Not Another Child
1. Police officer Janice is supposed to help bring down a serial killer of pedophiles, but she's torn. Sure, a commendation would be nice, but if she holds off a few weeks on capturing the killer, he'll have time to send a few more abusers to hell. Maybe it's time to go on vacation.
2. Ogard is a troll and Malfeasia, his wife, is the wicked witch of the forest. Ogard comes home late on a Friday as Mallie is stuffing one of the neighbor's boys into the oven. Ogard attacks her and she casts spells in all directions. Several forest folk die in the chaos. But prosecutors take Mallie's side and send Ogard to the slammer where he becomes the star linebacker on the prison football team.
3. When Clarissa's daughter is murdered, she starts the Not Another Child foundation. Donations pour in. When her daughter comes home, very much alive, will she announce the good news--or make sure the donations don't stop?
4. Nineteen kids, and counting. Nineteen! Sure, the TV show money helps pay some of the bills, but do you have any idea how much these kids eat? I can't even remember half their friggin' names. I swear, if he comes near me with that thing again, I'm cutting it off. Well ... maybe one more.
5. When a two-month-old infant is left on a pawn broker's doorstep, the over 5,000 members of the American Pawnbrokers' Association decide to raise this one as their own. Now Faust must prove he's the baby's daddy before Lucifer finds out he's got competition in the used souls market.
6. Youtube was made for movie trailers, instructions on making the MS Word bullets and numbering feature work, and Russian hood-cam footage, not your "cute" baby videos. A hard-hitting, wide-ranging look at the explosion of sickening terabytes of giggling kids, fighting kids, singing kids, etc. that is slowly destroying the Internet.
7. After hearing that his wife would like to have another child to add to their twenty children, Dillon goes to outlandish lengths to avoid both his wife and the wedding bed.
8. This nonfiction expose of the U.S. educational system comprises a series of first-person accounts of elementary school teachers. It focuses on the growth of average classroom size from 2 children per classroom in 1900 to an anticipated 67 in 2020, and the heretofore undocumented stress this uncontrollable increase has on teachers.
Original Version
Dear Agent,
I would like to submit my thriller novel, NOT ANOTHER CHILD, complete at 84,000 words for your consideration. It is the story of Canadian Police Officer, [No need to capitalize a person's occupation. True, I capitalize "Editor," but that's because it's my last name.] Janice [Jones?], who is assigned to a task force to hunt down and capture a killer. The killer has targeted a well-documented and abhorrent pedophile as he is released from prison. Evidence points to someone in the justice system and the kill rate is growing. [This isn't clear. Are you saying a serial killer who's been killing at an ever-increasing rate has declared his/her intention to kill a specific pedophile as he is released from prison? Or are you saying someone killed a pedophile as he was being released from prison, and that killer has since gone on to kill more people? Seems a bit stupid to announce the time and place of your next murder, so I'd normally assume the latter. But the tense of the 3rd sentence (has targeted as he is released, rather than targeted as he was released) suggests the opposite.] [I'd be interested to know if the other murder victims were also pedophiles.]
Abused as a child, Janice has overcome the trauma but it has left its mark. [In fact, it's left quite a few marks.] She is obsessed with stopping the abuse of children. She has always believed in the Law but admits that the killer’s solution is more decisive and permanent. The abuse victims never have to worry about a repeat assault. When the killer leaves Janice a note with the latest victim, Janice realizes that the killer is close to her. [Geographically close, or it's someone she knows? What's in the note?] She will need to keep her head on a swivel, to figure who she can trust and where the killer will strike next. [Keeping her head on a swivel might keep the killer from sneaking up on her, but I don't see how it will tell her whom to trust or where the killer will strike next.]
Recently retired as a Deputy Fire Chief, I have experience with PTSD, multi-agency task forces, arson investigations and Coroner’s Inquests and have drawn on this experience to develop my story.
Thank you for your time and consideration,
Notes
A lot of setup, but not much plot.
Not sure if this is your story, but . . .
Canadian police officer Janice Jones is assigned to a task force hunting a serial killer who, thus far, has targeted only pedophiles. A victim herself, Janice is obsessed with stopping the abuse of children. She has always believed in the Law but admits that the killer’s solution is more decisive and permanent.
