of GovernmentGrants is determined to make a difference by forcing social change on organizations hindered by law and ethics. [If the villain is the hacker, why did you call it an "evil" computer system? Does the computer system have its own agenda?] [What exactly is the hacker's goal? If I kidnap all the children who enroll in after-school programs, the government will see the light and . . . do what?]

Darrell Ford, Keisha’s handsome co-worker, scours the ghetto streets for signs of the children.  He encounters residents who saw the missing children secreted into vans in the middle of the night by men in black clothing. [Are they the Men in Black? Because that would be an unexpected but welcome development.]

Keisha’s boss, Dr. Scott, goes looking for the missing children and is never heard from again.  Darrell and Keisha investigate, searching the riverfront where Dr. Scott was last seen. Keisha beats the system by writing a grant application for the return of the missing children, and is targeted by GovernmentGrants.gov for elimination.

[Sirs:

Childrens Holistic Services would like to apply for a government grant in the amount of $75,000. The money will be used to provide lunches for students, supplies for teachers, and to recover the children you kidnapped.] 

Running for her life, Keisha encounters hundreds of social service workers who will kill for the price on her head. [My first thought is, you wouldn't think there'd be hundreds of people who are both willing to commit murder for hire and who also have chosen social work as their career field. My second thought is, if you've been a social worker longer than six months, it would be amazing if you weren't eager to commit murder.] If she can survive long enough, maybe the government can trace the computer hacker. If they can’t, she’s on her own.

THE NON-PROFIT is a 70,000 word thriller.

I have worked as secretary for non-profits all my life, encountering many grant making bodies and government websites. They are not user-friendly. [I feel it's time someone blew the whistle on these corrupt bastards, and that someone may as well be me, as long as I do it in a work of fiction under a pen name, because hey, I don't wanna get murdered tomorrow.]


Notes

For starters, let's get rid of "all" the children are being kidnapped, and "hundreds" of social service workers are out to kill Keisha. Those sound like wild exaggerations. Save them for the book. Also, saying the system kidnaps the children isn't advisable. Keisha doesn't know who's kidnapping them, so no need to reveal it to us. It's the mystery she's out to solve.

We don't care about GovernmentGrants.gov. Focus on Keisha. Children are being kidnapped. Keisha is alerted to the common thread in the kidnappings when she realizes she entered all the missing children into the after-school program database. Someone must have hacked into her computer! Keisha investigates, but soon finds that someone thinks she's getting too close to the truth. Fearing for her life, she teams up with hunky Darrell and . . .

Serial Killers!

The following Guess the Plots appeared here during the past year. But not all were fakes. Which one(s) turned out to be the actual plots of minions' novels?


1. A new serial killer leaves a bizarre signature - he hacks out his victims teeth and puts dandelions in the gums. As investigators waste time arguing over whether his nickname should be "dandelion mouth" or "the floral dentist," he manages to kill three more times.

2. Due to prison overcrowding, serial killer Richard Snead is released after three months of incarceration and ordered to keep a log detailing all his activities.

3. After escaping from a serial killer and then getting captured by him again, Lila declares that she's a failure as a human, and when she dies she'll be a . . . Bitter Angel.

4. Someone is leaving death-threat poems on Gina's front door. Is it the serial killer known as . . . "The Rhymester"? Maybe, but Gina hasn't rejected the possibility she has a secret admirer.

5. As Josh Booth camps in the north woods, vampires capture him, binding him to a tree. He escapes and warns authorities but Detective Abby Lincoln says he’s crazy. When bodies--drained of blood--are found bound to other trees in the woods, Lincoln thinks Booth is the serial killer.

6. Hiking in the forest, Ami finds a box of trinkets. Could each of them be a trophy from some killer's thirty-year murder spree? She thinks so. But can she avoid becoming the killer's next victim?

7. When the bodies of four women turn up in different parts of the city, homicide detective Zack Martinez puts it down to football violence. But when a fifth girl is found missing a piece of her scalp, it brings back memories of a chilling serial killer from the beginning of his career. He knows two things: If this is the Genesis killer, then they sent the wrong man to San Quentin; and the Genesis Killer knows where he used to live.




Answer below.



The actual plots are:



3, 4, and 6

Face-Lift 1087

Guess the Plot

Girl in the Dark

1. She's a girl. She's in the dark. Also, some rats, a baseball bat, and a flashlight with failing batteries.

2. After dying, seventeen-year-old Julie finds herself in a Dark world where she must stop a Darkness in its quest to claim the earth as its own. But can she focus on her task when there's a hunky stranger hanging with her? Did I mention it was Dark?

3. When the severed head of iconic 'scream queen' Devilicious is found stuffed in a cooler inside a burning car, homicide Detective Zack Martinez knows two things: One, she didn't drive herself, and two, that horror film scream-a-thon at the Egyptian won't be the same without her as hostess.

