Face-Lift 782

Guess the Plot

Jesus, Mo and Cheese Puffs

1. Jesus is a Puerto Rican immigrant living in New York. Mo is his neighbor and drinking buddy. Together they have a dream to transform the snack food industry.

2. Mo and his wife Flo pack the car with Cheese Puffs and head for sunny California so Flo can get plastic surgery from a TV doctor. Along the way they meet Angel, a homeless woman who tells them about Jesus. Will Angel renew their faith, or will they give her some Cheese Puffs and tell her to get lost?

3. Jesus and Mo are middle grade Vampyres without a care in the world . . . until their school cafeteria, trying to meet strict new healthy lunch regulations, adds garlic to the Cheese Puffs. Hilarity ensues.

4. Being Jesus means you can hate but you can't show it. Mo is God's relative but God smat him and threw him into the cheese puffs. Jesus goes back to woodworking, which he likes very much. The puffs, 12 of them, wander the desert until it rains. They melt, Jesus stays a carpenter and Mo becomes Moses.

5. Mo smokes one bowl too many, sending him on an epic crusade for Cheese Puffs. When he opens the bag of cheesy airy goodness and discovers a puff in the likeness of Christ the Savior, a moral dilemma ensues as he considers whether to sell it on eBay.

6. When Jesus Christ appears at Mo's door seeking a bed for the night, Mo is only too happy to oblige. If this doesn't get him into heaven, nothing will. But Mo regrets his hospitality the next morning when he wakes to find Jesus gone and the entire bag of Cheese Puffs eaten.


Original Version

Dear Evil Editor,

When Flo Brown wins $40,000 from a scratch-off lottery ticket it’s vanity that propels her to agree to a cross country trip with her husband Mo. [If it's Mo's idea to take the trip, one wonders if it's Mo who's the vain one.] In no time at all, Flo packs, and is ready to go. She and Mo plan to drive from Indiana to California so she can have one of those “TV doctors" do plastic surgery on her mangled eye. It’s with this premise in mind that she and Mo pile in the car along with extra bags of cheese puffs. [Be specific: Is she looking to hire Dr. Taub on House, or the doctors on Nip & Tuck? Are they packing regular cheese puffs or the crunchy kind?]

From the get-go, their trip is anything but ordinary. Their first stop is at a bitty gas station where the clerk directs them to a favored diner. There they meet a young family with twin toddlers and a broken-down car. Mo, having been a mechanic in Vietnam offers to help. Flo goes with Kendy, the mother of the twins and her toddlers [The twins are the toddlers. Just say Flo goes with Kendy and her kids to the park. ] to the park. What Flo doesn’t know is Kendy is Mo’s granddaughter, but at this point, neither Flo nor Mo knows she exists. [So far you haven't backed up the claim that the trip is anything but ordinary. The granddaughter bit is unusual (in fact, it sounds like a one in a trillion chance), but no one knows it, and it's never mentioned again. Gas station, diner, park? Very ordinary.]

As they make their way across the highways and byways, they stumble upon a variety of situations and people that continue to stretch them in ways they couldn’t predict.

The novel weaves together both touching and funny moments. A young boy, Joey, lives with his grandparents. His mother still hasn’t come home, and it’s been six months. Joey is a Boy Scout, and when Flo and Mo hear about someone stealing their money from the plant sale, Mo agrees to help Joey’s grandpa build chicken and rabbit cages to sell instead. Joey is happy that Flo visited with his grandmother and made her smile. He tells Flo he was scared because his grandma seemed so sad lately and he feared she might want to leave too. [Touching and funny moments may work in the novel, but in the query they're boring. Normally I tell writers to be specific, but if your best specifics are diners and plant sales and chicken cages, I recommend being general until you get to the important stuff.]

In Hooker, Oklahoma, [the most popular truck stop on the Interstate,] they stumble into [Two stumbles are at least one to many.] a wake when all they wanted to do was stop at the store and buy needle and thread. The spirited shop owner, Lettie Jean, eventually lets on that the wake isn’t for a person but High Henry, a Clydesdale horse who held the honor of uniting a town.

