Face-Lift 1556

Guess the Plot

Shell Game

1. What to do when you're dying of boredom on a desert island? Those seashells are good for more than clothing and dinner plates, and bring new interest to the concept of strip poker, or would if Sam and Lisette hadn't drawn a do-not-cross line down the center of said island. Maybe there hadn't been enough rum.

2. A company that researches genetic history of families is using DNA they collect to create clones (shells) which demons use as vessels in their nefarious plan to put one of their own in the White House. Which will be an improvement.

3. Gambling addicted Bob stops on the sidewalk where a guy invites him to guess which shell the pea is under. If he's right he wins a dollar. If he's wrong he loses a dollar. Six hours later, Bob is down 47,000 bucks. 

4. Thanks to global warming, the Cayman Islands shell company that launders the Mafia's ill-gotten gains has gone underwater. In other words, it's sleeping with the fishes.

5. When an American customer at Chez Louis in Paris orders escargot, the chef is horrified to find there are none. Thinking fast, he opens a box of shell-shaped pasta and fills some of them with red grapes. He won't know the difference, he thinks. He's American.

 

Original Version

I am seeking representation for my debut novel, SHELL GAME, a complete adult thriller with speculative elements, at 90,000 words, and told in dual, alternating POVs. It will appeal to fans of high-stakes corporate conspiracy and intricate plotting, such as Joseph Finder’s corporate thrillers and Daniel Suarez’s fusion of tech and speculative elements.

[You can probably get by with this as an opening paragraph:]

I am seeking representation for SHELL GAME, a 90,000-word thriller with speculative elements. It will appeal to fans of  Joseph Finder’s corporate thrillers and Daniel Suarez’s fusions of tech and speculative elements.

Joseph Grant, Senior Vice President at the world’s most powerful social media company, Speculo, has built his career on weaponizing human hatred. [Ah, it's Elon Musk. And he's gonna be annoyed that you made him only a vice president.] Once a nerdy Black Gay kid from Chicago, he is now a kingmaker, running the "Shells" program: an AI-driven social media influencer network that leverages people’s deepest prejudices to manipulate their behavior and secure the upcoming presidential election for Speculo’s founder, Simon Crowley. [ Ah, it's Trump.] [Or Simon Cowell.]

But Joseph’s perfectly constructed life shatters when his close friend, geneticist Aileen Jepson, is murdered on company grounds. A cryptic note left by Aileen sends Joseph on an off-the-books investigation that quickly reveals the horrifying truth: the Shells are not just actors. Speculo is using Aileen's Family Finders DNA database to genetically engineer clones, who are being used as vessels—Shells—for demons with a sinister, ancient agenda. [This is The Omen times 10.] [I sent my DNA to one of those places. Now I gotta worry that someone who looks like me and has my DNA is gonna destroy humanity and I'm gonna get the blame?] 

Meanwhile, Detective Susan Thomas is only one closed case away from achieving the highest homicide clearance rate in Chicago Police history. [12%.] She views the Speculo murder as simply the case that will get her record. [She won't be happy when she sets the record by pinning the murder on me, only to find out it was a demon in an Evil Editor shell.] But to the CPD brass, desperate to manage a PR disaster over police brutality, Susan, an Afro-Latina cop with a spotless record, is the perfect face for their new reality TV show, Windy City Blues. Now, Susan must solve the biggest case of her career while navigating the scrutiny and narrative control of her own department’s media machine. [This has morphed from a corporate thriller to a political thriller to a supernatural thriller to a situation comedy.]

As Election Day looms, Joseph must decide if his newfound redemption [realizes that is worth sacrificing  to destroy the demonic world he unknowingly created [, he must sacrifice everything he built.] [Then he decides the country couldn't be in any worse shape if it were being run by demons.] Simultaneously, Susan must confront whether solving a murder for the camera is [it's] worth trading a meaningful career in law enforcement for the eternal allure of reality TV stardom. 

SHELL GAME has been workshopped at the San Francisco Creative Writing Institute. By day, I work as a political organizer and lobbyist, and when I’m not writing, I can be found at wine tastings and exploring new cities.  [This paragraph won't sway the agent one way or another, and the query's pretty long, so . . . ]

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

Notes

A well-written query and an intriguing premise. Did you consider dumping Speculo, focusing on Family Finders, and making the low-level geneticist who discovers what's being done with DNA at the company your heroine? She'd be a more sympathetic character than a guy who can't decide whether it's worth letting demons take over the world as long as he's still employed. 

