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Guess the Plot

The Skyward Sea

1. When the sea is accidentally lifted into the sky, it's up to one guy to put things right, but first he'll have to contend with land sharks and mutant sea creatures. Also, zombies.

2. Atlantis and LGBTQA+ mermen/maids in a Hamlet-esque plot with a dash of Macbeth and a sprinkle of Apollo 13.

3. Global warming happened, and sea levels rose, and everyone's feet got wet. The icebergs melted, and the water rose to our waists. Everything we thought would happen has happened, but now it's up to our necks and somehow it keeps getting worse. It's not just climate change, it's . . . glub glub glub.

4.  Apparently the earth has sprung a leak and nobody knows where all the water is coming from. Now it's up to Mario the plumber to find and fix the problem before we all become extras in a remake of the worst Kevin Costner film.

Original Version

Dear [agent],

I am seeking representation for THE SKYWARD SEA, a high fantasy complete at 115,000 words. 

A young artist cheats the blood pact protecting his island, accidentally lifts the sea into the sky, and crosses a mutant-infested seafloor to reverse the catastrophe – only to choose between saving his home and reclaiming the family stolen from him. [This paragraph isn't needed, as it's all repeated below.]

It will appeal to readers of Blood Over Bright Haven by M. L. Wang, Robert Jackson Bennett’s The Tainted Cup, and The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez. I saw that you’re interested and [TOPIC] and thought it might be a fit for you. [This paragraph could be tacked onto the first sentence, or placed after the plot summary.]

Orran Rast doesn’t want to inherit his late mother’s blood pact. He’d rather be scamming tourists with inkmancy, the ancestral magic [tattoos] he’s supposed to hide from the Eternal Order. But his bloodline is the only thing keeping his uncle’s zombies away from his Order-controlled island home.

When Orran cheats the pact, he triggers a magical cataclysm that lifts the sea into the sky, leaving behind twisted sea creatures that now hunt in the open air. [I see two problems here. 1. The sea cannot be lifted into the sky. 2, The only sea creature that can hunt in the open air is Aquaman.]

Orran crosses the exposed seabed to bargain with his sorcerous uncle, Keltzus, in hopes of reversing the catastrophe. With land sharks and flying squid ahead of him and the Eternal Order’s inquisitors on his tail, Orran will need more than trickery to survive. He’ll need to break the inkmancer’s taboo against using blood to fuel magic.  [The decision to walk hundreds of miles through muck and seaweed and rotting fish, with a trillion tons of water floating above him that could surrender to gravity at any moment, just to get to his uncle, who has zombie bodyguards, seems ill-advised.]

But when Orran uncovers the massacre that scarred his family, he’ll need to make a choice: he can save his island, or sacrifice it to resurrect the mother he lost. [I recently read a book in which a guy resurrected his mother, and . .. . let's just say your guy should save his island.]

I am a Toronto-based writer with 3,000+ published news stories as a professional journalist. My fiction blends the snappy prose of my reporting career with the world- and character-building I love in everything from Star Wars and the MCU to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Moana, the Locke & Key comics, Dungeons & Dragons and video games like Baldur’s Gate 3 and Mass Effect 2.m [A list with more than three items becomes boring. And having already listed three comp titles, there's little value to also listing games and movies and comics.]

THE SKYWARD SEA is my first novel.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Notes

There's too much stuff here (which might be okay if it were billed as a comedy with comp titles by Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett). Just when one thing is brought up that I'd like more information about, we switch to another topic. Questions that might occur to the reader:

What is the blood pact, and what constitutes cheating it?

Why would someone with magic powers use them just to scam tourists? There's way more money in scamming the government.

Who declared that inkmancy should be hidden from the Eternal Order?

His uncle "has" zombies? Why?

How could zombies get to his island home? Are they swimming zombies?

If the sea were lifted into the sky, wouldn't the sea creatures be lifted with it?

Do all the vessels on the sea get lifted or do they fall to the seabed after it rises through them?

If the catastrophe is reversed, does all the water just drop onto whatever's beneath it, crushing them?

Why can't Orran save his home and resurrect his mother?

Whose blood does Orran plan to use to fuel his inkmancy?

Is the sea constantly above the seabed, or does it move, like clouds? I ask because I wouldn't want to wake up one morning in Iowa and find an ocean hovering over me. There'd be mass hysteria.

Am I saying you need to answer all these questions in the query? YES! Wait, NO! I'm saying if you don't mention the tourists and the zombies and the flying squid, the agent might not be wondering whether you've thought all this stuff through. Unless, at the beginning of the query, you put a disclaimer saying, Before you ask, the answer to all your questions is: Magic.

Usually we expect our hero to solve a problem the villain caused before we all die. But here our hero is the one who caused the problem, and his uncle is the one who's gonna solve it. 

Surely the uncle, on the other side of the sea, has noticed that the sea is in the sky, and will probably have fixed it, long before Orran finishes slogging through muck for months to get to him. 

Orran's goal seems to be to get back the family he lost, but he spends most of the book thinking his goal is to fix his blunder. At least Dorothy and Frodo believed getting to Emerald City and Mount Doom would let them accomplish their goals.