Face-Lift 1498

Guess the Plot

Like Mother

1. The daughters of mother earth are sent on generational ships to terraform barren planets in the goldilocks zones of their respective stars. Unfortunately, bears don't exist just in fairy tales.

2. They say "Like mother, like daughter." And that's what Petka's afraid of, since her mother was a Bulgarian alcoholic who killed herself. 

3. Charles was expected to carry on the family tradition, and become a lawyer, like his mother. But he has his "sights" set on becoming the first blind person to win a Formula One automobile race.

4. Chakka's mother is a famous soprano, but Chakka doesn't know A flat from G sharp. That won't stop her from trying out for a reality show singing competition, against her mom's advice. Two years later, Chakka's made millions off her three number one indy rock hits, and her mom has lost her voice after a bout with covid. 

Original Version

Dear agent,

LIKE MOTHER is a 73,000-word dual-timeline upmarket novel set in the U.S. and Bulgaria. It is a fictionalized memoir based on my experiences. Fans of Yaa Gyasi's Transcendent Kingdom and Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation would enjoy this book.

When Petka gets a DUI, she hits bottom and returns to Bulgaria [Anytime you decide the answer to your problems is a trip to Bulgaria, you've definitely hit rock bottom.] to find out how to not become her mother. Afraid that she'll repeat her mother's past, Petka returns to the home she and her parents fled after the Fall of Communism. [Most of that information can be gleaned from the previous sentence.] [Wait, after the fall of communism, couldn't they just leave without "fleeing"?] [Also, Bulgaria seems like the place she would go if she did want to become her Bulgarian mother.] In Bulgaria, Petka unearths family secrets that may hold the key to why her mother took her own life as she approaches the same [when she was Petka's] age. [Does Petka consider the possibility that her mother took her life because she lived in Bulgaria?] Surrounded by Bulgaria's folklore, magic, and history of patriarchy, Petka confronts the ghosts haunting her family, [Magic and ghosts! Finally we're getting somewhere.] like her uncle Ilya, who has been missing for thirty years; [My guess: 30 years ago Ilya suddenly realized he was living in Bulgaria.] the fallout her parents sparked when they converted from communist-sponsored atheism to evangelical Christianity; and the secrets Baba Levka—her mother's mother—won't tell. [In the previous sentence, she unearthed family secrets. Apparently with no help from Baba Levka.] It doesn’t help that Petka’s relatives keep calling her by her mother’s name. [Which was Baba Yaga.] As she battles with the question of if we're [Refusing to accept that she's] fated to repeat generational curses and traumas, Petka reaches for healing, sobriety, and a new relationship with her past.

I was born in Sofia, Bulgaria [, and I'm definitely NEVER returning]. Excerpts from LIKE MOTHER have won the Nomadic Press award, the WNBA-SF award, and were semi-finalists or honorable mentions for the Miami Book Fair, San Francisco Writers Conference, and U.S. Fulbright Grant in Creative Writing. Excerpts have been published in Business Insider, phoebe, and The Common. [Is there any part of this novel that hasn't already been published or celebrated?] [You have a lot of laurels, but they're all about this book, so perhaps limit the list to the two or three most impressive ones.] [Also, Business Insider? Was that the chapter where Petka starts a rehab facility in Sofia?] I have an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Goucher College and BA in English from UC Berkeley. I live in San Francisco with my fiancé. I am also working on two contemporary upmarket millennial novels titled SATURN RETURN and TULUMINATI. [You should be working on Ilya's Return, so if this novel is a hit, you have a sequel underway.] 

Thank you for your consideration.

Notes

There were a few awkward places in there. I've made some changes below, probably getting some facts wrong, but leaving room for you to add something specific at the end, preferably something important that happens or some revelation or decision that moves the story forward. 

When Petka gets a DUI, she fears she's becoming her mother, an alcoholic who committed suicide when she was Petka's age. Afraid that she's repeating her mother's past, Petka returns to the Bulgarian home where she grew up. There, Petka unearths family secrets that may hold the key to why her mother took her own life. 

Surrounded by Bulgaria's folklore, magic, and history of patriarchy, Petka confronts the ghosts haunting her family, including the disappearance of her uncle Ilya, thirty years ago; the fallout her parents sparked when they converted from communist-sponsored atheism to evangelical Christianity; and the secrets her mother's mother won't tell. It doesn’t help that Petka’s relatives keep calling her by her mother’s name. 

Refusing to  accept that she's fated to repeat generational curses and traumas, Petka reaches for healing, sobriety, and a new relationship with her past. 

You list three ghosts, but I can't tell if all or any of them point to why mom took her life. Maybe choose one of them to focus on, so you have room to elaborate on Baba's secrets or the religion fallout, or how long after Ilya disappears Mom dies, explaining the relevance.