MerPeople!

The 1st Ever
MerPeople
Guess the Plot
Quiz

Mermaids and mermen have appeared occasionally in fake plots over the years. But four of the plots below were the actual plots of minions' novels. Which four?


1. Kyle designed the Mermaid Virus to trail bubbles across random office monitors and to relieve boredom. But when the saucy fish-tail starts skimming the managers' accounts and transferring the money to orphanages, cancer research, and Save the Whales, Kyle isn't sure if he's created a monster or an angel.

2. When he gets into salt water, Garrett sprouts gills and a scaly tail and becomes a merman. What will his girlfriend Frances say when she finds out?

3. Medieval woodcutter Eldrid Svenson learned everything the hard way. If he didn't accidentally offend some belligerent tyrant, he was trying to appease a dragon or an elf. And when his parents insist he choose a bride and settle down, he sails toward Greenland in pursuit of the beautiful mermaid Marina Nox.

4. When her ship sinks, a US Navy sailor finds herself miraculously transformed into a mermaid. Before she can even swim back to the US, she undergoes yet another transformation, this time into an inhuman goddess of the sea, heiress to all its wealth, and as cruel as its laws of survival.

5. For years, virologist Lyle Bodecker has been studying a mysterious disease that transforms women into near-duplicates of Daryl Hannah during the filming of Splash. Now he's announced he's on the verge of finding a cure. Can he be stopped in time?

6. As little girls are encouraged to dream of becoming astronauts, doctors, and bus drivers, the number of qualified fairy princesses grows smaller each year--until Charlemagne Smythe takes charge and starts outsourcing to mermaids and witches.

7. When a dead mermaid with open sores washes up on the beach it causes a media frenzy. Can Dr. Michaels stop the plague she carries from spreading to humanity--before Arnold Toole convinces everyone that eating mermaid flesh grants immortality?

8. She claims to be a mermaid and although most people would be skeptical because she uses a submarine instead of swimming, crewman Digby believes it and lets her aboard the Sea Guppy. Hilarity ensues.

9. In a village famous for its seafood and its smell, Kayla's scientist parents are studying a mysterious virus that kills one teen-aged girl per year. When her parents suddenly die, Kayla must finish their work before she becomes the next victim of . . . The Mermaid Virus. Also, Rastafarian surfers.

10. Navy SEAL Hank Deadle knows he and his badass comrades are the best of the best . . . until they start growing iridescent green tails. Could it have anything to do with that top-secret medical research project funded by Disney that they volunteered for?

11. Nissy is the mermaid in charge of keeping Neptune's oysters happily making fine pearls. When young Danny Banks dives too near the pearls, she stops him before Neptune can order him killed. Can she get him home without arousing the King's suspicions?

12. Madison wakes up on the beach and discovers that her hair has lost its natural curl. Also, that she's become a mermaid. The bad news is, her boyfriend may not be able to handle it. The good news is, she has gained the power to command the ocean's waves, which is much cooler than having a boyfriend.

13. The merpeople are almost ready to take over the world and wipe out humanity with their water sorcery. Meteorologist Fenwick Jones is the only one who can stop them. But will he do so when the merman king offers him his beautiful daughter if he stays mum until the merfolk institute a worldwide fishocracy?

14. When fishermen in Nova Scotia land a mermaid, they think they've hit the jackpot--until they're stricken with a mysterious illness that makes them unable to breathe except while underwater. Can fish pathologist Hank Walley decipher the genetic code of this nightmare virus and identify a cure in time to save himself? Or must he, too, soon be tanked?


Answers below





The real books are numbers

2, 4, 9, and 12.

Face-Lift 715

Guess the Plot

Daughter of the Ocean

1. Moira's always wondered who her biological parents were. She finally meets her mom, but when she asks about meeting her father, Mom just says, "Head for the coast; you can't miss him."

2. She claims to be a mermaid and although most people would be skeptical because she uses a submarine instead of swimming, crewman Digby believes it and lets her aboard the Sea Guppy. Hilarity ensues.

3. Just as Octavius the shepherd perfects the art of walking on water, the damn Ocean starts parting whenever he comes near, so he decides to search the sea floor until he finds Venus -- and bring her back to Pompeii as his wife. Plus, seven spectacular obstacles and a monstrous fish.

