Face-Lift 1544

Guess the Plot

Kissing Existence

1. After Tanner goes overboard in the middle of the ocean during a storm, he washes up on a deserted island. He kisses the sand, and the plants, and the trees, and the boat that rescues him, and every member of its crew, and....

2. When Moka finds a dead body, it turns out to be Alice, a woman she barely knows, but whom she's in love with. Then Alice's ghost gets Moka to hook up with Alice's ex, a singer in a rock and roll band. Also, lots of kissing.

3. An aspiring author gives their first novel a title that will appeal to no one other than a few hippie philosophers, thus dooming their career before it starts. Also, a pilgrimage to Lourdes.

4. "I kiss. Therefore I am." It's the credo by which Bob Humphrey has decided to live his life. What he soon realizes is that not everyone wants to be kissed, at least not by Bob Humphrey.

Original Version

Dear [Agent],

Moka, an overly anxious office worker, is on the verge of falling in love with Alice—a magnetic, elusive woman she keeps encountering around town. But shortly after their third chance encounter, [If I encounter you three times, it's not chance. You're stalking me.] on a cold winter night, Moka discovers a dead body in the snow. It’s Alice. [I've encountered my neighbor while walking my dog three times in the past few months, but I wouldn't say I "keep" encountering her. And I'm not on the verge of falling in love with her. In other words, maybe call Alice a magnetic woman she knows only from their weekly yoga class. This suggests more than three encounters, and opportunities to get to know each other by going out for coffee after the class occasionally.]

In the aftermath, Moka drifts through her days in a shroud of grief and loneliness, wondering how she should mourn someone she barely knew, but was already beginning to love. Her question grows heavier when Alice’s ghost appears [begins appearing] in her apartment as a young child. Through these visits, Moka begins to learn more [learns] about Alice’s own life and dreams—something she never got to do.

Alice’s ghost soon leads Moka to Sho, a childhood friend she hasn’t seen in years—now the lead singer of an up-and-coming band, and once, Alice’s partner. Drawn together by their shared grief and the unresolved questions Alice left behind, Moka and Sho find themselves forming an unexpected bond. As their relationship deepens into something they both resist acknowledging, they begin to uncover the truth of Alice’s death—and discover what her ghost truly wants from each of them.

KISSING EXISTENCE is a 65,000-word multi-perspective novel blending magical realism and literary fiction. It examines haunting grief—both literal and emotional—the pursuit of one’s dreams, and love amongst loss. It will appeal to readers drawn to the wintry haunting in Han Kang’s We Do Not Part, the heartfelt yearning in Lily King’s Heart the Lover, and the hallucinatory stillness of Haruki Murakami’s The City and Its Uncertain Walls.

Notes

In the aftermath, I assume Alice's cause of death was determined. Maybe you can work in whether it was murder, suicide, heart attack, or an accident.

An entire novel whose unstable main character is drifting through her days in a shroud of grief and loneliness isn't my cup of tea, but that's me. Maybe if you reveal what the ghost truly wants from Moka and Sho, I'll be intrigued. 

If a ghost appears to me, I'm more likely to take her seriously if she's an adult ghost than a child ghost. For instance, I'd take dating advice from Geena Davis's character in Beetlejuice, but not from Moaning Myrtle in the Harry Potter books. Besides, if you're a ghost appearing to someone, and you aren't trying to scare them, you'd want them to recognize you. That's why the ghosts of Hamlet's father and of Marley appeared to Hamlet and Scrooge as their adult selves rather than little kids.