4. Sophia works in Brussels as a high class ‘night escort’. She goes to the most exclusive parties with Europe’s most powerful men. She is privy to many nations’ secrets. Others want those secrets and they are after Sophia. She hides during the day and ventures out only at night. Can Sophia’s ‘friends’ catch the stalkers before she is caught?

5. Shanna is an ordinary teenager, worrying about college acceptance letters and a date for the prom, but when a freak accident unlocks her hidden clairvoyance, her life takes an unexpected turn. Suddenly, Shanna knows things she shouldn’t know, and her idealistic family life is anything but what it seems.

6. Jason, a young Catholic priest in fin-de-siecle New Orleans, sees the Girl in the darkened rectory hallway every night. After a steamy candle-lit bath, Jason discovers a message from the Girl on his fogged mirror. It warns of doomsday -- and asks Jason to help save the world.



Original Version

Dear Evil Editor,

Julie's last thought before she closes her eyes is that dying isn't too hard, but dying alone sucks. [Her first thought after she opens her eyes is that sex isn't bad, but sex alone is even better.]

The world looks different on the other side - here, she can see the Darkness, an evil force that thrives on bloodshed. It's out to claim the earth as its own, [Anyone can claim the earth; it's getting earthlings to accept your claim that's the tricky part.] and must be stopped at all costs. The collectors are devoted to doing just that, and see something in Julie worth saving. But her new life comes with a price: she must either succeed as a collector, or die. Again. For real, this time. But even with great gifts - the ability to stop time, a regenerating and ever-young body, and a weapon powerful enough to slice the devil in two - Julie knows she's going to be a big fat fail as a collector. Because Julie knows all about stacked heels. The best spring lip color. How to tell the real Prada from a knock-off. [Knowing those things isn't what's going to cause her to fail. If we must know Julie has great fashion sense, tell us when you introduce her. Otherwise, save it for the book.]

She has no idea how to be a hero. 

[Actually, it's pretty easy. 

1. Stop time. 
2. Take your weapon and slice the bad guys in two. 
3. Go home and restart time.]

Julie's uncoordinated. Unpretty. Not even particularly brave. She might be immortal, but she's no hero. And her mentor, the girl who's supposed to be showing her the ropes, seems like she's more interested in throwing Julie to the wolves. She has Julie wondering[:] if the collectors are supposed to be the good guys, then why do they seem so bad? [In what way do they seem bad?] And then there's the blue-eyed stranger, [Isn't everyone in this place a stranger?] the only kind thing in this new Dark world. Will she live long enough to reveal the secret he carries about Julie's past? [Does that sentence say what you think it says? How can she reveal the secret he carries? To whom would she reveal it?]

Julie's got to get this right. This is her last chance. Last chance at redemption for a seventeen year-old that died alone on some forgotten stretch of road. It's her last chance at something resembling life. Maybe even love. [Love with a blue-eyed stranger.]

She just has to be that girl. That superhero girl.

Impossible.

Girl in the Dark is a YA urban fantasy, 80,000 words.

Thanks,


Notes

An occasional non-sentence is fine for effect. But. You have at least ten sentences with no verb. Annoying. Irritating. To me. I start wondering if the whole book is like that. Choppy. Like this. Is there anything wrong with:

Sure, Julie knows all about stacked heels, the best spring lip color, and how to tell the real Prada from a knock-off.

But she has no idea how to be a hero.

or:

She must succeed as a collector, or die--for real this time.


Why are the collectors called the collectors? What do they collect? Should "collectors" be capitalized?

We know very little about the story. Julie dies on a highway, and finds herself being mentored as a collector, someone devoted to stopping some "Darkness" that thrives on bloodshed. And there's a stranger. What little we know is vague. 

The Darkness wants to claim the earth as its own? What does that mean? What specific things has the Darkness done in this attempt to claim the earth? Has it killed three people? Has it caused a World War? Is it a visible entity or just a nebulous idea?

Her mentor seems to be throwing her to the wolves? What did her mentor do? We want specifics about the plot.

ZOMBIES!

The following "Guess the Plots" all appeared during the past year. But three of them turned out to be the actual plots of minions' novels. Can you remember which three?


1. Molly the mole is worried. There were enough predators out there even before all the humans became zombies. Because zombies are slow, they've taken to digging up prey. So Molly is building an army of moles to bash the zombie heads and make Earth safe for mole-kind.

2. Zombie mummy cats chase zombie mummy mice in Tutankhamen's tomb after an earthquake releases a spell from a sealed vase. Plus, a hapless archaeologist.

3. Emma comes home for her ten-year reunion, hoping to reconnect with her best friend, Rose. But she didn't count on Rose being a zombie queen who has turned all Emma's closest relations into flesh-eating undead who want Emma as their next snack.