4. The merpeople are almost ready to take over the world and wipe out humanity with their water sorcery. Meteorologist Fenwick Jones is the only one who can stop them. But will he do so when the merman king offers him his beautiful daughter if he stays mum until the merfolk institute a worldwide fishocracy?

5. Shi'inabi has always been different from the other villagers. She can get fish to jump into her net, seals play with her, and dolphins give her rides on their backs. Life is good, until her 16th birthday, when a green-skinned man comes to her door, claiming he must take her to her father, Poseidon.

6. Madison wakes up on the beach and discovers that her hair has lost its natural curl. Also, that she's become a mermaid. The bad news is, her boyfriend may not be able to handle it. The good news is, she has gained the power to command the ocean's waves, which is much cooler than having a boyfriend.


Original Version

Dear Evil Editor:

What would happen if you woke up on a shore of an ocean’s beach [Not wordy enough; how about "coastal shore of an ocean’s seaside waterfront beach"?] not knowing who you are or how you got there, and you must go back to a life pretending not to be an emotional hollow shell that yearns for the ocean’s embrace. [I've got nothing against opening with a question, but this question can be worded more clearly as: Would you please read no further and just send me a rejection slip?]

Madison Harington went missing after her high school graduation only to be found wandering the redwood forests in Northern California near her home-town several months later. [I thought she was on the beach.] Her unusually ghostly pale skin [There are many shades of unusually ghostly pale skin. For instance, there's unusually ghostly cadaverous ashen pale skin and unusually ghostly anemic pasty pale skin. Paint us a picture.] along with her longer straighter hair has caught the suspicious eye of her childhood friend, [Peter] Parker, who [, thanks to his spider sense,] immediately knows this creature isn’t his old companion.

[Parker: You're not the Madison I once knew.

Madison: How so?

Parker: Your skin's pale.

Madison: I've been in this dark forest two months.

Parker: Your hair's longer and straighter.

Madison: Hello? Two months without a cut and perm?

Parker: I guess I was wron--wait, what about the fact that your legs have been replaced by a scaly fish tail?]

Madison now has to blend into a world that she has no emotional attachment to while resisting the constant luring of the ocean’s sweet lullaby calling her home. [Why must she resist? Why does she have no emotional attachment to the world she lived her whole life in?]

As mermaids, they aren’t supposed to feel any connections to land dwellers anymore, but when Parker becomes the key to unlocking all Madison’s hidden emotions and her one and only true love, she finds herself commanding the ocean’s waves and the skies in a battle against [Aquaman and] the woman with the emerald eyes who converted her, in order to save her two worlds.

Thank you for taking the time to consider my first novel. Daughter of the Ocean is a young adult, fantasy novel about a girl’s journey to self-discovery; along the way, she’ll stubble upon new abilities [like shaving her scales], new and old friends, enemies, and a few awkward, red-faced moments [like almost suffocating when her makeup clogs her gills]. It is completed at a 72,600 word count. The young adult readers of today have been invaded by vampires; the next invasion will come from beneath the ocean.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,


Notes

Too much time explaining Madison's situation, and not enough telling us what happens. She's become a mermaid. What does Emerald Eyes want from her? What does Madison want? What happens if she can't defeat her enemies? Dump the first paragraph and give us more story.

I get the impression she was converted during the time she was missing, in which case the ocean's lullaby wouldn't be "calling her home," as her home would be where she spent most of her life. I think that "lullaby" is Aquaman's mating call, luring her into his underwater bachelor pad.

You'd think the woman with emerald eyes would send Madison to mermaid orientation after converting her, instead of ditching her on the beach or in the forest.

If you've just been converted to mermaidism, do you already have the power to command the ocean and skies? Enough to take on Emerald Eyes and Aquaman?

Thanks to the Blogger search function, I was able to determine that this is the 14th query we've done in which Aquaman showed up.

Here's Aquaman's problem: other superheroes have cool-sounding arch-enemies like Doctor Octopus, Lex Luthor, and The Joker. Aquaman has The Fisherman.

