Face-Lift 1516

Guess the Plot

Gospel of the West

1. Sequel to Journey of the West, another group has yet another set of scriptures to deliver to Buddha. Though this time, the group gets lost. A lot.

2. The mayor of a western American town has an ingenious plan for getting rid of migrants: He'll hire a foreign superpower to come in and build a dam that will drown them.

3. A singing competition showdown between the top gospel churches east and west of the Mississippi goes awry when Jesus Himself descends from the heavens and proclaims everyone to be losers. A particularly belligerent group of singers from the west discover Jesus's resonant frequency, and sing until He bursts.

4. Jesus is everywhere, yet in the traditional Gospels, he appears only in lands east of the Mediterranean. In this new Gospel, he appears in the West, specifically the Wild West, where he teams with Wyatt Earp.

Original Version

Dear [Agent],

[Reason for Agent]

A racially fractured town falls into chaos when its mayor, Arthur—frustrated by his inability to quell the rampant crime at his gates—signs a pact with a foreign superpower to build a dam that would drown the city's entire migrant district, potentially killing hundreds. [Because dams are expensive and take years to build, they are usually constructed to provide electrical power, control flooding, and store water for irrigation or consumption. Rarely would it be cost effective to build one for the sole purpose of drowning migrants. It's so much cheaper to just deport your migrants to a mega-prison in El Salvador. Also, I googled "Can the mayor of an American town make a pact with a foreign superpower?" and the answer, provided by AI, was: "No, the mayor of an American town cannot unilaterally make a pact with a foreign superpower. The authority to enter into agreements with foreign nations rests with the federal government, specifically the president, with the advice and consent of the Senate." Note that I didn't even include the part about drowning migrants. I suppose you could argue that if the superpower were Russia, Trump would okay the pact, and his sycophantic Senate stooges would go along, but then they'd have to clear it with DOGE, and Elon Musk would declare that while drowning migrants behind a 30-billion dollar dam would be fun, deporting them would be more efficient.]

Teen justicar Jean organizes a protest, ignoring warnings from Tocalone—his fearful friend who dabbles in forbidden blood magic to resurrect her mother. Unbeknownst to them, gangster Mikhail hijacks the demonstration for his own gain, injuring dozens and demonizing the protesters in the eyes of the people.

Refusing to abandon his people, Jean vows to burn down the construction site. [The construction site of a proposed dam is probably a river and an area that needs to be cleared of vegetation. The river wouldn't burn, and the dam builders would appreciate having the vegetation burned so they could start pouring the non-flammable concrete. Even a dam made of wood wouldn't burn; ask any beaver.] Terrified she might lose him like she lost her mother, Tocalone gambles everything on a ritual that just might shield him from harm...or consume them both.

Gospel of the West is a YA dystopia infused with subtle magical realism, complete at 85,000 words. It blends the moral grittiness of Sabaa Tahir's An Ember in the Ashes with the rebellious spirit of Marie Lu's Legend. At its core, it asks how far one should go to protect the ones they love.

 

[Bio] 

Thank you for your time and consideration

Notes

Your plot summary is only five sentences, which is probably why it feels disjointed, more like an outline. Give us nine or ten sentences with cohesive connections between them.

Even if the mayor wanted to hire American companies to build a dam, it would have to be cleared with authorities to protect communities downstream from losing their water supply or having their water tainted by corpses of migrants that get snagged on branches as they float past.

Face-Lift 1515

Guess the Plot

Lujain

1. A simple shopping trip becomes a fight for survival when terrorists take over the local big box store. And then the elves arrive.

2, Archaeologist Rebecca has searched for the lost city of Lujain for years. So did previous generations in her family. Her exploits in India involve con artists, a Pakistani spy, and a determined white cow.

3. A woman discovers alchemy and accidentally transmutes her blood to gold. She dies very quickly and her heirs fight over who inherits the corpse, which is more valuable than the rest of her estate.

4. Lujain, her parents, and 15 other immigrants are labeled by the current administration as Palestinian terrorist sympathizers and are deported on a boat to El Salvador, but before they arrive, armed men board the boat and kill everyone except Lujain, leaving her adrift in the Pacific with no food or water. She survives for months thanks to a helpful dolphin.

Original Version

Dear Evil Editor,

"LUJAIN is a 92,000-word literary novel that combines the isolated survival narrative of Yann Martel's 'Life of Pi' with the political urgency of Héctor Tobar's 'The Last Great Road Bum' and the lyrical exploration of identity found in Yaa Gyasi's 'Transcendent Kingdom'"

When fifteen-year-old Lujain Al-Masri witnesses her father, a respected Palestinian-American dentist, arrested for allegedly killing a police officer at a protest, her orderly Philadelphia life implodes.

Despite his pleas of innocence, a viral video appears damning. The administration, eager to make an example, strips him of his citizenship and targets his family under a controversial executive order against “homegrown criminals.” [Nothing like this could ever happen in real life.] 