4. Katie Holloway always signed her love letters to her hockey goalie fiance Malcolm Daley “Forever yours”. The words take on a new meaning when Malcolm dies in a freak Zamboni accident and is buried in the newly opened Eternal Springs cemetery where the residents don’t rest peacefully. Can Malcolm prove his undying love, or will Katie convince him once and for all that “forever” doesn’t mean spending the rest of her days as a zombie bride?

5. When his brother is killed, Ethan seeks revenge by unleashing an army of zombies on the nation's capital while a war between heaven and hell spills over into everyday life. Chaos ensues.

6. An attention-starved, cross-dressing zombie yearns to be human again, but to purge himself of his curse, he must convince the local pastor to let him enter purgatory. Will he agree to give up his tutu and heels?

7. It's the 70's, and the show is so "mod" that it's "groovy." It's...Soul Game! But Charley the Zombie, who could never get anything right, made the mistake of airing it opposite this "hip" new show called Soooooul Train.

8. The zombie apocalypse was supposed to be the stuff of blockbusters. So why does Jeff still need to report to his cubicle by eight to get brains on the table for his family? At least his zombified state makes the drudgery of data entry easier to bear. For him. For the reader, not so much.

9. Since she can remember, Sandra has wanted to be only one thing; a gravedigger. Sandra's parents are already horrified when she lands a dig-gig right after high school instead of going to college, but when she starts bringing her work home with her...

10. A zombie sidles into Tombstone with nary an idear the newspaper misspelled "ghoul" for "girl" in the help wanteds. He gets so upset he upchucks his last meal of brains and cream gravy, which the newspaper terms "White Erp" in its next edition ... and a legend is borned.

11. The hookers on Fremont's Wharf are all long dead. Some of them got their start lifting their hoopskirts for Civil War soldiers. But now some one is murdering them for real.

12. There's a war. People die. There's a plague. More people die. There's a smith and a doctor. They philosophize about life, do business, and die to the ZOMBIE HORDES!!!!!!

13. The residents of Darkmoon City are undead, and they don't want humans encroaching on their homeland. It's a territorial thing. Of course, when the person doing the encroaching is gorgeous, all bets are off. Also, an unemployed drummer.

14. Hitler, Napoleon, and Attila race chariots towards a row of exploding shopping carts where clones of zombie Marilyn Monroe line dance. More things explode. A sensitive monologue about the cost of explosions on the environment ensues. And things explode some more.

15. What's a witch to do when alien plant monsters invade, cats go on strike, and the town council condemns her condo? Create a better love potion with the help of an Egyptian zombie. Also, illicit fertilizer usage.



Answer below.



The actual plots are:


3, 5, and 13

Bidding Now Open!

 
Attention Minions:

Evil Editor is now up for bids in a charity auction to raise money for Hurricane Sandy relief.

The auction is at: http://www.publishinggivesback.blogspot.com.


BTW: The writer who won this item in the Brenda Novak auction this year has informed me that she has since gotten an agent. Yes, a highly reputable agent.

Don't let Evil Editor suffer the humiliation of not raising more money than all other contributors combined.

SATAN!

The following Guess the Plots have appeared since the last time we did a Satan quiz a few years ago. Four of them turned out to be the actual plots of minions' novels. Which four?


1. After Adam and Eve screw up, God replaces them with a more self-reliant pair. As Eden is overrun by rodent-spawn, God realizes He's just been conned . . . by Satan.

2. Mort Rimby, ace reporter, agrees to run a newspaper for Satan. But all Hell breaks loose when Mort discovers that Satan's wife Marge is the real power behind the pitchfork -- and Marge has the hots for Mort.

3. Wannabe artist Nigel was never as talented as his brother Simon. In desperation he cuts a deal with Satan, selling his soul in return for the ability to paint with the Devil's own oils. He begins work on a picture he knows will be a masterpiece, not realizing that he is about to unleash Armageddon.

4. First Maya goes to her husband's funeral, but there's no body in the casket. Then her new boyfriend turns out to be a rogue FBI agent hunting her "dead" husband, whose name "just happens" to be an anagram of Evil Satan. It's all par for the course in a town where . . . Nothing is what it seems.

5. Elke has always been unattractive, so when Satan offers to make her beautiful if she'll burn down a nunnery, she agrees. Hey, she's not even Catholic. But when she discovers that her long-lost twin sister is living in the nunnery, will she go through with the deal or try to con Satan into letting her renege?

6. Holy visions appearing in the sky. Miraculous cures. Global warming eliminated. Turns out, Satan's teenage daughter is going through a rebellious phase. But when her good deeds actually earn her a ticket to the Pearly Gates, can she win the cute angel's heart before Heaven changes its mind?

7. Evangeline is banished to hell for something she didn't do, as God screws up for the first time ever. There, she is nominated to become the next Satan. Hey, it's better than working at Starbucks.