When the killer leaves Janice a note with the latest victim, a note referencing Janice's childhood trauma, she realizes she may be dealing with someone she knows, possibly someone in the justice system.
That leaves you plenty of room to tell us how Janice plans to capture the killer, what goes wrong, what will happen if plan B fails, how she deals with her dilemma.
If that isn't your story, well . . . maybe it should be.
13 comments:
Incorrect:
It is the story of Canadian Police Officer, Janice, who is assigned to a task force to hunt down and capture a killer.
Also incorrect:
It is the story of Canadian police officer, Janice, who is assigned to a task force to hunt down and capture a killer.
Correct:
It is the story of a Canadian police officer, Janice, who is assigned to a task force to hunt down and capture a killer.
Also correct:
It is the story of Canadian police officer Janice, who is assigned to a task force to hunt down and capture a killer.
(Although even in the two correct sentences, it looks strange not to have a last name.)
Janice is the killer. Split personality.
Please tidy up your punctuation, capitalization, and language choices. Specifically: To make the first sentence correct, you would need to add a comma after "84,000 words," but you'd be better off restructuring the sentence so it doesn't have so many qualifiers between "my novel" and "for your consideration." You end sentence #2 with "a killer" and begin sentence #3 with "The killer." "When the killer leaves Janice a note with the latest victim" should probably be "a note naming the latest victim." "She will need to keep her head on a swivel, to figure who she can trust and where the killer will strike next." "Who" should be "whom" and the comma should go. "Coroner’s Inquests" should be lowercase. When you resubmit the query, I hope you don't introduce new mistakes!
And you must, absolutely MUST, fix that third sentence. What I read is that a (professional?) killer plans to murder a soon-to-be-released pedophile at the moment the pedophile exits prison -- which makes little sense on multiple levels.
I'd change "arson investigations" to "crime investigations." It's a bit of a cheat but it's a better credential.
You can leave out "The abuse victims never have to worry about a repeat assault" and tell us more about the plot as EE suggests.
Overall it seems like a good twist. If it's well-pitched I don't see why it wouldn't be read; if it's well written I don't see why it wouldn't sell.
Not a lot to add, but are there any reasons that the reader might want Janice to catch the killer? Yes, vigilante executions are illegal, but this is someone who apparently targets provably guilty child abusers (or at least one provably guilty child abuser, as it's not clear right now how many pedophiles our serial avenger has offed.) Child abuse is a highly emotional subject, one where otherwise rational people can easily get convinced that torture and murder are perfectly okay punishments. So even if catching the killer is Janice's job, it seems like she's got a lot more motivation to look the other way than to bring the killer to justice. So what are the arguments on the other side? Is the killer dangerous and unpredictable, capable of moving on to a different kind of target? Is there the possibility of the killer targeting someone who may be innocent? Is the killer dispatching pedophiles who could have revealed the identities of other kids they abused, allowing the authorities to find and help them?
Be clear about what the killer has done and what he/she is threatening to do.
A last name for your MC won't clog up the query with too many names, honest.
It's an interesting premise, now we just need to know what the plot is. Specific details about what is going on are better than vague generalizations. Figurative language tends to be verbose and vague, so you might want to reconsider your usage.
Most agents recommend putting the housekeeping stuff (title, word count, genre) at the end. I'd also say ditch the separate log line. Integrate the information with the rest of the query.
The main problem I'm seeing right now is that I can't see a reason why I would be rooting for Janice to catch the killer--or why I'd even be expecting her to want to.
I'd suggest calling the main character Jake rather than Janice. Also, I'd make him a hockey-player rather than a police officer.
You need to know your market. If you want to sell to Canadians, then think like a Canadian.
Well hell, this Canadian don't play hockey. That why he's writes. What's Tony V's excuse....?
I took the advice of the others and have amended both my query and synopsis. Hope you are as honest as before.
Laura Amour is a psychiatrist and a leading Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) councilor for first responders. What her clients don’t know is that she also hunts and kills pedophiles.
Laura has seen the damage sexual abuse cause on its victims, their families and the officers who have to investigate these heinous crimes. Using skills learnt from the emergency workers that she helps, Laura has started a crusade to draw attention to the issue. Making the monsters feel the same fear they inflict on their victims is the least Laura can do before she purges them from society.