With the stroke of a pen, Lujain and her mother are labeled as “terrorist sympathizers and a threat to national security.” They are summarily deported to El Salvador—a country they’ve never set foot in and have no connections to. [Either you wrote this 92,000-word novel in the past month, or you're remarkably prescient.] Their unexpected journey takes a deadly turn when armed men board their vessel, leaving Lujain the sole survivor, adrift on the vast Pacific Ocean with no food, water, or means of communication. Just when all hope seems lost, Lujain forms an unexpected bond with a curious bottlenose dolphin she names Najma. 

Their connection becomes her lifeline through months lost at sea. With dwindling resources [Dwindling? She had no food and water to begin with.] and mounting injuries, Lujain clings to one purpose: surviving to expose the truth—that the murder of her mother and 14 others was not a simple robbery gone wrong. It was an assassination. That her family was targeted not for a crime, but for their voice. 

Thank you for your consideration.

Notes

If you get deported from Philadelphia to El Salvador, you're traveling by plane. Including a layover, it wouldn't take more than half a day. To make the trip by boat would take more than a week, and would be costly and dangerous. Thus we must assume they went by boat to make them vulnerable to the killers, who were also sent by the government. It seems unlikely the government would okay the killing of the crew of the boat they used to transport the deportees, but who knows?

If the government sent the killers, it's unlikely they would wait till the boat was in the Pacific to attack it. The Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico America have vast convenient areas. Once they're in the Pacific after going through the Panama Canal, the route to El Salvador is right up the the coast of Central America, not through the middle of the Pacific. 

Also, your vessel wouldn't be a rowboat, it would have an engine, and built-in means of communication that the attackers wouldn't bother destroying, as they think everyone on board is dead. I'm surprised the killers didn't set the boat on fire and sink it to get rid of evidence.

A boat that carries that many passengers in the ocean should have a lifeboat. Lujain should get in the lifeboat and tell Najda to tow her to land, preferably in Costa Rica or anywhere other than El Salvador.

Most of this may be satisfactorily dealt with in your book, but if the agent you write to wonders whether you could possibly manage to make it all work, she may assume you don't. Maybe they should go by plane, and it crashes in the jungle and Lujain is the sole survivor, and she's befriended by a toucan.

Face-Lift 1514

Guess the Plot

Dearest Dad

1. I used to hate women and treat them like dirt, but after 15 years of therapy I've finally realized it was my dad's fault. Hey, wanna go on a date?

2. Mikey intended to write a thank-you letter to his father for fathers day. After it passes 60,000 words, he decides to publish it as a novel instead.

3. When twin men adopt a child, it can be confusing to the kid, especially when one dad acts like Mr. Rogers, and the other acts like a demon from hell, but the demonic one is good at faking that he's the other one.

4. Jen's father was the best man she ever knew, and she's writing a book to honor his memory. But should she leave out the times when he came home at lunch to have sex with her nanny while mom was at work? Or the murder she witnessed that he tried to tell her was a bad dream?

Original Version

Hello [So and So],

How do you rehabilitate a narcissistic incel? [That reminds me of a riddle: How many narcissistic incels does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Three. One to manipulate a woman into doing it, and two to tell her she's doing it all wrong.] One answer is in this book, a completed 70,000 word autobiography, [memoir?] “Dearest Dad” (working title). It demystifies the manipulative habits, depression, and misogyny that plagued my abused mind, and details the journey to overcome them.

My mother disappeared when I was 8 and my father imposed a mortal fear on my impressionable mind through starvation and beatings. [I see why your mother left, but not why she didn't take you with her. Unless . . . are you sure she isn't buried in the woods behind the house?] He puppeteered my emotions at will and damaged my will to live. In adolescence, these hardships pushed me towards toxic groups like pyramid schemes and [assholes like] pick-up artists because they simply offered easy answers [avenues] to achieve a happy life that didn’t exist under my father's care. These groups [This], combined with my father’s treatment, taught me how to be manipulative: I used cheap psychological tricks to make friends and get dates, and I lulled men and women into opening up emotionally — making them think I was a close friend — then abandoned them. [If I'm interpreting this correctly, whenever you met someone you did not want to be friends with, you consciously decided that instead of dumping them immediately, you would, just for kicks, lull them into opening up emotionally. And then dump them. At this point, some agents will be thinking, Who would want to read this guy's autobiography? And the anwer is, only someone who hopes in the end you get your comeuppance. 