The competition to close the most cases and the reality TV show probably don't need to be in the query. 

One main character is dealing with a demonic world, while the other is investigating a murder. If you can connect these two plots it would help. There's no indication here that Susan and Joseph cooperate on any aspect of either mission.

Chicago homicide detectives generally work in pairs to manage the high volume of work, such as tracking leads, interviewing, and evidence processing. While they are typically assigned partners, they may work with a broader team of investigators. I got that from Google. You probably address it in the book by giving her a partner or saying Susan is so good she doesn't need a partner or this case is so open & shut the CPD doesn't assign her one. 

Google also informs me that there are some business entities known as Speculo. They don't say whether any of them is in business with demons.

Face-Lift 1555

Guess the Plot

The Memory that Never Was

1. Lexi's best friend Mia died 15 years ago, but now that Lexi time travels exactly 15 years into the past every night, she's planning to go back and prevent Mia's death, even if that changes the world, like by affecting her career or causing nuclear armageddon. 

2. The epic autobiography by that guy in 50 First Dates whose memory only lasts 15 seconds. 357 pages of "Hi! I'm Tom!"

3. After getting lost in a web of lies and nearly blowing her con, Fredrica Erlich (aka June Ricks) pretends to have amnesia. Unfortunately, she then gets involved with hot Dr. January. Can she make it to the border with the diamonds before the mob catches her? Without losing January?

4. Gary McWeen begins the day searching for his car keys, which leads to a violent but somehow funny series of misadventures involving a deadly confrontation with a neighbor, a deadly confrontation with a family member, a deadly confrontation with a backyard shrub, and a sexually-charged standoff between rival circus performers. Gary handles it all with grace and pinache (and martial arts mastery), including the final, fateful realization that he has, in fact, never owned or even driven a car.

Original Version

Dear Evil Editor,

Lexi is living her best life. She’s married to her true love, raising two beautiful children, and thriving in her dream career as a producer. The past is behind her. Except at night.

In her lucid dreams, her best friend Mia is still alive—replaying fragments of the argument they had the day she died fifteen years ago. [Is it Mia who is replaying the argument, or both of them? In other words, are they interacting, or is Lexi just observing?] [Has she been having these lucid dreams for 15 years?]

What begins as another dream turns real when Lexi wakes up months before Mia’s death.  Convinced she’s been granted another chance, she vows to protect her. [In other words, she failed to protect her 15 years ago? Details, if that's so.] But every time Lexi returns to the present, [If this is no longer a dream, but real, are you saying Lexi is not in her bed asleep but 15 years in the past? If so, how does she return to her present? By going to sleep in the past?] something has shifted: a new assistant. Her mother is married to someone else. Changes that start making her life feel suddenly fragile.

Terrified of losing everything she loves, Lexi tries to resist sleep—but sleep always comes. She must decide whether to let history repeat itself or intervene. [I assumed that things were changed in the present because Lexi intervened in the past. Did she? Or is she only now deciding whether to do so?] But after she discovers Mia was pregnant before her death, looking away is no longer an option. 

Lexi succeeds. Mis [Mia] is alive. The present feels stable. [Wait, what? Which present feels stable? Mia's or Lexi's? Is Mia alive in Lexi's present? If so, is she 15 years older?] [How did Lexi succeed? I don't need all of the details, but your query can't just say, Dorothy finds herself in a magical world called Oz and must find a way back to Kansas. She succeeds.]

Relieved, Lexi lowers her guard—until Mia’s old symptoms resurface—the ones that led to her death. [Symptoms of a disease or a life-threatening condition? That Lexi noticed, and failed to insist Mia get to a doctor?] 

Did Lexi really defy fate… or only delay the inevitable? 

 

Given your interest in [SUBJECT], I am seeking representation for THE MEMORY THAT NEVER WAS, a 50,000-word contemporary magical realism novel about memory, loss, and the lingering cost of second chances.

It will appeal to readers of Somewhere in Time by Richard Matheson, and Lightbreakers by Aja Gabel—emotionally driven stories where memory, choice, and love reverberate across alternate realities and time, and where [spoiler alert] grief proves impossible to outrun.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Notes

So, each time Lexi sleeps. she time travels to the same day 15 years ago, where she finds Mia re-enacting their argument? Is 15-years-younger Lexi also there? 