8. After her terrible experiences with the first nine grades of sin, Gladys decides she's had enough and converts to atheism. But can she really get off that easy? Not if Satan has anything to say about it.

9. Despite having his own gallery in the best part of Manhattan, Satan's work isn't selling. He hires Jane Dumont to help with this marketing crisis, unaware she is an angel in disguise on a secret mission to inspire him to redeem himself.

10. Angel sees dead people. She thought they were ghosts, but it turns out what she's been seeing are demons, and they force her to choose eternal damnation in Satan's realm or insanity. Are the living conditions better in hell or an asylum?

11. When Hannah first meets her new college roommate, Giselle strikes her as a little odd. Nice enough, but a trifle . . . off. And that's before Hannah notices the horns, the tail, and the smoking cloven hoofprints that Giselle leaves on the carpet.

12. Executed serial killer Ed Parker Hull, awaiting his afterlife fate, finds both Satan and Adramelech vying for his soul. One he's never heard of, the other has a pretty bad reputation. Is it better to sign on with . . . The Devil You Know?

13. Michael wants to be one of the glamorous fashion designers he loves, so when Satan offers him a fashion line of his own in return for his soul, he jumps at the chance. He never thought Satan would stick him with a line of plus-size clothes for a cheap catalog catering to trailer park clientele. Is there any way to cut the thread?

14. When Jason attempts an escape from prison, he is hit by a runaway golf cart. In limbo he meets Satan who offers him a deal; eat seven people who embody the seven deadly sins, or rot with him in hell. Jason’s a vegan. Will he accept the deal or barter for a vegetarian alternative?

15. When Petunia's art teacher vanishes, she discovers he sold his soul to Satan 700 years ago for the ability to paint . . . and now he wants Petunia to trade her soul for his so he can get back to his studio.




Answer below.



The actual plots are:



4, 7, 10, 15

Publishing Gives Back

 
Attention Minions:

Evil Editor has offered his services as a prize in a charity auction to raise money for Hurricane Sandy relief.

The auction began today at: http://www.publishinggivesback.blogspot.com.

However EE's contribution doesn't go up for bids until tomorrow. At which time I expect all you guys to place some early bids so that all the wealthy people who never heard of EE will realize that this is the one auction item they simply MUST have, thus driving the price into the stratosphere.

Don't let Evil Editor suffer the humiliation of not raising more money than every other contributor.

Evil Editor Classics

Guess the Plot

Walk the Broken Road

1. It's not easy to get to Ambercross. Mostly because it's a fictional world created by author Casey Winter. But Casey's ex-husband has gotten there, and he's planning to destroy the place with C4 and Napalm. Which will pretty much ruin Casey's writing career. Also, a cannibal.

2. Isolated since 1917, when floods washed the road out, everyone in Ridgeville is paranoid of the Outside. But 14-year-old hillbilly genius Buddy Boone is determined to take his banjo to Nashville and embrace modernity. First he must invent an inflatable raft using pigskin glued with tree sap. Or maybe he'll just . . . walk the broken road.

3. Hunter Jones is on the verge of country music stardom with an album about growing up on a farm in Kentucky. Only one problem: Hunter is actually part of the British peerage. How long can he keep up the charade before that cute reporter digs up the truth?

4. Road worker Melanie is having a bad day. Her civil engineering degree hangs useless on the caravan wall as the sun blazes down on her. A bunch of drunk and disorderly giants have stolen all the road signs on route 43. And as Melanie fills another foot-shaped pothole, she fails to notice the spaceship descending toward her.

5. One day Josh oversleeps and wakes up to find zombies attacking the city. What's worse, his brain has already been eaten, yet somehow he's still walking around. Being dead feels great! He decides to help others find the same undead bliss he's discovered--while at the same time satisfying his craving for grey matter.

6. With Dorothy gone you'd think Oz had been set straight. But with her sisters out of the way, the good witch Glinda has become the wicked bitch of the South, and she's ruling Oz with an iron wand. Can the once-cowardly Lion convince the Scarecrow to stop waxing philosophic as he wanders the poppy-fields, and to drag Tinman away from crying over his tv-soaps and rusting himself, so they can finally free Oz from the last despotic witch-sister?