Only after starting therapy in college did I start to realize just how warped my perception of reality had been. I had discarded every compliment and kind act out of suspicion that they were manipulative tactics, and believed that I was dumber than dirt despite a blossoming academic career. Well into adulthood, at 36, and after 15 years of therapy, I finally found the courage to stand up to my father's manipulation and disown him. [Your therapist's thoughts after ten minutes in your presence: Hmm. Do I tell him to disown his father, thereby solving all his problems in one session, or do I string him along for the next fifteen years, by which time he'll have paid for my summer house in the Hamptons? Easy decision.] In turn, his missing influence freed me from a life-long conditioned silence, enabling me to document my experiences as both the abuser and the abused. Writing about them, combined with continued therapy, enabled me to fully excise all toxic traits from my personality. This concrete transition from narcissism to humility is the most important part of this book, because it shows incels how to heal, if they are so willing. [If you want to convince the person reading this query letter that you have completely transformed from narcissism to humility, it may be best not to boast that you've fully excised all toxic traits from your personality.]

Incels have extremist views and have caused at least 12 known mass killings since 2014. Self-reported surveys show that over 93% of incels have depression or anxiety. This book is my attempt to show the public how incels become indoctrinated, from a deeply personal perspective. [Is that what you're attempting to do? Because you just said your purpose was to show incels "how to heal if they are so willing." Is your audience incels or the public? ]

Readers of Scarred: The True Story of How I Escaped NXIVM, My Life After Hate, and The Gift of Our Wounds will most immediately find kinship with this story, while readers of Understanding and Treating Incels, Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists, and The Incel Rebellion may appreciate the less clinical and more personal perspective. [You have so many comp titles, the agent is probably wondering if the incel book field has already become oversaturated. Two books that focus on the personal perspective is plenty.]  

Best regards,

Notes

Out of curiosity, did your shrink suggest it would be therapeutic to put your story in writing, and did you block out the second part of their suggestion: and then burn it? I ask because thanks to Google, people you want to date or befriend will be able to find out what you were like before you excised your toxic personality traits, and may unfairly abandon you.

Have you considered converting this into a novel? One where the incel is trying to mend his ways, but dozens of women he wronged band together to take revenge on him? The book might not sell, but the screenplay would go for six figures.

Face-Lift 1513

Guess the Plot

The Journal of Emily Davis

1. Emily Davis’s journal has the spirit of her great grandmother trapped inside of it. Her great grandmother becomes her mentor & teaches her important life lessons.

2. When our universe and another universe are simultaneously attacked by monsters and zombies and mages and demons, it's up to one teenaged girl to defeat them and save us all while also cleaning up the environment of several worlds, struggling with personal and mental problems, trying to get through high school, and writing it all down in her voluminous journal. Her friends help.

3. Emily Davis keeps a journal that is not completely factual, which isn't a problem until her (now former) best friend posts "selections" on the internet. She becomes a pariah at school, a subject of mockery on the web, and garners a 6 figure book deal.

4. Emily Davis's journal wakes up after a devastating earthquake. Buried beneath tons of rubble and only able to communicate by generating written words on its pages, it must find a way to the surface and seek its plain-named creator Emily Davis for answers that it may never find.

Original Version

Dear

The 90,000-word novel, The Journal of Emily Davis, is about a teenage protagonist named Emily Davis and her friends who live in a fantasy universe separate from the human world. Emily tries her best to balance her life as a warrior tasked with protecting the fantasy universe and its citizens as well as her life as a normal teenager trying to adjust to differences in the human universe. [You seem to be saying she lives in two universes. Which universe was she born in? If the human one, who tasked her with protecting the fantasy world, and why her? Did they give her super powers or weapons?] When danger suddenly threatens the citizens of the fantasy universe, Emily and her friends will answer the call to help those in danger whether it is against demons, dark mages, or zombies. [What if danger suddenly threatens the fantasy universe while Emily and her friends are in school, taking an important test? Do they ask the teacher for permission to go fight zombies? Does it  go:

Teacher: Yes, Emily?

Emily: May I skip the test to go fight demons in a fantasy universe?

Teacher: Not again. Christ. All right, go.

Emily's friends: We wanna go fight demons too.

Other students: Hey! What about us? Can we go fight demons too? Can we? Can we?]

 

When legendary dark mages, long-thought to be gone, attack Emily’s school, Starhaven, Emily is tasked with not only protecting her school from the menace, but also many other worlds throughout the fantasy universe as monsters once thought to be dormant or defeated return. [Who is tasking her with all this? How can Emily protect multiple worlds? Even Superman and the Avengers have to work 24-7 just to protect a couple American cities.] Along the way, she will also strive to help the inhabitants of the worlds who are struggling with many different problems including environmental damage and trauma from war. 

 

Opposing Emily and her friends are multiple enemy factions ranging from the cursed order of mages, and a demonic army who wants nothing more than the complete destruction of the fantasy universe. [You continue piling on obstacles to Emily's success without ever revealing what she has going for her. We have no reason to believe Emily could defeat one zombie, much less accomplish what you task her with.] If Emily and her friends are defeated, the many worlds of the fantasy universe will either be annihilated, or subject to the oppressive and destructive rule of the dark mages. [The fantasy universe is doomed. We're all doomed. And Emily will never complete 10th grade.] Emily and her friends will also struggle with personal and mental problems [Of course they will. Otherwise their task would be too easy.] due to the distrust they face in the fantasy universe, a universe that has long faced wars and other catastrophes. [In other words, it's no different from our universe.]