They meet a homeless couple at the farmer market in Pasadena, Angel and Jostlin’ Jack. Flo is appalled at their hardscrabble life, but Angel assures Flo she’s happy. Angel teaches Flo about trust, faith and how to “wear the world like a loose garment.” Flo runs into Angel again at a church, and it’s after this meeting Flo wonders if Angel might actually be a real angel.

Mo and Flo discover that the trip has changed them in ways they never imagined. Flo accepts her struggle with vanity and realizes the only limitations she has are the ones she puts on herself. Mo lets go of his bitterness toward Flo's God and makes peace with losing their only son, Jimmy, who died at seventeen from complications of Down's Syndrome.

Complete at 52,000 words, the novel is available for immediate review. This is the fourth book I have written; the first three are full-length women's commercial fiction novels. I am an RN, but also have a BA in English with an emphasis in creative writing. I am a member of RWA and ACFW. I would appreciate your consideration for representation. [We don't need to know about books you've written that weren't published, or about your education.]


Notes

I can see vanity being behind getting a face lift or a nose job, but do you have to be vain to get surgery on a mangled eye?

There's too much detail for a query. It should fit on one page. It also feels like a list of things that happen. Start with something like:

When Flo Brown wins $40,000 from a scratch-off lottery ticket, it’s vanity that propels her on a cross country trip with her husband Mo. She and Mo plan to drive from Indiana to California so she can have one of those “TV doctors" do plastic surgery on her mangled eye. As they make their way across the west, they stop now and then to help strangers in need, never realizing what a positive impact they're having.

Then skip down to the homeless couple, which is where your real story begins.

Usually when people are traveling cross-country they zip off the highway, gas up, grab some food, and hit the road. It seems odd that Mo and Flo meet and interact with so many people. Also, is Pasadena their destination? I assumed LA/Hollywood, but if it's one of those, stopping off in Pasadena seems odd, when it's fifteen minutes from their final destination.

Mo: Finally, after three days, we're almost there. Ten more miles.

Flo: Pull over at the next exit. I wanna go to a farmers market and talk to some homeless people.

If it's intended for the Christian book market, say so.

Face-Lift 774

Guess the Plot

Beauty for Ashes

1. John's faith in God was unshakable until God let John's beautiful wife burn to death. Now John has a new religion based on alcohol, gambling, and sex with strangers. Can anything save this man's soul?

2. Carlo Frumi is a student archeologist working at Pompeii. When he pours plaster into an ash mold of a former citizen, the woman whose face emerges from the past haunts him. But is she also visiting him in his room?

3. Norma Jean Walker, white trash stage mother extraordinaire, becomes the prime suspect in a string of arson cases involving the homes of rival child beauty pageant contestants. Can Norma Jean elude the police long enough for her little baby to reach the Little Miss Sweet Corn crowning?

4. On a world where death is as curable as your common hangnail, it's not your body up for judgment, but your urn. To win enough money for "permanent resurrection", Lavidia Clomesty must survive the beauty pageant of the dead. Too bad her murderer also happens to be the chief judge.

5. Elke has always been unattractive, so when Satan offers to make her beautiful if she'll burn down a nunnery, she agrees. Hey, she's not even Catholic. But when she discovers that her long-lost twin sister is living in the nunnery, will she go through with the deal or try to con Satan into letting her renege?

6. Sculptor Christobal's latest project is an enormous statue of Aphrodite made entirely from cigarette ashes. But anti-smoking campaigns have limited his raw materials, so he moves to Greece, which has the highest per-capita smoking rate in the world. Will the real Aphrodite take kindly to being portrayed in ash?



Original Version

Dear Evil Editor,

Jonathon Douglas’ future looked bright- he had a beautiful young wife, a job he loved, and a faith in God that couldn’t be shaken- what more could he want? [A smoke alarm.] But his life goes into a tailspin when a deadly fire claims the lives of his wife and infant daughter.