Original Version

Dear Evil Ed.,

Fantasy novelist Casey Winter isn’t a hero. She just writes about them. Jack, her violent ex-husband, is the famous pastor of a powerful mega-church and wants her to defend his abusive history on national television. [My husband abused me throughout our miserable marriage, Oprah, but I defend to the death his right to do so.] [He wants her to defend his abusive history? What does that mean? I can only guess that instead of "defend" you mean "disavow." Or maybe "forgive." Either way, if she does this on national television, won't that just call more attention to his abusive history? Is that what he wants? You wouldn't think a guy with a widely known abusive history would have enough parishioners to fill a mega-church.] [Unless . . . Is he a Baptist?] He attempts legal blackmail, threatening to seize her house if she doesn’t co-operate. [If they're divorced, surely the ownership of the house has been settled. If it's her house, how can he seize it?] [Also, if I were Jack, I would be seriously worried that Casey would go on national television and say, "Jack has threatened to seize my house if I don't disavow his abuse, but I can't lie, he brutalized me like Mike Tyson brutalizes his cellmate," and then pastor Jack loses whatever reputation he had. I'd feel safer buying her a new house in New Zealand than putting her on television.] When she contacts his former lawyer, [Why not contact his current lawyer? What's in it (whatever "it" is) for his former lawyer?] she receives a letter from a younger, saner Jack. He left Casey a set of magical paintings in the event of his death, and his artwork and letters lead to a startling discovery: her fictional world, Ambercross, is real and in need of her help. [You've lost me. If the paintings go to Casey when Jack dies, and he's still alive, how has his artwork led anywhere? Presumably she hasn't inherited it yet.] [Also, when your ex sends you a letter in which he claims to have a set of magical paintings that will take you to a fictional world, I doubt you'd think of him as "saner."] [Also, it's a little late in the query for such a radical turn of events. If your main character is a mermaid, reveal it up front.]

Her novel’s protagonist is framed for an attack on the King of the Faeries and can’t defend himself, as he’s currently stuck in the villain’s body. [Who's in the protagonist's body? The villain? Jack?] [Also, WTF?] The King is MIA. His temporary regent is in her ex’s employ and will gladly trade the treasury for a chance to turn humans into slaves (and the occasional snack). When the King’s attacker appears in Casey’s living room, she realizes fairy-tale bad-guys don’t wear Nikes or carry .45s. [That makes no logical sense. Well, it makes sense if what you mean is that Casey used to think fairy tale bad guys wore Nikes and carried .45s, but now that a fairy tale bad guy who's not wearing Nikes and not carrying a .45 has appeared before her, she realizes she's been wrong all these years; but what I think you mean is that someone claiming to be the fairy tale bad guy has appeared before her, except he's wearing Nikes and carrying a .45, so he can't possibly be the fairy tale bad guy, in which case you might tweak the sentence to read, When the King’s attacker appears in Casey’s living room, she quickly realizes he's an impostor--fairy-tale bad-guys don’t wear Nikes and carry .45s.] Pastor Jack’s on the prowl, and she’s the only one who can warn Ambercross before he introduces it to C4 and Napalm. And when Jack reveals that he’s actually the disembodied villain, Casey realizes she must fight for more than just her fiction. The fate of two worlds hangs on her choices, and whatever happens, it had better make one hell of a book.

WALK THE BROKEN ROAD is complete at just under 85,000 words. It is intended as the first of a trilogy. This is my first novel. I am a commercial baker in the trenches of a large grocery chain. I also do digital, fantasy themed artwork and have done several covers for a small press. Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,


Not part of query: (The title comes from the main theme of faith, and the MC's realization that no matter how nasty things get, she has to keep going.) [The title and its origin sound like literary fiction. The plot summary sounds more like Who Framed Roger Rabbit.]


Notes

The first paragraph is a bunch of random backstory plot threads about a woman whose violent ex-husband is making her life miserable. Then suddenly she's tasked with saving the king of the Faeries while saving humanity from cannibals. Or whatever. That may work in the book, but in the query it's a bit much. I'd base the query mainly in one world, starting:

Fantasy novelist Casey Winter isn’t a hero; she just writes about them. But that all changes when she discovers that her "fictional" world of Ambercross suddenly exists, and her despicable ex-husband Jack is plotting to blow it up.

The second paragraph is a list of the absurd things that are happening in Toon Town, but I think you can work some of that in without losing the main thread. Perhaps by finishing up something like:

This is not the Ambercross Casey created. Her protagonist is stuck in her villain’s body. The King of the faeries is MIA. And his temporary replacement is a cannibal working for Jack! She can't write her way out of this one; she's going to have to go to Ambercross if she wants to save her world . . . and her book.

In between those paragraphs you can have the character show up in Casey's living room to tell her what's happening in Ambercross (I assume that's how she finds out?).


Selected Comments

Anonymous said...One of the difficulties of writing query letters is the figuring how to best describe the story for clueless readers. You took on some major logic challenges and the real/false/real world thing is complicated.

With the query structured like this we fear the first 300 pages are all about coping with this domestic violence guy, then you make an abrupt excursion to Oz to solve things. It might all be brilliant in the book, but after reading this query we FEAR your plot was hijacked mid-story. We're afraid the manuscript reads like two half books of different genres.

Dorothy had domestic issues before she went to Oz, too, but they didn't take half the book. So maybe the query will work better if you barely mention the X and mostly tell about the rest of the story.