 

I have written as a hobby for years now, and my interest in writing has long stemmed from my enjoyment reading both fantasy and sci-fi. Inspirations of my novel include Silver in the Bone by Alexandra Bracken and The Dragon’s Promise by Elizabeth Lim

 

Thank you for your consideration, and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Notes

Do the parents and teachers know about the fantasy universe? Are they all okay with these kids protecting it?

Why is it called The Journal of Emily Davis? She's so busy saving everyone in the universes, I find it hard to believe she also has time to keep a journal. She might have time for a brief journal entry, something like:

April 26. Today I cleaned up the environment of all the planets in our galaxy, quashed 3 zombie invasions in the fantasy universe, and made it back in time for fifth period phys ed.

One thing you might try: Instead of having Emily protect and save numerous worlds in two universes from multiple enemy factions, have her protect her BFF from a high school bully.

Face-Lift 1512

Guess the Plot

Bogshephards of Elmbloom County

1. Rowena is sick of being a bogshepherd. She dreams of opening a bed and breakfast, preferably one no one comes to so she can live in solitude. Then she meets Kal, and love is in the air. But is Kal a friend, or has he infiltrated her life solely to destroy her dream?

2. A story of sheep, told by sheep.

3. The annual competition between the bogshephards of  Elmbloom County and the moorshepherds of Westmeath County is in danger of being cancelled. Only one 14-year-old girl can save it, and she's gone missing.

4. Peat bogs were sentient long before mankind took its first bipedal steps, but no one noticed until a 100-year old retired bog farmer realized the bogs had been slowly spelling out words in his dreams. The farmer becomes the first bogshephard and fights a losing battle trying to convince the world of his discovery.

Original Version

Dear Agent,

Rowena, pointed-eared Sylph and dedicated bogshepherd, [I was thinking that should be pointy-eared, so I looked up the difference, and apparently "pointy" is more informal than "pointed." More playful. So when applied to the ears of a sylph or an elf, I'd go with "pointy." When applied to the ears of a Vulcan, "pointed."] [When applied to the ears of a bogshepherd, it's not clear.] [When you spell "bogshepherd" two different ways between the title and the first sentence, someone's gonna think one of them is a typo.] wants nothing more than a few seconds [day] of peace, alone. But operating her late grandmother’s rural farm keeps her on the tips of her wind-affinited toes every day of the week. So when her business partner (and only friend) proposes a new venture that could allow them to make enough coin [That settles it, "pointy."] to afford them time to relax, Rowena accepts. The idea? Turning the working farm into a charming, countryside inn. But they’ll need a helping hand, and not just from each other. Between finally meeting the townsfolk she’s so purposefully tried to avoid since her grandmother died and training the mysterious newly-hired help, Rowena might be deeper in the muck than she thought. 

Kal, a half-blooded pyro-fae, desires nothing more than a life free from his pureblood, faerie family’s business: a rural bed and breakfast. [The things your main characters want "nothing more than" seem remarkably attainable.] So when he’s recruited by two strangers to help open a rival inn he takes his chances in hopes of a new start. [He wants nothing more than a life free from his family's bed and breakfast business, so he starts a new life . . . at the bed and breakfast across the street?] But so does his family, who ruthlessly desire to come out on top in Elmbloom County’s hospitality market. They make him a deal: infiltrate and disrupt the enemy, and they’ll work their magic to get him the far-away city job of his dreams. But his plans rapidly halt when he meets Rowena, [If Rowena was one of the two strangers who recruited him, they'd already met.] a prickly, jaded Sylph that, despite what she argues, might be the first person that has ever truly accepted him as his true self. [She's arguing that she doesn't accept him? Or that she's not the first person to accept him? Or neither? Is "argues" the right word?]

As the two of them bond over hosting fantastical overnight guests, stubborn swamp animals, and endearingly peculiar townspeople, Rowena begins to question her beloved [desire for a] future alone [--until she learns of] Kal’s initial intentions[.]  right before [With] the inn’s Equinox Festival [approaching, she] retreats into the [withdraws into an earlier] version of herself when her grandmother died: broken and alone. But with the success of the festival on the line, Rowena has to make a decision [must decide]- does she leave her new passions behind, returning to a familiar life of stoic isolationism [solitude], or does she finally risk being vulnerable enough to enjoy a future of friendship, belonging, and love?

BOGSHEPHARDS OF ELMBLOOM COUNTY is a 65,000-word cozy fantasy novel. It combines the fantastical, small-town slow-burn of The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst with the enchanting, dreamlike world of Water Moon by Samantha Sotto Yambao.

[Reasons for choosing this agent here.] Thank you for your time and consideration.