Stripped of everything he ever held dear, he turns his back on the God who betrayed him and embraces a life of sin, [Perhaps you'd like to go back and rephrase your earlier claim that his faith in God couldn't be shaken?] turning to alcohol to escape his pain. Jonathon hits bottom in the seedy underbelly of the Las Vegas strip, when he wakes up in the bed of a stranger. Broken and repentant, he finds that the Lord had been with him all along. [Wait, you're saying he woke up in the Lord's bed?]

[If I woke up with a hangover in the bed of a stranger, I wouldn't conclude that the Lord has been with me all along. What really clues Jon in to this fact?]

John begins to rebuild his life and discover a new future in California, where he meets and falls in love with Jenni, a young Christian woman. But his days of hard living catch up with him in the form of a very pregnant April, his one-night-stand from Vegas. Will his faith crumble again [I'm starting to think this man's faith is about as unshakable as a James Bond martini in a paint shaker.] and can his relationship with Jenni survive? Everything good in his life is threatened once again, but this time he chooses to cling to his faith and trust in God to carry him through. [Thus when God cometh to him in a vision and telleth him April must be killed and buried in the woods, he doth.]

John must be willing to give up everything to do what is right- and perhaps a soul will be saved in the process. [I hope "what is right" isn't getting married to a crack-addicted prostitute he's known for a few hours and who's pregnant with a baby that might be his, so the child can be raised by two idiots who'll resent each other for the next twenty years.]

Beauty For Ashes is a Christian Fiction novel complete at 93,000 words. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,


Notes

It sounds weird to say he falls in love with a Christian woman. If she were another religion it would be worthy of remark, given his faith--which is shakable only occasionally, like when God is letting his wife and daughter burn to death--but in this case you could be more subtle and say he falls in love with a woman he meets at a church potluck dinner.

I'm thinking a character losing faith in God in the face of tragedy is standard fare in inspirational books, and perhaps seeking solace in sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll is too. But when that fails, why not try Buddhism or marathon running or the Peace Corps? In other words, tell us what brings John back to the God who betrayed him.

Face-Lift 748

Guess the Plot

The Shadow's Edge

1. After his family moves to the deep south, Julien is treated like an outsider. He has no close friends. And just when he thinks things can't get any worse . . . Hitler invades! The shadow of the Third Reich has a long reach.

2. Hank Horowitz always thought of his shadow as an out-of-focus, benevolent figure that followed him around. But when he finds his shaving cream replaced with denture adhesive, and discovers he’s unable to go half a block without encountering a banana peel, he realizes that fuzzy shape’s got a definite mean streak.

3. Jim's friends all say that it's impossible to step on your own shadow's head. But Jim has recently become aware of an amazing celestial phenomenon: the sun moves in the sky! He issues a challenge to the nay-sayers: "Meet me on the playground by the swings at high noon." Jim will crush the puny psycho-religious beliefs of the other four-year-olds.

4. At the Shadow's Edge there is a town of peg-leg men and parrots, where all the dogs are named Millie. Is there something in the Shadow's Edge that robs men of their legs and their imagination? Now, one man dares to name his dog Bob. Can Javis avoid the Shadow and keep both his legs? Or will the mysterious drunk woman chasing him with a chainsaw claim more than his love.

5. Postal carrier Mark Kingman doesn’t worry about getting mauled by an untrained dog on his route. He fears sunny days—and the shadows they bring. Demons lurk in the shadows. When Mark trips while sprinting from a front porch to his mail truck, will he be trapped in the darkness . . . forever?

6. The Planet Xanth has a Light Side and a Dark Side. Rotating on its axis as it swings around Beta Centauri, one side of the planet faces away from the sun in eternal night. No Xanthan dares enter there--except one intrepid Xanthling named Grol. What terrors will Grol find beyond . . . the Shadow's Edge?