Angela Robbins said...i was thrown for a loop with this one. i agree, why would he want to dredge up a past that will only harm him, unless it's already come into light and he's wanting her to deny it.
ee's brought up some valid points that i think need taken into consideration not only with the query but the storyline as well.


arhooley said...What happened to the "younger, saner Jack"? Was he killed and his body possessed by the abusive pastor? Please un-dangle that thread.
Also:

The fate of two worlds hangs on her choices, and whatever happens, it had better make one hell of a book.

I get that Ambercross might end, but is the fate of our world hanging on her choices? If so, how? All Jack has is C4 and napalm. And why had it "better" make one hell of a book? Has her publisher told her one more midlist snoozefest and she's out?


M. G. E. said...Your bad-guy reads like "super-bad-guy." He has no redeeming qualities, he's one-dimensional:

He's an ex-husband, a hypocrite, a liar, a blackmailer, extortionist, a wife-beater(!), and now getting ready to commit mass literary murder by introducing explosives, etc.

In short, he's a cartoon. So, it's pretty good that you make him one by saying he basically came out of her mind.

But, my question is, how far are you taking this? Is the book actually about how Casey is quite literally insane and the final shot of the book is a pan away from her tied down, drooling, to a hospital bed?

This plot just isn't appealing to me -unless- it's actually about her struggle to regain her sanity and end the hallucinations. But if that's the real plot you can't leave that out of the query.


vkw said...Again, I think it's the query monster.

"So what's your story about?" the man asked in the elevator.

"Well it's about this woman who is a victim of domestic violence and her ex is still making her life miserable by trying to exploit her into making a national television appearance saying it didn't happen and he's. . . . wait, er the door's opening, don't you want to hear the plot?" the query monster says.

"Well I wanted to hear about the plot that's why I asked. But I'm sorry I don't have time to hear about the character." The man walks out of the elevator.

In the query we want to know the PLOT not the details of the characters.

Start with the plot, then tell us about the characters.

It's a story about an evil villian taking over a fairy tale world that was developed by an author in this world.

The villain does this in the fairy world by . . for the purpose of.

The author has to save the world by doing this.

Failure to solve the plot will result in . . . .


Adam Heine said...When you start with an abusive pastor blackmailing his wife, it makes it really hard for me to care about what happens to Fairyland. It doesn't help that I know nothing about the characters there.


AA said...Author: What M.G.E. said. I had a hard time believing Casey's books sell if she creates such unrealistic characters. Then again, I'm assuming Jack started out as a good guy or she wouldn't have married him. Unless she was abused as a child and this is part of the vicious cycle.

I, also, was confused about the former lawyer, and why a lawyer would betray his client's confidence, etc. Basically, none of this makes sense the way it's written.

You seem to have forgotten how to plot a story in writing this letter. The plot of this story would go something like this:

First, MC. Who she is and why we should care. Second, Villain introduction. Important choice MC must make, or goal she must achieve. Villain gets in the way of her achieving her goals how? MC then- what? Confronts and fights, hides and makes a plan, receives help from a magical source, another character intervenes, or what? Some instances described, leading to the final confrontation, and the ending.

Definitely leave out the part about this being your first novel, you being a baker, etc. All the agent wants is the word count and generic thank you.


Stephen Prosapio said...What they all said AND my normal rant about titles. Go to the bookstore. Read the titles there. Go to netflix. Read the titles there in your genre. Then dump "Walk the Broken Road" into the bin with "Wear the Smelly Shoes" "Sing the Discordant Song" and "Meet the Disgruntled Postal Worker"

rachel*_ said...I might try starting with the novel itself: Roger's the protagonist of an unfinished fantasy novel. He's been framed for murder, had his soul stuck in the villain's body, and been fed popcorn-flavored jelly beans. All this and he's got to beat a "humans make great snacks" sort of guy, the faery king.

Then the author's ex-husband shows up in the novel with C4 and napalm, planning to destroy the one thing Casey, the author, still loves. Things have gone from bad to worse--but if Casey and Roger team up, they might just win.


Joe G said...Um, for the record, I am actually intrigued by this book. There's a lot of imagination on display and I'm fond of outside of the box fantasy stories. I agree that it's a scatterbrained query but there's a story there. It sounds like a bizarre Murakami Haruki novel. I think E.E.'s got it right... you don't need to throw all the crazy at us at once.

"So and so is a popular fiction writer, the creator of Ambercross, who is being harrassed by her evil ex husband. But when she finds herself in the magical world she created..." etc.

But I like the combination of domestic issues with fantasy.


M. G. E. said...Well, at the least, the fantasy aspects should be frontloaded much more. They really take the reader by surprise in this query.

Evil Editor Classics

Guess the Plot

This Changed World

1. This morning it was sunny. This afternoon, it rained. How will mankind adapt to a world where water falls from the sky?

