Face-Lift 1482

Guess the Plot

Smoke Dancing

1. Vegas. 1976. Casinos, hustlers, cry babies, the mob. Yeah, that.

2. Alistair Ridley is a "smoke jumper": he parachutes into a wildfires to rescue those trapped by the flames. But his real passion is ballet. Faced with a blaze whose path shifts and twirls with the wind, can he teach ten survivors the choreography that will lead them to safety?

3. Smoke. Dancing. What more do I need to say to get you to read my book?

4. As usual, it's up to one young girl to save the world, this time from the vile men who've imprisoned all the women in the world and slaughtered all the men who stood against them. Should take her a couple days.

5. Combine Smoke & Mirrors with Dirty Dancing and what do you get? My book, along with its sequel, Dirty Mirrors

Original Version

Dear [agent],

The last of the free girls has cherished a life outside of Tlaloc’s mud walls for as long as she can remember. So far, the Kinsmen have been easy to fool, dressed as she is in boy’s clothing.

But when her first blood day betrays her disguise, she becomes easy prey for the Kinsmen stalking her. [This makes it sound like they were already stalking her, but couldn't find her until her body gave her away. Hard to believe they were devoting any manpower to finding one girl who doesn't even live inside their city.]

Luckily for the girl and her boy companion, some gods still take pity on wretchlings. After a mysterious entity they call the pale one rescues them from the Kinsmen’s vile clutches, the girl seeks a vengeance commensurate with his godlike powers.

Even so, the pale one’s strange magic won’t be enough to survive a fight with the Kinsmen head-on. Instead, they’ll have to be clever: infiltrate the city, free the women and the mutilated boy slaves, kill as many Kinsmen as possible. Escape.

But the Kinsmen have not successfully rounded up the world’s remaining women and girls and slaughtered all who once stood against them by sheer luck alone. [Is this a subtle allegory describing what's gonna happen to America the next four years?] And they certainly won’t roll over for one determined girl and her pitiful boy companion, even with some outlandish godling at their side.

Now, trapped within the city’s walls, the boy lost, the pale one no longer what he seems, the girl must think fast to stay alive. Even faster if she wishes to fulfill her reckless undertaking and liberate all those the Kinsmen hold captive.  [So they succeeded in part one of their clever plan, infiltrate the city, but failed to liberate anyone, kill anyone, or escape. And now, with the boy  captured, mutilated, and enslaved, and the godling having turned out to be an illusionist, the girl, who's probably about fourteen, and has no special powers we know about, is on her own. It seems hopeless, but . . . ]  [I wouldn't mind a bit more about how she's planning to get out of this than just by thinking fast. And even faster.]

Then again, she wasn’t the last of the free girls for nothing. 

She knows sometimes a single cut is all it takes—if one only knows where to slip the blade.

SMOKE DANCING is a novel of literary fiction that mixes elements of Southern Gothic, Magic Realism, and soft sci-fi. The novel runs 86,000 words. I envision it on the shelf alongside Tender is the Flesh by Augustina Bazterrica and Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse. 

I currently live in [City], California with my wife and seven-month-old son. I received an MFA in Creative Writing from [University] in 2013.

Thank you for your time and consideration,

Notes

Agent: Who are your main characters?

You: The last of the free girls (a wretchling), her pitiful boy companion (another wretchling), the pale one (a godling), and some Kinsmen.

Agent: I meant, what are their names?

You: Those are their names.

Reasons not to mention anyone's name in your query:

1. No one has a name in the book. (It's the cool thing you do that makes this literary fiction.)

2. After seeing you named your city "Tlaloc," your auto-correct refused, for your own good, to let you further embarrass yourself with the unpronounceable character names you'd chosen. For instance, every time you typed V'lechh-Quph'ht, it changed it to Emily.

Are the Kinsmen all kin of each other, or can any male earn his way into Kinsmanship? The girl apparently had friends who were boys when she was younger, so at what point and how is it decided which boys will become mutilated slaves, and which will become . . . Kinsmen? 

Just so I have it clear, all the women and girls in the world (save one) have been rounded up and are being held in one city that's surrounded by a mud wall? Either the city is the size of China and the wall is the size of the Great Wall, or the population of this world is minuscule.

This is too long, but maybe not by much; it would seem shorter if there weren't so many paragraphs. Like if you tacked P2 onto P1, and P4 onto P3 and P8 onto P7. 

If I'm a Kinsman, and I know we've already rounded up the world's remaining women and girls, and already slaughtered all who once stood against us, I'm exhausted, and ready to sit back and relax for a few decades, and when some wannabe leader tells me he thinks there's one more girl we missed, and orders me to track her down, I'm cracking open a cold beer and saying, Track him down yourself, asshole.