Notes

Is Kal the the "mysterious newly-hired help"? If not, no need to mention the the mysterious newly-hired help, as you don't bring them up again. If he is the the mysterious newly-hired help, he can't be that mysterious, as they recruited him, and he shouldn't need a lot of training, having worked in the business already. You also don't mention Rowena's business partner again after they suggest turning the farm into an inn. As the query is a bit  long, we could cut the first paragraph down to:

Rowena, pointed-eared Sylph and dedicated bogshepherd, never gets a day off from operating her late grandmother’s rural farm. Her solution: convert the working farm into a charming, countryside inn. But she’ll need a helping hand, as she has no experience running an inn.

This takes us into Kal's paragraph:

Enter Kal, a half-blooded pyro-fae, who desires nothing more than to escape his pureblood, faerie family’s business: a rural bed and breakfast.

This is where you deviate from the tried and true plot in which Kal has always wanted to run a farm, and they live happily ever after. Your Kal wants out of Elmbloom County and into the city where he'll be eaten alive. Oh well. You need a villain, and who better than the ruthless elderly couple running a quaint family-owned bed and breakfast?

I'd like a better idea of what the fae magic can do. Apparently it can get Kal the job of his dreams in the big city, but they need Kal to infiltrate the enemy because their magic isn't able to disrupt the new rival business. It seems like this story would be the same if the characters were all human. 

There was a time when one's attempt to beat the competition involved improving your service or lowering your prices. Sending in a spy to figuratively or literally burn the other business down was a last resort. No longer. I blame it on Trump.

Face-Lift 1511

Guess the Plot

Fatum

1. The Bachelor meets The Hunger Games on this reality show where dozens of women vie for one man's ring, with the winner becoming a star, while the losers . . . you don't wanna know. This is the story of one woman who bets it all on being the sole survivor. 

2. A middling student comes across this word and googles it, only to slowly realize through oddly powerful pangs of deja vu that she is Marcus Aurelius incarnate. She discovers that Pompey has been reincarnated as Trump and she now must find a way to dethrone him before civil war begins (and without getting sent to a psych ward).

3. Regular fatso, Tatum, acquiesces to joining weight watchers per his wife's request. But when he finds out his wife has begun an affair with her trainer, Tatum takes on the title of 'Fatum' & owns his identity as an obese man.

4. When Elsie goes to fat camp, it's to please her family, not to lose weight. When she sees the personified spirit of impending doom, it only encourages stress eating. When she returns home 200 lbs heavier, her family sues the camp.

5. When an oracle informs Fatum of his pre-ordained fate, an early death, he refuses to accept it. He kills the oracle. Now he's on the run from a lot of people intent on locking him in a small room with no window on death row. 

                              

Original Version

Dear [AGENT NAME],

Thank you for considering my query. Because of your interest in [PERSONALIZATION], I suspect you might enjoy meeting antiheroine Belén Kabar and following her journey through the glittering dystopia of Fatum, where The Bachelor meets The Hunger Games. [Italicize titles.]

Twenty-seven women enter Fatum in pursuit of one man’s final ring. Some want love. Some want fame. Belén Kabar wants out: out of her rotting country, out of obscurity, and into the heart of Tyche, the world’s entertainment capital. She’s betting it all on one goal: become the show’s next lead.

She knows how the game works: cry at the right time, kiss like you’re in love, and make the audience root for your happy ending. Because Fatum, Tyche’s number one reality show, isn’t just a TV phenomenon. It’s a cultural machine. A ratings juggernaut. A tool of soft power so influential, it shapes fashion, politics, and the very definition of desirability. Contestants are stripped of privacy, rewritten in editing rooms, and hunted for tears by moiras (producers) whose job is to break them open. The ones who play along can be made into stars. The ones who don’t vanish into obscurity. [Wait, the losers don't die? What about The Hunger Games? This is more like The Bachelor meets Top Chef.]

Belén arrives with more than just ambition; she has a secret connection to the show’s production, relentless discipline, and a mind built for strategy. But the deeper she gets, the harder it becomes to tell where the story ends and where she begins. Her scripted romance with the golden-boy, the show’s Destined, becomes both saccharine and sour. An old flame behind the scenes resurfaces. A magnetic rival starts to look less like an enemy and more like something far more dangerous. [Finally. An enemy. I hope she's formed some trustworthy alliances.] And all the while, the people at the top (the faceless, all-knowing “Powerfuls”) are watching. Pushing. Rewriting the rules.

Fatum (95,000 words) is a novel of dystopian women’s fiction that will appeal to readers who enjoyed How to Be Eaten by Maria Adelmann and Annie Bot by Sierra Greer. [See, now if you'd italicized the titles, I wouldn't have thought you were comping one title by Sierra Greer: How to Be Eaten by Maria Adelman and Annie Bot.] Fans of reality TV might also appreciate this novel, but only if they’re willing to look behind the Wizard’s curtain.

I was born, raised, and am currently based in [SOUTH AMERICAN CITY], where I work as an [BORING JOB]. Fatum is my debut novel.

You will find the first [XX] pages of my manuscript in the body of this email, below.  [Don’t give your page count in Roman numerals.]

