Guess the Plot
All the Colors
1. The color "out of space" wants to join the rainbow connection in this children's Lovecraftian comedy that will make your eyes bleed if it doesn't kill you with laughter. Also, Cthulu's feelings are hurt.
2. Red, yellow, green . . . um . . . blue . . . and white. Wait, orange. I forgot orange.
3. After a decade living under gray clouds, Anna decides to move from Canada to Crete, where the sun is always shining and life is full of color . . . until it isn't.
4. Tommy wants to make the most colorful painting in the world, so he mixes all his paints together. What he ends up with is grayish brown, thus teaching him a valuable life lesson.
5. A family of chameleons move from the jungles of Africa to Las Vegas, where they hope they can blend in with their surroundings.
Original Version
I am seeking representation for ALL THE COLORS, a literary novel told in first person, complete at [word count] words. It will appeal to readers drawn to the passionate, sun-drenched intensity of the love affair at the heart of Ann Patchett's Tom Lake and the shattering trauma and hard-fought recovery of Kristin Hannah's The Women.
Anna is forty-three, a social worker in Toronto, and a woman who has been quietly disappearing for a decade. Ten years ago, her young daughter drowned — and Anna was responsible. She has survived the intervening years the only way she knows how: by working, by numbing herself with tranquilizers, and never, ever stopping long enough to feel. When burnout finally brings her to her knees, she escapes to Crete, hoping that sun and distance will put her back together.
What she finds instead is color. A married American career officer — magnetic, complicated, wholly unexpected––who pulls her into an affair that is immediate, sensual, and sparkled with joy. For the first time since her daughter's death, Anna laughs. She swims at night. She wakes up wanting the day. She falls in love with the passionate totality of a woman who has had nothing to lose for a very long time, and the Greek light makes everything — even her own reflection — look beautiful.
Then he shatters it. A hit-and-run accident, a moment of cowardice, and he flees the scene. Anna is left staring at a man who, when it mattered most, ran. The affair doesn't end cleanly. He returns to the US for annual leave. She is left in the wreckage — but a different kind of wreckage than before, because this time she is coming awake
What follows is not a love story. It is a pilgrimage. Anna moves through Europe alone, not as a woman chasing romance or adventure, but as a woman whose anesthesia is wearing off and who must now face everything she spent a decade refusing to feel. She meets three people who lead her toward a twelve-step program and toI an ashram in the United States, where she begins the slow, work of rebuilding a self she can live inside.
When her lover eventually finds her in Toronto, he comes with everything she once wanted — devotion, a promise of marriage [as soon as his divorce is final,] a future. But Anna is no longer the woman he met on a Greek island. She has forged her own life, on her own terms, out of her own wreckage. The novel's final question is not whether she still loves him. She does. It is whether the woman she has fought to become can say yes without losing herself again.
ALL THE COLORS explores grief, addiction, desire, and the difference between being saved and saving yourself. It is a novel about the kind of love affair that cracks you open — and the harder, quieter love of learning to hold yourself together.
Notes
This is good writing. I can't speak for all agents, but in general, this is what an agent wants to see . . . if they request a brief synopsis. Below, I've taken the liberty of trimming the query from 480 words to 280, a length most agents prefer. Not saying agents will auto-reject a longer query, but if they can clear 100 250-word queries from their in-box in the time it takes to clear 50 500-word queries, guess which pile goes on the back burner. (If I've removed the wrong words, put them back and remove other ones.)
Ten years ago, Anna’s young daughter drowned — and Anna was responsible. She survived the intervening years by working, numbing herself with tranquilizers, and never stopping long enough to feel. When burnout finally brings her to her knees, she escapes to Crete, hoping distance will put her back together.
What she finds instead is color. An American naval officer who pulls her into an affair that is immediate, sensual, and sparkled with joy. For the first time since her daughter's death, Anna wakes up wanting the day. She falls in love with the passionate totality of a woman who’s had nothing to lose for a long time.
Then he shatters it. A hit-and-run accident, and he flees the scene. Anna is left staring at a man who, when it mattered most, ran. The affair doesn't end cleanly. He returns to the US for annual leave. She is left in the wreckage.
What follows is a pilgrimage. Anna moves through Europe alone, not chasing romance or adventure, but facing everything she spent a decade refusing to feel. When her lover eventually finds her, he comes with everything she once wanted — devotion, a promise of marriage, a future. But Anna is not the woman he met on a Greek island. She has forged her own life, on her own terms. And she won’t say yes if it means losing herself again.
ALL THE COLORS, complete at [word count] words, explores grief, addiction, desire, and the difference between being saved and saving yourself. It will appeal to readers drawn to the passionate love affair at the heart of Ann Patchett's Tom Lake and the trauma and hard-fought recovery of Kristin Hannah's The Women.
I left out the fact that the officer is married, as, at least in the query, I think Anna would be less devastated by the end of the affair if it was unlikely to go anywhere. In the book you have more room to convince us her lover really does plan to leave his wife. No, really. Would he lie to her? Never.
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