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Guess the Plot

Wild Domain

1. Someone has hacked into St. Eustasian's website and Sister Cecilia is determined to uncover the perpetrator. When she learns that Sister Vivian is the culprit, and that on-line porn sales are paying for the school's new boiler, will she try to shut down The Wild Domain? Or should the money be put into pension accounts for retired nuns?

2. Aunt Rosaspina is at war with the wild spirits that inhabit her house, so she hires her niece, Amanda, to install spot lighting and patio doors, hoping that will eradicate the spirits.

3. Zombie alligators crawl from their swamps to the subways of New York, consuming everyone in their path. They're the minions of Dr. Hannah Wild. She's taking over the world. Meanwhile, a daring team of meteorologists and astronauts struggle to bring a great blizzard from Winnipeg that will turn the monsters to ice.

4. Net entrepeneur Carl DiSalvo can handle anything: hackers, IT geeks, cybersquatters. But can he handle Shandra Teagle, the fiery redhead assistant he just hired?

5. The world's greatest chess player, Guido Goldberg, is also a sumo wrestler. When his plane crashes in the most remote Amazon, he has only a crazy terrorist for company -- Judy Green, the notorious Luddite. Will it be soon be checkmate, baby? Or will these bitter enemies unite for survival? Also, a curare frog and piranhas.

6. Paul and Mary Bland, a nondescript couple in the plain-jane village of Under-Whickersham, invent a surprisingly good Bland Omelet with local cheese and free range eggs. In order to bring this omelet to the world through the Internet they must battle with the Sorcerer of the Wild Domain, the blandest villain of them all.


Original Version

Dear Evil Editor,

I would like to submit my 75,000-word fantasy novel, WILD DOMAIN, for your consideration.

Single mother Amanda has come to deepest Suffolk [Deepest? It sounds mysterious, like darkest Africa, but really, how deep into Suffolk can you go before you're out of Suffolk?] to renovate an old house for her Aunt Rosaspina. It's the perfect way to escape from her domineering parents, earn some money, and keep an eye on her daughter Minette during the summer holidays. [I'm not sure I agree that the perfect way to keep an eye on your kid is to renovate a house. I wouldn't be surprised if the kid vanished.]

At first the building work goes almost too well. Amanda is able to ignore Minette's strange tales of ghosts in the attic and a gardener who isn't supposed to exist. But Aunt Rosaspina keeps putting off her arrival. She won't say why, but Amanda hears a threatening voice in the background on the phone - a voice that doesn't sound human. [I get that voice all the time. It says, "Hello. I'm trying to contact . . . " Then another voice says, "Mildred Dunham." Then the first voice comes back and says, " . . . about an important business matter." Then they tell me to call them. I have no idea who Mildred Dunham is, but I agree that the voices aren't human.] Then Minette, playing hide and seek, climbs into one of the new kitchen cupboards, shuts the door, and vanishes. [Toldja.] The police say she must have wandered off, but Amanda knows something far stranger has hapened.

She learns that the house is home to a family of wild spirits with whom Aunt Rosaspina is at war. [How does she learn this?] By employing Amanda to destroy the house's magical features by putting in spot lighting and patio doors, Aunt Rosaspina hopes to eradicate the spirits, but she hasn't told Amanda any of the rules.

Fighting to get Minette back, Amanda tries to outwit the hostile spirits in a game where every move changes reality for ever. But this conflict isn't black and white, and Amanda can't tell which side she ought to be on. What is Aunt Rosaspina really fighting for, and should she be allowed to succeed? And if she doesn't, can Amanda ever get her daughter back?

The full manuscript is available upon request. Thank you for your time.

Yours sincerely,


Notes

Renovating an old house sounds like a big job for a single mother to take on during her daughter's summer vacation, especially as she's doing this in part to earn some money, which suggests she's not in the business of renovating old houses.

Not clear why spot lighting and patio doors would eradicate spirits. If you don't want to explain that in the query, you might just say that she hopes modernizing the place will drive the spirits elsewhere.

Otherwise, I thought this was well done. Though I wouldn't mind a hint of what is meant by "a game where every move changes reality." That may be what separates this from other haunted house stories.