Feedback Request

The author of the book featured most recently here would like feedback on this new version of the query:


Three years ago the alien took Parker Rhodes's father away from him, though Parker didn’t know it at the time. “He died during an important mission overseas” was the lie the Government told Parker and his mother, Dorothy Rhodes. But now the alien has returned, and before the day is over Parker will learn the truth.

Parker had just had the worst day of his 13 year old life, and that was a huge understatement. [There's no way that's an understatement. It's either exactly correct or it's an exaggeration.] As if the alien invasion that wiped out his home town of Wakesville, MD wasn’t enough, he had been chased by aliens, in a car accident, almost killed a half a dozen times and shot, and those were just the things he remembered (being knocked unconscious three times in one day plays tricks with a kids [kid's] memory). [Items on your list should have parallel construction. As you use past-tense verbs (chased, killed, shot) in the other items, add a past-tense verb (injured? involved?) to "in an accident."]

The day didn’t start out bad; in fact it started out pretty awesome, [period.] Parker had just been accepted into the most prestigious high school in Wakesville, he had actually held a conversation with Danielle Rochester, the girl of his dreams, without looking like a total dweeb and his mom had bought him the soccer cleats he had been wanting since forever when she heard the news about his acceptance. [One list per query is plenty. If you want us to think he's had a horrible day, don't provide evidence to the contrary.] But then the day took a nose dive when he turned on the TV and saw the alien that had crashed on earth three years ago, uniting mankind to fix its ship and left earth as a celebrity had returned. [Terrible sentence. The longer you make a sentence, the more chance you have of losing your way.] The alien, named “The Omega” by humans because of a pendent it wore shaped like an omega symbol, [Lucky for him he didn't wear his other pendant, the one shaped like a penis.] was talking about finding earth, which it called “The Seed”, and how the discovery was going to change the course of the Universe. [You've now provided the approximate amount of information a query's plot summary should have. And it appears we're only half through.] The Seed was a planet of legend and is believed to have the ability to revitalize the Universe [Inconceivable that someone besides us thinks Earth is an important planet.] into its former glory by sharing its resources with other planets and bringing those planets back to “life” but there was only one issue, humans. They seemed to be destroying the resources of the Seed and paid little attention to the other planets in the Universe in need of restoration, [How thoughtless of us not to preserve our resources for planets in other galaxies.] so the Omega felt its only course of action is to eliminate humans from the earth. It drove this point home by assassinating the Vice President, [As there've been a couple dozen assassination attempts on presidents, four of them successful, while no vice president has been assassinated, the Omega figured killing the vice president must be much more difficult and thus much more impressive.] detonating a bomb that whipped [wiped] out Wakesville, MD and releasing an army of seemingly invulnerable dog like creatures to wipe out all humans slowly, as to not cause too much damage to the planet. [If you're going to release creatures that will wipe out all humans, what's the point of first bombing Wakesville, Maryland? Just release the creatures in Wakesville.] 

Luckily, Parker and his mother survived the blast, [It wiped out the whole town, except for Parker and Dorothy?] though Dorothy was knocked unconscious leaving Parker to find transportation to get him and his mother to safety. [Luckily he's able to summon a car using the Uber app.] During his search he meets a fearless boy no older than 5 years old, dressed in a cowboy outfit and in search of his own parents named Billy. [Both of his parents are named Billy?] The two boys soon became threated [threatened] by one of the alien creatures and in an act of defiance [defense?] Billy shot at the creature with his toy six shooter killing it, inadvertently discovering the aliens’ weakness, the plasticizer phthalate. [Why was that sentence in past tense?] The boys meet with General Carter, President Maria Martinez [A woman president? You expect anyone to buy that?] and a few army soldiers recovering from a failed attack on the alien and held [holed] up in a secret base. With the information learned from Parker and Billy on how to stop the aliens for good, the Military personnel, along with the President, [No need to capitalize "military" or "president." "Or vice president" or "universe" or "government."] formulate a plan to take the invaders down. [They equip the entire military with toy guns.] Parker, focused on getting [back] his mother, Dorothy Rhodes, back [No need to tell us her name again.] who had gone missing, sneaks a ride to the alien ship hoping his mother had been taken hostage there. Once in the ship the military men fight the remaining aliens [Are these aliens like the Omega or aliens like the dog-like creatures? Is the Omega vulnerable to toy guns?] while Parker searches the ship and soon finds himself in the middle of the gun battle. He is hit by a stray bullet that had passed through the Omega, the mixture of the Omegas blood with his own gives him the same incredible speed and strength that was displayed by the Omega. With these new powers Parker is able to defeat the Omega and send it fleeing off the planet, but not before reveling [revealing] it had something to do with the death of Parkers [Parker's] dad. [The Omega tries to kill us all, and we send it fleeing instead of capturing or killing it?]

This 60,000 word book is complete and ready for your review. I would be delighted to send it to you.

Best regards


Notes

When I said we wanted to know what happens in your book, I didn't mean everything that happens. You've got to condense this into about ten sentences, and I don't mean sentences as long as the first one in paragraph 3.

The story is how Parker saves us all from the alien. Everything up until he goes after the Omega is the setup, and you get one three-sentence paragraph for that. Something like:

Thirteen-year-old Parker Rhodes learns that the alien who kidnapped his father three years ago has returned to Earth and released invincible dog-like creatures that will eventually kill all humans. Parker swings into action, teaming up with Billy, a five-year-old boy in a cowboy outfit. Turns out Billy's toy six shooter contains the plasticizer phthalate, which happens to be the creatures’ weakness. 

Now you can tell us how we plan to defeat the Omega and what goes wrong, and what will happen if we fail again.

This switches between present and past tenses too much, sometimes within the same sentence. When in doubt, use present.

It's also riddled with errors. No agent or editor is going to want to read a manuscript full of errors in grammar, punctuation, and spelling. We have no reason to think your manuscript doesn't have just as many errors on every page as your query has. In fact, since your query is the key to getting requests for the manuscript, and thus has been proofread numerous times, I would expect the manuscript, which you probably proofread only a couple times, to have an even greater density of errors.