Original Version

Dear Evil Editor,

In The Shadow's Edge, set in France during the first two years of World War II, a school rivalry becomes a matter of life and death for two Jewish refugees.

Fifteen-year-old Julien is angry. His family has moved from Paris to his father's hometown in the deep south, [This makes me think Mississippi rather than the south of France. I'd name the town instead of saying the deep south.] where the guys at school stare at him and won't let him in on their soccer games. His family's new boarder--German, Jewish, nerdy, and in his class--isn't helping. Nor is the fact that Hitler has invaded Poland, and France has declared war. [This seems to imply that Julien blames Hitler for his troubles at his new school. That may be the case, but the order of magnitude of the causes of his problems is so different it sounds like a joke: I'm not making friends because I'm new in town, there's a nerd living in my house, and Hitler invaded Poland. It's like saying Jeff is afraid to ask Millie to the prom because he's shy and he wears braces and the Zorgon fleet is attacking Earth.]

But nothing happens on the border for months, while Julien, through grit, soccer skills, and a near-death experience in a snowstorm, finally wins over most of his class--except for class leader Henri. Then Germany invades. [Don't you just hate it when a genocidal megalomaniac bases his military decisions on how best to screw up your social life?]

As his country falls in a matter of weeks, Julien's world changes drastically. School closes, there's not enough food, no one can believe this is happening. Profoundly relieved when surrender terms name the south as an unoccupied zone, Julien gradually realizes all is not well: [Your country just surrendered to Hitler; "all is not well" is an understatement.] the new Vichy government is collaborating with the Nazis. As school resumes he sets up a rivalry with Henri over the new fascist flag-salute; Henri's power is eroding, his belief in Vichy growing unpopular. Julien is gaining ground. [He thinks, If Belgium would just hurry up and surrender, Henri would be toast.]

Then two teenage refugees get off the train: Gustav and Nina from Austria. Henri's father, the stationmaster, looks at them and smells trouble; he offers them a ticket back out of town, and Julien witnesses the scene. They refuse; Nina is very sick, they need help desperately. Julien guides them to the pastor's house at their request. But Henri's father has called the mayor, who tells the pastor's wife these "illegal immigrants" have a choice: to leave town quietly or be sent to a Vichy internment camp. She says they'll leave. Julien helps to hide them in town.

Then Henri tells Julien he knows they're not gone, and asks where they're staying. Now Julien has to convince him not to tell his father--if he fails, Nina may die.

But who has ever listened to his enemy?


The story of Gustav and Nina's journey from Austria is also told, in short vignettes between chapters. As Nina's father lay dying of TB in the summer of 1939, he told her:Leave Austria, you and your brother. Burn your papers. Find a place where you are safe. But a narrow escape from a stranger who offered to help them cross the border makes Nina wonder: did her father understand what kind of world he was sending them out into? Or is her uncle right, who told her to stay put, that there is no safety, that everywhere there are evil men? This question haunts her as she and Gustav make their uncertain way across half of Europe, wondering if there will ever be a place for them. [Their story sounds more exciting than Julien's.]

Complete at 88,000 words, The Shadow's Edge is a Christian historical YA novel for teens who like a good life-or-death story and for parents and teachers who want to enrich their kids' school study of WWII and the Holocaust. It is loosely based on the true story of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, the only town to be honored by the state of Israel for rescuing Jews during the war.

I won contests for poetry and creative nonfiction in college. The Shadow's Edge is my first novel. My mother, Lydia Munn, and I are the co-authors.

Sincerely,


Notes

This too much detail for a query letter. The Gustav/Nina vignettes paragraph can go. The nerd boarder can go. The pastor can go.

I assume the main plot involves saving the refugees. This is more compelling than whether Julien gets to play soccer. Possibly the story lies in Henri and Julien realizing there are more important things than the school pecking order? (The story might be even more compelling if Julien weren't on the rise and Henri on the decline already.) In any case, focus more on saving Gustav and Nina, and less on Julien's problems. We just need to know Henri and Julien are rivals, so we can appreciate how their relationship affects the bigger picture.

