Face-Lift 187

Guess the Plot

Madame Hands and the Matter of Will

1. Elizabeth Hands eyed the pastries as tears stung her eyes. She'd only been on Jennie Craig for a week, and already the temptation was too much.

2. When Will walks into Madame Hands's antique store, she feels a connection too powerful to resist. She simply must read him.

3. Einstein's longtime masseuse accidentally applies the genius's relativity theory, turning her son, Will, into pure energy.

4. Consulting detective Shirley Hands solves crimes with her sidekick, Dr. Johnson. When villain Will Hannity kidnaps the doctor, only Madame Hands's keen powers of observation can locate the missing Johnson.

5. Lucretia eyed young Shakespeare and loosened her bodice. A handsome bit, he was, and they didn't call her Madame Hands for nothing.

6. When Duyen opened her Oriental Massage Parlor, she took the name of Madame Hands. But a surprise visit from her eight-year-old nephew, Will, has her re-evaluating her life.


Original Version

Dear Evil Editor,

Please consider my mainstream suspense novel, Madame Hands and the Matter of Will (90,000 words), for representation.

Madame Hands is an antique dealer named Teresa Fetter who conducts psychic counseling sessions on the side [The spirits advise you to purchase a colonial-period maple sideboard today.] in her small Kentucky town. After years of giving the same basic advice to the same handful of clients, [Invest in antiques.] Teresa has grown bored and cynical—until the day a distraught young man walks into her store and asks for a reading. When he opens his hands on her counter, she feels a psychic connection so strong she can't resist. [Can this be the long-lost Monsieur Hands?] She agrees to read him the next evening. [Is that the right terminology? It sounds almost sexy. Drop on by tomorrow night, sweetie . . . I'll read you.]

The young man, Will, turns out to be the son of a former client, [Do psychics call their customers "clients?" I thought they called them "suckers."] [Maybe this is nitpicking, but I've never liked "turns out to be" in this situation. Einstein flunked math, but later turned out to be a genius. But Will was already the son of a former client when he came in. "Proves to be" is better, though I'm not sure what's wrong with "is."] and the pivot[al] event of his life is [was] the night Teresa last counseled his mother. Over the next twenty-four hours, as Teresa uses her tools of research to prepare for Will's reading, [Are psychics still using Tarot cards and tea leaves, or do they now have machines you stick your hand inside and it reads you, like a miniature CAT scan machine?] she discovers she may have played a role in the violent and heart-breaking events of his life. Will, then a teen, misinterpreted the reading and in a violent rage defended his mother against his abusive stepfather. The act put the man into a coma and prompted his mother to betray him. [Prompted whose mother to betray whom?] Still haunted by his own hands eight years later, Will has returned to the source to try to make sense of his guilt and find a way to move forward. [Not clear what the problem is. Was the stepfather abusive? If so, what was Madame Hands's advice to Will's mother, and how was it misinterpreted?]

Told in alternating points of view between the two main characters, Madame Hands and the Story of Will [The Story of Will? I thought it was the Matter of Will. A shorter title would be easier to memorize, say, The Reading.] reads like a mystery while it explores the issues of fate, choice, and the human drive to connect.

I received an MFA from George Mason University and have published in a variety of places. A few sample pages are enclosed along with a self-addressed stamped envelope. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,


Notes

This isn't bad. If you clear up the questions, it'll be fine.

I like Madame Hands in the title, but The Matter of Will is awkward and boring.