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Best,

Notes

I have no complaints about this. The TV show would probably be a hit. I've noticed a couple agents putting books based on reality TV shows on their wish lists and they'd probably want to check this out. It's longer than ideal, so if you think that's a problem, here's a slightly shortened version of the plot summary, which might include a minor change or two that you like.:

Because of your interest in [PERSONALIZATION], you may enjoy following antiheroine Belén Kabar into the glittering realm of Fatum, the number one reality show in a dystopian world. Fatum isn’t just a ratings juggernaut. It’s a cultural machine that shapes fashion, politics, and the very definition of desirability. Contestants are stripped of privacy, rewritten in editing rooms, and hunted for tears by producers whose job is to break them open. The ones who play along can become stars. 

Twenty-seven women enter Fatum in pursuit of one man’s final ring. Some want love, some want fame. Belén Kabar wants out: out of her rotting country, and out of obscurity. She’s betting everything on becoming the show’s next lead, and she arrives with more than ambition; she has relentless discipline, a mind built for strategy--and a secret connection to the show’s production. She knows how the game works: cry at the right time, kiss like you’re in love, and make the audience root for your happy ending.

But the deeper she gets, the harder it becomes to tell where the story ends and where she begins. Her scripted romance with the golden-boy, the show’s Destined, becomes both saccharine and sour. An old flame resurfaces. A magnetic contender starts to look less like a rival and more like a dangerous enemy. And all the while, the people at the top (the faceless, all-knowing “Powerfuls”) are watching. Pushing. Rewriting the rules.

The plot summary feels like an exposé of a show like The Bachelor. If the losers are subjected to worse than obscurity, like death, or if a contestant gets murdered, that's worth working in.

Face-Lift 1510

Guess the Plot

Willow in the Godwood

1. Willow in the Godwood: A young willow seeking answers about his missing family joins the ministry and trains for years before realizing that the church is made of his family's bodies.

2. Dryad Willow lives in a mystical forest shunned by loggers, tree-huggers, and witches alike. Even with all the other dryads, animals, bugs, etc, she's getting lonely. An allegory.

3. Willow and Herla make a deal. She'll cure the blight on his godwood trees if he'll cure her mother's fatal illness. Neither is aware that the other has no idea how to cure anything.

4. Godwood trees are the rarest, but most sought-after wood for anything the heart desires. Yet when a willow tree gets grafted onto a godwood, strange things start happening. Fae things.

Original Version

I am proud to present my debut fantasy novel with crossover appeal, WILLOW IN THE GODWOOD, which is complete at 80,000 words. The novel can standalone [stand alone] or become a series.

Willow is hollowed out by the grief for her missing father and the burden of caring for her ailing mother while ostracized in her small, northern commune. [This explains her nickname, Weeping Willow.] Even the holy Godwood trees, once believed to be filled with the spirit of the Elverum, are dying. While no one knows the true source [cause] , King Herla suspects it’s his fault, and he can’t forgive himself for the unwitting part he played in his late wife, queen Caiome’s, death. [Unwitting, because he thought he was killing Caiome's twin sister.]

On Samhain night, guided by Caiome’s spirit and a procession of will o’[ ]the wisps, Willow chances upon King Herla at the Godwood marsh, [If she was guided to him, she didn't chance upon him. Meets or encounters.] and they make a bargain. Willow agrees to help Herla discover the source of the blight if Herla can restore her mother’s health. Both think they have the better end of the deal. [Because she has no idea how to cure blight, and he has no idea how to cure her mother.] Cunning Willow has nothing to offer, but Herla, too, has nothing to lose. He never wished to inherit the Godwood anyway.

Soon, Herla and Willow’s relationship blooms as they fill the hollow spaces inside of one  another. [You keep calling people "hollow." I'm starting to think the big twist is that the characters all turn out to be trees.] But Herla has kept secrets from Willow, and as their relationship develops, he must come clean about the swirling magic in his veins and his father’s unsettling influence. Together, they discover that the last Elverum token, the Heart of the Wood, is the source and solution to the blight. Herla reveals that his father, King Ceallach of the Lonely Mountain, seeks the heart too, and he sends his second-in-command, the dark huntsman Menis, after them. [Herla and Ceallach are both the king? You forgot to mention that Ceallach is dead, if he is. Is Menis also dead?] Unraveling the riddle of the blight teaches them both to face their fears, embrace their gifts, and make peace with their burdens. [Yeah, but it doesn't cure mom. Does Herla renege on his part of the deal, or does he cure mom with the swirling magic in his veins?]

This dark fairytale blends the gloomy romance and triumph of Rachel Gillig’s SHEPHERD KING duology with the encroaching fear and atmosphere of Hannah Whitten’s FOR THE WOLF*.* 

[blah, blah, author bio with personal info, blah]

Thanks for your time and consideration.