It seems like it would be hard for the Nazis to round up Jews in the south if the south was unoccupied. Not they were trustworthy, but if you want to give the impression you aren't occupying the south, infiltrating every town looking for refugees is going about it the wrong way. No wonder they lost.

If this is for a Christian market, are you sure you don't need a little something about the religious angle? There's no indication the pastor does anything to help the refugees. The stationmaster and mayor don't strike me as typical Le Chambon-sur-Lignon heroes.

Face-Lift 672

Guess the Plot

Save Us

1. Heeeeelllpppp! Haha, just kidding. Aahh! Help! Ha, got you again! Owowow, help! No, seriously this time!

2. As Jesus preaches his message of peace, a lowly fisherman leads a rebellion against the devil and his demon army. Can one fisherman save all the tortured souls of hell from damnation? And if he does, will Jesus take all the credit?

3. When a mass wave of solar radiation kills off all superheroes, the only ones who can save the world from the alien invasion are Mr. Paranoid, The Human Pebble, and Schitzy, who've been hiding in concrete bunkers since the Cold War.

4. Five friends go on a road trip from UC Berkeley to Colorado, but the car breaks down in nowhere, Utah, so they enter an abandoned junk yard in the desert to search for car parts in the old wrecks but end up getting haunted by ghosts of the car-crash dead and the mysterious Anasazi god known as Kokopelli.

5. Bob was Jesus's backup apostle, in case one of the twelve died, but his incompetence frustrated Jesus enough to send him into the future to get rid of him. When Bob arrives in rural 21st century America, he's more prone to mix up the holy wafers with garlic bread than to save any souls. Can he overcome his cluelessness and bring salvation to the people of Cheeseville, Wisconsin?

6. When a world-famous hero stops overnight in dull little Midtown, the people see their chance for fame and tourism dollars. They'll do anything to convince Badaz the Fist to make Midtown his home--even if it means faking a few disasters to keep him occupied.



Original Version

Dear Evil Editor:

Phoebus has had a busy few months: falling in love, dying, and leading a rebellion—in that order.

Phoebus is a young, orphaned fisherman living in ancient Phoenicia during the time of Christ. When he and his love Ariadna drown in a storm, they find themselves on the outskirts of Hell. Captured, separated, and enslaved, [Are you saying they aren't there because of their sinful ways, that they just happened to be passing the gates of hell on their way to heaven and got captured by Satan's minions?] they sink into despair, until Phoebus inadvertently sparks a rebellion against his demon captors.

He soon meets Durus, a mercenary angel sent to aid him, [If I were an angel, I'd be pretty pissed if a fisherman who couldn't even keep his boat afloat were chosen to lead a rebellion and I was just supposed to aid him. When you're taking on an army of demons, who do you want calling the shots: a mercenary angel or a dead fisherman?] who informs Phoebus that this conflict is meant by God to distract the devil from events on Earth. [Sort of like Dick Cheney starting a war halfway around the world to distract people from how bad things are at home. But hard to believe God would pull the same stunt.] Faced with this new mandate, the desire to find Ariadna, and the threat of a growing demon army, Phoebus becomes the unlikely leader of a desperate people. As Jesus’ path takes him to the cross, Phoebus undertakes a task that transforms him as much as it changes the fate of the slaves in Hell.

SAVE US is 75,000 words, and is my first novel.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,


Notes

As "mercenary" means greedy; covetous; working only for monetary gain, I don't see a mercenary angel being trusted on such an important mission.

I was under the impression those in hell were there because they deserved to be there. What's the story on how your slaves in hell got there?

A little more specificity would help. What are the stakes, i.e. what would happen if the devil weren't distracted from events on Earth? What was Phoebus transformed from/to?What does Phoebus bring to the table that convinces slaves who didn't think they had a chance in hell to defeat an army of demons that they can do so with Phoebus at the helm?