2. Vampires Gabriel and Michael move to the little city of Oskaloosa to harvest blood from the unsuspecting--only to find their home besieged by vampire-crazed teenagers. Maybe they should have stayed at that retirement home on Key West.

3. Only forty years ago, children would walk ten miles to school in the snow, uphill both ways, work 25 hours a day and be happy. Now they're always twittering and face-blogging on the interwebs. And they're miserable. Except the ones on Prozac.

4. Raised by an all-American war hero father he could never measure up to, Bill decides to make his own mark on the world: he travels to Tibet to murder a monk who's the key to everlasting world peace.

5. At 43, Jack Skellar finds his world turned upside down. His teenaged daughter has shaved her head and his son wants a pet anteater. All becomes clear when Jack is beamed up to a UFO and told that he's going back to his home planet -- Earth!

6. Priscilla Denby time-travels from Victorian England to modern-day Manhattan and finds herself in a sex club. She's shocked by what she sees, but even more shocked to discover that she's the one lady every guy--and woman--in the place wants to hook up with.


Original Version

Dear Agent,

By the time Bill realized he should have let the boy die that day in Chengdu, Sichuan, instead of jumping in with CPR, it was too late. [For the boy was already alive.] The world changed the day he breathed life and pounded a pulse back into the still body. Natural disasters hit at an all time high. Bill's personal disasters ran a close second. The chain of calamities started when Bill interferred [interfered] and saved a life that wasn't meant to continue. [I don't see how he can make a connection between saving a life and an increase in natural disasters. It's like Evil Editor saying, "Man, there've been two floods, a tsunami, a disastrous hurricane and three earthquakes in the past decade; I never should have rejected that guy's manuscript in 1999."]

Bill decides to find the boy and when [he] does he's going to kill him. Not sure if he's crazy or right, [Traveling from the US to Tibet to murder a 14-year-old boy: crazy or right? Crazy or right? I'm just not sure.] Bill ends up face to face with the boy in Tibet where Bill is forced to rethink his decision. It's hard to murder a fourteen year old [but if it might solve your personal problems, it's worth it]. It is harder when he is a novitiate monk, lives in a temple and he could be the world's conduit to enlightenment and the peace it will bring - if you buy into the hype the kid's generated. [In other words, murdering a 14-year-old is a lot easier if it's an eighth-grade girl who spends too much time on the phone?] The government, not fond of mass hysteria over any charismatic personality, doesn't believe the boy should live either. [But their armies have been thwarted in every attempt to murder him.] Bill's choices become much harder as he comes to know this simplistic boy. [The first rule of being a professional hitman: Don't spend a lot of time getting to know your target.]

Bill, raised in an all American home with a real war hero for a father who raised his 8 kids in his Voodoo religion, [I'm not sure I'd describe a home in which the father and eight kids practice the Voodoo religion as all-American.] [Bill could have saved a lot of time and money by staying home and sticking pins in a Tibetan monk doll.] has a few things to learn about the circle of life from the youngster he came to kill. [The circle of life? Isn't that where the wildebeest eats the grass and the lion eats the wildebeest and the lion dies from e coli and the insects eat the lion and the bird eats the insects and the crocodile eats the bird and . . . the wildebeest eats the crocodile? Wait, where'd I go wrong?]

This Changed World is complete at 60,000 words and I'm seeking representation.

Thank you for the time you took reading my query.

Sincerely,


Notes

We need to know why, out of the billions of things that happened right before the disasters started, Bill decides that his CPR incident is the one that's responsible.

Leave the Voodoo out of the query. It makes the story sound even nuttier.

So your novel attempts to solve the age-old moral dilemma: Is it better to have world peace with frequent natural disasters, or to be at war with occasional natural disasters?


Selected Comments

Bibi said...Dear Evil, So sorry for the spelling mistake. You make me laug and my hart sign. (Joke!) Grand coments. Thanks, oh Evilness,


Adam Heine said...I actually really like this story idea and the voice of the query. But yeah, EE's comments are spot freaking on.


Bibi said...Just an aside here - the guy, MC Bill didn't travel from the US to save the kid. He was already in China (and had been for years) when he saved the kid in Chengdu. He was working there and came across a comtose/dead kid - no pulse. He did cpr. To this day he regrets it. This is a true story, maybe I haven't done it justice.


vkw said...This is a true story? An American, voodoo practioner, saves the life of a kid who becomes a peace leader? The American determines that saving this kid has resulted in natural disasters and personal problems. So, he therefore, decides to kill the child.

Conclusion:

The American is a paranoid personality disorder with psychosis and ends up checking himself into the state psychiatric hospital after a long philisophical discussion with a child.

Wait: That's crazy. A paranoid personality disorder would never do anything rational after a discussion with the person he thinks is the cause of his problems. He would kill the kid. No need to have a discussion and certainly would not "get to know the kid" unless it was for the purpose of finding more evidence to support his delusions, which he will do.