Notes

If Herla had the power to cure Willow's mother with magic, and didn't tell her until the blight was dealt with, that should take the bloom off their relationship. Mom could have died while they were worrying about friggin' tree blight.

Is there a reason Herla and Willow each believe the other has the ability to keep their part of the bargain? Like she's a botanist and he's an MD? Or all people have different magical abilities in this world? 

It seems weird for the dead king to have a second-in-command. I'd expect the dead king's second-in-command to pledge allegiance to the new king.

This is a big improvement over the version you sent earlier, which I hadn't gotten to when you sent this one.

Face-Lift 1509

Guess the Plot

Keepers' Valley

1. Once you enter the Keepers' Valley, you may never return. Rebecca learns this the hard way when the Keepers chain her to the Monolith of Chained Bones.

2. In a post-apocalyptic world, an army seeking a place to conquer comes upon Keepers' Valley, so called because its residents keep the records of the pre-apocalypse world. If they can't conquer a bunch of historians, what a pathetic army they are. As usual, it's up to one woman to stop them.

3. The Finders went exploring, named exoplanets, asteroid belts, solar systems, etc, etc. But now that it's down to the nitty gritty, the Keepers own everything. That's where Joe comes in: protecting a dinky little crevice between mountains in a backwater corner of a galaxy no one else cares about.

4. Keeper settled the Hidden Ranch Valley two years after the pandemic, hopeful to find a plot of land to tend to away from the chaos of society & government. But strange things have been popping up in his valley lately. Ever the independent, Keeper keeps his secrets safe in his valley. When he meets Ayana Strongthold on one of his few trips to town, will he have the heart to let her in and risk her safety? Or will he entrench himself further in his isolation?

Original Version

Dear Agent:

KEEPERS’ VALLEY is an adult low fantasy adventure set in a quaint post-apocalyptic North America. [Rarely is anything in a post-apocalyptic world described as "quaint."] I believe this novel is a good match for your representation because (relate to agent’s MSWL or current stable)

Allie Francoeur’s courage has always outpaced her judgement. [judgment]  So, naturally, when her village is invaded, Allie allows herself to be captured.  [When soldiers invade, they don't want to drag all their captives from skirmish to skirmish. So much easier to just kill them.] The second step in her plan, where she is going to orchestrate [orchestrating] a daring escape for her people, well…that doesn’t go as anticipated.  Now held in the dormitory of the school where she used to teach young healers, Allie’s half-baked plot has landed her in a battle of wits against the invading general, Reginald Gray.  Worse, Gray believes he can use her magical gifts to aid his quest to conquer the valley she calls home.  [Her magical gifts couldn't even get her out of a school dormitory, but this guy thinks she's the key to conquering the valley? What are her magical gifts?]

As Gray strives to unravel her secrets, Allie is devising an agenda of her own.  She saved the life of the general’s second-in-command, Thomas Landen, when they were children.  She knows his heart (and his real identity), but she can’t make sense of his devotion to the silver-tongued general who controls his every move. [Obviously Thomas is an undercover agent who infiltrated the invading army and is now afraid Allie's flawed "judgment" will blow his cover before his own not-half-baked plan saves the valley.]

Allie must decide how much she can reveal about the true calling of her people to bring Thomas over to her side.  [The true calling of her people is revealed below in your note to EE; it would be nice if it were mentioned in the query.] If Allie’s judgement is right, [which it seldom is, as it's "always" outpaced by her courage,] her new alliance will be the key to ridding her home of its invaders. [Because history shows when an army invades a village populated by historians, the invaders flee if their second-in-command betrays them.] If she’s wrong, Allie will have given Thomas, and the general he serves, exactly what they need to claim the valley for their own.   

KEEPERS’ VALLEY combines the magic-entwined war setting and lost family themes of The Book of Thorns by Hester Fox with the reimagined science, anti-colonialism threads, and stomach-turning villain of Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Alternately heartwarming and dark, KEEPERS’ VALLEY is complete at 118,000 words and stands alone with series potential.  

Sincerely,

[The title refers to the Valley where the story is set, and the people who live there call themselves "Keepers" because they have been tasked with preserving humanity's accomplishments from before the fall of civilization.]

Notes

My sense is that when an army invades a valley and captures people, the army's general has better things to do than engage in a battle of wits with one of the captives. They delegate battles of wits to their trusted lieutenants, who order their sergeants to kill the captives, especially if they think the captives have the power to turn them into frogs.

Most of my comments will prove irrelevant if you fill us in on the magic. As historians normally have no chance of defeating armies, if you want us to believe that's not the case, we need to know what the historians have going for them. Is Allie the only resident of the valley with magical gifts? Where would you place her on this list of people with magic powers:

Dr. Strange

Gandalf

Merlin

Elphaba

Samantha Stephens

Penn & Teller

Also, it probably seems like it would require magical gifts, but if you could trim about 20,000 words from the book . . .

