Guess the Plot
Horizon’s Door
1. Harold Ivaans draws himself an awesome new reality with a purple crayon, then discovers a monochrome fantasy land gets boring quick. With the end stub, he creates a door on the horizon that should get him out. But he should've used a different color for the door, because now he can't find it.
2. A space opera in twelve acts, each starring a protagonist with a unique take on extra-galactic exploration. Also, dolphin-squid hybrids.
3. With an army of savage zombies attacking the kingdom, it's up to lowly squire Wrayn to save us all, but when he peeks through the door to another dimension, hoping for help, all he sees is an ancient evil that wants to inhabit his body. Also: jousting!
4. When a portal opens on the distant horizon, the islanders board their canoes and paddle toward what they think is a passageway to the spirit world. But the faster they paddle toward the horizon, the faster the horizon flees. There's a lesson in there somewhere.
Original Version
Dear [AGENT]:
Wrayn is a squire from a backwater corner of the realm who just wanted to joust in the lists one day. But that was before savages from the other side of the world began unleashing fires that grew closer and closer to home. In the last three weeks, Wrayn has learned three key survival tips:
1 - Dead bodies smell bad. Real bad. They smell even worse when you figure out that they are barbarian pawns being manipulated in a conspiracy by the richest noble in the land to seize the throne for himself. [Not clear how this is a survival tip. To me, the survival tip when dead bodies are coming for me is to outrun them. And stopping to figure out whether they're being manipulated by a rich noble is likely to ensure my failure to survive.]
2 - Jumping into a magical doorway, although tempting, especially when it is the only way to save your own skin with cavalry lances seconds away from impaling you, is a pretty bad idea. [Especially when no one has seen any magic in the world for millenia. [millennia] [Another terrible survival tip. You either jump through the door, or you don't survive. Jumping through the door is a fabulous idea. I'll be surprised if this guy lives past chapter 3.]
3 – Do not, under any circumstances, look directly into the eyes of an ancient sorcerer hovering above a battlefield, no matter how grim things may look on the ground. That kind of thing could get you killed. Or worse. [A better tip: Do not, under any circumstances, look at anything other than the dead barbarian pawn swinging his sword at your neck.]
Wrayn only wanted to serve his lord well, and maybe even earn a knighthood one day. But deadly games are playing out above his head. [Literally? Like the sorcerer hovering above the battlefield?] Soon he is charging with cavalry headlong into a siege, uncovering bloody clues of a decades-long ploy to take the crown, and peering into a parallel dimension, where an ancient evil is looking for just the right mortal vessel to inhabit. [I'd change those first two commas to semicolons so we don't think he's doing all three things at the same time.] If Wrayn does not master his fears and survive long enough to solve the mysteries threatening the realm, he will not only never make it back home, but [and] the kingdom will descend into irreversible chaos. [It kind of goes without saying that he won't make it back home if he doesn't survive.]
Given your taste for epic fantasy and representation of [INSERT GOOD AGENT COMPS], I thought C would be a good fit for your list. A standalone fantasy novel with series potential and three points of view, it is complete at 104,000 words. Influenced by my love for fantasy with genre-blending twists and political intrigue, Horizon’s Door will appeal to fans of James Islington’s The Will of the Many and John Gwynne’s Bloodsworn Saga.
I am a construction lawyer living in Charlotte, North Carolina, where I enjoy hiking in the Blue Ridge Mountains and eat way too much BBQ for my own good. Horizon’s Door would be my first published work.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Notes
Not clear why it's up to this squire to solve the mysteries threatening the kingdom. I suppose if the ancient evil inhabits him and gives him the power to stop an army of zombies, that would be a start. But then he's stuck with an ancient evil inside him.
The survival tips are taking up a lot of space, and it's not clear how he learned this stuff. Did he look into the sorcerer's eyes and jump through the door? And survive? Or did he see someone else do it and die? Maybe it's better to show us what's happened than to tell us what he learned from it.
Maybe you should start something like:
Wrayn, a squire from a backwater corner of the realm, just wants to serve his lord well, and maybe even earn a knighthood. But when dead savages from the other side of the world lay siege to the kingdom, Wrayn realizes that magic and sorcery, not seen for millennia, have returned. And an ancient evil from a parallel dimension is looking for the right mortal vessel to inhabit.
Now you have room to cover the mysteries and clues and how Wrayn plans to save the kingdom from irreversible chaos.
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