Evil Editor Classics

Guess the Plot

Of the Dark

1. Dark Meat goes on a road tour that blows through Ogden and changes it forever when the members of the band answer a desperate call for sperm donors. The bank is replenished but ten years down the road the next generation of Ogdenians turn out to be mutant classical cellists.

2. Mike has always had a fear of the dark. A new therapy- one night spent in total darkness with a counselor- looks promising, mainly because the counselor is smoking hot. Then the woman is mysteriously murdered during the night, and Mike suddenly has a real reason to be afraid . . . Of the Dark.

3. Country lass Adastea has a tough decision: should she marry Mor-Lath, God of the Dark, and help him destroy the Gods of the Light? Or should she decline his proposal and risk never getting married? Spoiler alert. Wedding bells are gonna chime.

4. Lumia is a Spirit of the Light, representing all that is good and pure. It is her duty to protect the world of Alagera from evil, not an easy job, especially when she winds up between the sheets with Domar, a Spirit of the Dark. Can she overcome her attraction and fulfill her destiny to destroy Domar and his kind?

5. Vampires! They don't turn into bats, sparkle or have fangs, and they do have reflections, but they will drink your blood! Oh, hang on, they're just highly organized, deranged serial killers! And they're after the protagonists, who are smoking hot and scantily clad!

6. It was the worst blind date ever. After the hurricane blew the roof off Bud's Cafe, they took off running. It was too dark to see the bridge to the mainland was gone and the water was full of vampires. WTF? Talk about a bad swim! Plus, zombie alligators and a boatload of haunted pirates in pursuit of fabled diamonds.



Original Version

Dear Evil Editor,

Country lass Adrastea has received a proposal of marriage from Mor-Lath, God of the Dark. That is not the sort of news she wishes to share with the whole village ere they condemn her as a witch. [If I'm engaged to Mor-Lath, God of the Dark, villagers condemn me as a witch at their own peril.] [Also, I'd go with "lest" rather than "ere" there.] Those few she’s confided in­--her family and the village priestess­--advise her to turn down his proposal. [If you need to consult other people about whether to marry Mor-Lath, God of the Dark, you are beyond salvation.]

But he won’t take no for an answer and steadily increases the pressure for her to accept. Only in the end does she agree in order to save her village from destruction. [Threatening to destroy your beloved's village almost always gets an engagement off to a rocky start.]

For all his godly wisdom and millennia of life-experience, the one thing Mor-Lath does not know is how to be a good husband. [If you marry Mor-Lath, God of the Dark expecting him to do his share of the housework and watch The Bachelor instead of Monday Night Football, you deserve what you get.] Their marriage starts to fail from day one: infidelity, secrets and abandonment. [If you can't get through one day of your marriage without being unfaithful and abandoning your spouse, you, too, are beyond salvation. Although I suppose if your name is Mor-Lath, God of the Dark, that goes without saying.]

Adrastea [Now that they're married, shouldn't that be Adrastea-Lath?] learns from the Gods of the Light the true reason behind Mor-Lath’s desire to marry; he is only a demigod. [So he was actually Mor-Lath, Demigod of the Dark.] [Every guy has a few secrets he keeps from his wife, but failing to reveal that you're only a demigod is sure to come back to haunt you.] Only together--male and female--can they become full gods, thus making him strong enough to defeat the Light in the final battle. [But they're already married. How much more together can they get?] [I find it hard to believe one God of the Dark can defeat all the Gods of the Light just because he married a country lass.]

Armed with this knowledge and power, she is faced with a dilemma: does she side with the God of the Dark or does she choose to defeat her husband even though it could mean her own destruction? [Good or evil. That's always a dilemma.]

“Of The Dark” is a fantasy trilogy of three books, “Troth of the Dark,” “Bride of the Dark” and “House of the Dark”, each novel being 120,000 words. [Amazing coincidence.] [Based on these titles, they get married in book 2? 120,000 words of her deciding whether to marry Mor-Lath, God of the Dark, followed by 120,000 words of her being married to Mor-Lath, God of the Dark, followed by 120,000 words of fighting over who gets to keep the house?] The manuscripts are complete and ready to send to you should you wish to see more.

I’m a published writer of moderate repute. I’ve has [had] several short stories published in Somewhat Famous SF magazine and Kinda Famous magazine and have a career in freelance nonfiction.

Thank you for your consideration; I look forward to your reply.

Regards,


Notes

I get the impression you're querying for the entire trilogy. This doesn't allow you to say much about any one part of it. No one's likely to ask you to send them a 360,000-word trilogy, so query the first novel, and tell them it's book 1 of a trilogy. Then you can work in more of the book 1 plot.

Selected Comments

eth said...Surely there has to be more to book one than whether or not she says "yes."


arhooley said...Mor-Lath, God of the Dark? Note to writers of fantasy: Beware unintentional parody.

Anonymous said...The big suspense here is all about whether she'll marry him or not, and then she does. But the book doesn't end there, it goes on for who knows how many hundred pages while we read about the details of their housekeeping routine or whatever, plus 2 more volumes of ??? The demigod / god thing seems like an afterthought and we don't know the difference, so it doesn't seem to matter much.


Joseph said...I couldn't decide if this query was insane because it was hilarious, or if it was hilarious because it was insane (whatever that means).


no-bull-steve said...Yeah it seems the inciting incident of this story is when she learns Darth-Mol or whatever isn't a full god, only a demi-god. This query also suffers from the non protagonizing protagonist--lots of stuff being done to her. Getting advice and "discovering secrets (unless it's a mystery)" aren't protagonistic.
The way this is presented it's highly unlikely to keep readers' attention spans for 360,000 words.


Xenith said...3 x 120,000 words with little obvious plot sounds like a slush reader's nightmare.

OTOH dealing with the day-to-day problems of being with a (demi)gof dark, against the background of an actual story, could be fun.


batgirl said...Don't know if this is fair to say, but I've read part of this (not sure which volume, probably the first) years ago on OWW.
There's a bunch more plot - local wars and a noble who wants to wipe out Adrastea's whole village, and she becomes indebted to Mor-Lath by asking his help to save her people - which would also get her outcast even if she saved them. Etc.

I wonder if the author was overwhelmed by the prospect of summarising the plot or picking the main threads out, and decided just to leave most of it out? I can understand the impulse.


BuffySquirrel said...It strikes me that there ought to be something special about Adrastea if marrying her puts Mor-Lath in a position to become a full god and lose his demi-. Otherwise, presumably, he could scour the villages until he finds a woman who doesn't need to be coerced. But we're never told what is so special about her. Maybe she knows exactly what's wrong with books she's never read!


150 said...Maybe she knows exactly what's wrong with books she's never read!

Hey, that's MY power! Where's MY demigod suitor, huh?


BuffySquirrel said...150 dear, I think EE is your demi-god suitor. Ahem.