Adam & Eve
1. Adam Hennings and Eve Jenks cause the end of the world, but are thrown into a time loop which takes them to Genesis. Like Groundhog Day, only longer.
2. The real story of Eden, suppressed literally from the Year One, told by the other one who was there on the ground (in a tree, actually) when it happened: the snake. The shocking truth: those two actually were Adam and Steve. Also, an immaculate conception.
3. Steve, permanently third-wheeled, finally decides to take matters into his own hands. Who says it's not Adam and Steve? Not Steve, that's for sure.
4. Cat thought she was getting intra-uterine insemination, but what she got was embryo transfer, and she doesn't know who--or what-- it was transferred from. Will she be birthing the first member of a new species?
5. The human race is dying out, and governments are desperately awarding lucrative grants to people willing to unhook from VR and hook up with each other. Evelyn wants out of her dead-end job servicing toilet-scrubbing robots, and Adamo wants to be remembered for something other than accidentally starring in the viral holo "Man at McBucks bawls over oat milk". Will their scheme to have a child a year succeed? And can they ever learn to love each other?
6. The only thing better than gardening is naked gardening. Covering everything from fig-leaf rashes in intimate places to what to put in nature's pocket, Adam & Eve will make your gardening experience biblical.
Original Version
Dear Evil Editor,
ADAM & EVE is an LGBTQ+ speculative thriller, complete at 99,000 words. Combining the character-as-the-author style [aka first person singular] of Everyone in my Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson with the cloning theme of My Murder by Katie Williams, ADAM & EVE will appeal to fans of the dark humour in AppleTV’S Severance.
42-year-old solicitor Cat Cowan goes home to make a baby, but not the old-fashioned way. Fresh from a break-up, she thinks Intrauterine Insemination from the renowned fertility specialists at The Clinic will fill the hole her ex-girlfriend left behind. But Cat hasn’t been home in years, and ‘home’ isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Mac-Talla Beag is a tiny island in the Scottish Highlands and Islands, population: not enough, thanks to a disastrous chemical spill in the 1970’s that caused birth defects, cancer, and a distinctive stench known locally as “The Shite”. [Whose bright idea was it to put The Clinic in a place whose claim to fame is its high number of birth defects?] Cat was one of the lucky ones. Born unscathed in 1983, she left the island for Glasgow and never looked back—until now.
The Clinic is the place to go if you want to get pregnant without a penis—and ‘without a penis’ is exactly how Cat wants to do it. But when a nurse-turned-whistleblower tells her she received an Embryo Transfer instead of the Intrauterine Insemination she requested, her lofty plans for parenthood are derailed.
It isn’t her embryo. [She is, however, pregnant without a penis, so maybe the previous paragraph should say it's the place to go if you want to get pregnant through intrauterine insemination. This has the added advantage that you no longer need to include the word "penis" twice. (Not that that's a crime; I mean it's not like putting an F bomb in a query.)]
Cat’s furious. If she wanted to get fucked, she’d’ve saved thousands doing it on her own time. [I'm not sure what you mean by "fucked." The procedure she underwent was similar enough to the one she wanted that she didn't even realize she was getting it. Maybe you mean "fucked over"? Also not clear is what she means by she could have done it on her own time. If she wanted an embryo transfer, she could have performed it herself?] <Brief pause while I do some internet research.> [Okay, so embryo transfer normally requires the doctor to retrieve eggs, and then 2 to 5 days later the woman returns, at which time one of her eggs that has been fertilized with someone's sperm is implanted in the woman's uterus. As Cat did not undergo the retrieval part, the egg that was implanted must be someone else's. So instead of saying, If I wanted to get fucked I'd've done it on my own time, she should be saying If I wanted to carry another woman's baby, I'd've found someone to pay me to be her surrogate, instead of paying you clowns to fuck me over.] She takes a DNA test and gathers evidence for a case against The Clinic. With the help of the offending clinician’s ex-wife, Cat uncovers much worse than run-of-the-mill medical malpractice—it’s not just a matter of whose baby is inside her.