Now that her crusade has come to the police’s attention, Laura knows she only has a limited window to escape the country. But there is one last monster to kill and he is being guarded by an elite team of police.
Now Laura has to decide: either succeed or die trying.
I am seeking representation for my thriller novel, NOT ANOTHER CHILD, complete at 84,000 words.
Recently retired as a Deputy Fire Chief, I have experience with PTSD, multi-agency task forces, criminal investigations, and coroner’s inquests and have drawn on this experience to develop my story.
Thank you for your time and consideration,
Now Laura has to decide: either succeed or die trying. You kind of want her to have a tougher decision than that. Pretty much anyone would go with "succeed." A better finish might be something like: Now that her crusade has come to the police’s attention, Laura has a limited window to escape the country. But there is one last monster to kill. And Laura isn't one to run from unfinished business.
This is a much better query. It does leave out Janice, who seemed to be the main character in the first version. That's okay if Laura and Janice deserve equal billing, and you've decided to focus the query on Laura. But if Janice is the focus of the book, you may want to rework the query . . . or better yet, the book.
Also, Laura is a "counselor" (counsellor outside the US), not a "councilor." FYI, "Learnt" rather than "learned" is uncommon in the US, but common in "British" and, presumably, "Canadian."
Sounds pretty dark! Kind of like Dexter with pedophiles. With EE's amended finish, I would read on to see if the first page was any good. 84K does seem a bit on the short side, though. Shorter than the thrillers I'm used to reading, anyway. Although "Sharp Objects" was pretty short.
But yeah, post your first page if you haven't already. I'm curious.
Yeah, in addition to not being much of a choice, I don't see the logic in why she must kill or die. What happened to fleeing the country? Go with EE's advice.
Other little nitpicks
The text sounds a bit stilted. That's probably just me.
Not seeing a clear connection between "crusade to draw attention to the issue", which in this context usually means things like demonstrations and advertising, "fear" in which case is she kidnapping them and torturing them?, and "purges" which I assume is the serial killer part. Are the first two just referring to the fact that there's a killer hunting pedophiles? Again, this is probably just me.
WOW on that first paragraph. No complaints except the spelling error.
Like the above Anon, I'm getting a disconnect in the second paragraph. It starts off with Laura sane and responsible. The "crusade to draw attention to the issue" sets us up for something like a public awareness campaign, a Polly Klaas Foundation, an Amber's Law, a tip hotline, that sort of thing. What follows is not a cool twist like in your first paragraph, but a non sequitur: "Making the monsters feel the same fear they inflict on their victims." The moment when the monsters experience that fear -- the murder itself, right? -- is the last thing Laura wants attention on. I'd make the first sentence less like a newspaper story or mission statement and more imaginative. "Laura is all too familiar with the nightmares of sexual abuse, nightmares that haunt families and even the cops who investigate the crime." (No need to tell us it's "heinous.") I'd also reword the next sentence to something like "Laura is on a secret mission to scare the monsters straight." You're writing fiction now -- let loose.
Finally, I'll repeat something I said on the first go-round: pay for a copy editor. "Laura has seen the damage sexual abuse cause on its victims" has two mistakes, one of them being subject-verb agreement. You don't want your hard work to go to waste because of a fixable problem.
I'm wondering what skills Laura could have possibly learned from her emergency worker clients that help her kill (and possibly torture and abduct pedophiles). This might be something to cover briefly here and in more detail in the synopsis, which is a little low on details in general and doesn't answer the question of how Laura became such an effective killer.
I'd say straight up what Laura is doing and then follow up with how she hopes her actions will have a larger effect than just eliminating a handful of child abusers. You're very clear about hat Laura is up to in paragraph one, but it gets a bit hazy in paragraph two.
Presumably Laura has not murdered all the pedophiles in Canada (or even whatever province this story takes place in) except the one she wants to take out before fleeing the country. You might want to make it clear why this guy is the worst of the worst, somebody who Laura might be willing to risk capture or death to rid the world of, even thought everyone seems to be in police custody already.
Adding to the concerns about Laura's options at the end: Laura does not get to decide whether she succeeds or dies trying. Her choice is this: flee the country and ensure her safety and ability to kill more pedophiles someday, or risk her freedom and life to kill this one guy. (This is why you need to build up Laura's final target as even more horrible than the average pedophile.)
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