The Secondaries
1. The Secondaries are the ghosts/spirits of the dead. Their ranks have split into two factions fighting for control of the afterlife. And the only person who can bring peace and stability to the afterlife is a teenager who's already juggling her freshman classes while trying to keep her jealous street-performer boyfriend happy.
2. After the primaries end in catastrophe when the Republican party realizes that all of its candidates are hot garbage, the state of Arkansas scrambles to acquire new candidates by kidnapping the ten democratic people who live there and putting them through a hunger-games-esque tournament, where only the last one standing doesn't have to apply for candidacy.
3. All sale items after the initial sale become secondaries, sold in the cellar. Joany will admit working in the cellar is a rather dull job, but it is at least a job. That is, until an unusual sale item goes unsold and an intrigue between a goat, a boat, and 10 yards of human hair make things complicated.
4. Phil Philmont II is tired of living in his father's shadow. He joins force with his childhood friends Rich Richardson II, and Dan Dianton II, to prove they are not simply children of self-made billionaires, that they have what it takes to out-party, and out-spend their parents and do it even better. They just need to rewind history 50 years first.
5. Maeve starts an odd-job company which mainly provides backup for important positions: kings, presidents, magistrates, etc. But when Claude, back-up to the archetype hero finally reaches the evil overlord's domain, he discovers Sorsha, back-up to said overlord. Will they do their duty and fight, or talk shop until their shift is over?
Original Version
I'm pleased to submit THE SECONDARIES, complete at 89,000 words.
Besieged with visions of the dead, Seren hopes for a normal life with a new boyfriend, Jackson. But a tangle with an immortal soul drags her into a battle between two groups of spirits for control of the afterlife.
Seren is a college freshman majoring in physics so that she can decipher her dead father's discoveries about consciousness. Since she was orphaned at the age of six, visions of spirits and their tragic human deaths have tormented her. Seren wants nothing more than to be normal, but the visions won't let her.
When she meets Jackson Meins, an alluring clairvoyant, Seren starts to believe [he convinces her] that her strange visions might actually be a gift. But just as she begins to fall in love with Jackson, a long-dead spirit named Finn tells her about the afterlife power struggle threatening the natural order. Finn is part of a group, which he claims includes Seren's father, fighting against the Ascendants, malicious spirits bent on taking control [of the afterlife]. Showing Seren her world through his eyes, Finn tries to convince persuades her that Jackson is helping the wrong side.
When Jackson finds out about Finn, he becomes enraged with jealousy and kidnaps her, keeping her prisoner at the compound where he is planning a mass suicide of his followers to infuse the Ascendants with an army of strong new recruits. [Speaking from experience, kidnapping and imprisoning your ex-girlfriend never results in reconciliation.] Seren must learn to harness her own power to defeat Jackson's plans and restore the stability of the afterlife. [We know she has visions, but can we get a hint of what this power is that she can harness to affect the afterlife?]
THE SECONDARIES can be compared to Twilight (supernatural love triangle) meets Sixth Sense [I see dead people.] and Fight Club. [I'd declare the genre of the book before comparing it to other titles. According to my Internet research, the genre of Twilight is young adult fantasy romance, while The Sixth Sense is a psychological thriller. Your book sounds like an urban fantasy or a blend of that with paranormal romance. If all you provide is those comp titles, you may be giving the wrong impression.]
Notes
Nice. Even if you ignore my comments, I can see this getting requests for the manuscript.
1 comment:
Hey author, congratulations on finishing your book.
As EE said, this is pretty good. If you want a bit more polishing:
A title that gives some clue as to genre/content might work a little better.
Usual advice is to lead with your strengths, put the title and word count at the end.
I'm not sure you need the summary/logline paragraph at the beginning since all the information is repeated in the following paragraphs.
It might help to know Jackson is the leader of a cult before the attempted mass suicide. Maybe include the info when Finn tells the MC her boyfriend is working for the wrong side?
Usual advice on comps is debut novels published in the past 3 years, and don't use mega best sellers. ymmv
Hope this helps,
good luck.
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