42-year-old solicitor Cat Cowan goes home to make a baby, but not the old-fashioned way. Fresh from a break-up, she thinks Intrauterine Insemination from the renowned fertility specialists at The Clinic will fill the hole her ex-girlfriend left behind. But Cat hasn’t been home in years, and ‘home’ isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Mac-Talla Beag is a tiny island in the Scottish Highlands and Islands, population: not enough, thanks to a disastrous chemical spill in the 1970’s that caused birth defects, cancer, and a distinctive stench known locally as “The Shite”. [Whose bright idea was it to put The Clinic in a place whose claim to fame is its high number of birth defects?] Cat was one of the lucky ones. Born unscathed in 1983, she left the island for Glasgow and never looked back—until now.
The Clinic is the place to go if you want to get pregnant without a penis—and ‘without a penis’ is exactly how Cat wants to do it. But when a nurse-turned-whistleblower tells her she received an Embryo Transfer instead of the Intrauterine Insemination she requested, her lofty plans for parenthood are derailed.
It isn’t her embryo. [She is, however, pregnant without a penis, so maybe the previous paragraph should say it's the place to go if you want to get pregnant through intrauterine insemination. This has the added advantage that you no longer need to include the word "penis" twice. (Not that that's a crime; I mean it's not like putting an F bomb in a query.)]
Cat’s furious. If she wanted to get fucked, she’d’ve saved thousands doing it on her own time. [I'm not sure what you mean by "fucked." The procedure she underwent was similar enough to the one she wanted that she didn't even realize she was getting it. Maybe you mean "fucked over"? Also not clear is what she means by she could have done it on her own time. If she wanted an embryo transfer, she could have performed it herself?] <Brief pause while I do some internet research.> [Okay, so embryo transfer normally requires the doctor to retrieve eggs, and then 2 to 5 days later the woman returns, at which time one of her eggs that has been fertilized with someone's sperm is implanted in the woman's uterus. As Cat did not undergo the retrieval part, the egg that was implanted must be someone else's. So instead of saying, If I wanted to get fucked I'd've done it on my own time, she should be saying If I wanted to carry another woman's baby, I'd've found someone to pay me to be her surrogate, instead of paying you clowns to fuck me over.] She takes a DNA test and gathers evidence for a case against The Clinic. With the help of the offending clinician’s ex-wife, Cat uncovers much worse than run-of-the-mill medical malpractice—it’s not just a matter of whose baby is inside her.
It’s who’s in there at all.
[BIO]
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Notes
It's not clear to me what the difference is between whose baby is in there and who's in there at all. Are you implying that it might not be someone's baby, but someone's goat? Or that it might be Satan's baby?
I can't tell if this is a legal thriller or a horror novel.
You've buried the lede, as they say. Actually, they usually say the lead, but I digress. I don't think we need anything about Mac-Talla Beag in the query.
42-year-old solicitor Cat Cowan wants to make a baby, but not the old-fashioned way. So she checks into The Clinic for a routine Intrauterine Insemination procedure. Or so she thinks, until a nurse-turned-whistleblower tells her she actually received an Embryo Transfer.
Cat’s furious. The embryo obviously isn't her own, and . . .
Now there's plenty of room to let us know whether this is going to be about what's really "in there" or about a trial, or about who Adam is. (If it's a horror novel, it turns out the father is Adam Sandler; if it's romantic suspense, he's Adam Brody.)
Maybe you should call it The Clinic. No, Amazon lists a half dozen books called The Clinic. And most of them are psychological thrillers. You'd think they'd be hospital dramas, but no. I guess there's something inherently spooky or evil about The Clinic.
1 comment:
haha, THANK YOU-I needed this reality check about how much backstory I was putting in. I am struggling with the genre a bit too, so I will think on that. Much appreciated!
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