Most of my comments and questions are similar to what I'd ask about any time travel story, and there are never any good explanations. It's the nature of time travel. So you can ignore me.

You could gloss over some of the time travel paradox issues by skipping ahead to the parts you currently gloss over, namely how Lexi plans to alter history by saving Mia from whatever. For instance, start:

Lexi is married to her true love, raising two beautiful children, and thriving in her dream career as a producer. She's living her best life . . . Except at night, when she mysteriously travels back in time, always to a day months before her best friend Mia died. 

Convinced she’s being granted a chance to save Mia, Lexi . . . 

That gives you space to tell us how Mia died and how Lexi plans to prevent it and what goes wrong, etc., while avoiding some of the complications.

The story is intriguing and the query is well-written, but 50,000 words is a tough sell. As an experiment, add a word here, a sentence there until you've added 20 words (on average) to every page. That should get you to 60,000, which is also a tough sell, but not as tough.

Happy Valentine's Day

 

Face-Lift 1554

Guess the Plot

Resurgence

1. An ancient supernatural power that was thought to have been lost is back. So of course the government is planning to use it to oppress society. 

2. Zombies! Need I say more?

3. Centuries ago, the Black Plague killed half of the world. Now it's returned to finish the job, and it's up to one biochemist named Bruce to save us all.

Original Version

Dear agent,

I am seeking representation for my debut sci-fi/fantasy novel Mythos of Kento: Resurgence, an 85,000-word story for readers of Star Wars: Light of the Jedi and Dune, in which siblings Zeph and Kyra Thunstar—descendants of an ancient warrior group called Kento—inherit Energy, the long-gone supernatural power the world no longer believes exists. [It kind of sounds like you're saying Zeph and Kyra are characters in Dune. Maybe move your comp titles to the end of the query.] Their inheritance, however, comes at dear personal cost.

Discovery of the mythical stone Jenasite triggers a covert government plan to train soldiers in the ancient power of Energy, a force not seen since the Kento warriors of old [ruled the world. (or whatever)]. [You already told us what Energy is, two sentences ago.] The Triad Emperors, leaders of the planet, seek to utilize military force to exert increasingly authoritarian rule over society. [It sounds more like they seek to utilize supernatural power.]

After civil unrest sparks an assassination of government delegates, siblings Zeph and Kyra Thunstar, descendants of ancient Kento, [We already know their last name, that they're siblings, and that they're descendants of ancient Kento, having learned all of this four sentences ago.] are pulled into an emergency response group seeking to ease the dissent. With the help of their friend and unofficial government informant Rytel Gamnar [anagram: martyr angel], they discover the dark connection between the assassinations and the Emperors’ exploitation of Energy. Disgusted by the Emperors’ corruption, Zeph and Kyra seek the knowledge and power of their ancestors to make a stand against the Triad’s oppressive rule.  [You said at the beginning that Zeph and Kyra inherited Energy. But here you're saying the government has Energy, presumably because they found a mythical stone. And Zeph and Kyra are still seeking it. Do they need to also find a mythical stone? Either way, by the time they find Energy, the soldiers will all be trained in it, and our heroes will be outmanned.] [Three of the last four sentences have people seeking. Maybe one or two could be planning or wanting or hoping.] 

Resurgence is the first in the Mythos of Kento series – I am currently on draft 2 of the follow-up Retribution which picks up directly where Resurgence leaves off.

I live in New Jersey with my wife, two kids, and two dogs. I’ve worked for the past fourteen years as a Finance & Analytics professional. My hobbies include running, snowboarding, skateboarding, reading, and amateur stand-up comedy.

Thanks for your time and consideration.

Notes

There's not room in a query to say the same things twice. Whether you put the information in an introductory paragraph or in the plot summary is up to you. 

What is the personal cost the inheritance of Energy brings to Zeph and Kyra?

At the end of the query, Zeph and Kyra don't even have Energy. If we're to have any hope for them, they need to get it. If the 2nd and third paragraphs were combined into something like:

With the Triad Emperors, leaders of the planet, utilizing military force to exert increasingly authoritarian rule over society, civil unrest sparks an assassination of government delegates. Zeph and Kyra, recruited to an emergency response team trying to suppress the dissent, uncover evidence of the Emperors’ corruption, and resolve to make a stand against the Triad’s oppressive rule. But to take on the government, they'll need to harness Energy, the long-lost power of their ancestors.