Face-Lift 1508

Guess the Plot

Human Years

1. Failed potter Earnest vomits up a baby boy that starts aging so fast, he'll be older than Earnest in a few weeks. Earnest wants to show his kid the world, so he takes him on a road trip to Vegas where they get trapped in a casino.

2. The tale of a talking dog who, annoyed with his owner for always telling people his age in dog years, starts telling other dogs his owner's age in fruit fly years.

3. A multi-generational family saga about aliens who crash landed during the Renaissance and live five times longer than humans, but other than keeping that secret are pretty normal.

4. A dog and a human make a Freaky Friday level body swap, only to discover life in the other's body isn't so different.

5. A man on a spacecraft meets a woman alien that makes a home in his brain. It's an intergalactic love story for the ages.

Original Version

Dear AGENT

HUMAN YEARS, at 65,000 words, is a work of surrealist literary fiction that will appeal to readers of absurd, voice-driven, and humorous road novels that tackle existential themes [Let's put this at the end of the query, and start with paragraph 2, to avoid being rejected before the end of the first sentence.] such as Miranda July’s ALL FOURS and Melissa Broder’s DEATH VALLEY.

While his wife is away on a work trip, a failed potter vomits up a baby [Did I say start with paragraph 2? I meant paragraph 3.] and takes it on the road after discovering it’s aging rapidly with each passing day. [Stop calling the kid "it." Unless "it" is your pronoun of choice.] [If "they" is your pronoun of choice, some people will be annoyed, but not if the guy vomits up twins. And vomiting up twins is far more surreal and absurd than just vomiting up one kid.] [Wait, twins, but one is a rapidly aging baby and the other is a 100-year-old guy getting younger at the same rate. When they both turn 50, they finally look identical, and the universe explodes. Surreal.] [If that sounds better than your actual plot, you can have it for free if you dedicate the book to me.] [Also, wouldn't you take your kid to a doctor first, to see WTF is going on, and then go on a road trip?]

Earnest and his wife never wanted children. It was something they agreed on from the jump. [Exactly what I thought you meant by "never."] But the morning that his wife leaves town for the world’s biggest genetics conference, Earnest starts to hear the sound of his biological clock ticking. It’s that same night that Earnest throws up into a clay bassinet and the baby, Bud, appears. [So only vomit comes out of his mouth, but then it morphs into a baby, as opposed to the fully formed baby exiting Earnest's mouth?] [If they never wanted children, why do they have a bassinet?] The following day, Bud is already walking and talking, calling Earnest, “Dad.” Which is when Earnest and his best friend decide to take Bud on a road trip, a desperate attempt to show him as much of the world while they still can. 

Their trip spans from Santa Cruz to the Grand Canyon,  [That's a good itinerary to see the world; they can stop in Lake Havasu City to see the London Bridge, and Las Vegas for the Eiffel Tower. Of course the Grand Canyon is the highlight, but by the time they reach it the kid will be 120 years old. In human years.] with several hurdles along the way—including a confrontation between Earnest and his dead parents in a tent at Coyote Lake, [Sounds more like a confrontation at Peyote Lake.] as well as being trapped in the siren song of a Vegas casino. As Bud gets older and older, [During the trip, or during the next few weeks?] their bond grows stronger and stronger—lighting the fuse of Earnest’s impending breakdown—all while his relationship with his wife carries the weight of this secret he’s keeping from her. His son. [Is he also her son?]

My short fiction has received [Prize from respected litmag], and is forthcoming in their Fall 2025 issue. My short stories have also been published in the [litmag], [litmag], [litmag], and elsewhere. I am a Teaching Associate at [College], where I study and teach writing. This would be my debut novel. 

Thank you for your time and consideration. 

Best,

Notes

Let me start by saying you've based the whole premise of this novel on faulty science. Which was predictable if you're in a red state.

This baby was totally unexpected and unwanted, but it arrives already named? 

There's a rare rapid-aging condition known as HGPS. Maybe Bud has a mutated form of it.

When a book or movie has magic or monsters or superheroes, there's usually an explanation. Superman and Silver Surfer came from other planets, Spiderman, Flash and Hulk got powers in accidents of nature. Aquaman's father was a fish. Tom Hanks was granted his wish to be big by Zoltar. You either buy the explanation, or you don't. I'd be interested in how a father/son relationship develops if the son is aging years in days, or in whether the son's intellect keeps up with his body. But can't you just say the kid was left on the doorstep in a basket with a note saying Please take care of my child. He has HGPS, and I can't handle it? Or give mom and dad a child who gets into one of mom's genetic experiments and starts aging? In short, I want a better explanation than Bud was vomited up by a man. And there may be a good explanation in the book, but if the query leaves the agent thinking Ew, gross, they may never see the explanation. 

Whether you keep the vomit or not, I think you need to write a query that doesn't inspire questions you aren't gonna answer in the query. That might mean starting the query: When Earnest finds his son Bud is aging several years every day, he realizes time is short, and decides to take the boy on a road trip to see the world. Or at least the Grand Canyon.