Face-Lift 1469

 

Guess the Plot

A Win for Victoria

1. Despite her name, Victoria has never won anything. Not even a luck of the draw item. But now she has practiced to finally win the county fair's pie eating contest. As long as there are no cream pies. She's lactose intolerant.

2. Victoria has tried out for every team in her school, even chess, after which she was forbidden to come within 30 feet of any of them. Fortunately, there's still archery where 30 feet isn't even the minimal distance.

3. Queen Victoria of Great Britain single-handedly smashes the Russian Army during the Crimean War, then marches on Moscow Prigozhin-style in this alternate history doorstopper.

4. Two lesbians, both named Victoria, fall in love, but not with each other. With Marcy. One of the Victorias is a sword-brandishing monster hunter. The other is a shy high school student. Which one will win the heart of Marcy?

5. Victoria enters the national spelling bee and makes it to the finals. But she's up against all these foreign-born ringers who've memorized the dictionary. You'll never guess who ends up winning, unless you looked at the book's title.

Original Version

Dear [Agent],

Seventeen-year-old Victoria von Tauber has it all: royal parents, a magic sword, and a loyal band of teenage monster-hunters. [Not sure the "it all" applies, as it's immediately contradicted in the next sentence.] All that’s missing is her best friend Simon, who vanished two years ago. Bitter from her failure to find him, she vows to bring him home after receiving a letter from a powerful monster. Its offer is deceptively simple: prove her skill by hunting it to the ends of the fantastic Otherwise, and it will reveal Simon’s fate. [I find it hard to imagine Godzilla sitting down at a writing desk and composing a letter.] [I'd want Godzilla to offer something better than I'll reveal Simon's fate; at least an assurance that his fate wasn't being eaten by Godzilla.] [This seems analogous to a situation where the police are investigating a child abduction, and they receive a letter saying I know where the kidnapper has the child, but if you want me to tell you, you'll have to find me first.] 

Meanwhile, seventeen-year-old Victoria "Tori" Tauber dreams of herself as a fantasy heroine, but struggles to talk to anyone at her suburban Chicago high school. Sick of being an anxious recluse, Tori pushes herself to befriend new girl Marcy at the start of junior year. [I know a lot of novelists have trouble coming up with names for all their characters, but if your two main characters have the same first and last name, you might want to try an online fantasy name generator.]

Though one battles monsters and the other social anxiety, Victoria and Tori's paths become increasingly intertwined. Victoria grows closer to new hunter Marcia, while Tori uncovers traces of her old friend Simon, who has vanished from memory in the waking world. Both grapple with the revelation [realization?] that they are lesbians, head over heels for Marcy/Marcia. [Are Marcy and Marcia aware of each other? Is there a Cy to go with Simon?] And as the year goes by, both discover that the alternate versions of themselves they see in their dreams are all too real. [Does Victoria dream of being an anxious recluse?]

Bending the barrier between their two worlds, Victoria and Tori must work together to solve the mystery of Simon’s disappearance and accept themselves as lesbians. Should they fail, both Simon and Marcy will slip through their fingers forever. 

As you are [Agent-specific personalization not to exceed 400 words], [30 words would be more reasonable.] I am thrilled to present A WIN FOR VICTORIA for your consideration. A WIN FOR VICTORIA is a standalone dual-POV YA lesbian fantasy novel of 98,000 words with series potential. It would be ideal for readers who enjoyed the haunting dreams of H. E. Edgmon’s Godly Heathens and the slow-building mystery of Ryan La Sala’s Reverie, as well as fans of the dual-world narrative of Omori.

I drew on my experiences in the LGBT community when conceiving this story, and put it to paper [Some agents may be unwilling to request novels that have been put to paper. Just say you wrote it; you're covered no matter how they want it.] in between my work as a research engineer at [College University] and my performances in the [City] DIY music scene.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Notes

One advantage of your putting the description of the book at the end instead of the beginning is that you don't have to describe the book as a standalone dual-POV YA lesbian fantasy novel of 98,000 words with series potential, because a lot of that is obvious from the plot summary. To me, "a 98,000-word standalone fantasy with series potential" is more than enough. (Another advantage is that it doesn't matter whether you do it my way or yours, because by the time the reader gets to that part, they've already decided whether they're intrigued enough to request pages.)

A monster telling a band of monster hunters it'll reward them if they hunt it down is like a parent telling their kid they can have ice cream, but only if they eat all their cake. They were already planning to eat all their cake.

If Tory and Victoria were head over heels for each other, would the universe implode?

It seems like a lot of books hype the fact that they have a lot of twists, or a twist you'll never see coming. This feels like a query with several twists, and I'm not sure whether that's a good thing, or confusing: 

P1: We're dealing with a standard fantasy with a heroine named Victoria

P2: Oh, Victoria just fantasizes she's a fantasy heroine. They're one person. Walter Mitty-like story?
P3: Possibly same as P2, till the end when Oh, we see they're separate people in 2 worlds. Apparently the waking world and dream world. Maybe alternate universes? And they're lesbians!

P4: They can work together. Presumably they can communicate with each other, possibly meet physically.

I can envision Agent A saying, "I must read this book, it's Red Sonja meets Pretty in Pink meets Vanilla Sky." And Agent B saying, "WTF? This author can't figure out what her own book is about. The whole book probably turns out to be the monster's hallucination."

Maybe try introducing the dual worlds up front and see where that takes you? 

Monsters seem like something from a middle grade book. You could make up a cool fear-inspiring name for them or make them lizard men. Or remove them from the book and make Victoria a ninja who leads a band of crimefighters.

Questions for my own curiosity.

When two girls are born in alternate worlds are they twins, appearance-wise? Is it a rule of nature that their parents give them the exact same name, such that if Victoria and Tory both have daughters, they'll independently decide to give them the same name?