Face-Lift 1491

Guess the Plot

The Bait

1. Nick has put together the perfect con, and he's hired  a perfect woman to lure in the biggest fish for a big score. Too bad he's falling for her too.

2. Here, fishy fishy.

3. An impressionable worm named Birdfood must survive the trials and tribulations of living in a backyard full of starlings on a rainy morning. If that's not enough, the homeowner is about to take his daughter fishing and digs up the compost, finding Birdfood between an eggshell and a banana peel. 

4. When the government decides to deal with the zombie problem by depositing millions of them in the Grand Canyon, they need bait to lure them across the country. But how many people will be willing to sacrifice their brains to save humanity?

5. Detective Zach Martinez needs to get into that warehouse, but there are dogs barking and snarling at him through the fence, and he didn't bring any meat to bait them away. He knows two things. Cutting off his hand and tossing it over would be overkill. And whether he does it or not, his wife will expect him to bring home some chicken fingers from Hungry Hen.

Original Version

Dear AGENT,

If he had to, Stanley would walk into a herd of the undead for his adopted daughter Mabel - and he might have to.

Like THE LAST OF US, my debut novel THE BAIT features a complex father-daughter relationship in a post-apocalyptic future where ingenuity is the key to survival. With bone-chilling cliffhangers and a wry social commentary, THE BAIT is a genre-blending, SFFH epic at 99,000 words. It fits on the shelf between Mira Grant's FEED and Robert Kirkman's THE WALKING DEAD. [This paragraph would be better after the plot summary. That two of your comp titles are a video game/tv series and a comic book/tv series is best left till after you hook the reader.] 

Stanley doesn’t know if he’s a good guy or a bad guy. He wants to be good. But everyone needs him to be bad. After kill-killing his way through the AfterWars, Stanley established the town of Loretta, Utah, a rooftop haven for survivors of the American West. The undead can stumble up a staircase but they can't climb ladders. So Stanley built Loretta on the roofs. [So there was already a town here, but the people were all dead, so Stanley took over the roofs of the buildings and declared it "Loretta"? And there are now buildings with nothing inside them, and people living on their roofs? Are the ladders outside the buildings, leaning against them? If the undead knock down the ladders, will the people be stranded, eventually without food? I wouldn't want to be on a roof during a thunderstorm. In fact, the people living on a roof would probably add walls and a roof to keep the weather out, and now they're not on the roof, they're in the penthouse. Are the roofs wheelchair accessible? If not, are those who can't walk abandoned to the undead? Because carrying a person up a ladder would be really hard. Why not have normal buildings with several floors and staircases where the people live, but ladders are needed only to get to the second floor? What if it turns out the undead can climb ladders, they just haven't needed to because they haven't encountered any buildings that require ladder climbing?] He aims to live peacefully with [without?] the tilting corpses that roam the countryside. [Did the undead sign a peace treaty that requires them to roam the countryside and ignore the fact that there are delicious brains up above them?] It’s risky, but Stanley believes the worst is behind him.

He is wrong.

A stranger arrives from the NewUSA with news of a government plan to draw millions of the “unfortunates” out of the Great Plains and into the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately, Loretta is in the way, and in 48 hours, a massive stampede of zombies will destroy everything. [But the zombies didn't count on Loretta's secret weapon: ladders.] 

To make matters worse, Stanley’s adopted daughter Mabel left town with her boyfriend Charlie, and was taken by train pirates in the Navajolands. As the fragile peace of Loretta crumbles, Stanley must embark on a perilous journey to rescue Mabel before it’s too late. [Are train pirates pirates who travel by train instead of ship, or what we used to call train robbers in the old west? Just asking.] [How does Stanley know Mabel was taken by train pirates? Where were Mabel and Charlie going?] 

I am seeking representation for THE BAIT, the first of a trilogy, with series potential. PART 2: The Mormon Territories, (a flashback) focuses on the stranger from the NewUSA, a queer woman who, to survive, must conform to the fascist regime that takes everything away from her. PART 3: Operation Lemmings, (back to the present) follows the dangerous choice our two protagonists must make. Do they work together and save humanity, or save them themselves and watch everything fall? [This is a lot of space to devote to two books you haven't written yet. I'd keep the first sentence, and then tack on that stuff from up at the top.]

I am a filmmaker and father from Portland, Oregon, discovering my neurodivergence. I have written and edited narrative films and documentaries for the last 20 years and served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in West Africa. My life in the Pulaar culture deeply influenced my novel's message of hope, diversity, ingenuity, and survival. [For the next four years, no one will publish anything with a message of diversity. Be forewarned.]

Thank you for your time and consideration. 

Notes

You spend a lot of the query on the roofs, considering that the main character leaves his rooftop world. How much of the book is set in Loretta? Are there any Loretta-based plot scenes worthy of mention? Or could the query just begin: When the residents of Loretta, Utah, learn that the government of newUSA is herding millions of zombies toward the Grand Canyon . . . 

If I were herding millions of zombies to the Grand Canyon, I'd take them south and cross into Arizona from central New Mexico. Coming down through Utah would require them to climb the Colorado Rockies. Which is probably even harder than climbing ladders. I guess there are streets they could walk on, but if the street has walls of rock on both sides at some point, and millions of zombies have to merge into two lanes, there's gonna be a massive pileup.

Millions of zombies suggests that this apocalypse is well under way. But there's a government dealing with it, Mabel seems to think there are better places than Roofville, and there's enough communication (cell phones?) that Stanley knows what happened to Mabel. Some of this suggests that the situation isn't as dire (yet) as in those TV shows.

Of course most of my comments concern plot points that are probably addressed in the book. So the question becomes, If the agent asks these same questions, will she want to read the entire manuscript to find the answers, or will she decide it's easier to email you a form rejection? 

This note about the title, that you included with the query, seems to me to clarify a lot:  The title refers to Stanley, the protagonist, baiting zombies through his town to keep the residents safe. But then a government plot also recruits him to be "the bait" and lure millions of zombies into a mass grave. The query isn't specific about when Stanley goes after Mabel, and had me believing Stanley left town before the zombies showed up. What does he use to bait them through his town? Is he planning to use the same thing to get them to the Grand Canyon? More about that.