Feedback Request

Dear Evil Editor,

Please post this new attempt at Face-Lift 1219 for you and your minions. I have taken your comments to heart and continue struggling to improve this query. Hopefully, this latest attempt is closer to the right path.


Dustin Leahry watched the four men on horseback, knowing they’d reach for their guns. His knack for finding trouble that wasn't his own had him facing death again. Usually it took more than twenty-four hours for the stakes to raise this high. But he knew Shelly Cartwright was trouble of the special kind when he first laid eyes on her. [As I recall, the trouble is of the special kind because her land is the last that Benson doesn't own,  not because of what she looks like.] [Change "raise" to "rise" or "get."] [This is reading like an excerpt from the book, possibly the opening lines of the book. We want a summary of the story, not just one scene.]

Shelly hired Dustin the night before, bringing the number of men working her ranch to ten. Ten men working a thirty-thousand acre spread was hard enough. [So each of the men has to work 3000 acres?It takes my four lawn guys about an hour to work my one-acre spread. Which means they could work forty acres in a forty-hour week. That works out to ten acres per man. Either mowing and weed-eating my lawn is a lot more time-consuming than rounding up stray cattle and repairing fences on 3000 acres, or I'm not working my lawn guys hard enough.] [For those who've forgotten their land conversion rates, 30,000 acres is larger than the Bronx, which has a population of 1.3 million. On the other hand, the Cartwright ranch on Bonanza was over 600,000 acres, and worked by only four guys (unless you include Hop Sing). When you added a greedy land baron like August Benson into the mix it became downright dangerous.

Shelly grew up watching her dad’s former friend take control of the ranches of Tom Greene County. Now he had his sights on the Cartwright spread.

Shelly stood tall after her dad died and her mom ran off to the big cities back East. She tightened her belt when she couldn't afford the over-priced goods in Benson’s stores. She worked side-by-side with her men to repair the damage done by his desperadoes. Determined, she’d managed to survive longer than other West Texas ranchers against the scheming of August Benson.

Despite what she’d accomplished, Dustin knew Shelly wasn’t ready to see her men killed by August Benson’s hired guns. So he drew his gun before the men on horseback reached for theirs.

Drifter: San Angelo Showdown, is set in 1885 Texas and approximately 118,000 words.

Thank you for your time and consideration.


Notes

Basically, you've taken part of one brief scene from the book and inserted some backstory.

Here's a tried and true format for a query:

Paragraph 1: The setup. Introduce the main character and tell us what his situation is when things start happening. For instance...

When drifter Dustin Leahry takes a job working on Shelly Cartwright's West-Texas ranch, he has no idea that twenty-four hours later he'll be facing down four gunman. The year is 1885, and Shelly is the county's last holdout against August Benson's land-grabbing scheme. Benson's gunslingers are there to intimidate Shelly into selling . . . or to drive her out by force.

Paragraph 2: The plot. How do the Cartwrights plan to hold out? Why is Dustin still hanging around? Where does their plan go awry? What's plan B? Are they in love already? What happens next?

Paragraph 3: The climax. Everything comes to a head. What happens if Dustin and Shelly fail? Succeed? What crucial difficult choice will make or break the ranch? Are you planning Drifter: Oklahoma City Showdown, or do Leahry and Shelly settle down?

Then the usual wrap-up, with the title, word count, genre.