. . . you'll have room to tell us how they acquire Energy and how they plan to use it. This also avoids the agent asking annoying questions like, How are two people with Energy going to defeat an army of soldiers who also have Energy?

Kento is a pretty common Japanese name. A Japanese reader would react to an ancient warrior group called Kento as an American reader would to an ancient warrior group called Bob.

Face-Lift 1553

Guess the Plot

Fathers, Sons and Their Holy Ghosts

1. Phil ran away from home to escape his conservative father, and never looked back. Three decades later, Phil's son runs away from home to escape Phil, who has become his own father. Also, the ghosts of murdered people.

2, John Paul's father was the foremost scholar on the Catholic Saints before dying in a plane crash. Now the ghosts of said saints have found him and want him to set his father's speculative research straight.

3. When a parallel universe, with its own Holy Trinity, collides with our universe, we end up with six beings who are also one. A Holy Sexternity. But it's hard enough to keep three in line. Six is chaos, and leads to galactic war.

Original Version

In 2002, Phil Walsh, former Sixties hippy now businessman, [He was always a businessman, but now his business is legal] accepts an executive promotion which requires relocating his happy California family to his hometown, Chicago. In 1970, Phil had run away to escape his oppressive and conservative father, a World War II veteran and Chicago cop. He vowed never to return. The Generation Gap between the two remains open.

After moving, Phil’s life comes full circle when his own son runs away in an attempt to return to California. Phil’s pursuit of success and wealth might destroy his cherished family just as his own youthful commitment to the Sixties upended his boyhood family.

His family in turmoil, Phil questions why he moved back, and at the same time, wonders why he left in the first place. Were the Sixties relevant, or just another fad like disco in the Seventies? [You're comparing an entire decade to a dance craze. It's like asking, Is world hunger relevant, or just a fad like avocado toast?]  And worse, has he become the father he ran away from?

Phil’s runaway son stays with his grandfather [His grandfather, meaning Phil's father? Or Phil's son's mother's father? Is Phil's son's mother even in the book? Any confusion caused by referring to Phil and his father and his son and his son's grandfather might be diminished by giving Phil's son a name.] [But don't make the grandfather Phil senior and Phil Phil Jr, and Phil's son Phil III.] [Or do, and switch the setting from Chicago to Philadelphia.] and discovers him living a life reflective of the liberal causes Phil once supported. [A Chicago ex-cop isn't gonna move to California and become a liberal. Make him a Chicago ex-bartender.] When the grandfather suddenly dies, it is up to the son to show Phil the impact the Sixties had on his own father; and in so doing, he reunites three generations of his family. [One of whom is dead.] [If it was the sixties that had an impact on Phil's father, you'd think Phil would have noticed this was happening, and not run away in 1970. Unless. . .  Did the sixties impact dad in the nineties?]

Fathers, Sons and Their Holy Ghosts is an 84,000-word family saga flashing back to Beatlemania and the tumultuous Sixties. The assassinations of John Kennedy and John Lennon…Their Holy Ghosts…are presented as symmetrical milestones defining both generations.  

Readers of Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen, Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane and Commonwealth by Ann Patchett will enjoy this novel.

After a successful business career during which I took time off to study creative writing at The University of Iowa, University of Chicago, and Arizona State University, I completed this novel and had it copyedited. My life experiences as the son of a World War II veteran and the younger brother of a Sixties hippy inspired me to write my debut novel. [So, you are Phil and Phil's son.]

Notes

Does Phil's father know Phil ended up in California? Does he move close to where Phil lives? Does Phil know his father's in Cal. when he decides to move to Chicago? Has Phil's son been in contact with Phil's father? I can't tell if these people are like ships passing in the night, or if everyone's in touch with everyone, at least by phone. Surely Phil's mother would want contact with Phil and Phil's son.

I guess it's not unusual for literary fiction to be character-based, with minimal plot, but does something happen in this book besides people moving back and forth and Phil's son's dead grandfather somehow being reunited with his descendants? Was there a specific event that turned Phil's father around? 

Maybe it would be better if the  generations finally were actually united, arranged by Phil's son before the grandfather died, so Phil gets to see the change in his father, rather than hears about it second-hand when his son tells him that he and Grandpa spent all their time together smoking weed while listening to the Doors and the Dead.