Feedback Request

I failed to notice that this was a rewrite of an earlier query submission, and placed the title in the query queue. So you get to read some more fake plots for Adore. Most recently the title was seen here.



1. A literary novel about the symbiotic relationship between Maureen Montgomery and her 47 cats, all living in a Brooklyn apartment.

2. When a singer at a local Italian restaurant and theater goes silent mid-note during one of his late night practice sessions, 68-year-old next door neighbor Mac Fach (who's been complaining about the place for years) must find the killer, since between dementia and a bloody ax, he suspects it might be him. 

3. When spokesmodel for fragrance Adore La Alina turns up dead in a hotel swimming pool, homicide detective Zack Martinez knows two things. One, that arrow through her head probably didn't drown her, and two, maybe his wife would like to try some Adore perfume instead of Chanel.

4. Jimmy has discovered a thousand guaranteed methods to pick up girls and wrote them down in a book. Only now that book has gone missing. Can he still woo the girl that has captured his heart this time, or will his faulty memory be his downfall? 

5. Casey thought Grummon loved her. "You are adore," he said, and she thought that was cute, in an English-isn't-my-first-language sort of way. Turns out he was saying "You are a door," in a human-soul-as-gateway-to-another-dimension sort of way. Crap. Now instead of people walking all over her, she has people (and other creatures) walking right through her. Worst of all, she thinks she might be pregnant. 

Dear Evil Editor,

Fourteen year old Liz Morton is so weak she can barely hold her recess apple let alone chew it. [No need to tell us it's her recess apple, unless she has no trouble holding non-recess apples.] Something is deeply wrong. Liz follows her intuition to secluded Spraggs Road, searching the forest for a cure to her exhaustion and spots Nathaniel Tillack at night fall. [She's too weak to hold an apple, but she can search a forest?] 

She met him the night before. She remembers that. Now. [I would go with: She remembers that . . . now.] Shocked at the holes in her memory, Liz opens up to him, sensing he has answers. Nat says he knows exactly how she feels. 'Empathy', apparently, is a sixth sense Liz doesn’t realize she possesses.  Nat is a vampire and his preternatural torment ( including his self-imposed starvation ) is stuck inside her and will kill her within weeks.

 Nat thinks they can solve the problem with a little experimentation. Liz stays with Nat, his dutch painter friend Yvonne and their freaky half-vampire cat at their cottage, so they can go on a midnight hunt. When Nat drinks blood from a victim, Liz feels instant relief. Just like Nat. He insists this insight has broken [means] the empathic connection [is broken] , and takes her home.

Only growing sicker, Liz can’t find Nat [Has she looked in his coffin?] and no doctor believes she’s ill. [She's too weak to hold an apple, yet multiple doctors say there's nothing wrong with her? Are her parents involved in trying to find out what's wrong with her?] With her last reserves of energy, she returns to Spraggs Road, but Nat's enemy is there. Wild eyed Isaskia explains Nat is just using Liz as a walking [living?] storage vessel for his 'Permanent Feeling' (the feeling that will haunt him for all eternity due to how the moment he died affected him.) [That's a wordy and vague explanation for "Permanent Feeling," which is also vague. I'd just say a living storage vessel for his anguish.] [Why is Isaskia there? If I'm the enemy of a vampire, I'm staying as far from his home as possible, not hanging out there. Is Isaskia also a vampire?]

 Liz doesn't know whom to trust: Nat, who has always been kind, or Isaskia, who is willing to share all those secrets Nat keeps close to his chest. One thing is certain, with her body thinking it's a starving vampire, the one person Liz cannot trust for anything is herself—and she is running out of time.

 ADORE, at 94,000-words, is a YA urban Fantasy novel set in a small mountain town in Australia. ( It's not a romance, despite title ) 

Thank you for your time and consideration, 


Notes

She suddenly remembers that she met this guy who's a vampire the night before she became impossibly weak, a vampire with whom she now has an empathic connection, and she can't decide whether to trust him? She needs to trust neither of them and check into a hospital for a full battery of tests.

This isn't doing it for me. Maybe start something like: After a night she can barely remember, 14-year-old Liz Morton is as weak as a kitten. She returns to secluded Spraggs Road, hoping to find a clue to her condition, and spots Nathaniel Tillack. Him she remembers. She senses that he has the answers she seeks.

Then Nat claims her exhaustion is caused by their empathy, which he can remedy.

Then Isaskia shows up and claims her exhaustion is caused by Nat, who's using her as a vessel for his anguish.