Face-Lift 1061

Guess the Plot

The Waking Mountain

1. Returning from a tour in Afghanistan, John Pratt discovers that his Appalachian home has been overrun by Yankee backpackers. Can he shame his kinfolk into spurning the tourist dollar, and reawaken them to the way of the mountain? 

2. Volcanologist Dr. Autumn Brown is doing a survey on Mt. Ranier when she discovers the horrible truth: a catastrophic eruption is only days away. Can she alert Seattle and Tacoma so they can be evacuated without mass panic, or will those idiot hackers broadcast the information first, killing thousands in the ensuing panic?

3. Chronic sleep-in Matt is always late for school. His parents have tried nearly everything: loud alarm clock, rooster chorus, baby Mary shouting in his ear... nothing works. Their last resort is hiring the services of The Waking Mountain. Will its thunderous bellows help Matt's attendance records? 

4. Swept away by strong currents, Querrl is finally rescued by soldiers. She is raised in her new home, but eventually longs to go home. However, a nearby volcano is about to erupt. Even if she knew how to swim, which she doesn't, swimming through molten lava probably wouldn't be a good idea.

5. Unaware she is the daughter of Vulcan and Venus, failing geology student Latasha Minsk hopes to redeem herself on the class field trip to Mt. St. Helens, but once again, her interest in pillow lava is totally eclipsed by the abs of hunky Joe Mars. They sneak off to make out on the flanks of the volcano and eruptions ensue. 

6. In 1995, soon after marrying 700 pound chess champ Wayne Forbush, Linda took up hypnotism and tried it on Wayne. He kept snoring in a trance and didn't wake up for 23 years. Now he calls himself The Mountain, and thinks he's a superhero who smites Martians, but there aren't any -- until a giant spaceship lands behind the shed!

7. Volcanologist Clair Wentworth visits her friend Jim Urban, who runs the seismographic station on Saba, a volcanic island in the Lesser Antilles. After her arrival, the island is hit with a 6.9 earthquake that destroys the runway. The next morning, the dormant volcano begins to smoke. With no ships in the harbor, a thousand people are at the mercy of nature, and it's up to Jim and Clair to save them.

Original Version

Dear Evil Editor,

Querrl is a girl that can't swim, judged useless by a people that raise their infants underwater. [If I'm an infant and they want to raise me underwater, swimming is the least of my concerns. Breathing is gonna top the list.] She thinks she has it bad. But when she ventures away from home to be fostered, [Not clear to me what that means. She's looking for a foster family on her own? Her own family doesn't want her? How old is she?] an accident sweeps her downstream to a distant civilization. [Actually, it's probably the current that sweeps her downstream.]

When the soldiers drag her from the river, she is mistaken for a drudge, the sterile caste, and lumped in with a group of Ehillen war orphans. [In an orphanage? Gulag? Prison?] Querrl grows to adulthood under the thumb of the conquering Julagnan. [I think I'm safe in saying that if you want anyone to read beyond this point, you need to remove the words Ehillen and Julagnan from the query.] She learns of things her own culture never invented: writing, math, [daycare,] engineering, and powerful guns able to kill at a distance.

Querrl wants to return home, but there is no shortcut past the war between the Julagnan and Ehillen. The Julagnan military offers her an education, so she enlists. But she never forgets that only the Ehillen stand between the Julagnan and her homeland, [Geographically? Militarily? Metaphorically?] or that if Querrl's true caste is found out, her dreams of bringing engineering back to her people will never be realized. [If she can bring them the plans to build a submarine, they won't think she's useless just because she can't swim.] [By the way, did anyone ever try teaching her to swim?] Females are the rarest of the three castes, and the Julagnan imprison all they find. [Are you saying they can't tell she's a female?] [If all the females are in prison, I'll bet there's a waiting list for the job of prison guard.]

Worse, an ancient volcano that once nearly exterminated both the Ehillen and Julagnan may be about to return. [Return? You mean erupt. And change "may be" to "is." If you name your book The Waking Mountain, and it sleeps through the whole book, you're gonna have a lot of pissed-off readers.] Querrl must find a way back to her family, conceal her true caste until then, and decide whose side she is on without getting herself killed or compromising her principles. [What are these principles she won't compromise?]

"The Waking Mountain" is a work of science fiction complete at 110,000 words. [Science fiction? Do space aliens emerge from the volcano?]

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Notes

Were you writing your query when you came up with the name Querrl?

There's too much unnecessary information. Here's what we need:

Six-year-old Querrl, playing by the river, falls in and is swept away. Eventually she's pulled from the water by Julagnan soldiers and sent to a Junior Julag with other war orphans. There she is raised and taught about things her own culture never invented: writing, math, engineering...

As Querrl grows to adulthood she yearns to return to her home with her new-found knowledge. But travel is dangerous, not only because the Julagnans are at war, but because an ancient volcano that once nearly exterminated the Julagnans shows signs of an imminent eruption.


Now you have room for a paragraph about what happens when Q works up the courage to make her move.