Guess the Plot
The Blood of the Blue Lion
1. A drunk witch-doctor mumbles an “ancient folktale”: deep in the jungle lives a blue lion with diamond claws and golden blood. A senile scientist, hoping for one last discovery, believes him and goes hunting. The lion is real. The scientist tries to take a blood sample and becomes lunch.
2. Bad enough that Miri's father got her best friend Ani pregnant, now he's planning to dump Miri's beloved mother and replace her with Ani. Think Anne Boleyn in the Ottoman Empire.
3. A lion gets trapped in a chocolate factory and eats a candy he isn't supposed to, swelling up into a massive blueberry. Then, he must fight to defend his world behind a child's wardrobe.
4. Edina is the last princess of Kolanth with the curse that destroyed the kingdom (anthropomorph Filench) a millennium ago ready to descend upon her head as soon as it finds her, or rather figures out who she is. Will misdirecting it into the Sisis jungle keep her safe, or will the local tribesmen capture it and use it to take over the world?
5. A wealthy businessman entrenched in the aristocracy keeps a dark secret. He is a lion shifter. He solves crimes in the jungle while his drunken wife is asleep.
Original Version
[Why this agent, if there’s a really cool reason.]
Lady Miri didn’t know that the king, her adoptive father, was preparing her for the throne.
That’s fine. Neither did he.
Then the king’s only heir dies, and a foreign warlord makes a plausible claim to the throne. Because Miri is popular with the commoners and the powerful religious authorities, the desperate king makes her the first female crown prince in centuries. Miri enthusiastically seizes her new position. She doesn’t know the king never meant her to keep it. [I assume it's the king's throne that the warlord is claiming, which doesn't seem related to the king's heir dying.] [My research reveals that "crown princess" is a thing. Calling her a female crown prince is like calling the king a male queen. Hmm, bad example. It's like calling the queen the female king.] [Also, this seems to be set at a time when kings wouldn't care what commoners thought, and even if this king did care, he'd be a pretty bad king if the commoners would prefer a foreign warlord as their ruler.] [Having read ahead and seen that the warlord/king issue doesn't get mentioned again, I think we can do without it. Also, once we abridge this paragraph, it's kind of short, but we can just tack those first two paragraphs onto the front:
Ani, another young noblewoman, belongs to a despised magical race. Her dead brother was a traitor. [A character who does nothing in the query except be dead isn't needed.] at least she has [, though she does have] one thing going for her: she’s Miri’s best friend. Then [But when] her father is charged with treachery. When [and] Ani tries to defend her father [him] but ends up insulting the king, Miri’s friendship isn’t enough to save her. Exile and hard labor threaten to break her—until the king offers her an out. He’ll pardon her and her father; she just has to bear him a son. [What kind of leader sends an innocent person off to some . . . Salvadoran prison just for disagreeing with him about something?] [I may have made that paragraph confusing. I think this is sufficient:
Miri soon discovers that Ani is pregnant with her father’s child. Worse yet, he’s ready to set aside Miri’s beloved mother and appoint Ani queen in her place. If Miri keeps silent, she will forfeit her title. If she fights to protect her mother and defeat her erstwhile friend, [Defeat Ani? Is Ani on board with becoming queen? Or just trying to stay out of the gulag?] she could lose her home, her freedom, and maybe even her life. [With her father and the best friend in charge, Miri is in danger of losing her life? Suddenly I'm rooting for the foreign warlord.]
The heart-wrenching family dynamics of The Jasmine Throne meet the strong religious roots of The Adventures of Amina Al-Sarifi in THE BLOOD OF THE BLUE LION, an adult fantasy novel. The dual-POV novel, which loosely retells the stories of Mary Tudor and Anne Boleyn in a Classical Ottoman-inspired world, is complete at 109,000 words. It’s followed by a finished second novel of around 82,000 words. Further books in the series are possible.
I’m a cat-toting spec-fic author of mixed heritage (German, Persian, and hobbit). My short fiction has appeared in Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores, The Orange & Bee, New Myths Ezine, and a number of other venues. Meanwhile, my legal briefs and memoranda have appeared next to the coffee mugs of hapless appellate judges in MA and NC.
[Why this agent, if there’s no really cool reason.] Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Notes
The only hint that this is a fantasy is the mention of a despised magical race. Apparently Ani's magical powers aren't enough to protect her father or turn the king into a toad. What can she do? A sentence like: Ani and her father could magically transport to the other side of the ocean, but Ani refuses to give up on her friendship with Miri. would give us an inkling.
My impression is that the king is a jerk, Ani's father is possibly a traitor, as was her brother, and Ani is now Miri's enemy. Does Miri want to run away with her mother, or does she have a plan for setting everything right? What would be a perfect ending, and what can she do to reach it?
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