150 said...Like Adam, I'm actually a little intrigued, but that's despite the query letter, not because of it. Try again according to EE's suggestions and with a clearer sense of cause and effect. This has a fairly high concept but I'm not yet convinced the story lives up to it.

Mother (Re)produces. said...I found the beginning of the query repetitive. We are told a couple of times in different ways that he saved a kid he should have let die. The jump from saving the kid to trying to kill the kid needs to be explained, as EE said, but I'm intrigued by the query all the same.


arhooley said...Author, Bill travels from far away to reach Tibet to kill the kid though, right?

A few commenters are doing a good job of diagnosing Bill. If you still need convincing as to how nutty this comes off, here's my version of your query:

Raised in an all-American voodoo household, Bill knows why he's had nothing but bad dates and IRS audits while the earth has been plagued with earthquakes, floods, and global warming: years earlier, Bill saved the life of the wrong boy in Chengdu, China. Bill knows there is only one way to rectify this mistake, so he resolves to track the boy down and kill him.

By the time Bill catches up to the boy, he has moved to Tibet, become Krishnamurti, and attracted the hostility of the Chinese Communist Party. Krishnamurti explains to Bill that earthquakes, floods, and fires are necessary to make room on the earth for more people to be born. This has never occurred to Bill. Now he's not sure whether to proceed with his murder plans.


Bibi said...Thanks all. I missed the mark, but I'm learning. The true part is after saving a kid's life the guy's life went into the loo personally and several world disasters happened. We were "what if-ing" a couple of years later and bang - there was the story. Appreciate the comments so much. Retreat and revise. Valuable input. Thanks for the help.


arhooley said...Whoa, Bibi. Now you're describing something I could get into. A guy who's had a crazy upbringing -- seven siblings and Voodoo Veteran dad -- is going through a series of personal disasters. His thoughts wander to the headlines -- floods, fires, earthquakes! A little math, a dash of chaos theory, maybe some really good hash, and our hero winds up on a quest to this junior Dalai Lama . . . not to consult him, but to kill him! And heck, it turns out the kid can relate.

It sounds to me like a great twist on the trip to The Wise One, if this is what you've done.


Anenome said...No, no. He was trying to say that Bill traded his all-American up-bringing for living in the house of the Tibetan he's now trying to kill, a Tibetan who's now raising his own kids in a voodoo religion, and that Bill is trying to fit in with them.

Although, characterizing Tibetan Buddhism as "voodoo" isn't exactly nice :P

What I don't like about the story is that it's the causal fallacy in story form. Saving a life simply cannot cause natural disasters.

And if it's really a character-study of a guy who's actually sick in the head it should probably be presented that way.

You know what, one night I broke up with my girlfriend, the next day was September 11, 2001. Doesn't mean the world was coming to an end just because we broke up... or does it :P

Well, it does mean no one asked me why I looked sad and mopey for the next month :P They all thought they knew. It was a completely invisible break-up :P


Bibi said...Arlhooely: Great re-write. Thanks. Your second comment, you got it.

Anonenome: "characterizing Tibetan Buddhism as "voodoo" isn't exactly nice." I didn't do that, promise, honest. Where did I write that? How did that come across? (I know my query sucks.)And maybe... who knows.

Mother: Thanks, I know I am repetitive. Would I like to kill that. It's like I don't see what I've written. Appreciate you pointing it out. Have to work on it.

150: As always, hit me on the head with your hammer- in a good way. Thanks.
Yup, gonna do what Evil says - Evil, the voodoo thing seemed to turn a few cranks. I will obey our dear King, but I'm getting interest in the voodoo. So let's smear ourselves in chicken blood and dance naked around the fire. Okay?
Best, thanks for reading my cruddy query and commenting, Bibi


Joe G said...I understood the story, but I'm generally in the camp that a confusing query letter filled with awkward English will accurately reflect the novel itself.

You seem to have, really, written a philosophical novel. As I found the ideas in your query disconnected, I imagine the novel is much the same way. I'm not sure this idea is fully realized yet, or that you've polished your skills enough to write a novel. A query should give me confidence that the book will be well written and the ideas in it will be clear and have internal logic.

I think this is why people are criticizing your hero as seeming nutty, when it's clear that while others in the story may see him as nutty, the reader should be able to see that he is really the only person seeing truth. Internal logic is everything.


mb said...Bibi -- it's not so cruddy, just needs polishing. I also think this has the germ of an intriguing idea. Just see if you can get to the heart of it and maybe make it clearer (in a few words) what Bill's thought process is here. It's not so far off.


batgirl said...Bibi, keep your dictionary handy while revising this. For instance, 'simplistic' is not the word you want, if you mean something like divine innocence.
I hope that doesn't sound insulting. I keep a Pocket Oxford Dictionary beside my laptop so I can doublecheck words I'm unsure of.