Face-Lift 666

Guess the Plot

The Mermaid Virus

1. When a dead mermaid with open sores washes up on the beach it causes a media frenzy. Can Dr. Michaels stop the plague she carries from spreading to humanity--before Arnold Toole convinces everyone that eating mermaid flesh grants immortality?

2. In a village famous for its seafood and its smell, Kayla's scientist parents are studying a mysterious virus that kills one teen-aged girl per year. When her parents suddenly die, Kayla must finish their work before she becomes the next victim of . . . The Mermaid Virus. Also, Rastafarian surfers.

3. Kyle designed the Mermaid Virus to trail bubbles across random office monitors and to relieve boredom. But when the saucy fish-tail starts skimming the managers' accounts and transferring the money to orphanages, cancer research, and Save the Whales, Kyle isn't sure if he's created a monster or an angel.

4. For years, virologist Lyle Bodecker has been studying the "Mermaid Virus", a mysterious disease that transforms women into near-duplicates of Daryl Hannah during the filming of Splash. Now he's announced he's on the verge of finding a cure. Can he be stopped in time?

5. Navy SEAL Hank Deadle knows he and his badass comrades are the best of the best . . . until they start growing iridescent green tails. Could it have anything to do with that top-secret medical research project funded by Disney that they volunteered for?

6. When fishermen in Nova Scotia land a mermaid, they think they've hit the jackpot--until they're stricken with a mysterious illness that makes them unable to breathe except while underwater. Can fish pathologist Hank Walley decipher the genetic code of this nightmare virus and identify a cure in time to save himself? Or must he, too, soon be tanked?


Original Version

Dear Evil Editor,

Sandstone is an unusual village, not just because of its uncanny success in the seafood industry [despite its location 800 miles from the ocean,] or the mysterious virus that takes the life of one teenage girl every year, but because of its smell. [There's nothing unusual about a village that's famous for seafood also being famous for its smell.] The smell of Sandstone air is the first thing that strikes Kayla as unusual when she moves to the seaside village with her parents, scientists that are determined to discover the cure for the Mermaid Virus [thus saving 100 lives per century]. [I smell a Nobel Prize in medicine coming their way.]

Kayla is soon befriended by the mysterious and green-eyed Joseph [I'd rather know what's mysterious about him than what color his eyes are.] and a delinquent crew of Rastafarian surfers. When attacks from strange water creatures [Mermaids.] begin to take their toll on the surfers and fishermen alike, Kayla starts to realize that there is more to Sandstone's annual deaths than a “virus.” When her parents meet an untimely death at the verge of scientific breakthrough, she becomes sure of it. [It's the fact that one teen-aged girl per year dies that indicates "virus" should be in quotation marks, not the fact that sea creatures are trying to rid their waters of Rastafarian surfers, or that Kayla's parents, who aren't teenagers, died. What killed her parents?] Now, under the guardianship of a woman she does not trust, Kayla must continue the work that her parents began—discovering the cause of the Mermaid Virus—before she becomes its next victim, even as she struggles with her grief over her parent's [parents'] death, the unusual nature of her relationship with Joseph, [If you aren't going to tell us what's mysterious about Joseph or what's unusual about their relationship, why is he in the query?] and the dark secrets her surfing friends fail to keep hidden. [But that you have no trouble keeping hidden.]

The Mermaid Virus is complete at 67,000 words. I have spent several years on both the East and West coast and have become an avid reader of mermaid lore. I hold a BA in Literary Studies from Brigham Young University-Idaho. [BYU Idaho? That makes as much sense as MIT at Chicago.] My shorter creative work [A Haiku and a non-rhyming limerick.] has appeared in The Claremont Review and Bottle Rockets, and has earned several awards at my university's annual pre-professional conferences. I thought that this project may be suitable for you because of your interest in folklore, cannibalism, and obscure Asian history. Thank you for your time in reviewing this query. [For the record, my interest in cannibalism isn't literary in nature; I just like the flavor of a well-seasoned grilled human thigh.]

Cordially,


Notes

So what's so unusual about the smell of the air? If you're going to bring it up, you have to explain.

I don't see how scientists can be so convinced there's a virus that targets one teen girl per year, that they pack up their family and move to the scene of the deaths to find a cure. It sounds more like a case for amateur sleuth Amelia Pettipants.

