Face-Lift 1474

Guess the Plot

The Journey to the End of Things

1. The experience of cleaning my room and getting ADHD sidetracked, where I find something from 4 years ago and get entirely engrossed in this New Thing, until I run out of time to do the Original Thing I had set out to do. That. 

2. A couple get trapped in a library together, and discover books from every time period, somehow all the way back to the beginning of things, which is also somehow the End of Things.

3. To save her brothers from a curse, Princess Alianna is given a quest to meet the wizard at the End of Things. It would have been nice to know it was a local bar months ago.

4. What should have been a four hour trip has stretched to nearly ten hours due to heavy traffic, bad weather and an absurd number of bathroom breaks. Nick's wife has passed the time pointing out when he is driving too fast or too slow and chiding him on, of all things, "trusting his brakes too much." The two oldest kids have escalated a territorial dispute over the middle seat to the point where one or both might require hospitalization. The youngest is rocking violently in her car seat as if possessed, incessantly chanting "are we there yet?" Up ahead, Nick sees a gap in the guardrail along the edge of the cliff and finally has hope that there may be a way to get out of seeing his mother-in-law this weekend after all.

5. When Sam dies in a car accident, she finds herself in Hades. Which is where she assumes her father also is, so she goes looking for him. But if she can't find him within a couple days, they'll both be stuck there forever.

6. Obsessive compulsive Frederique Nanaczka sets out on a road trip with his best friend Schlurpy, his beagle Watson, and two gold fish, to reach the end of the road, but gets stuck in rush hour traffic. Six hours later they debate calling the whole thing off and catching a movie instead.

Original Version

Dear [Agent],

No one’s escaped the Underworld before but that won’t stop Sam Katopodis from trying.

 

After waking on the shores of the Styx following a fatal hit-and-run, Sam expects to be damned to Tartarus. What other afterlife could there be for a person who accidentally killed their father months prior? [It was an accident. And she thinks she should be thrown in with the worst of the worst?] But, instead of eternal suffering, Sam soon learns her death was a mistake before [when] a sympathetic Hades offers her a deal she can’t refuse. She’ll have three days to find her father, make amends for his death, and return to the Styx for her resurrection. If time runs out, she’ll be trapped in the realm forever. 

But Sam doesn’t want forgiveness, not when she could reunite her family by rescuing her father instead. 

 

If only she knew where he was, something Hades refuses to disclose. Sam enlists the help of Pollux, a demigod who’s spent centuries looking for his lost brother, as her guide. [You have three days to find someone, and you choose, as your guide, someone who's spent centuries failing to find someone?] Together, the pair journey across the Underworld in search for [of] her father, [That already sounds like it would take more than three days. And the three days is for the round trip, so she has to find her father in 1.5 days.] discovering a city filled with memoryless souls that resets every night [Just searching one city would take more than three days.] and traversing [searching through?] the Library of Alexandria. But everywhere they look is another dead end. [Did Pollux ever look for Castor on Mount Olympus instead of in Hades?] As Sam struggles to figure out where her father might be, [Did she try Tartarus?] she’s forced to grapple with her grief while learning life continues after loss. [She's dead, her father's dead, Pollux is dead, the millions of damned souls around her are dead, and this teaches her that life goes on?]

 

Even if she manages to find her father in time, Sam still needs a way to get him out. After discovering the demigod [Pollux] has a divine relic that ensures escape, she’s forced to choose between the companion she’s falling for and fixing her past. [So the relic can be used by her and her father? Will Pollux need the relic to escape if he finds his brother? Is Pollux falling for Sam? Can Sam, her dad, and Pollux all escape with the relic?] Though none of that will matter if she can’t make it to the Styx before time’s up. 

 

THE JOURNEY TO THE END OF THINGS is a dark contemporary fantasy, complete at 103k words. This story will appeal to readers who liked the folklore-steeped expedition of When Among Crows by Veronica Roth and the twisted fairytale of Nettle and Bone by T. Kingfisher [and Netflix's Kaos, which is also about a guy who goes to the underworld to find his soulmate who died in a hit-and-run].

Though intended as a standalone, it has potential for expansion. [As does Kaos, though I hear it wasn't renewed.]

 

I thought you’d enjoy my manuscript because [insert reason].

 

This story came about after losing my father in the pandemic. My background is in academia, having completed an LL.B. and MSc International Relations at the University of Glasgow before receiving my Juris Doctorate at UCLA in 2020. I currently live in [City] with my partner and our cat, Nyx. This is my first novel.

Notes

Searching all of the Underworld will probably take her three decades, but in the interest of brevity, I'll settle for three weeks. Maybe time is different in Hades, and what seems like years to us is mere minutes there? Wait, do they have internet in the Underworld? Because Sam could Google her father to find out where he is. I can't believe they have a library but no internet.