On the other hand, if the villagers are sacrificing one girl per year to Aquaman, how did word that there was a mysterious virus reach Kayla's parents? Was it CSI Sandstone that originally determined that the annual deaths were caused by a virus?

How can a teen-aged girl just take over the work of her scientist parents? Doesn't this work require years of training?

Face-Lift 376

Guess the Plot

Depth

1. Written to shame admirers of genre fiction, this novel is so deep that it is completely incomprehensible, as all true works of literature must be.

2. In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, near the end of World War II, a Nazi submarine goes too deep and disappears. Presumed lost, it actually is whisked to another dimension where, with a few alien modifications, it fights in Galactic War II as the flagship of the Groodoan Spacefleet.

3. When her ship sinks, a US Navy sailor finds herself miraculously transformed into a mermaid. Before she can even swim back to the US, she undergoes yet another transformation, this time into an inhuman goddess of the sea, heiress to all its wealth, and as cruel as its laws of survival.

4. Lovely Marine biologist Lance Corporal Tootsie LaMer has disappeared off the coast of Dry Tortuga. As Adventurer Dirk Glascock races to her rescue, an outbreak of ptomaine renders his crew useless and his bilge full. Dirk knows his greatest fear - bathophobia - has nothing to do with showering. But will it prevent him from finding the true depth of his feelings?

5. When mousy librarian Louise Glip opens a magic book and mysteriously finds herself transported into the hip Viper Room she realizes that not only is she underdressed and over-read, she is also out of her . . . Depth.

6. Moyra and Tiffany are sooo tired of being called "shallow", they convince all the Gamma Gamma Gamma sisters to wear black, read Marx and Kant, and throw a "peacenik" party which turns into a riot because most of the guests are actually undercover police.


Original Version

Dear (Ms. / Mr. Lastname):

I have completed a fantasy novel, and would like you to represent me. Depth (65,000 words) is the adventure of a young woman overcoming the sea after her transformation into a mermaid. [Those of the finned persuasion will argue that you're born a mermaid, not transformed, but you can simply respond, "It's fiction, gill-face."]

Kali W. [Amazing. Her last name is only one letter, yet it has more syllables than her first name.] [Does she always go by Kali W, like Kenny G and Mister T and Auntie M?] is 18, a US Navy sailor on her first cruise. [That's the latest strategy used by navy recruiters: tell 'em they're going on a two-year world cruise.] After her ship capsizes and sinks [Do naval ships really capsize and sink? It's gotta be pretty rare, not to mention embarrassing. I mean, you take out a naval vessel like a destroyer or an aircraft carrier for maneuvers or something, and you sink it? You're the friggin' navy, for Pete's sake. And you can't make a four-billion-dollar ship float?] she finds herself breathing water, her legs replaced with a tail. Worse, she's the sole survivor of an aircraft carrier dropping into abyssal depths. [The sole survivor? There are thousands of crew members on a carrier. Aren't there any lifeboats? Does anyone know how to swim?] Breaking free of the ship, she's stranded in the blue desert of the pelagic Pacific [I had to look up pelagic, and now that I have, I wonder if it's used correctly. It means "of the sea," as in pelagic birds, pelagic ecosystem, pelagic organisms. Can it describe the sea itself? Wouldn't that be redundant, like the arboreal trees, or the evil editor?] and left with only one choice: swim back to America.

Through challenge and trial she learns the powers of her siren form, transcends [Evolves?] from prey to predator, and masters the sea. When Kali rests at a beautiful, remote atoll, it becomes harder and harder to leave, until she accepts it as her new home. There she faces a new threat: [A shark that breathes air and has human legs.] that of her transformation into an inhuman goddess of the sea, heiress to all its wealth, as vain as its beauty and as cruel as its laws of survival.

Depth realistically renders the Pacific's varied ecosystems and species. [Except for the mermaid part.] The mythology of sirens underlies real-world detail. I served as a military journalist, publishing news and features in defense and civilian publications. I've seen much of the Pacific waters detailed in the story, from both above and below. This is my first novel.

An SASE is provided for your reply. Thank you for your time and consideration.


Notes

Who would win between Kali W. and Aquaman?

Okay, she's on a ship, it sinks, she becomes a mermaid. That's the setup. What's the plot? The rest is vague. She starts swimming home, rests on an atoll, decides to stay, morphs into a cruel goddess? I want to know what happens. Are there any other people in the book after the ship sinks? What does she do in her role as a goddess of the sea? Does she lead her minions in attacking fishing fleets? Melt glaciers with her heat ray to expand her realm? There is a story, right?

Face-Lift 168

Guess the Plot

Over Their Heads

1. When Professor Hanson spends the entire period spouting complete nonsense and nobody in his General Relativity course notices, it's just as he suspected -- the material is "over their heads."

2. When he gets into salt water, Garrett sprouts gills and a scaly tail and becomes a merman. What will his girlfriend Frances say when she finds out?

3. Angus McPhee is inspired to teach partial differential equations, representation theory, and algebraic topology to fourth-graders. But is this quest too quixotic even for so dedicated an educator?

4. Susan makes a dreadful mistake when she enrolls her "special" twins in a program she thought would help them with their learning disability. The other students, budding young astrophysicists all, are not amused.

5. Carol and Tim could never understand why their dinner guests always ran away screaming. Why didn't the guests just keep their eyes downcast, if it was so upsetting to see the mounted heads of Carol's deceased relatives?

6. The memoir of MIT professor-turned-comedian Stanley Menschowitz and how his career based on the humor of quantum physics never really took off.


Original Version

It's 1905 in a small seacoast town in Maine. Frances Schmidt, one of the few female graduate students of her era, has traveled north to read Garrett Hathaway's huge library of books about mermen and mermaids. [I'm not sure whether to express disbelief at the claim that a huge library of books about mermen and mermaids exists, or at the claim that someone wants to read all of it.] Armed with her grandmother's cookie recipes, she's ready to charm Garrett and to best her academic nemesis, Norbert. [She needs to charm Garrett why? Has he invited her to read his library of books, or is she just showing up unannounced?] [Learning all about mermaids and mermen is going to help her best Norbert? What is this, a science project? Wait, I know where this is going, she shows up at the grad school science fair with a merman, figuring first place is in the bag, but then Norbert walks in with a centaur.] [It's just a hunch, but if the first woman graduate student at the University of Maine insists on writing her Masters thesis on mermen, I'm guessing they won't let another woman into graduate school for forty years.] But when she falls in love with Garrett, she doesn't realize that he's hiding a terrible secret. [Once you've revealed to a woman that you own an entire library of books about mermaids and mermen, and she hasn't slowly backed out of the room, chances are she can handle any other secret you're keeping.]

No one knows that Garrett Hathaway is a merman. [I would like to retract my previous statement.] When he touches salt water, he sprouts gills and a blue, scaly tail. [I always wondered how Aquaman could swim really fast without a fish tail. I mean, the guy had just feet. You'd think he would have had enough brains to put on swim fins.] Despite his growing love for Frances, he is certain that she will see him as a monster if she ever learns the truth. [She'll learn the truth when he takes her home to meet his parents and she discovers that his father's a fisherman and his mother's the flounder in the bathtub.]

Over their Heads is a completed YA romance novel. [How many 15-year-olds are gonna read a book about a 22-year-old woman who's in love with a fish? Maybe she should be in high school.] Under my pen name, my short stories have appeared the magazine Night to Dawn, the anthology In the Outposts of Beyond, and on a can of Story House Coffee. [Evil Editor has the complete set of those. My library has one wall of books and three walls of coffee cans.] When I'm not writing fiction, I'm a historian with a PhD in the History of American Civilization from Harvard. I have published an essay in the Journal of the Early Republic, and I am under contract with ABC-Clio to write and edit a book about the Industrial Revolution.

I would be delighted to send you my sample chapters. Thank you very much for your time.


Notes

Not clear why that last sentence in paragraph 1 begins with "But."

Not clear how reading books about mermaids will help her best Norbert.

Also, I'm not sure what the time frame is, but she seems to fall in love awfully fast with this guy, considering that she's probably been granted a limited amount of time to read his library, and is probably spending most of her time reading.

Fortunately, it's fairly brief, so you have space in which to expand your plot description with additional information.